50

I tried to arrive at a theoretical basis for my use of the drug, to construct a new theology of love and openess. I studied the Covenant and many of its commentaries, attempting to discover why the first settlers of Velada Borthan had found it necessary to deify mistrust and concealment. What did they fear? What were they hoping to preserve? Dark men in a dark time, with mindsnakes creeping through their skulls. In the end I came to no real understanding of them. They were convinced of their own virtue. They had acted for the best. Thou shalt not thrust the inwardness of thy soul upon thy fellow man. Thou shalt not unduly examine the needs of thine own self. Thou shalt deny thyself the easy pleasures of intimate conversation. Thou shalt stand alone before thy gods. And so we had lived, these hundreds of years, unquestioning, obedient, keeping the Covenant. Maybe nothing keeps the Covenant alive now, for most of us, except simple politeness: we are unwilling to embarrass others by baring ourselves, and so we go locked up, our inner wounds festering, and we speak our language of third-person courtliness. Was it time to create a new Covenant? A bond of love, a testament of sharing? Hidden in my rooms at home, I struggled to write one. What could I say that would be believed? That we had done well enough following the old ways, but at grievous personal cost. That the perilous conditions of the first settling no longer obtained among us, and certain customs, having become handicaps rather than assets, could be discarded. That societies must evolve if they are not to decay. That love is better than hate and trust is better than mistrust. But little of what I wrote convinced me. Why was I attacking the established order of things? Out of profound conviction, or merely out of the hunger for dirty pleasures? I was a man of my own time; I was embedded firmly in the rock of my upbringing even as I toiled to turn that rock to sand. Trapped in the tension between my old beliefs and my still unformed new ones, I swung a thousand times a day from pole to pole, from shame to exaltation. As I labored over the draft of my new Covenant’s preamble one evening, my bondsister Halum unexpectedly entered my study. “What are you writing?” she asked pleasantly. I covered one sheet with another. My face must have reflected my discomfort, for hers showed signs of apology for having intruded. “Official reports,” I said. “Foolishness. Dull bureaucratic trivia.” That night I burned all I had written, in a paroxysm of self-contempt.

51

In those weeks I took many voyages of exploration into unknown lands. Friends, strangers, casual acquaintances, a mistress: companions on strange journeys. But through all the early phase of my time of changes I said not a word to Halum about the drug. To share it with her had been my original goal, that had brought the drug to my lips in the first place. Yet I feared to approach her. It was cowardice that kept me back: what if, by coming to know me too well, she ceased to love me?

52

Several times I came close to broaching the subject with her. I held myself back. I did not dare to move toward her. If you wish you may measure my sincerity by my hesitation; how pure, you may ask, was my new creed of openness, if I felt that my bondsister would be above such a communion? But I will not pretend there was any consistency in my thinking then. My liberation from the taboos on selfbaring was a willed thing, not a natural evolution, and I had constantly to battle against the old habits of our custom. Though I talked in “I” and “me” with Schweiz and some of the others with whom I had shared the drug, I was never comfortable in doing so. Vestiges of my broken bonds still crept together to shackle me. I looked at Halum and knew that I loved her, and told myself that the only way to fulfill that love was through the joining of her soul and mine, and in my hand was the powder that would join us. And I did not dare. And I did not dare.

53

The twelfth person with whom I shared the Sumaran drug was my bondbrother Noim. He was in Manneran to spend a week as my guest. Winter had come, bringing snow to Glin, hard rains to Salla, and only fog to Manneran, and northerners needed little prodding to come to our warm province. I had not seen Noim since the summer before, when we had hunted together in the Huishtors. In this last year we had drifted apart somewhat; in a sense Schweiz had come to take Noim’s place in my life, and I no longer had quite the same need for my bondbrother.

Noim now was a wealthy landowner in Salla, having come into the inheritance of the Condorit family as well as the lands of his wife’s kin. In manhood he had become plump, though not fat; his wit and cunning were not hidden deep beneath his new layers of flesh. He had a sleek, well-oiled look, with dark unblemished skin, full, complacent lips, and round sardonic eyes. Little escaped his attention. Upon arriving at my house he surveyed me with great care, as though counting my teeth and the lines about my eyes, and, after the formal bondbrotherly greetings, after the presentation of his gift and the one he had brought from Stirron, after we had signed the contract of host and guest, Noim said unexpectedly, “Are you in trouble, Kinnall?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Your face is sharper. You’ve lost weight. Your mouth—you hold it in a quirky grin that doesn’t announce a relaxed man within. Your eyes are red-rimmed and they don’t want to look directly into other eyes. Is anything wrong?”

“These have been the happiest months of one’s life,” I said, a shade too vehemently, perhaps.

Noim ignored my disclaimer. “Are you having problems with Loimel?”

“She goes her way, and one goes his own.”

“Difficulties with the business of the Justiciary, then?”

“Please, Noim, won’t you believe that—”

“Your face has changes inscribed in it,” he said. “Do you deny there have been changes in your life?”

I shrugged. “And if so?”

“Changes for the worse?”

“One does not think so.”

“You’re being evasive, Kinnall. Come: what’s a bondbrother for, if not to share problems?”

“There are no problems,” I insisted.

“Very well.” And he let the matter drop. But I saw him watching me that evening, and again the next day at morning’s meal, studying me, probing me. I could never hide anything from him. We sat over blue wine and talked of the Sallan harvest, talked of Stirron’s new program of reforming the tax structure, talked of the renewed tensions between Salla and Glin, the bloody border raids that had lately cost me the life of a sister. And all the while Noim watched me. Halum dined with us, and we talked of our childhood, and Noim watched me. He flirted with Loimel, but his eyes did not wander from me. The depth and intensity of his concern preyed on me. He would be asking questions of others, soon, trying to get from Halum or from Loimel some notion of what might be bothering me, and he might stir up troublesome curiosities in them that way. I could not let him remain ignorant of the central experience of his bondbrother’s life. Late the second night, when everyone else had retired, I took Noim to my study, and opened the secret place where I stored the white powder, and asked him if he knew anything of the Sumaran drug. He claimed not to have heard of it. Briefly I described its effects to him. His expression darkened; he seemed to draw in on himself. “Do you use this stuff often?” he asked.

“Eleven times thus far.”

“Eleven—why, Kinnall?”

“To learn the nature of one’s own self, through sharing that self with others.”

Noim laughed explosively: it was almost a snort. “Selfbaring, Kinnall?”

“One takes up odd hobbies in one’s middle years.”