Thendara House (50 page)

“Forty days more to fulfill my obligation to the Guild House; after that, I’m not sure. I might apply to change citizenship - “

“Oh, don’t do that,” he said quickly. “Empire citizenship is too valuable for that; Haldane put through for citizenship for Jaelle, so their kid will be born a full citizen. Be as Darkovan as you like, but hang on to your citizenship. Just in case.”

Yes, that was the Terran way. Defend against all contingencies, never make a full commitment without leaving a way of escape. Cover yourself
. She glanced again at her timepiece. “I should run up to Intelligence HQ, now they’ve got one, and check in with Cholayna - “

“She’s off duty,” Monty said, “and I happen to know she went to the Meditation Center and put through a notice not to be disturbed for at least eighteen hours. I suspect she’s in an isolation tank or something - she belongs to one of those queer Alphan religions. Very odd lady, though it’s good to have someone really competent in Intelligence. Only one drawback; she can’t do her own fieldwork. So we have to depend on you. Could I ask a personal favor, Magda?”

“You can always ask,” she said, smiling, and suddenly knew that in a sense she was flirting with him, letting the personal part of their communication take over momentarily from the business one, as a way of flattering him… was this worthy of an Amazon? It was the Terran way. She had never noticed it before, but now she knew she was doing it, and heard the harsh voice of Rafaella,
is it so important to you that a man must consider you beautiful
? Rafaella certainly was not the one to talk, she had three sons by three different fathers… at least Camilla, who was a lover of women, was consistent! But through all her doubts it was reassuring, that she could still attract attention, not only professionally, but as a woman.

“You know how to pass as a native. Haldane can do the same thing. I will take the Braniff-Alpha corticators - I will believe it is safe if
you
say so - but can you tell me what I am doing wrong, so that in the Old Town I can pass as a native, as you and Haldane and Cargill do?”

“Why not ask them? They are men and would know what is necessary for a man…”

“No,” he said. “I’d trust a woman to spot a man and a man to spot a woman, any day. For instance I think I’d spot you even if you wore Darkovan clothes… I mean, when you weren’t off guard, as you are here; I think I’d read you in the market, for instance. You don’t walk
quite
like them - no, it’s your eyes; you don’t keep them down, not in quite the same way. You - ” he groped for words, “you keep them down but I can tell you’re doing it deliberately, not automatically. Is that just being a Renunciate?”

“Maybe, in part. Though you’re right; I always had some trouble with that. You get into your Darkovan outfit and I’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong. And while you’re doing it, I need to get down to credit transfer… oh, damn, I can’t go into HQ in this outfit, I’ll set off every alarm in the place!”

“One of the women in my office is about your size, and she lives just down the hall; let me go borrow a spare uniform for you.”

She acquiesced, warning him not to tell anyone who it was for. She did not want, on her day off, to be flooded with old acquaintances eager to know all the details of her curious field assignment. When he came back with it he stood aside and let her change in his sleeping quarters. She was surprised at how naked she felt in the narrow tunic and tights, after months of the loose, unrevealing Amazon dress. She was conscious of her cropped hair - short even for a Terran, but she brushed it into a fairly smart coiffure, and Monty had thoughtfully asked for a few cosmetics as well so that she could make up properly. As she stepped out he whistled admiringly.

“In that outfit you were wearing, I didn’t realize what a smasher you were!”

Again she laughed, realizing how far she had come from such compliments. It felt familiar and strange at once to walk down the HQ halls, knowing that the uniform made her invisible, just another employee with a right to be there. It was different and somehow comforting to drop her individual identity and slip into anonymity.

Soon she would be out of seclusion. Would they want her back here? If so, then she must acknowledge to all her sisters that she was Terran; would they hate her for it? When she got back, Monty was in Darkovan clothing again and she applied herself to critical study.

“Your hair is too short. To look really right, you would have to let it grow down at least to
here
.” She brushed a fingertip along his neckline. “Now walk for me…” and she watched him seriously. Finally she said, frowning, “I know what it is. You walk too - too lightly, unencumbered. Darkovan men… all of them, except beggars and cripples… grow up wearing a sword, and even when they’re not wearing it, they’re wearing it, if you know what I mean. Here,” she said, picking up the Amazon knife she had laid aside. “Belt this on - try walking with it. It’s not a sword, of course - “

“It sure looks like one.”

“Legally it’s not,” Magda said.

“By law and charter no Amazon may wear a sword.”

“What
is
the difference?” Monty asked, studying the blade. It did, Magda realized, look very much like what any Terran would call a sword. “About three inches,” she admitted dryly, and they laughed together as he belted it on.

“No, you are leaning to one side to compensate. And keep your wrist a little back so you won’t be knocking against the hilt; remember when you first started wearing a wrist-radio and had to learn not to bang it into things? Wrist back - lower - so it won’t get in the way but you could draw it at once if you had to. You have to psych yourself into it; you grew up wearing it, you started wearing and training with it when you were about eight, you never went out without it, you would feel as naked if it wasn’t there as if you forgot to put your pants on in the morning.”

“Good God,” Monty exclaimed. “I knew the culture was aggressive, but do they really start their youngsters at eight?”

“The valley men. In the mountains the kids start carrying daggers almost as soon as they can walk, and using them, too. It’s just part of the realities of their world; there are plenty of things bigger than they are, out there. And until you can feel that down in your guts, not just know it intellectually, you’ll never have more than a superficial understanding of what it’s like to be a man on Darkover. Their women are less protected than our men - there were women on the fire lines and they weren’t all Renunciates, either!” After a minute she suggested, “You should get yourself a sword and wear it all the time around your quarters in here.”

“How in the world do I sit down in the thing?”

“That’s the point,” Magda said. “Wear it for six weeks, and you’ll know. You’ll be able to sit down with it and get up with it and walk with it and work with it and run with it, and slide into a seat in a tavern without bashing the next guy with it.”

He followed that, nodded slowly. “Haldane did all that?”

“Damn right, and more; his father actually let him work out with an arms-master with the other boys his age in the village where we grew up. In Empire uniform, he told me once, he feels undressed. We both do.” She glanced self-consciously at her long legs in the thin tights. “And I have to change back before I leave.” She headed in to the inner room to take off her uniform, adding, “Also, dance as much as you can. Men here start learning it when they’re about five. Like everybody else.”

“I did hear that,” Monty said. “The old proverb - get three Darkovans together and they hold a dance. I did some work in ballet as well as martial arts before I came back here… studied gravity-dancing on Alpha.”

“That explains it,” she said. “How you manage to pass at all; you don’t walk quite like the average Terran who has no notion of how to move. I noticed that you were graceful. Most Darkovans think Terrans are incredibly clumsy. Dance - they say - is one of the very few wholly human activities; most things are also done by animals, but there’s a saying:
only men laugh, only men dance, only men weep
.”

“I’ve noticed that,” he said, “the way both men and women move, gracefully… you move like them” he added, “like a feather…”

She was suddenly self-conscious about the way he was looking at her. “I must go and change,” she said. “Not even a whore would go out on the streets like this.”

He did not look away. “I cannot decide which way I like you better. Darkovan women are so modest, so - ” he hesitated, searching for a word, “so womanly. It makes me more conscious of myself as a man. Yet in your Amazon clothing you seem to be trying to negate all that, to be distant. And in uniform - you are very beautiful, Magda,” he said, and came over to her. He turned her slowly round and kissed her. “I have been wanting to do that since I first set eyes on you that day in the Guild House when you were so angry with me. And now when I know you are not some sort of shrew or spitfire but a beautiful woman - and, and, so many things, a colleague and a friend and a woman too - ” he stopped talking and kissed her again.

She said after a minute, softly, “Am I really so intimidating?”

“Not now. Don’t go and change, Magda, stay with me here awhile…” and he drew her against him. Letting him kiss her again, she felt again the curious ambivalence. She liked him. She did not want him to be attracted to her this way. Yet it was reassuring, to know that even through her defenses, she was still desirable - he kissed her bare neck, and she drew away, troubled.

“No,” she said in a low voice, “Monty, no. I came here with you for work, not for - not for this.”

He did not move away. “It is not true what they say - that the Amazons are haters of men and lovers of women, is it?”

And that is what they say, and now I am wondering is it true? One of the women said it once in Training Session… that a woman who gives her love to men is traitor to other women, that men are always trying to reduce us only to something they can, or cannot, have as a sexual conquest, because it means they do not have to take us seriously. He was talking about how my work is the standard of excellence here… does he need to seduce me simply to prove that for all that, I am no more than a woman to be taken?

Nevertheless she let him draw her down on the couch, gave herself over to his kisses. She was uneasily conscious of her own response.

I don’t want to. I have lived alone and celibate for more than a year, I should be eager. He’s a very nice person, but I really don’t want to. What’s wrong with me? I should never have let it go this far
. If she were going to stop him she should have done it swiftly and decisively when he made the first move, she had let him think she wanted it too. It would be cheap and small-minded to stop him now.

It’s not as if I were a virgin, for heaven’s sake!

After a time he whispered “This is foolish, Magda, kissing like children, with all our clothes on - we’re both rational grownup people. You do want me too, don’t you?”

Do I? Do I not? Or do I simply want to reassure myself that I am still capable of reacting to a man, that I have not become an alien sexless thing
-
like Camilla
-
why am I thinking now of Camilla
? That frightened her. She looked up at him and smiled.

“Of course I do,” she said clearly, “but I never go to bed with a man before I know his first name.”

He laughed down at her with relief and pleasure. His eyes were dark and shining, his face flushed. “Oh, that’s all right then,” he said, accenting the absurdity, “I don’t use it because there’s no Darkovan equivalent. That doesn’t bother my father but it does bother me, I don’t like having a name no one can pronounce, so I’m Monty. My name is Wade. I really ought to take a Darkovan given name for myself, I just haven’t made up my mind yet. Isn’t that ridiculous? But if that’s all it takes - ” He leaned down to her, laughing, and she smiled and let him draw her down again to the couch.

When she was dressing again, before his mirror, he came and touched her face gently.

“You are so lovely,” he said in a soft voice, “but in those clothes you look so hard and strange. I hate to see you hide yourself in them, even now that I know it is a lie, that you are not really like that.”

She said, laying her hand lightly on his arm, “No, Monty. It’s not a lie. It is - it is
part
of what I am. Can you understand?”