“I met her the night she first noticed that she was unhappy. She thought with the three of us she’d have all the advantages of marriage and none of the disadvantages.” Gaet’s amusement warmed his voice. “It was a disaster. She was a spoiled brat. She knew everything about holding a man for the first week and nothing beyond that. She was the terror of her family; very sober people. And we knew nothing about women beyond the basics of getting our wicks dipped.
“She was so impossible that Joesai beat her from time to time and Hoemei and I would sit around in the next room listening to the screams, biting our nails and saying Thank God someone was doing something about her. Then when it was over, we would ostracize Joesai and comfort and cuddle her.
“Money was never a problem. We were very successful with the coins — we had our mansion already — but our Four got worse and worse. And worse. Finally she left us.”
“She never told me that!” said Kathein.
“Of course not.”
“Did you miss her?” Oelita asked with sentimental curiosity.
“Miss her! I was never so happy in my life that she was gone. Hoemei was wiped out. It was sexual withdrawal. He moped around not saying anything. Joesai was our moralist. He always has been. He didn’t even like her but he hunted her down and brought her home against her will. I’ve never found out what happened then. I couldn’t get rid of her afterwards. I was pissing from my nose, I was so mad at Joesai for bringing her home. He remembers being very firm and gentle. But she acted like she thought he was going to kill her if she didn’t behave, that there was no escape from him. I don’t think he ever threatened her, but when you are fresh from the creche you have a certain cavalier attitude toward death that the non-creche never really want to test.”
“I think I know the man,” said Oelita.
Kathein was wistful. “I’m sure Noe returned because after she’d been away she knew she couldn’t live without you all. She was probably happy that Joesai came for her.”
“That’s when I found Teenae. I was up in the mountains and happened to pass through one of the o’Tghalie estates when they had a child auction. My maran prescience, which we all have from Tae, could see the woman she was to become and I was smitten even though she had shaved her head to make herself ugly so that no one would want to buy her.
“Mostly, though, I was thinking how nice it would be to have a child bride around who could be trained properly in the ways of serving a man and wouldn’t be spoiled like Noe. It never struck me that the reason the o’Tghalie were selling her was that she was unmanageable. So I finished my trip in the mountains with this girl-child terror who would follow me because I owned her, but who wouldn’t do the tiniest thing I asked.”
“She loves you now,” said Oelita.
“Of course.” He smiled. “I’m telling you these stories because marriage isn’t an easy thing, and when we look back we never see the thing we saw then. Some marriages that look perfect, don’t work. And some marriages that are the despair of all rational people somehow have the basics that make them work.”
“How did you win her?” asked Kathein.
“I was trying to resell her for half-price to an og’Sieth steel-smith who was interested in her because of the reputation of the o’Tghalie women as superior servants for their men. He asked her about her ambitions and she jinxed the sale by telling him she wanted to be a mathematician. Back on the trail I muttered and told her I’d teach her some mathematics if she’d fix the food. She looked at me skeptically and told me that if I taught her the mathematics first then she would fix our food. So I taught her some algebra that I’d learned painfully and that she learned as fast as I could remember what I knew. She smiled for the first time.”
“Did she fix your meal?”
“The best road meal I ever had! Joesai was the one who really got to her, though. He had her number from the start. He came on with total assurance and would teach her some manipulation that was always flawed. She’d catch him and then he’d grab anyone who’d listen and tell them in amazement how smart she was. When he didn’t know what she wanted to know, he’d hire an o’Tghalie male to teach him and then smuggle what he’d learned home to her. She became our slave. We could get her to do anything provided we were consistent. If we weren’t logical, then she’d fight us tooth and dagger. It would have been a good life, but Noe took pity on her and taught her some of the fine points about bamboozling men.”
“When I met your Five you were very happy,” said Kathein. “I loved your happiness.”
“A baby learns to walk. Every other step was a disaster no matter how hard we concentrated — and then suddenly we were running and we were such a good team that our services came to be in high demand.”
“I thought you were the smoothest people I knew,” Kathein said, laughing.
“So did we. That’s the danger signal. As soon as you learn to walk so well that you can run over rough ground, then you want to fly and you break your bones in your first sailplane crash. We hadn’t counted on Aesoe.”
Oelita broke her silence. “Joesai told me that one day Aesoe just ordered you to marry me.”
“That’s the way it was. We were outraged.”
“He wanted me,” said Kathein contritely.
Gaet grinned. “He gave us a fair trade. Aesoe had excellent taste in women!”
The women stared at Gaet and he knew the question that each was asking him with her eyes but was unwilling to speak. Which of us do you prefer?
Gaet paused solemnly. “We have arrived at a conflict of futures. The five of us learned to love you, Kathein, and I think it was mutual — and then you left us and we still loved you but we began to look at alternatives. The five of us didn’t want you, Oelita, not because we didn’t love you when we met you, but because you had been imposed on us against our will.”
“And against mine,” she added.
“But wasn’t Aesoe right? You could have become part of a functional Six. Still, Aesoe’s vision went awry and so we have this situation in which two futures try to occupy the same present The five of us cannot resolve this conflict. It is up to you two.”
“We’re back where we started,” said Kathein, almost angrily.
“You cannot ask that of us,” said Oelita.
“We could flip a coin,” said Kathein bitterly.
Gaet was smiling. “Do you like each other?”
“Of course we like each other!” flared Kathein.
Tears were running down the ridges of Oelita’s facial cicatrice.
“Could you live with each other?”
A look of astonishment crossed Kathein’s face. She turned to Oelita. “Do you know what this man is proposing?”
“No.”
Kathein was on her feet. She was dressing. “Poor Hoemei and Joesai are back at the mansion feeling miserable, and this lecher here has the audacity to think he can have both of us. I know this man very well. I know what he is thinking.”
“I don’t believe it!” said Oelita, staring at Gaet’s face. She saw it was true and rose with Kathein to dress, too.
“It’s one solution,” said Gaet, admiring two women he loved.
“But a Seven is illegal!” exclaimed a shocked Oelita.
“By custom, not by law. With Hoemei as the Prime Predictor it would hardly be a problem.”
“Where were you planning to take us? I know you! There must be pillows around here somewhere.” Kathein was sarcastic.
“The Temple of the Gray Rocks. It’s small, but it has a charming game room. What better place to spend the night?”
“See!” said Kathein indignantly. “See how easily he betrays his brothers!”