The Gate to Women's Country (14 page)

S
EVERAL DAYS
after carnival, Myra went to the medical center, taking Stavia with her for company. After an hour, Myra came out looking angry and ill used, and they walked toward home together.

“Have you got something?” Stavia asked.

“No, I have not got something. I'm healthy.”

“What's the matter?”

“Just—they're so rude. Always the same questions. When was my last period? She knew. It was just before carnival, and she gave me an exam then. Was I taking my supplements? Did I have any sexual problems?”

“That doesn't sound too rude.”

“It was something else. She had me up on the table all spread out like a split fish with that metal gadget in me, squirting me with syringes and stuff, and then they called her out for an emergency and she left me there!”

“There are emergencies, My. There really are.”

“Well, somebody could have come and let me loose. I was there for half an hour, flat on my back.”

“Does she think you're pregnant?”

“She says she can tell in six weeks or so.”

“Do you want to be pregnant?”

“Sure. I mean, I have to start sometime, right?”

“But do you really want to be pregnant? By Barten?”

“It would be the prettiest baby, Stavvy. I have always hated this hair. And freckles. I hate freckles. Barten's baby will have dark hair and blue eyes and skin the color of spun wool.”

“You can't be sure of that, Myra.”

“Well, it's a good chance.”

“I'm just saying, don't count on it. The baby may have hair and freckles just like you, and it wouldn't be a good idea to let it know you were disappointed.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake, Stavia, you are not the only person in this family ever to have taken childrearing courses! I swear to God, some days you sound just like Morgot. You're only eleven and I wish to God you'd act like it!”

Stavia was so astonished that she stopped short, letting Myra walk on by herself. It was true. She did sound like Morgot. It struck her for the first time that she even thought of herself as a kind of Morgot. A smaller version. It seemed unfair that Myra had reminded her she was only eleven. It was true, but it didn't mean anything, except physiologically. She had no breasts. She had no menses as yet. Presumably these would come. When she lay in her bed at night, touching herself for her own pleasure, she thought of Chernon, longing for the years to pass until…. She flushed, aware of the heat in her body. That meant she was quite normally sexual. And she did have a womanly mind.

Her thoughts flowed on: If it was true that Morgot and Stavia were much alike, then Morgot would understand Stavia's giving Chernon the books, understand and approve of it….

The thought abruptly drained out of her, like irrigation water flowing down through some hidden gopher hole, all her easy, consoling rationales pouring away to leave only a soggy certainty behind. She, Stavia, might be as like Morgot as one twin to another or as mother and daughter could be, but Morgot would not approve giving books to Chernon. Morgot would quote the ordinances.
Morgot would say, “If he wants books, let him return to Women's Country and he may have all the books he likes….”

It was true. Joshua had books. Many. And so did little Minsning, and so did any other servitor who wanted them.

But not the warriors. A man who chose the warrior's lot chose to fight for his garrison and his city. A warrior needed all his powers of concentration. Having other, irrelevant thoughts in his head could be risky. Also, it could be dangerous for a warrior to know too much about certain things. Metallurgy, for instance. A warrior might obtain an unfair advantage if he had learning that other warriors didn't. Out of loyalty to his garrison, a warrior might make some device which could return them to the time of convulsions. Only equal match between equal warriors at arm's length could decide things fairly without imperiling others, without threatening devastation….

She could hear Morgot's voice. But she could also hear Chernon's. “Please, Stavia. I want them so bad! There's things I need to know….”

When he pleaded with her like that, he melted her. As though she were no better than Myra, turning to mush when some man begged her. “Please, Stavvy.” His eyes were as clear as Jerby's, childlike still. His hair was soft gold, like Beneda's. He looked so much like Beneda, too, with that lovely, bony face, all planes and angles.

No. She could not say anything to Morgot. And Chernon must be told firmly that he could have all the books he wanted if he would only come back.

Except that he wouldn't let her talk about that. He had begged for books where he was, not where he might someday be.

She stamped her foot angrily, biting her cheek on one side and bearing down until it hurt. She couldn't stop giving Chernon books now. Not now. But it wasn't really wrong, not yet. He wasn't really a warrior yet. Not until he was fifteen….

“Shit,” she murmured at the stones beneath her feet. “Oh shit.”

T
HOUGH EVERY SCHOOLGIRL IN
W
OMEN'S
C
OUNTRY
learned
Iphigenia at Ilium
, it was actually produced and acted by the Councilwomen of each city. Thus it was Councilwoman Stavia who stood on the stage of the winter theater at Marthatown's center with half a dozen of her fellow Council member-players, working their way through the first rehearsal of this year's production. The evenings were still too cold to rehearse outdoors in the summer theater, so here they all were in the wide, low-ceilinged room which had been designed to be warmed by bodies alone. With only the cast and stage crew present, there weren't enough people to raise the temperature noticeably, and Stavia shivered under her coat.

They had tried Cassandra's entrance three different ways, none of which pleased the director.

“Enter Cassandra from stage left,” the director said plaintively. She was an old Council member but a new director, and she had not yet come to terms with the job.

C
ASSANDRA
Mother! Andromache! I've come to say good-bye.

H
ECUBA
Cassandra! You? Still here? Oh, girl, I am so weary of farewells—saying good-bye to living and to dead! Long, sad farewells when there's no good to come. There is not sleep enough to heal farewells, and now you're here when I had thought you'd gone.

C
ASSANDRA
Others have gone, but Agamemnon stays. He says he has some trouble with the sails, so long left furled upon this Trojan shore they're full of rot.

A
NDROMACHE
Any housewife could have told him that. All seaside towns hold mildew like a sponge.

H
ECUBA
Such a humble thing to thwart a tyrant's purpose.

I
PHIGENIA
Strength often comes from unexpected sources, perhaps most often from the humble things….

A
CHILLES
Is that Polyxena?

I
PHIGENIA
That is Cassandra, great Achilles. Look closely. That one is still alive.

C
ASSANDRA
Ghosts! Who are these ghosts?

A
NDROMACHE
You see them too?

C
ASSANDRA
Is that Achilles? And the child—Andromache, is that your son?

A
NDROMACHE
It was my son. Odysseus had him slain.

C
ASSANDRA
(Weeping)
Alas. Such is the fate of warriors' sons….

V
ERY FEW MOTHERS IN
W
OMEN'S
C
OUNTRY EVER
spoke of their boy children as “warriors' sons.” Myra had been an exception. When her first baby had been born, Myra had used the phrase on every possible occasion. She never spoke of him as “my little Marky,” or even just as “Marcus.” He was always, “My little warrior son….”

He had been born with a full head of dark hair and deep blue eyes. These resemblances to Barten had been mentioned to everyone at least ten times a day. When within a month all the dark hair fell out and the
eyes
turned hazel, Myra had considered the change a personal affront, arranged by some human agency.

Morgot seldom lost her patience as completely as she did over this issue. In such chilly weather as they were having at the time, the family spent long hours together in the big, warm kitchen, listening to Myra's continuous complaints. When Margot could bear it no longer, she said, “Myra, if you say one more word about that baby's hair or eyes, I'm going to go to the Council and suggest it be given in fosterage. If you're going to go on and on like this, the poor child will grow up self-conscious and unhappy and it will be your fault.” Morgot was pale and thin lipped with anger.

“I only said….”

“You only said that the midwife committed some kind of scientific indecency by modifying the child's heritage—though that is utterly impossible—or that the birthing center mixed up the babies. Which you know is ridiculous, because Marcus never left the room where you
were from the moment he was born, and you brought him home yourself a day later!” Morgot opened the iron door on the front of the tile cookstove and put two split logs inside, positioning them carefully, obviously trying to gain control of herself.

“Besides,” Stavia offered, “Marcus is a very cute baby.” She picked up the broom and swept bits of bark from the tile hearth, turning to warm herself at the exposed coals before Morgot shut the door and narrowed the air supply. The kettle on top of the stove had begun to steam and the air in the room was almost summery with moisture and the scent of herbs. “The baby looks a lot like Jerby. There's a definite family resemblance.”

“This
family,” snorted Myra in disgust.

“Yes,
our
family. The Margotsdaughters! And what's the matter with that? Barten is good-looking, but he's a rattlesnake. I'm sure he's fun to have sex with, but otherwise he's a serpent. Everyone says so….” She burrowed into a cupboard among the herb-tea cannisters, looking for the one with fruit peel in it.

“Chernon says so, you mean,” Myra sneered.

Stavia felt herself turning red, heat rising inside her as though she had a furnace in her belly. “Chernon says everyone in the garrison says so. What I mean is, if Marcus doesn't look like Barten, maybe Marcus won't act like him, and you should be happy over that.” With shaking fingers, Stavia measured tea into the pot and poured boiling water over it.

Myra subsided into outraged and sulky silence. Her romantic dream of motherhood had been riven into sharp-edged fragments by late-night feedings, constant diaper washing, and a baby who persisted in looking and acting like a baby, not like a young hero. She had more than half convinced herself that when she took this child to his warrior father at age five, Barten would probably reject it.

Morgot shook her head and went back to packing food into a heavy canvas sack. She and Stavia were to leave on the following morning for a short trip in the direction of Susantown. “Stavia, are your clothes and necessaries packed?”