“Long ago.”
“I miss the city.”
“I, for one, am glad to be away. Hoemei has finally split with the Expansionists and you can’t believe the uproar that caused! Aesoe is after his hide and when two-husband goes to the Palace he avoids Aesoe. He’s furious at the blindness of the Expansionists. He’s pulled in a whole group to support him. Aesoe calls their proposals and predictions Stomach Thinking because Hoemei’s basic policy is Digest First, Eat Later. The conflict is dangerous because the split is basically along creche and non-creche lines.”
“That’s been coming for a long time.”
“You Who Were Born of the Machines are in the minority.”
“That won’t last.”
Teenae frowned. “It is not logical. The Expansionists want to move out rapidly and the only ready source of the priests they must have is the creches and that means they must sharply curtail the mortality rate of the Trials, but if they do that for long the creche children will be in the majority.”
“Aesoe will be dead by then and won’t care. And remember, his children will mainly come from the creches.”
Teenae gestured impatiently. “I don’t even think that is the real issue. Kathein is seeing Hoemei, more and more openly — she moons over him publicly, and makes no secret of her sexual interest in him. That drives Aesoe wild and he is about to exile Hoemei, too, or worse. I sent Gaet to talk to her, and she was her usual sweet self, but distant and uncommunicative. Hoemei thinks he is reaching her and will bring her back to us, but I think she is using him in some way I cannot compute.”
“She loves and hates Aesoe,” said Joesai. “I caught the breath of it when last at the mountain observatory. We were discussing finances. I carried a gold bar as gift from the Mnankrei for the new sky-eye.” He paused. “I was telling her of my policy of supporting and adopting Mnankrei children who have shown an aptitude for the priesthood and how that was paying off in good will. And she was telling me how she gets coin, bags of it, from Aesoe.”
Joesai threw his hands up in despair. “Aesoe is mad. He is so possessed by her that he strains all projects to please her whims. Thank God her whims are in line with the goals of Geta. I’ve come to see her as a religious fanatic. She is determined that in her lifetime our son will rise to meet God in a rocket. Everything to that end. It drives her. She hates Aesoe but he is the center of power so she loves him in order to get what she wants. I no longer know her myself. I’ve tried to seduce her but she won’t have me. What am I to her? An exile who wanders the beaches.” He smiled. “Remember how shy she used to be? And how the least encouragement would bring the kalothi power welling out of her?”
“She has placed Hoemei in great danger.”
Joesai laughed. “I see that Kaiel-hontokae hasn’t changed a bit since I was last there.”
“Kathein knows that Hoemei will be the next Prime Predictor and she is damming the mountain waters at both ends.”
“You think Hoemei has even a chance at that exalted position? He is creche. The non-creche would never permit it.”
Teenae rose to a straight sitting position with a fury that made her breasts point like fists. “The succession is not an issue of votes! It is a matter of an audit of the predictionsl Such is in Tae’s constitution!”
“And have the Kaiel ever hesitated to break the rules?”
“I’ve called a family council. We’ll all be here, in one spot, for once. I don’t know what we’ll talk about. I did it to get Hoemei out of the city.”
Joesai laughed the great laugh and threw Teenae around his neck like a shawl. “The world is one big creche.” And he took her to her room to see her new furniture.
“It’s here!” exclaimed a delighted Teenae.
The wood was the finest desert Okkai, planed and oiled to show a black grain. The surfaces were inlaid with polished Mnankrei leather, lead pebble holes and all, and was bordered with carved squares from the skull of Tonpa.
“Sorrow’s craftsmen are good,” he said.
She wiggled in delight. “The next low night we spend here! I’m so pleased! When I make your child it will be in this room!”
He chose that moment to present her with Oelita’s bound book, done in the crude print of a secret print shop. “She’s alive.”
Teenae’s eyes widened and he could see her heart begin to pound. “How do you know?”
“They keep knowledge of her from me. This book was kept from me. If she is dead, why would they protect her? But that’s not the reason I am confident of her health — in this book she speaks of God. She has worked Him into the weft of her warp. That means she has recovered from the shock of discovering that God exists and so has passed safely through the Sixth Trial.”
Teenae burst into tears. “I’ve hoped so to hear that she was all right. So she believes in God now, does she? Do we?”
“Four weeks ago when I was last at the observatory there was a perturbation in His Orbit that can’t be accounted for by gravity. Whoever He is, He is not passive; He stirs in His Sleep.”
“We should have married Oelita. Our antagonism was immature.”
“I know where she is,” he said.
When a startled Teenae looked up at her husband she saw an old glint in his eyes. He was older, more, cunning, and no less stubborn than he had ever been. “No!” she said. “I forbid it! Leave her alone. That’s over! Six is enough!”
He smiled gently. “I only meant that she revealed her location in her book. There’s a touch of the hermit philosophy in the images she uses. She can’t be far from Kaiel-hontokae. There are records of the old hermit haunts.”
“Leave her be, Joesai. For God’s Sake!”
He would not answer his wife. He showed her the new clothes he had bought for her and dressed her and took her down to the tall leaded windows where he read to her from Oelita’s book.
56
Once there was a poor girl of the clan of oe’San whose family lived beside the river Toer making their way by pounding clothes on the rocks to free them of dirt and stiffness. Her riches were long eyelashes and a flirting smile and a body carved in the most intricate cicatrice forms by her father. She owned one ragged gown that often embarrassed her when it tore. She dreamed of mansions with pink glass and colored tapestries and cloud-like pillows in the bedchambers. She dreamed of travelling by carved palanquin with four mighty Ivieth as her servants. In her dreams she rode ships to the lands of hoiela cloth where tailors fitted her for weddings and tall men took her to the games in the high temple rooms. Her dream words spilled like poems from her mouth. She reddened the whitest pillow cloth with her love. Casually heaped food steamed on golden plates. There was no poverty anywhere in her dreams.
But when she pounded those robes in the Toer and wrung them dry for her basket, she knew that it was coin which bought such dreams. With every whack she vowed that she would never remain poor like her family. She would find the gold and platinum and the silver to live her dreams.
I passed an old woman of the clan of oe’San living by the river Toer. Her riches were long eyelashes and golden teeth and a body carved in the most intricate cicatrice forms. She owned one ragged gown held together by heavy thread that passed through pierced coins that weighted her every move and jingled. I showed her one silver coin and she reached for it with a flirting smile, but I held back, asking her for her dreams. “I dream of money,” she said, and stitched the coin into her rags.
ONCE KATHEIN HAD thought she could subdue Aesoe by draining his wealth to feed each of her vast projects, but he had always found more coin. She discovered to her horror that she could never break Aesoe; she could only bankrupt the Kaiel. In a desperate walk along the Hai aqueduct she was trying to figure out a way to leave him.