She had forgotten the one she had just brought to the Last Pleasure and seemed to stare at Joesai intently, hoping for more. The woven carvings of her body were tight geometrical designs that flowed along her curves. She reminded him of Kathein and he smelled Kathein’s perfume, his loins stirring while he half returned the courtesan’s glance and would have faded into the tapestry to that couch and his dreams of Kathein had his startled ears not caught talk of a great land march.
Getans were a land-oriented people on a world of eleven disjoint seas. They tended to think in terms of mountain and plain, since every sea could be bypassed if necessary. No Gathering had ever had to challenge an island rule and that in itself made tradition worthless in the present case.
“Taking Soebo by land we’re more liable to drown than set table for Judgment Feast,” Joesai lashed dryly, speaking for the first time.
Bendaein was not troubled by sarcasm. “There is also land between here and Soebo. Would you have us row it or sail?”
Joesai grunted noncommittally. He was soured by the role he had been awarded. His mission was to set up an undefended Advance Inquest in the Plaza at Soebo. Such effrontery in Mnankrei territory would be Ritual Suicide without the trappings of temple decor. Prime Predictor Aesoe, acting through Bendaein, was brazenly asking him to make his Contribution to the Race, a sacrifice move in some larger strategy.
Of course there were advantages to heading the advance suicide party. He would be beyond Bendaein’s communication lines. Then he could create his own campaign. What infuriated Joesai was knowing Aesoe knew he would disobey orders. Thus the master plan must call for a man to kill himself flouting clan discipline.
Aesoe can see my death and why such a death will be useful to him — may those who love him vomit at his funeral!
Joesai broke another toothpick and cleaned his nails. He was not listening to the Grand Strategy. I’ll need Noe, he thought. One-wife was related to the sea-going peoples of the northern Njarae who were not pleased with Mnankrei rule. She will have access to ships. He thanked God for his family. They were loyal, come gain or sorrow.
A conference with brother-husbands Gaet and Hoemei was in order. He felt the old wild pressure in him, the need to strike without thinking — which was his asset in an emergency but which he had learned was deadly if there was time for thought. The creche was closing in again. Gaet and Hoemei could calm him. There was a way out. There had always been a way out. Hoemei could think through any trap.
I wonder if Aesoe will ever turn on my shortest brother? I must be here if that happens. They need me. Now he needed them.
Joesai’s fierce longing for action pulled at him. Dreaming about Kathein, he sneaked away from the lifeless meeting. It was because of her that he had been marked for death. The sweet mystery of that woman had driven him to oppose Aesoe’s will with relentless abandon, until his persistent violation of official Kaiel strategy brought the final disfavor from a Council dominated by Aesoe’s ambition. In opposing Aesoe’s seduction of Kathein, he had opposed Aesoe’s drive upon distant Sorrow. Now he was expendable. He would be used to blunt the Mnankrei who also had designs upon the coast.
He remembered a happy Kathein splashing nude in the pool of their central courtyard, wearing a crown of love vine, pink with the first buds of flower. Gaet had failed to herd her with the rest of his family to the Founding Day clan dinner with its mock Arant pudding made of beans. Kathein slipped away, not wanting to go, and he had slipped out of Gael’s clutches, unwilling to leave her. Love vine was not flowering now, but he bought some anyway in the half hope it would touch her memory. How could a Six-love of such intensity ever have failed at the bonds?
Beside her door he debated whether to whack the knocker or throw the arm of the silly electron bell she maintained to elevate herself above the rest of humanity. Either way he would risk having the door shut in his face. It was easier to pick the lock and just enter.
“Joesai!” She found him on the second floor, staring at his baby.
“Ho! He’s a big one!” Casually he handed her the green love vine. “Remember when we made him?”
She threw the vine away. “I do not! You carry your arse between your eyes! Aesoe will kill you when he finds you’ve been here!”
Joesai grinned at her and she trembled between reach and withdrawal.
“I made something for you,” she said as if she’d just cooked up a special batch of poison. “Not because I like you, but because you’ll need it, you fool. I have better things to do with my time!”
She tricked him into a room with four of her people. That was a disappointment; he’d wanted them to be alone. “What is it?” he asked, looking at a box built into a packsack, cluttered with black knobs and a reel of wire.
“It’s a portable rayvoice. It doesn’t speak but it gives off powerful pulses that can be detected here in Kaiel-hontokae even if you are as far away as Soebo. Teenae helped me with the coding. It is slow but it is redundant. That means, stupid, that your message will have so much repetition in it that it can smash through heavy noise and still be decoded. Hoemei will have the code. You’ll have to learn it.”
“What use would I have for such a cumbersome contraption?” He was really quite pleased. Hoemei’s ability to locate his men in Soebo had made an immense impression. Better yet, Bendaein wouldn’t know what to make of it and the Mnankrei might never suspect worse than a soup pot.
“You’re a dunderhead. I don’t even like you. Am I to receive no thanks?”
He put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “Anytime. All you want.”
She stiffened under his arm. “Not that kind!”
He held onto her body, refusing to be rejected. “Kathein. We love you.”
She sneered. “That’s over. I have my own life and my own family, and my own lovers, if you please!”
Joesai was bewildered by her hostility. Few women had ever loved him. The ones who had still held him. He clenched his mind until the pain went away, then searched for some common ground. “Teenae spoke of the wonders of the new Voice of God.”
“… that you nearly lost for us!”
He grinned contritely.
“More of God’s words have appeared this high morning.” She sighed. “Joesai, I’m truly sorry if I’m irascible. I’m terrified. God is speaking to us; He has broken His Silence, and it’s not what I expected. I need your opinion. You. Your opinion. You’re the only person I know who cares enough about the heavens to understand what it might mean. I’ll show you the latest silvergraphs.”
There were only four clear pages of writings — in an alphabet that was almost familiar in a dialect that almost made sense. He puzzled over the script. “I don’t understand the key words. ‘Destroyer’ sounds like a grain mill. Pulverizer? But ‘cruiser’ and ‘battlegod’?”
“A god who plays games, I thought.”
“Twelve-inch guns?”
“There was a gungod in another fragment.”
“It is very obscure.”
“A form of the word ‘kill’ is used eighteen times in those four pages.”
“I noticed that. This is an ancient language. It speaks of the world of the Heroic Solo Chant.” Joesai was awed to the point of religious revelation. “He sets His tale in the World of the Sky.”
“What would ‘weapon’ mean? Here” — she pointed — “I thought it meant a knife because it is used to kill, but the other reference” — she pointed again — “refers to a cart. A knife with wheels?”
“Let’s make ritual to reveal more pages.”
“No. You have to go. Go now! Keep these pages. I have copies.”
“Kathein. I came to see you.”
“Out!” she flared. “Or I’ll have you thrown out! Can’t you see I’m busy? And take your rayvoice. Hoemei will assign a man to you to care for it.”