It was like the vine narcotic. Neq knew what she was doing, but was powerless to oppose it. He had to listen, had to respond, had to hate himself as she hated him. He was a killer, worse than the man who had killed his own mate.
Tyl did not interfere.
In the next month of their travel, Vara grew especially sullen. Her campaign was not working, for Neq only accepted her taunts. "I had everything!" she exclaimed in frustration. "Now I have nothing. Not even vengeance."
She was learning.
She was silent for a week. Then: "Not even his child."
For Var had been sterile. Her father Sol had been castrate; she had been conceived on his bracelet by Sos the Rope, who later gave his own bracelet to Sosa at Helicon. So her husband, like her father, had had no child.
Neq knew that twisted story, now, and understood why the Weaponless, who had been Sos, had pursued Var. Vengeance, again! But Var had been hard to catch, for his discolored skin had been sensitive to radiation, a marvelous advantage near the badlands. But that ability bad come at the cost of fertility.
"And my mother Sosa was barren," Vara cried. "Am I to be barren too?"
Tyl looked meaningfully at Neq.
Var had been naive. Neq was not. That had been established and reestablished in the past two months, to his inevitable discredit. But this shocked him. The meaning of Tyl's original stricture had suddenly come clear.
Vara wanted a baby....
She didn't seem to realize what she had said, or to comprehend why Tyl had stopped her from attacking Neq at the outset.
Yet what was in Tyl's mind? If he thought it important that Vara have her baby, there were other ways. As many ways as there were men in the world. Why this? Why Neq, Vara's enemy? Why dishonor?
There was an answer. Vara did not want just a baby-- she wanted a child to Var. Any infant she bore would be Vari, the line of Var. Just as she herself had been born Soli, child of the castrate Sol. The bracelet, not the man, determined parentage in the eyes of the nomads. And what man would abuse Var's bracelet and his own honor by contributing to such adultery, however attractive the girl might be?
What man indeed--except one already shed of his bracelet, and so hopelessly sullied by his own crimes that violation of another bracelet could hardly make a difference? What man, except one bound by oath to return a life taken?
What man but Neq!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Now it was Tyl's turn to advance his cause, and Neq's to stand aside. The trek continued into the third month, interrupted by strategies and combats and natural hazards, but the important interaction was between Tyl and Vara. Vara's initial fury had been spent, and she was now vulnerable.
It started subtly. One day Tyl would ask her a question, seemingly innocuous, but whose answer forced her to consider her own motivations. Another day he would question Neq, bringing out some minor aspect of his background. In this way Tyl established that Vara's closest ties were to Sol, not her biological father, and to Sosa, not her natural mother, and that Sol and Sosa had lived together in deliberate violation of both their bracelets, making a family for Soli/Vara.
"It's different in Helicon," she said defensively. "There are no real marriages there. There aren't enough women. All the men share all the women, no matter who wears the bracelets. It wouldn't be fair, otherwise." She spoke as though Helicon still existed, though she knew the truth.
"Did Sosa share with all the men, then?" Tyl inquired as though merely clarifying a point of confusion. "Even those she disliked?"
"No, there was no point. She couldn't conceive. Oh, I suppose she took a turn once in a while, if someone insisted--she's quite attractive, you know. But it didn't mean anything. Sex is just sex, in Helicon. What counts is that women have babies."
Similarly true in the nomad society, Neq thought.
"Suppose you had stayed there?" Tyl asked.
"Why should I be different? I was only eight when I left, but already--" She stopped.
Tyl didn't speak, but after a while she felt compelled to explain. "One of the men--there's no age limit, you know. He liked them young, I suppose, and there weren't many girls anyway. But I wasn't ready. So I hit him with the sticks. That was all. I never told Sol--there would have been trouble."
There certainly would have been! Neq remembered something she had cried in the flower-forest, when the visions were strong. A threat to some attacking man.
"But if you had been older--" Tyl said.
"I would have gone with him, I guess. That's the way it is, in Helicon. Preference has nothing to do with it."
"But when you married Var--would you have returned to the mountain then?"
"That was where we were going!" Then she had to explain again. "Var would have understood. I would have kept his bracelet."
But she shared some of Var's naivete, for she still didn't comprehend where Tyl was leading her.
Neq's turn as subject, then, in similar fashion. Day by day, as they marched and fought and slept. He didn't want to cooperate, but Tyl was too clever for him, phrasing questions he had to answer openly or by default. Gradually the outline of Neq's service in the empire came out, and his extreme proficiency with the sword, and the code by which he had lived. Yes, he had killed many times as a subtribe leader, but never outside the circle and never without reason. Much of it had been done at Sol's direction; none on order of the Weaponless, who had not tried to expand the empire.
Vara remained grim, not liking this seeming alignment of character.
Then Tyl came at Neq's post-empire activity. "Why did you seek the crazies?"
"The empire was falling apart, and so was the nomad society, and outlaws were ravaging the hostels. There was no food, no supplies, no good weapons. I tried to learn why the crazies had retreated."
"Why had they retreated?"
"They depended on supplies from Helicon, and their trucks weren't getting through. So I said I'd take a look."
Then the description of what he had found at the mountain. Vara's impassivity crumbled; tears streamed down her cheeks. "I knew it was gone," she cried. "My two fathers did it, and Var and I helped. But we didn't know it was that awful...."
Thus Tyl had somehow cast Neq as the upholder of civilized values, while Sol and the Weaponless and even Var were its destroyers. What a turnabout for Vara's assumptions!
They marched a few more days. Then Tyl resumed. "Did you go alone to Helicon?"
Neq would not answer, for the memories remained raw despite the years and he did not want this part of it discussed.
Surprisingly, it was Vara who pursued the questioning now. "You married a crazy! I remember, you admitted it. Did she go with you?"
Still Neq was silent. But Tyl answered. "Yes."
"Who was she? Why did she go?" Vara demanded.
"She was called Miss Smith," Tyl said. "She was secretary to Doctor Jones, the crazy chief. She went to show the way, and to write a report. They drove in a crazy truck, all the way across America. That's the Ancient name for the crazy demesnes--America."
"I know," she said shortly. And another day: "Was she fair?"
"She was," Tyl said. "Fair as only the civilized are fair."
"I'm fair!"
"Perhaps you too are civilized."
She winced at the implications. "Literate?"
"Of course." Few nomads could read, but most crazies had the ability. Vara herself was literate, but neither Tyl nor Neq.
Another day: "Was she a--a real woman?"
"She turned down the Weaponless, because he wouldn't stay with the crazies."
Neq winced this time. Neqa had put it another way.