The Memory of Earth (5 page)

So, though the path between Father’s house and the city was unchanged, Nafai now walked it in the other direction. The round trip now wasn’t from Rasa’s city house out into the country and back again; now it was a trek from Wetchik’s country house into the city. Even though he actually owned more possessions in the city—all his books, papers, tools, and toys—and often slept three or four of the eight nights of the week there, home was Father’s house now.

Which was inevitable. No man could call anything in Basilica truly his own; everything came as a gift from a woman. And even a man who, like Father, had every reason to feel secure with a mate of many years—even he could never truly be at home in Basilica, because of the lake. The deep rift valley in the heart of the city—the reason why the city existed at all—took half the space within Basilica’s walls, and no man could ever go there, no man could even walk into the surrounding forest far enough to catch a glimpse of the shining water. If it
did
shine. For all Nafai knew, the rift valley was so deep that sunlight never touched the waters of the lake of Basilica.

No place can ever be home if there is a place within it where you are forbidden to go. No man is ever
truly
a citizen of Basilica. And I am becoming a stranger in my mother’s house.

Elemak had spoken often, in years past, about cities where men owned everything, places where men had many wives and the wives had no choice about renewing their marriage contracts, and even one city where there was no marriage at all, but any man could take any woman and she was forbidden to refuse him unless she
was already pregnant. Nafai wondered, though, if any of those stories was true. For why would women ever submit themselves to such treatment? Could it be that the women of Basilica were so much stronger than the women of any other place? Or were the men of this place weaker or more timid than the men of other cities?

Suddenly it became a question of great urgency. “Have you ever slept with a woman, Issya?”

Issib didn’t answer.

“I just wondered,” said Nafai.

Issib said nothing.

“I’m trying to figure out what’s so wonderful about the women of Basilica that a man like Elya keeps coming back here when he could live in one of those places where men have their way all the time.”

Only now did Issib answer. “In the first place, Nafai, there
is
no place where men have their way all the time. There
are
places where men pretend to have their way and women pretend to let them, just as women here pretend to have their way and
men
pretend to let them.”

That was an interesting thought. It had never occurred to Nafai that perhaps things weren’t as one-sided and simple as they seemed. But Issib hadn’t finished, and Nafai wanted to hear the rest. “And in the second place?”

“In the second place, Nyef, Mother and Father
did
find an auntie for me several years ago and to be frank, it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

That wasn’t what Nafai wanted to hear. “Meb seems to think it is.”

“Meb has no brain,” said Issib, “he simply goes wherever his most protuberant part leads him. Sometimes that means that he follows his nose, but usually not.”

“What was it like?”

“It was nice. She was very sweet. But I didn’t love her.” Issib seemed a bit sad about it. “I felt like it was
something being done to me, instead of something we were doing together.”

“Was that because of . . .”

“Because I’m a cripple? Partly, I suppose, though she did teach me how to give pleasure in return and said I did surprisingly well. You’ll probably enjoy it just like Meb.”

“I hope not.”

“Mother said that the best men don’t enjoy their auntie all that much, because the best men don’t want to receive their pleasure as a lesson, they want to be given it freely, out of love. But then she said that the worst men also don’t like their auntie, because they can’t stand having anyone but themselves be in control of things.”

“I don’t even want an auntie,” said Nafai.

“Well, that’s brilliant. How will you learn anything, then?”

“I want to learn it together with my mate.”

“You’re a romantic idiot,” said Issib.

“Nobody has to teach birds or lizards.”

“Nafai ab Wetchik mag Rasa, the famous lizard lover.”

“I once watched a pair of lizards go at it for a whole hour.”

“Learn any good techniques?”

“Sure. But you can only use them if you’re proportioned like a lizard.”

“Oh?”

“It’s about half as long as their whole body.”

Issib laughed. “Imagine buying pants.”

“Imagine lacing your sandals!”

“You’d have to wrap it around your waist.”

“Or loop it over your shoulder.”

This conversation carried them through the market, where people were just starting to open their booths, expecting the immediate arrival of the farmers from the plain. Father maintained a couple of booths in the outer
market, though none of the plains farmers had the money or the sophistication to want to buy a plant that took so much trouble to keep alive, and yet produced no worthwhile crop. The only sales in the outer market were to shoppers from Basilica itself, or, more rarely, to rich foreigners who browsed through the outer market on their way into or out of the city. With Father on a journey, it would be Rashgallivak supervising the set-up, and sure enough, there he was setting up a cold-plant display inside a chilled display table. They waved at him, though he only looked at them, not even nodding in recognition. That was Rash’s way—he would be there if they needed him in some crisis. At the moment, his job was setting out plants, and so that had all of his attention. There was no rush, though. The best sales would come in the late afternoon, when Basilicans were looking for impressive gifts to bring their mate or lover, or to help win the heart of someone they were courting.

Meb once joked that people never bought exotic plants for themselves, since they were nothing but trouble to keep alive—and they only bought them as gifts because they were so expensive. “They make the perfect gift because the plant is beautiful and impressive for exactly as long as the love affair lasts—usually about a week. Then the plant dies, unless the recipients keep paying
us
to come take care of it. Either way their feelings toward the plant always match their feelings toward the lover who gave it to them. Either constant annoyance because he’s still around, or distaste at the ugly dried-up memory. If a love is actually going to be
permanent
the lovers should buy a tree instead.” It was when Meb started talking this way with customers that Father had banned him from the booths. No doubt that was exactly what Meb had been hoping for.

Nafai understood the desire to avoid helping in the
business. There was nothing fun in the slugwork of selling a bunch of temperamental plants.

If I end my studies, thought Nafai, I’ll have to work every day at one of these miserable jobs. And it’ll lead nowhere. When Father dies Elemak will become the Wetchik, and he would never let me lead a caravan of my own, which is the only interesting part of the work. I don’t want to spend my life in the hothouse or the dryhouse or the coldhouse, grafting and nurturing and propagating plants that will die almost as soon as they’re sold. There’s no greatness in that.

The outer market ended at the first gate, the vast doors standing open as they always did—Nafai wondered if they could even close anymore. It hardly mattered—this was always the most carefully guarded gate because it was the busiest. Everybody’s retinas were scanned and checked against the roster of citizens and rightholders. Issib and Nafai, as sons of citizens, were technically citizens themselves, even though they weren’t allowed to own property within the city, and when they came of age they’d be able to vote. So the guards treated them respectfully as they passed them through.

Between the outer gate and the inner gate, between the high red walls and protected by guards on every side, the city of Basilica conducted its most profitable business: the gold market. Actually, gold wasn’t even the majority of what was bought and sold here, though moneylenders were thick as ever. What was traded in the gold market was any form of wealth that was easily portable and therefore easily stolen. Jewels, gold, silver, platinum, databases, libraries, deeds of property, deeds of trust, certificates of stock ownership, and warrants of uncollectible debt: All were traded here, and every booth had its computer to report transactions to the city recorder—the city’s master computer. In fact, the constantly shifting
holographic displays over all the computers caused a strange twinkling effect, so that no matter where you looked you always seemed to see motion out of the corner of your eye. Meb said that was why the lenders and vendors of the gold market were so sure someone was always spying on them.

No doubt most of the computers here had noticed Nafai and Issib as soon as their retinas were scanned at the gate, flashing their names, their status, and their financial standing into the computer display. Someday that would mean something, Nafai knew, but at the moment it meant nothing at all. Ever since Meb ran up huge debts last year when he turned eighteen, there was a tight restriction on all credit to the Wetchik family, and since credit was the only way Nafai was likely to get his hands on serious money, no one here would be interested in him. Father could probably have got all those restrictions removed, but since Father did all his business in cash, never borrowing, the restrictions did nothing to hurt him—and they kept Meb from borrowing any more. Nafai had listened to the whining and shouting and pouting and weeping that seemed to go on for months until Meb finally realized that Father was
never
going to relent and allow him financial independence. In recent months Meb had been fairly quiet about it. Now when he showed up in new clothes he always claimed they were borrowed from pitying friends, but Nafai was skeptical. Meb still spent money as if he had some, and since Nafai couldn’t imagine Meb actually working at anything, he could only conclude that Meb had found someone to borrow from against his anticipated share in the Wetchik estate.

That would be just like Meb—to borrow against Father’s anticipated death. But Father was still a vigorous and healthy man, only fifty years old. At some point
Meb’s creditors would get tired of waiting, and Meb would have to come to Father again, begging for help to free him from debt.

There was another retina check at the inner gate. Because they were citizens and the computers showed they not only hadn’t bought anything, but hadn’t even stopped at a booth, they didn’t have to have their bodies scanned for what was euphemistically called “unauthorized borrowing.” So in moments they passed through the gate into the city itself.

More specifically, they entered the inner market. It was almost as large as the outer market, but there the resemblance ended, for instead of selling meat and food, bolts of cloth and reaches of lumber, the inner market sold finished things: pastries and ices, spices and herbs; furniture and bedding, draperies and tapestries; fine-sewn shirts and trousers, sandals for the feet, gloves for the hands, and rings for toes and ears and fingers; and exotic trinkets and animals and plants, brought at great expense and risk from every corner of the world. Here was where Father offered his most precious plants, keeping his booths open day and night.

But none of these held any particular charm for Nafai—it was all the same to him, after passing through the market with little money for so many years. To him all that mattered were the many booths selling myachiks, the little glass balls that carried recordings of music, dance, sculpture, paintings; tragedies, comedies, and realities, recited as poems, acted out in plays, or sung in operas; and the works of historians, scientists, philosophers, orators, prophets, and satirists; lessons and demonstrations of every art or process ever thought of; and, of course, the great love songs for which Basilica was known throughout the world, combining music with wordless erotic plays that went on and on, repeating
endlessly and randomly, like self-creating sculptures in the bedrooms and private gardens of every household in the city.

Of course, Nafai was too young to buy any love songs himself, but he had seen more than one when visiting in the homes of friends whose mothers or teachers were not as discreet as Rasa. They fascinated him, as much for the music and the implied story as for the eroticism. But he spent his time in the market searching for new works by Basilican poets, musicians, artists, and performers, or old ones that were just being revived, or strange works from other lands, either in translation or in the original. Father might have left his sons with little money, but Mother gave all her children—sons and nieces no more or less than mere pupils—a decent allowance for the purchase of myachiks.

Nafai found himself wandering toward a booth where a young man was singing in an exquisitely high and sweet tenor voice; the melody sounded like it might be a new one by the composer who called herself Sunrise—or at least one of her better imitators.

“No,” said Issib. “You can come back this afternoon.”

“You can go ahead,” said Nafai.

“We’re already late,” said Issib.

“So I might as well be later.”

“Grow up, Nafai,” said Issib. “Every lesson you miss is one that either you or the teacher will have to make up later.”

“I’ll never learn everything anyway,” said Nafai. “I want to hear the song.”

“Then listen while you’re walking. Or can’t you walk and listen at the same time?”

Nafai let himself be led out of the market. The song faded quickly, lost in music from other booths, and the chatter and conversation of the market. Unlike the outer
market, the inner market didn’t wait for farmers from the plain, and so it never closed; half the people here, Nafai was sure, had not slept the night before, and were buying pastries and tea as their morning supper before going home to bed. Meb might well be one of them. And for a moment, Nafai envied him the freedom of his life. If I am ever a great historian or scientist, will I have freedom like that? To rise in the mid-afternoon, do my writing until dusk, and then venture out into the Basilican night to see the dances and plays, to hear the concerts, or perhaps to recite passages of the work I did myself that day before a discerning audience that will leave my recitation abuzz with discussion and argument and praise and criticism of my work—how could Elemak’s dirty, wearying journeys ever compare with such a life as that? And then to return at dawn to Eiadh’s house, and make love to her as we whisper and laugh about the night’s adventures and triumphs.