“A likely story,” chided Noe.
He looked down the docks. “How’s Honey?”
“She loves my children,” said Oelita.
“She’s shy,” said Noe. “She reminds me of Joesai’s se-Tufi in Soebo, always finding a way out of a conversation.”
“Is it safe to leave those maniac husbands alone?” Teenae was still worried.
“Everything is under control. Jokain has Joesai by the nose. And I’m going to leave the twins with Hoemei.” He watched Oelita while he said that.
“No!” The Gentle Heretic was suddenly frightened.
“With your consent.” He took her hand and gestured for Honey to bring the children.
They put together two tables near the windows of the inn. Honey found high chairs for the children and retreated to the kitchen.
“Honey!” said Teenae, trying to recall her.
Gaet held out a negative hand. “Let her serve us if she so wishes. That’s the way she is.”
“Hoemei doesn’t like me!” pleaded Oelita. “I’m sorry I’ve caused your family so much trouble. Joesai had me wrapped up in his dreams. The changes in him gave me faith in mankind again.”
“Hoemei doesn’t dislike you,” Gaet explained patiently. “He was just defending Kathein. Marriage is like juggling. Anybody with any kalothi at all can handle two balls. Anything after three is complicated. Hoemei was up to six and doing well, and then somebody slipped in a seventh ball and he dropped everything. Oelita, you are no ordinary seventh!”
The twins started to kick each other. Their mother turned to quiet them and Honey arrived with sweetsticks for them to suck.
“There’s a reason I want him to take care of your twins,” said Gaet.
“Hoemei is gentle,” interjected Honey. “More than you know.” She ran her fingers shyly through Oelita’s hair, along the scalp, communicating gentleness. “He’ll love your children because they are his, too. He’ll see that they were raised in the desert and that way know your strength.”
“What good will that do!” cried Oelita morosely.
Gaet used one of his oldest tricks in reply. He reached into Oelita’s philosophy and picked out one of her dearest maxims. “You have told us that love changes us away from violence. That’s what I’m doing. While your children are with their father, you will be with Kathein.”
“No. I can’t do that! It’s too painful. I lived on struggle, not willing to die, not willing to hope. Joesai brought me a dream and now that dream is ashes. Either Kathein or I shall lose, and if one of us loses, we both lose.”
Gaet began a story. “Two men each dreamed a house and woke up at dawn intending to make real the house of their minds. They both planned to use the same tree as a center beam, each unaware of the dream of the other. How is such a problem resolved? They can fight and destroy each other’s foundations. They can fight and one can win. Or one can arbitrarily give up his dream. But that assumes there is but one tree on all of Geta and only one way of building a house. What if these two talked, bargained, explored? Maybe there is a second tree that two men can carry. Maybe a single conversation will suggest a whole new architecture. That’s why you must talk to Kathein.”
“Do that,” said Honey quietly. “Gaet is known as the best arbitrator in all of Kaiel-hontokae.”
Oelita looked at Teenae for support. “Kathein is a good woman,” said her friend.
Noe was waiting for her to say yes.
She turned away from them all. The dining room was gay with its oiled wooden tables and aroma of spices from the kitchen. Getasun had banished the fog. Sorrow was alive. “I’ll try.”
“We took the White Wound together. Remember? It wasn’t easy, either.”
63
1. Without help from others, any being’s future contains only lean alternatives.
2. Help can be:
(a) mutual as in cooperation,
(b) enforced as by the use of slaves.
3. An individualist — a man who has no intention of ever exploring the goals of others because he has no intention of compromising with his own — may become:
(a) a hermit of limited goals,
(b) a tyrant surrounded by slaves with rebellion in his future and covert hostility in his present.
4. A being may choose the route of mutual help, having no fixed goals because he is constantly exploring the goals of others and so modifying his own. Such a wandering road leads to loss of individuality, but such a person always finds a land where there is a rich choice of futures and so his gains are greater than his losses.
GAET RENTED A SAILBOAT to take Oelita and her boy and girl up the coast to the bay of the Old Man, the Mother, and the Child of Death. He had little knowledge of sailing and gave command to Oelita who remembered her sailor motions as if she had never left the sea. They beached beneath the maran mansion. Gaet left a bewildered Hoemei to manage as best he could with two squalling infants. Kathein gave him instructions and then apprehensively followed Gaet back to the beach.
“I’ve never been in a boat before,” said Kathein, “not even to cross a river.”
“You’ll like it!” Oelita said with a smile, as she helped her rival aboard, glad that she was in command.
“Tell me what to do,” said Kathein.
Gaet was shoving the boat out into the waves again. “You should know all about the forces of tacking.”
“The boom adds and subtracts on its fingers faster than I do!”
“Where to?” asked Oelita.
Gaet was aboard, dripping, helping Oelita hoist the sail. “You once told me long ago that you found the Frozen Voice of God along the shore near here when you were a child.”
“I know exactly where.”
“I thought it might be a place to picnic. The Forge of War is the common meeting ground between you and Kathein.”
Kathein’s eyes brightened. “Do you really remember where you picked it up? That’s very exciting!” The boat was gathering speed, splashing a fine spray into her face when they crossed a wave. That was exciting, too. “We’ve never found more than the one we had and yours.”
“The cove has a sandy bottom. A lot could be buried there.”
“Maybe God will nudge your hand again.”
“We’ll try. It is a wonderful place to swim.”
“Is swimming in the sea different than swimming in a pool?”
“Oh yes. I’ll show you how.”
The cove was isolated and protected from the storms and, because of that, sheltered peculiar kinds of insect life. Oelita remembered why her father had been here, and found a green-backed digger for Kathein and then a whole colony of tunneling insects with peculiar clawed eyes.
“What are these?” Kathein was holding blades of an underwater grass on which grew a delicate band of silver flowers all the way up each spine.
“They are delicious when rotted for a week — and quite poisonous. A nerve poison. Long ago when the Stgal first took over Sorrow from the Nowee priests they gave a great feast in honor of the new pact between the Nowee and the Stgal and fed the Nowee a salad laced with such grasses. A tale among other tales — and the Stgal wonder why they have a devious reputation!”
The two women shed their sailing clothes and began a diving exploration of the shore bottom. Gaet built a fire on the sand and roasted a lunch in bundles of leaf packs. He watched the swimmers, pleased with the emotional smoothness of his venture. He could relax now and worry about trivial details like the penetration of the leaf aroma into the food.
Women were beautiful in different ways, he thought, watching them. The artists of the coast had used simple designs over Oelita’s flesh, leaving sweeping areas of plain or lightly etched skin for contrast. Kathein was decorated more in the high fashion of the Kaiel, delicate work, lavish detail, symbols, intricate dye work overlaying the scars so that not a patch of child’s flesh remained, showing her to be a true Master of Pain.