The Judas Rose (30 page)

However, keeping the men convinced that nothing had changed meant that a large bustling decoy conference had to be set up every year and run by the conference committee. With programming tracks. With panels and lectures and discussion groups and a banquet. With keynote speakers and workshops and plenary sessions and opening and closing ceremonies. All the trappings of a genuine old-fashioned conference, done well enough to fool even the expert male eye.

It had not been easy. And it had been Nazareth who saved their skins, once again, when things had become not just difficult but desperate. They had revised Langlish and reformed it and reworked it until they'd run out of ideas. Human languages only offer a set of about seventy meaningful sounds to choose from; there are a multitude of possible noises, but only a finite number actually usable for linguistic purposes. And they were
linguist
women; their men would not have been fooled by a proposal that Langlish be revised to consist only of consonants, or any one of a number of other theoretically possible but pragmatically ridiculous alternatives. There are only six possible word orders that the elements subject/verb/object can take in a human language, and only a small number of mechanisms for indicating which is which; when you've exhausted all of those, what do you do next? For the women to be absurd was allowed, because it was expected; but if they had tried behaving like women ignorant of the characteristics of real languages, the men would instantly have been suspicious. It was a fine and perilous line to have to walk, and the necessity for continual changes within a web of absurdities made it very hard to keep track of what they were doing, much less what had already been done.

The year the women had tried proposing that subject be indicated in Langlish by simply
repeating
it had been the year they almost lost the Caucus. That had caught some man's eye as he was looking over the conference transcripts or watching the tapes, and suddenly he had paid attention instead of just skimming. Two hours later there'd been a woodshedder at Hashihawa Household, with three senior males calling in a half dozen of their women to discuss the matter.

“Let's see now . . . if we compare this to Panglish, and we consider a simple sentence such as ‘the men canceled the annual Caucus' and we use this new rule, all of the following will be grammatical, right?” they'd begun. “ ‘The men the men canceled the Caucus.' ‘Canceled the Caucus the men the men.' ‘The Caucus canceled the men the men.' ‘Canceled the men the men the Caucus.' ‘The Caucus the men the men canceled.' Have we got that straight?”

And there had been menace in their eyes.
Are you trying to be funny?
their eyes had demanded.

“So, we could have a sentence like this one: ‘The women who had abundantly demonstrated that they hadn't the faintest idea what they were doing and were only behaving like idiots the women who had abundantly demonstrated that they hadn't the faintest idea what they were doing and were only behaving like idiots regretted it.' Is that right, ladies? We are expected to seriously believe that this proposal took two hours' time? For women of the Lines?
Trained linguists?
And that it was
passed?
”

The Hashihawa women, badly scared, had introduced on the spot two subrules limiting the length of the duplicated subject noun phrase and specifying that any subject longer than three words would require the repetition of only its final three words.
And had explained courteously that the subrules had—with inexcusable sloppiness—simply been taken for granted by the women, which accounted for their absence from the tapes and transcripts. And had maintained staunch innocence while the men, obviously suspicious and justifiably so, set up one trick question after another. Requiring mental gymnastics that would have been a challenge even if the proposal had been
real
, so that a background of data and discussion would have existed for them to use as a basis for those gymnastics.

It had been awful, and a very near thing. They had managed to leave the men convinced that this was no more than typical female nonsense and excess, not worth worrying about no matter how deplorable in terms of wasted time. But they would be watching more carefully from then on; the women had slipped badly, and had drawn attention to themselves. Something new had to be done, or they would lose it all.

Nazareth's solution had provided the men with material for months of jokes at the women's expense, but it had solved the problem. Certainly, if you were developing a language to express the perceptions of women, and had brought it along to a point where it was at last roughly stable, you would want to find those last weak spots in its structure and vocabulary that needed shoring up and adjusting. And what better diagnostic probe could there be for finding areas where the perceptions of women were difficult to express than the monumentally male King James Bible, in the old unrevised version? With its kings and masters and battles and rods and staffs and foreskins and so on? The men had agreed with that judgment, struggling to appear at least minimally serious; they had choked their laughter back long enough to agree that if there were areas of Langlish not yet adequate for expressing women's perceptions, translating the King James Bible into the language would unquestionably locate those areas.

“The
whole
King James?
All of it?
” the men had demanded, half strangling. “You're proposing to translate the whole goddamn
thing
into Langlish?” And the women had assured them that only the whole thing would suffice, and that it was expected that it would take quite some time.

“Oh my god, I should think
so!
” the men had moaned, giving up the attempt at courteous consideration, pounding one another on the back and roaring with laughter, and the Caucus had been safe for another century. Nazareth had dutifully submitted to the men a conference resolution in which it was unanimously agreed that the Langlish word for
Langlish
should be
Láadan;
for the
women, this would mean an end at last to always having to guard their speech against an accidental saying of that word. The men had been unsurprised, and had declared themselves ready to be presented any day now with the Láadan name for Langlish, agreed upon unanimously by the women at the Caucus in plenary session. By acclamation, perhaps.

“I think if we were to do that,” Nazareth had said, frowning a little, “there would be a demand for a roll call vote.” And then she had sat smiling vaguely through the usual incantations about the impossibility of ever understanding women, quite content.

When Nazareth had first suggested the plan, a horrified woman from Verdi Household, already worn out with the lengthy discussion that had come before, had cried, “But Nazareth! The King James! You could spend hours on a single verse, Nazareth—it will take
forever!
”

“I do hope so,” Nazareth answered, her hands folded quietly in her lap and her eyes downcast to hide their expression. “I certainly do hope so.”

And hours
had
been spent on single verses, ever since. It had been impressed upon the men that the women could not possibly be comfortable with a translated verse, be it ever so flawless in its grammar and ever so magnificent in its style, if they had to worry that the translation had somehow caused a theological wrinkle; this required endless multiple sessions.
Women
, groaned the men,
and their pathological religiosity!
And the women admitted it, and expressed their regret, and were told that no one held it against women if they behaved in a way characteristic of women. The women had been properly grateful for the understanding the men showed of the matter, and for their forebearance; and they had been properly grateful to Nazareth Chornyak Adiness for preserving their Caucus, perhaps unto the very end of time. All those begats. . . .

CHAPTER 13

“The human brain has a hard time handling sentences when they're embedded inside one another. We can manage ‘The man the woman spoke to left the room' without much trouble; that's just one embedding. But make that ‘The man the woman the child kissed spoke to left the room' and our minds begin to gasp for clarification. And with each additional sentence embedded inside a sentence embedded inside a sentence it gets more impossible to understand. Now that's a handy thing to know, because it has applications well beyond the construction of sentences.

“I knew that a single plan, standing all alone, was sure to be noticed and interfered with eventually by those who had the power to interfere, no matter how carefully it was camouflaged. But suppose you took the plan that really mattered, and you embedded it inside a plan that was embedded inside a plan that was itself embedded inside a plan? And suppose you made each of the other plans as you worked your way out toward the edges less and less worth interfering with?

“It was obvious to me that there could be no better way of protecting the
real
plan from all harm; and that the more useless layers of planning there were to be stripped away before you
got
to the real plan, the better. Furthermore, the more frivolous the plans on the outside seemed to be, the more the whole structure would look like something that was more trouble to interfere with than it was worth. It took a certain amount of ingenuity to keep it all going, and a tremendous amount of help from other women. Sometimes I wish I had not had to burden them so heavily; other times, I am sure they welcomed the burden because it represented
doing
something, taking action instead of just sitting around and letting things happen. But I have never yet had any reason to regret making this my method of choice. . . .”

(from the diaries of Nazareth Chornyak Adiness)

*
     
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Father Dorien Pelure sat at the head of the long table; he was well aware of the dramatic note provided by the rays of late afternoon sunlight falling through the narrow window behind his head, and he was taking full advantage of it. It was the sort of thing that appealed to the uncomplicated minds of women, and Dorien never overlooked any such detail. During his first year as Abbot here he had kept a scrupulous calendar, noting precisely where that ray of light fell throughout each and every day for the entire year, so that he could schedule his appointments accordingly. He had moved the table, and moved the chair, checking and rechecking in a large mirror set before him, until he knew the one perfect spot for them in terms of putting the light to use, and he had put tiny dots of permanent black on the floor to mark where each leg should go. So that there could be no mistake. He did nothing carelessly.

The meeting with Fathers Claude and Agar had been set for three o'clock, while the light was golden and hearty and clear; then he had scheduled Sister Miriam to join them at four sharp, when the slant of light would make it seem that he had first the finger of the Holy Spirit at his shoulder and then, as the minutes went by, an unmistakable halo round his head. It would impress the sister, and amuse the other priests.

They had been severe with him. As they properly should have been. Forty-five minutes of interrogation. Was he absolutely positive that
this
nun was the right one? She was still young—could he be sure she had the necessary firmness of purpose? The ability to deal uncompromisingly with women older and more experienced than herself, and to keep them properly in submission? Was he certain of her dedication? Of her devotion? Of her virtuousness? And even if he was, was he certain of her intelligence, due allowance being made for her gender? Had she the proper skill of voice? Was she pleasant looking, but not beautiful, since beauty would make her task more difficult, causing the women she supervised to be jealous of her? Was she sufficiently learned? And so on, and so on. He had answered all the questions patiently, knowing they were wholly appropriate, and had let them wear themselves out and fall silent for lack of anything else to ask.

“You will be satisfied with her, I promise you,” he told them then. “I've chosen her very carefully—she is exactly right.”

“I still wish,” fretted Father Agar, him of the cavernous
cheeks and temples and the incongruous little pot belly straining against his robes, “that the task could have been given to a
priest
. I would feel so much more secure, so much more confident, if a man's strong hands were at the helm of this project!”

Father Dorien nodded, and shrugged his elegant shoulders, but he said nothing; they had been over this again and again, and there was no point in doing it yet one more time. A man could not do what must be done; it had to be a woman. He reassured them again: “You will be satisfied with her.” And then he lifted the heavy silver bell and rang it three times—once for the Father, once for the Son, once for the Holy Spirit—to call Sister Miriam Rose, of the convent of Saint Gertrude of the Lambs, into the room.

The door opened soundlessly and closed the same way, and the nun stood in front of it, her hands properly hidden away in the sleeves of her habit, her eyes cast down, her face serene, waiting. The priests stared at her, noting that she was tall for a woman, and too thin; unlike Father Agar, she had no round belly spoiling her Gothic lines. Her hair was hidden entirely by the wimple and coif, but the black of her lashes and the clear ivory of her skin hinted that the hair was also black; the perfect oval of her face was the classic oval of the traditional Madonna. Father Dorien knew what the others were thinking—that he had misled them, that this woman was too beautiful to work successfully in the supervision of other women, that he had made a mistake.