The Gate to Women's Country (38 page)

Which, she reminded herself, her studies had informed her was a frequent state of sexual affairs among very young men. Chernon was twenty-four, but that was still very young in garrison country, where a man counted for little until he had been tested in battle, even though he might have fathered sons before then. In Women's Country one was adult at sixteen or seventeen. Stavia thought about this, between times, bemused and a little sore from the unaccustomed lovemaking, though Chernon did not call it that. In Women's Country it was generally thought that the best lovers were older men who had given up being carnival cocks and who enjoyed intracarnival wooing—letters, verses, gifts—to stir up their own passions, and their partner's affections. Stavia thought that some between-fuck wooing might be rather nice, but she did not suggest it. She had come to the conclusion that just meeting Chernon's demands would take more of her energy than she had expected. She would have enough left over to complete the task at hand only if everything was kept as simple as possible. Sentiment, too, took energy.
She had no extra energy. Sentiment would have to wait. She made this decision coldbloodedly, almost in retaliation for what she had seen in his face, without recognizing that a large part of their emotion toward one another was hostile.

They worked their way east, and then south, making each night's camp in late afternoon, leaving it in mid-morning. The collection of herbs grew, notations on Stavia's maps became denser. Chernon was only mildly interested in what she was doing, mildly interested in the collection.

“I should think you'd be very interested,” she chided him tiredly at the end of a long day's travel. “You told me once you thought wounded warriors deserved better care. Some of these herbs may be excellent wound dressings.”

“How would I know?” he shrugged.

“You'd test them. Surely men get minor injuries in weapons practice? You could test different herbs to see which ones had healing properties.”

“We do well enough with moldy bread poultices,” he said offhandedly. “Bread is always available. Some of these herbs might not be growing when we needed them.”

She gave him a tired half-smile and dropped the subject. His desire for books had probably been more a desire for dominance than a lust for learning, so much was clear. Perhaps forcing her to bring them to him had been more important than what was in them.

Though he still carried the book he had stolen from Beneda. What did books mean to him?

“You once wanted to borrow my biology books,” she ventured.

“I wanted to know the secrets,” he blurted. “The ones you women know, that's all.” He had been wondering for several days how to approach the subject; now it popped out of his mouth like a frog into a pool.

Leaning across their evening fire, she struggled with this. Did he think that what was in the books was somehow magical? That the same information, discovered for himself, would not have the same efficacy? Perhaps it wasn't knowledge he wanted. It was magic he coveted. Magic and the power it would bring.

“You know,” she ventured, “the books were written by people. Just people.”

“Preconvulsion people,” he averred. “They knew things we don't.” His tone was dogmatic, vibrating with the power of prophecy. “They knew about… about weapons. And things.” He waited for her to say something, extend the conversation, make it possible for them to discuss weapons, and things.

She said nothing. She wasn't thinking of weapons at all. She thought he was partly right, of course. Preconvulsion peoples had known things the women didn't. But he was partly wrong, too. Many books were newly written, newly printed, and they contained information that preconvulsion people hadn't known of or thought important enough to record. She wondered whether it would be wise to try to convince him of this, realized that doing so would take hours, and decided on silence. Whatever words she gave him, he changed them, as though by sorcery, into something else. She gave him assurances, and he twisted them into things to be aggrieved or angry over. The way he had done with Sylvia, all those years before, over the subject of Vinsas. No point in endless argument. Better give him the least possible material to misunderstand. Or pretend to misunderstand, observer Stavia noted. Much of the misunderstanding was willful, and she would have to have been completely besotted not to see it.

The fire burned down and they settled into their blankets, reaching for one another like well-practiced raiders, stealing familiar treasure, grabbing it all by huge handfuls, not bothering to sort it. Nothing between them seemed to carry the implication of “later,” as though this was all there ever was to be. There were lovers in Marthatown who were together every carnival for decades, as faithful as though they had been “married” to one another, but nothing in Chernon's words or behavior said that he intended them to be lovers again. She said to him once, “Next carnival,” and he had turned on her angrily. “Not carnival,” he had said. “Not then.” Now, their assault on one another left them gasping, and she cried out, a muted howl that lost itself in the tree-waving wind.

“You'll bring me a son, won't you!” he demanded, lying
with all his weight upon her, growing flaccid within her, his teeth at her ear. “A son.”

“Perhaps, someday,” she said without thinking, wit-lessly, hate-loving him, both at once.

“Now!” he demanded. “Soon.”

“I can't,” she murmured, still carelessly. “Not on this trip, Chernon. I've got an implant to prevent it.”

He rolled off of her, sat up, glaring at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I have an implant to prevent my getting pregnant on this journey,” she said, suddenly aware of what she'd said. These things were not discussed with warriors. She remembered that now. They couldn't be expected to understand.

“And who, may I ask, did you expect to protect yourself from? Your ‘servitor'?” He made the word an obscenity.

“No,” she said honestly. “Of course not. I've never even met the man. But there are bandits about, and Gypsies, and women have been captured or raped. Don't be silly, Chernon.”

“What's his name,” he growled at her. “The one you were supposed to be with.”

She stared at him, at his face, reddened both by anger and firelight. “His name was Brand, I believe. He'd made quite a study of botany, up in Tabithatown, and it was thought he'd be a considerable help in collecting plant material.”

“How old is he?”

“I haven't any idea. I never asked.” She hadn't. She had assumed he would be one of the rather special servitors, someone like Joshua, with some of Joshua's strange and unspecified talents. Morgot would hardly have let her go off with him alone, otherwise.

“And you've never seen him,” he jeered at her.

“No, I never have. And if you don't stop this behavior, Chernon, I may not see you anymore, either. What are you angry about?” Stavia felt fury beginning to boil in herself.

“It's one of the reasons I wanted to come,” he said between tight teeth. “To have a son. One I was sure was mine.”

“One you were sure was yours?” She shook her head at him incredulously.

“Yes, damn it. One I was sure was mine. Not one you'd send to me when he was five that might be mine and might be anybody's. Oh, don't pretend you don't know what I'm saying. Everybody in the garrison knows that you women do it with everybody. Sometimes three or four different men during a carnival. How do you know who the father is?”

She smiled, a tight-lipped smile. “You've given a blood sample to the clinic, haven't you, Chernon? Yes, you have, and so has every other warrior. That's all we need. We take blood from the baby, from its cord, as soon as it's born, and we can tell who the father is. That's why sometimes we bring boys to the garrison whose fathers have died, and we say this is the son of so-and-so, even though he's dead. By my Gracious Lady, Chernon, but you men are sometimes impossible.”

She rose, her naked skin glowing like a ghost light among the dark trees. She dressed herself and took her blankets, leaving him alone.

“Where are you going?” he demanded in a tone of anger blended with pain. “Where!”

“Where I can get some sleep,” she replied. “I'm tired.”

He bit his tongue, so angry he could hardly speak, remembering Michael and what Michael would want to know. “I'm sorry, Stavia.”

“So am I,” she said, thinking that he did not sound sorry enough. “But I'm still tired, and I don't care to discuss it anymore.” As she moved away, Stavia realized that the movement was both actual and symbolic, that she was leaving Chernon, the Chernon she had thought she knew. In that same moment she realized she had broken the ordinances for no good reason and wondered, with a surge of deep, nauseating guilt, whether Morgot would ever forgive her for it—whether she would ever forgive herself. Only one thing was certain. She had parted from Chernon and would not return. So far as she was concerned, he was dead.

S
TAVIA HAD STARTED THEIR VENTURE DETERMINED
to stay well away from the badlands to the south and equally well away from the observers who lurked there. She had worked toward the east, following this fold of hills and that valley as the days went by, tallying those days in her notebook each evening when she wrote up the day's discoveries or lack thereof. On the morning following what she thought of as her coming to her senses, the fifteenth day of their travel, she told Chernon they had to start back. She was not sorry to say so. She would have ended their journey immediately if there had been a short route by which they could have returned.

He did not want to go.

“We have food enough if we leave now,” she said in a quietly reasonable voice without any hint of anger. “I'll get more in the sheep camp and bring it out to you for your trip back to the garrison. I'm expecting a message from Marthatown, and it will have arrived by the time we return.”

He stared southward. “It's necessary,” she said. He mumbled something. She turned and began packing the donkey.

“When we planned this, you said months,” he complained.

“Originally, that's what I thought. However, there's another team exploring eastward, so we needn't go farther in that direction. It's clear that going farther south would be dangerous. That needs a large force, not just two people.”

“You'd planned to travel months with him.”

“I didn't plan anything, Chernon. I did not plan this trip. It was planned before anybody even considered my doing it. It was planned before I talked to the women in the sheep camp. It was planned before I heard about the people spying on the camp.” She said all this patiently, knowing by now that any display of anger or impatience on her part would only make him dig in his heels. “I had to change the plans when we found out about that.”

“One or two more days.”

“We have food enough if we leave now,” she repeated. “This is not country we can live off of, Chernon. I recognize only a few things that are edible, and you would not relish them.” She realized how much she sounded like Morgot, as Morgot had used to talk to her when she was very young.

He folded his blankets, punishing her by not talking. She snarled silently to herself in exasperation. He was like a small child. Like Jerby had sometimes been. Like Myra's oldest. All sulks and silences, pretences and games. It didn't matter. No longer. Simply let there be an end.

They started back, down a hooked valley which led them slightly southward and into another which led them farther southward still. When they stopped for a midday meal, she climbed to the top of a hill, spying out the way they would go. The fold would lead them too far south to suit her, but the ridges to their right were too precipitous to climb. “No fire tonight,” she advised Chernon when she returned. “We're too far south.” She had warned him repeatedly about the dangers of the south, but did not do so again because of his moodiness.

They ate a cold supper and slept. Deep in the night she awoke, smelling smoke. A fire glimmered in the shade of the trees. “Chernon!” she demanded, outraged.

“I wanted some tea,” he said defiantly. “I'm putting it out right now.”

The glimmer had been enough to guide Cappy, Doots, and Rel to the right area. They had been searching the folded hills for some days, several times just missing Stavia and Chernon by passing before them or behind them.

“There,” breathed Cappy, pointing to the starlike gleam in the shadowed ripple of trees. “Got 'em.”

“You goin' to kill him?” asked Doots.

“Maybe not right away,” Cappy replied. “Maybe ask him some stuff first. He didn't come out of that place, you know? She met up with him somewhere else. Could be he's a different kind than those down there at the town.”

“Devil men,” Doots cautioned. “That's what Papa says.”