“That’s when I found Teenae. I was up in the mountains and happened to pass through one of the o’Tghalie estates when they had a child auction. My maran prescience, which we all have from Tae, could see the woman she was to become and I was smitten even though she had shaved her head to make herself ugly so that no one would want to buy her.

“Mostly, though, I was thinking how nice it would be to have a child bride around who could be trained properly in the ways of serving a man and wouldn’t be spoiled like Noe. It never struck me that the reason the o’Tghalie were selling her was that she was unmanageable. So I finished my trip in the mountains with this girl-child terror who would follow me because I owned her, but who wouldn’t do the tiniest thing I asked.”

“She loves you now,” said Oelita.

“Of course.” He smiled. “I’m telling you these stories because marriage isn’t an easy thing, and when we look back we never see the thing we saw then. Some marriages that look perfect, don’t work. And some marriages that are the despair of all rational people somehow have the basics that make them work.”

“How did you win her?” asked Kathein.

“I was trying to resell her for half-price to an og’Sieth steel-smith who was interested in her because of the reputation of the o’Tghalie women as superior servants for their men. He asked her about her ambitions and she jinxed the sale by telling him she wanted to be a mathematician. Back on the trail I muttered and told her I’d teach her some mathematics if she’d fix the food. She looked at me skeptically and told me that if I taught her the mathematics first then she would fix our food. So I taught her some algebra that I’d learned painfully and that she learned as fast as I could remember what I knew. She smiled for the first time.”

“Did she fix your meal?”

“The best road meal I ever had! Joesai was the one who really got to her, though. He had her number from the start. He came on with total assurance and would teach her some manipulation that was always flawed. She’d catch him and then he’d grab anyone who’d listen and tell them in amazement how smart she was. When he didn’t know what she wanted to know, he’d hire an o’Tghalie male to teach him and then smuggle what he’d learned home to her. She became our slave. We could get her to do anything provided we were consistent. If we weren’t logical, then she’d fight us tooth and dagger. It would have been a good life, but Noe took pity on her and taught her some of the fine points about bamboozling men.”

“When I met your Five you were very happy,” said Kathein. “I loved your happiness.”

“A baby learns to walk. Every other step was a disaster no matter how hard we concentrated — and then suddenly we were running and we were such a good team that our services came to be in high demand.”

“I thought you were the smoothest people I knew,” Kathein said, laughing.

“So did we. That’s the danger signal. As soon as you learn to walk so well that you can run over rough ground, then you want to fly and you break your bones in your first sailplane crash. We hadn’t counted on Aesoe.”

Oelita broke her silence. “Joesai told me that one day Aesoe just ordered you to marry me.”

“That’s the way it was. We were outraged.”

“He wanted me,” said Kathein contritely.

Gaet grinned. “He gave us a fair trade. Aesoe had excellent taste in women!”

The women stared at Gaet and he knew the question that each was asking him with her eyes but was unwilling to speak. Which of us do you prefer?

Gaet paused solemnly. “We have arrived at a conflict of futures. The five of us learned to love you, Kathein, and I think it was mutual — and then you left us and we still loved you but we began to look at alternatives. The five of us didn’t want you, Oelita, not because we didn’t love you when we met you, but because you had been imposed on us against our will.”

“And against mine,” she added.

“But wasn’t Aesoe right? You could have become part of a functional Six. Still, Aesoe’s vision went awry and so we have this situation in which two futures try to occupy the same present The five of us cannot resolve this conflict. It is up to you two.”

“We’re back where we started,” said Kathein, almost angrily.

“You cannot ask that of us,” said Oelita.

“We could flip a coin,” said Kathein bitterly.

Gaet was smiling. “Do you like each other?”

“Of course we like each other!” flared Kathein.

Tears were running down the ridges of Oelita’s facial cicatrice.

“Could you live with each other?”

A look of astonishment crossed Kathein’s face. She turned to Oelita. “Do you know what this man is proposing?”

“No.”

Kathein was on her feet. She was dressing. “Poor Hoemei and Joesai are back at the mansion feeling miserable, and this lecher here has the audacity to think he can have both of us. I know this man very well. I know what he is thinking.”

“I don’t believe it!” said Oelita, staring at Gaet’s face. She saw it was true and rose with Kathein to dress, too.

“It’s one solution,” said Gaet, admiring two women he loved.

“But a Seven is illegal!” exclaimed a shocked Oelita.

“By custom, not by law. With Hoemei as the Prime Predictor it would hardly be a problem.”

“Where were you planning to take us? I know you! There must be pillows around here somewhere.” Kathein was sarcastic.

“The Temple of the Gray Rocks. It’s small, but it has a charming game room. What better place to spend the night?”

“See!” said Kathein indignantly. “See how easily he betrays his brothers!”

Oelita was still staring at Gaet, remembering all the lonely nights, the suffering, the string of lovers who had been her fate because of her vow never to marry, the fear she carried with her which even the peace of the desert had never mollified. She began to speak firmly. “Joesai and Hoemei have fought. Let them suffer. At the creches they would have a name for it: the Trial of Stupidity. Kathein and I have not been fighting. We’ve only committed ourselves to loving, and challenged our fear to find that. We deserve our pleasures. Gaet, I’ll go with you.” She turned her eyes to Kathein defiantly. “I love this man. And I can live with you — because I love you.”

A FEW WINDOW-FRAMED globes added their green glow to the night sky. Then, like a black cloud across the stars, a shadow passed into the yard, examining the stairways and balconies and the footholds in the face of the wall. The Queen of Life-before-Death clutched the black shawl that made her invisible by night, waiting for the globes to be shrouded. Gaet had left her with women and she was resentful. She wanted to be with Hoemei. It was her duty to be with men. Her knees were like jelly knowing this was the most important night of her whole life. Someone inside the mansion covered the globes.

She heard sea noises. She was a wave rising as it ran toward shore at the very heartbeat before it crested, foaming, roaring, to lay itself on the beach.

As silently as God flowing across His Sky she moved up the stairs. With an assassin’s stealth she stole through the window-door open to the night breeze. She knelt beside the figure on the pillows, colored by the pale reflection of a waxing Scowlmoon across the sea. She longed to touch him but pulled her fingers back. Hoemei. This was the man she was raising to the highest position on Geta.