All right then. Rough stone warm against the palm, and a five-beat measure, and a short old woman going about her business.
It was a beginning.
I’ve been dreaming, he thought. Ever since we got here. Not a nightmare like the
Shoby.
A good dream, a sweet dream. But was it my dream or his? Following him around, seeing through his eyes, meeting Viaka and
the others, being feasted, listening to the music … Learning their dances, learning to drum with them …
Learning to cook… Pruning orchards … Sitting on my terrace, eating tipu seeds … A sunny dream, full of music and trees and
simple companionship and peaceful solitude. My good dream, he thought, surprised and wry. No kingship, no beautiful princess,
no rivals for the throne. I’m a lazy man. With lazy dreams. I need Tai to wake me up, make me vibrate, irritate me. I need
my angry woman, my unforgiving friend.
Forest and Riel weren’t a bad substitute. They were certainly friends, and though they forgave his laziness, they had jolted
him out of it.
An odd question appeared in his mind: Does Dalzul know we’re here? Apparently Forest and Riel don’t exist for him as women;
do I exist for him as a man?
He did not try to answer the question. My job, he thought, is to try to jolt him. To put a bit of dissonance in the harmony,
to syncopate the beat. I’ll ask him to dinner and talk to him, he thought.
Middle-aged, majestic, hawk-nosed, fierce-faced, Aketa was the most mild and patient of teachers. “Todokyu nkenes ebegebyu,”
he repeated for the fifth or sixth time, smiling.
“The scepter—something—is full of? has mastery over? represents?” said Forest.
“Is connected with—symbolizes?” said Riel.
“Kenes!” Shan said. “Electric! That’s the word they kept using at the generator. Power!”
“The scepter symbolizes power?” said Forest. “Well, what a revelation. Shit!”
“Shit,” Aketa repeated, evidently liking the sound of the word. “Shit!”
Shan went into mime, dancing a waterfall, imitating the motion of wheels, the hum and buzz of the little dynamo up on the
volcano. The two women stared at him as he roared, turned, hummed, buzzed, and crackled, shouting “Kenes?” at intervals like
a demented chicken. But Aketa’s smile broadened. “Soha, kenes,” he
agreed, and mimicked the leap of a spark from one fingertip to another. “Todokyu nkenes ebegebyu.”
“The scepter signifies, symbolizes electricity! It must mean something like—if you take up the scepter you’re the Electricity
Priest—like Aketa’s the Library Priest and Agot’s the Calendar Priest—right?”
“It would make sense,” Forest said.
“Why would they pick Dalzul straight off as their chief electrician?” Riel asked.
“Because he came out of the sky, like lightning!” said Shan.
“Did they pick him?” Forest asked.
There was a pause. Aketa looked from one to the other, alert and patient.
“What’s ‘choose’?” Forest asked Riel, who said, “Sotot.”
Forest turned to their teacher. “Aketa: Dazu … ntodok… sotot?”
Aketa was silent for some time and then said, gravely and clearly, “Soha. Todok nDazu oyo sotot.”
“‘Yes. And also the scepter chooses Dalzul,’“ Riel murmured.
“Aheo?” Shan demanded—why? But of Aketa’s answer they could understand only a few words: priesthood or vocation, sacredness,
the earth.
“Anam,” Riel said—”Ket? Anam Ket?”
Aketa’s pitch-black eyes met hers. Again he was silent, and the quality of his silence held them all still. When he spoke
it was with sorrow. “Ai Dazu!” he said. “Ai Dazu kesemmas!”
He stood up, and knowing what was expected, they too rose, thanked him quietly for his teaching, and filed out. Obedient children,
Shan thought. Good pupils. Learning what knowledge?
That evening he looked up from his practice on the little Gaman finger-drum, to which Abud liked to listen, sitting with him
on the terrace, sometimes singing a soft chant when he caught a familiar beat.
“Abud,” he said, “metu?”—a word?
Abud, who had got used to the inquiry in the last few days, said, “Soha.” He was a humorless, even-natured young man; he tolerated
all Shan’s peculiarities, perhaps, Shan thought, because he really hardly noticed them.
“‘Kesemmas,’“ Shan said.
“Ah,” said Abud, and repeated the word, and then went off slowly and relentlessly into the incomprehensible. Shan had learned
to watch him rather than trying to catch the words. He listened to the tone, saw the gestures, the expressions. The earth,
down, low, digging? The Gaman buried their dead. Dead, death? He mimed dying, a corpse; but Abud never understood his charades,
and stared blankly. Shan gave up, and pattered out the dance rhythm of yesterday’s festival on the drum. “Soha, soha,” said
Abud.
“I’ve never actually spoken to Ket,” Shan said to Dalzul.
It had been a good dinner. He had cooked it, with considerable assistance from Abud, who had prevented him just in time from
frying the fezuni. Eaten raw, dipped in fiery pepperjuice, the fezuni had been delicious. Abud had eaten with them, respectfully
silent as he always was in Dalzul’s presence, and then excused himself. Shan and Dalzul were now nibbling tipu seeds and drinking
nut beer, sitting on little carpets on the terrace in the purple twilight, watching the stars slowly clot the sky with brilliance.
“All men except the chosen king are taboo to her,” Dalzul said.
“But she’s married,” Shan said—”isn’t she?”
“No, no. The princess must remain virgin until the king is chosen. Then she belongs only to him. The sacred marriage, the
hierogamy.”
“They do practice polyandry,” Shan said uncertainly.
“Her union with him is probably the fundamental event of the kingship ceremonial. Neither has any real choice in the matter.
That’s why her defection is so
troubling. She’s breaking her own society’s rules.” Dalzul took a long draft of beer. “What made me their choice in the first
place—my dramatic appearance out of the sky—may be working against me now. I broke the rules by going away, and then coming
back, and not coming back alone. One supernatural person pops out of the sky, all right, but four of them, male and female,
all eating and drinking and shitting like everybody else, and asking stupid questions in baby talk all the time? We aren’t
behaving in a properly sacred manner. And they respond by impropriety of the same order, rule-breaking. Primitive worldviews
are rigid, they break when strained. We’re having a disintegrative effect on this society. And I am responsible.”
Shan took a breath. “It isn’t your world, sir,” he said. “It’s theirs. They’re responsible for it.” He cleared his throat.
“And they don’t seem all that primitive—they make steel, their grasp of the principles of electricity is impressive—and they
are literate, and the social system seems to be very flexible and stable, if what Forest and—”
“I still call her the princess, but as I learn the language better I’ve realized that that’s inaccurate,” Dalzul said, setting
down his cup and speaking musingly. “Queen is probably nearer: queen of Ganam, of the Gaman. She is identified as Ganam, as
the soil of the planet itself.”
“Yes,” Shan said. “Riel says—”
“So that in a sense she is the Earth. As, in a sense, I am Space, the sky. Coming alone to this world, a conjunction. A mystic
union: fire and air with soil and water. The old mythologies enacted yet again in living flesh. She cannot turn away from
me. It dislocates the very order of things. The father and the mother are joined, their children are obedient, happy, secure.
But if the mother rebels, disorder, distress, failure ensue. These responsibilities are absolute. We don’t choose them. They
choose us. She must be brought back to her duty to her people.”
“As Forest and Riel understand it, she’s been married to Aketa for several years, and her second husband
is the father of her daughter.” Shan heard the harshness of his voice; his mouth was dry and his heart pounding as if he was
afraid, of what? of being disobedient?
“Viaka says he can bring her back to the palace,” Dalzul said, “but at risk of retaliation from the pretender’s faction.”
“Dalzul!” Shan said. “Ket is a married woman! She went back to her family. Her duty to you as Earth Priestess or whatever
it is is done. Aketa is her husband, not your rival. He doesn’t want the scepter, the crown, whatever it is!”
Dalzul made no reply and his expression was unreadable in the deepening twilight.
Shan went on, desperately: “Until we understand this society better, maybe you should hold back—certainly not let Viaka kidnap
Ket—”
“I’m glad you see that,” Dalzul said. “Although I can’t help my involvement, we certainly must try not to interfere with these
people’s belief systems. Power is responsibility, alas! Well, I should be off. Thank you for a very pleasant evening, Shan.
We can still sing a tune together, eh, shipmates?” He stood up and patted the air on the back, saying, “Good night, Forest;
good night, Riel,” before he patted Shan on the back and said, “Good night and thanks, Shan!” He strode out of the courtyard,
a lithe, erect figure, a white glimmer in the starlit dark.
“I think we’ve got to get him onto the ship, Forest. He’s increasingly delusional.” Shan squeezed his hands together till
the knuckles cracked. “I think he’s delusional. Maybe I am. But you and Riel and I, we seem to be in the same general reality—fiction—are
we?”
Forest nodded grimly. “Increasingly so,” she said. “And if kesemmas does mean dying, or murder—Riel thinks it’s murder, it
involves violence…. I have this horrible vision of poor Dalzul committing some awful ritual sacrifice, cutting somebody’s
throat while convinced that he’s pouring out oil or cutting cloth or
something harmless. I’d be glad to get him out of this! I’d be glad to get out myself. But how?”
“Surely if the three of us—”
“Reason with him?” Forest asked, sardonic.
When they went to what he called the palace, they had to wait a long time to see Dalzul. Old Viaka, anxious and nervous, tried
to send them away, but they waited. Dalzul came out into his courtyard at last and greeted Shan. He did not acknowledge or
did not perceive Riel and Forest. If he was acting, it was a consummate performance; he moved without awareness of their physical
presence and talked through their speech. When at last Shan said, “Forest and Riel are here, Dalzul—here—look at them!”—Dalzul
looked where he gestured and then looked back at Shan with such shocked compassion that Shan lost his own bearings and turned
to see if the women were still there.
Dalzul, watching him, spoke very gently: “It’s about time we went back, Shan.”
“Yes—Yes, I think so—I think we ought to.” Tears of pity, relief, shame jammed in Shan’s throat for a moment. “We should go
back. It isn’t working.”
“Very soon,” Dalzul said, “very soon now. Don’t worry, Shan. Anxiety increases the perceptual anomalies. Just take it easy,
as you did at first, and remember that you’ve done nothing wrong. As soon as the coronation has—”
“No! We should go now—”
“Shan, whether I asked for it or not, I have an obligation here, and I will fulfill it. If I run out on them, Aketa’s faction
will have their swords out—”
“Aketa doesn’t have a sword,” Riel said, her voice high and loud as Shan had never heard it. “These people don’t have swords,
they don’t make them!”
Dalzul talked on through her voice: “As soon as the ceremony is over and the kingship is filled, we’ll go. After all, I can
go and be back within an hour, if need be. I’ll take you back to Ve Port. In no time at all, as the
joke is. So stop worrying about what never was your problem. I got you into this. It’s my responsibility.”
“How can—” Shan began, but Forest’s long, black hand was on his arm.
“Don’t try, Shan,” she said. “The mad reason much better than the sane. Come on. This is very hard to take.”
Dalzul was turning serenely away, as if they had left him already.
“Either we have to wait for this ceremony with him,” Forest said as they went out into the hot, bright street, “or we knock
him on the head and stick him in the ship.”
“I’d
like
to knock him on the head,” Riel said.
“If we do get him onto the ship,” Shan said, “how do we know he’ll take us back to Ve? And if he turns round and comes right
back, how do we know what he’ll do? He could destroy Ganam instead of saving it—”
“Shan!” Riel said, “Stop it! Is Ganam a world? Is Dalzul a god?”
He stared at her. A couple of women going by looked at them, and one nodded a greeting, “Ha, Foyes! Ha, Yeh!”
“Ha, Tasasap!” Forest said to her, while Riel, her eyes blazing, faced Shan: “Ganam is one little city-state on a large planet,
which the Gaman call Anam, and the people in the next valley call something else entirely. We’ve seen one tiny corner of it.
It’ll take us years to know anything about it. Dalzul, because he’s crazy or because churtening made him crazy or made us
all crazy, I don’t know which, I don’t care just now—Dalzul barged in and got mixed up in sacred stuff and maybe is causing
some trouble and confusion. But these people
live
here. This is their place. One man can’t destroy them and one man can’t save them! They have their own story, and
they’re
telling it! How we’ll figure in it I don’t know—maybe as some idiots that fell out of the sky once!”
Forest put a peaceable arm around Riel’s shoulders. “When she gets excited she gets excited. Come on, Shan. Aketa certainly
isn’t planning to slaughter Viaka’s household. I don’t see these people letting us mess up anything
in a big way. They’re in control. We’ll go through this ceremony. It probably isn’t a big deal, except in Dalzul’s mind. And
as soon as it’s over and his mind’s at rest, ask him to take us home. He’ll do it. He’s—” She paused. “He’s fatherly,” she
said, without sarcasm.
They did not see Dalzul again until the day of the ceremony. He stayed holed up in his palace, and Viaka sternly forbade them
entrance. Aketa evidently had no power to interfere in another sacred jurisdiction, and no wish to. “Tezyeme,” he said, which
meant something on the order of “it is happening the way it is supposed to happen.” He did not look happy about it, but he
was not going to interfere.