“There was a priest who was chasing the Gentle Heretic. He killed her.”
“No, he didn’t. I used to think he had, but today I bought a book that she wrote after she last saw him.”
“Are you a Follower? My mothers say it is all foolishness.”
“Oelita the Clanless One is human like us all. She is foolish and wise at the same time. She has passed the Sixth Trial of the Kaiel Death Rite and that means she has great kalothi which is better than wisdom.” Six out of seven.
“You sound like a Follower. They are all over.”
“No, I’m not a Follower. I’m the priest.”
“You’re him?” She squirmed and slipped off Joesai’s back. She turned and stopped at a distance of four man-lengths. “I’m not a Follower, either,” she said. Then she fled.
Joesai carried the title of Coastal Predictor. The de-priested Stgal had built his residence overlooking a curving beach that pointed out toward three rocks rising from the Njarae that, since olden times, had been called the Old Man, the Mother, and the Child of Death. Joesai loved his family’s new mansion and, though it was far from finished, it had the beauty of Life Incomplete. (Perhaps he didn’t like the wirevoice pole.) The Stgal spent at least one lifetime on a building they cared about, feeling how it was lived in before they added the next organic layer. When the Stgal had been broken as priests Teenae logically decreed their new role as architects. They were clumsy with chemistry and rule but, ah, the miracles they made with stone and wood and mortar!
He toured the rooms, seeing that all was ready for Teenae, his anticipation stirring his dormant loins. The cactus flower was blooming and he moved it to a prominent position in the light from the tall leaded window. The luster of the wooden table disappointed him and he found oil for a rubdown. The fruits and breads that Teenae liked were in stock.
He took special care with his room for that was where they would sleep. It was a kind of formalism they had developed over their marriage. When he arrived from a journey, he would spend his first evening in the bed chamber of one of his wives and when a wife had journeyed she became a guest of her husbands.
He poured his best whisky into a better bottle and washed the shot glasses a second time until they sparkled, remembering how Teenae hated to drink from spotted glass. He bathed and perfumed his underarms and put on his cleanest undergarments.
The wirevoice chimed. When he answered, disembodied male words from Sorrow’s switchery told him Teenae was on the way. God help us if the copper line ever reaches Kaiel-hontokae, he thought grumpily, but quickened the pace of his preparations.
From a balcony in the sloping roof he watched her arrive by four-wheeled skrei-wheel powered by a male and female Ivieth couple. He let them unload her iron-reed basket, then set off two rifle-powder bangers whose crack! crack! made the three of them look up in time to see his rocket rise on sparking tail to explode in a blue flash that spread across the sky while it burned to a dazzling white.
“Joesai!” Teenae screamed up at him, “you’ll scare the neighbors out of their skins!”
“This lonely exile welcomes you home, beloved!”
He rushed downstairs to meet her. Teenae was directing the placement of her basket and flashed him the open smile that had addicted him to her. She waited until the basket was safe before she hugged him. “Your bathwater is hot,” he said.
“Don’t you ever think of anything besides giving me a bath! The world is falling apart and all you can think of is having a wife on your pillows who doesn’t smell! Oh Joesai, I’m too exhausted for even a bath! To think I once walked over the mountains!”
“With a little help from our tall friends.”
“I’m heading straight for the whisky and I know where you hide it!”
He followed her to his room, where she poured herself an amber gulp, downed it, undressed, and began to sponge her body with cold water. He tried to help. She pushed him away. “Keep your hands off me,” she said almost angrily. “You know how I am when I haven’t been with you for a long time. I have to get used to you again. You’re so big!” Her pregnancy was showing, her belly just beginning to swell with child. Hoemei’s this time.
“Where’s Gatee?” Gatee was her baby daughter by Gaet.
“I left her in the mountains with relatives. Noe or Gaet will pick her up when they come out. I thought I’d have you all to myself for a while before Noe arrives to distract you. Hoemei is coming, too. I hope. I practically had to put a ring in his dong and haul him here by chain. There’s trouble in Kaiel-hontokae and I want him away from it.”
“I’ve heard nothing.”
“Because nothing is blabbered over the rayvoice. I’m too tired to talk about it.” She sank onto the pillows, her profile outlined like stitching in a quilt, her last bit of energy used up. He smiled warmly, just happy to have her with him again, relishing every ridge of the cicatrice design that flowed down her back and up over the hills of her rump. The best of the artistry was the wheat stalk of the Heresy that she had put there to fill the last gap on her body to defy him, to tell him that she was a finished woman and no longer a child bride who had to listen to him, a decision which led to her swinging upside down from the yardarm of a Mnankrei ship for a whole night.
He touched Oelita’s slim book that he had bought from a man who did not know Joesai as the priest who had cast the Death Rite upon his prophetess. It was a present for Teenae. She had a special place in her heart for Oelita. But he took his hand away from the cloth binding. Tomorrow, when she was rested.
Teenae shifted her legs and looked up at Joesai. “I’m not asleep yet. Hug me a little. Don’t be shy. You know I’ll be madly in love with you again by about the time Scowlmoon goes into eclipse, which isn’t too long to wait. Lover.”
Much later they made love with a sleepy passion. Her half-awake sighs faded back to unconsciousness but when he tried to leave, she held him. So he waited for a while, enjoying the warmth of her, before he brought some simple food to their bed. He sat on the pillows while she ate and with his lather and knife shaved the centerline over her skull from forehead to the nape of her neck. He rubbed his nose in her hair, smelling the black silkiness of it. They chatted.
“Gatee has teeth and she has decided to bite everything!”
“Did anyone ever restore the masonry on the north face?” He was referring to their mansion in Kaiel-hontokae.
“Long ago.”
“I miss the city.”
“I, for one, am glad to be away. Hoemei has finally split with the Expansionists and you can’t believe the uproar that caused! Aesoe is after his hide and when two-husband goes to the Palace he avoids Aesoe. He’s furious at the blindness of the Expansionists. He’s pulled in a whole group to support him. Aesoe calls their proposals and predictions Stomach Thinking because Hoemei’s basic policy is Digest First, Eat Later. The conflict is dangerous because the split is basically along creche and non-creche lines.”
“That’s been coming for a long time.”
“You Who Were Born of the Machines are in the minority.”
“That won’t last.”
Teenae frowned. “It is not logical. The Expansionists want to move out rapidly and the only ready source of the priests they must have is the creches and that means they must sharply curtail the mortality rate of the Trials, but if they do that for long the creche children will be in the majority.”
“Aesoe will be dead by then and won’t care. And remember, his children will mainly come from the creches.”
Teenae gestured impatiently. “I don’t even think that is the real issue. Kathein is seeing Hoemei, more and more openly — she moons over him publicly, and makes no secret of her sexual interest in him. That drives Aesoe wild and he is about to exile Hoemei, too, or worse. I sent Gaet to talk to her, and she was her usual sweet self, but distant and uncommunicative. Hoemei thinks he is reaching her and will bring her back to us, but I think she is using him in some way I cannot compute.”