Rod frowned. "I thought he was trying to get the Wolmen out of association with the colonists."
"So did I. I stepped a little closer, snapping that there would've been plenty of Wolmen to go around, if the colonist soldiers hadn't killed off so many of our men in the war. But Hwun told me that there are always two percent more female children surviving infancy than male… I wonder who does his statistics?"
Yorick shook his head, looking dazzled. "Odd bunch of primitives they've got here."
"Must be Cholly and his educational force." Rod shrugged. "I'm surprised he didn't quote the last IDE census at you."
"No, but he did finally get around to praising my patriotism. Almost as an afterthought. Then he fed me some sort of line about how literate cultures always destroy oral cultures, then swallow them up or kill off their members."
Rod just stared at her for a moment. Then he said, "Not exactly what I usually think of as a call to arms."
"Well, it could have been, if he hadn't sounded like some damn professor!"
Rod wondered at her irritability. Of course, Chornoi was always touchy… "So what did he say to comfort you?"
"Nothing." Chornoi turned away in disgust. "All of a sudden, he spun around and ran over to the stone step. And believe me, he can sprint!"
"Primitives stay in good physical shape," Yorick assured her.
"Not that good! I swear he could've run a horse race without the horse!" She shook her head, exasperated. "He got there just in time, too. He barely set foot on the stone, and the sun came up."
"Natural sense of timing," Yorick said.
"Which some people don't have." Rod fixed him with a beady eye.
Chornoi shook her head in exasperation. "Talk about a wasted night!"
"Oh, I don't know." Rod pursed his lips. "At least, now we're pretty sure he didn't want anybody to know which tribe the corpse came from. That's something."
"Not much," Chornoi snapped, but Gwen smiled with gentle amusement. "Thou shouldst not be so aggrieved, solely for cause that he did not sway to thy charms."
Rod's eyebrows shot up as he turned to look at her.
Chornoi sat very still, paling. Then she heaved a sigh. "All right, so my feminine pride's been hit. How'd you know, Ms.?"
Gwen answered with a shrug of her shoulders. "The lilt of thy voice, the tilt of thine head. Thou art quite knowledgeable in the use of thy womanhood, art thou not?"
"I've gotten pretty good at it," Chornoi admitted, "ever since I found out that the Wolmen have a very stiff code of honor where women are concerned—especially unmarried ones. It was such a welcome relief from my fellow colonists!"
"Also safer?" Rod guessed.
Chornoi nodded, chagrined. "I've always been a favorite with them, and not just because I was disaffected. Maybe they all thought I'd make a nice addition to their lodges, I don't know—but it was nice to be treated like a lady again after all these years. And I got to be pretty good at flirting." She sounded vaguely surprised.
Rod frowned. "But if their code of honor was so stiff that they wouldn't even try to seduce you…"
"Oh, I didn't say that!" Chornoi glared icicles at him. "They all did, always, every single one. That was what was so nice about it. I could flirt all I wanted to, then say 'No,' and they'd accept it. Even if they didn't want to, they'd stop right away."
"But this Hwun did not attempt to seduce thee?"
"Not a bit, not the tiniest flirt. Not even a leer, let alone a bedroom eye."
Rod cocked his head to the side. "But it sounded as though he was interested in you."
"Oh, yeah! In who I was, and why I was there, but beyond that… Well, he didn't even seem to be aware that I was female!"
Yorick shook his head. "Odd. Definitely odd. Anomalous, in fact. Y' might expect that kind of thing in a civilized culture, but…"
"Whoa! Hold it!" Chornoi's palm went up. "What makes you so sure the Wolmen aren't civilized?"
"Because the word means 'citified,'" Yorick answered, irritated. "At least pick legitimate nits, will you?"
"Yet wherefore wouldst thou look for such behavior in cities, yet not in the country?" Gwen asked.
"Because it takes a higher degree of technology to build cities than to build temporary villages," Yorick said. "I suppose I really should have said 'highly-technological,' instead of 'civilized.' I mean, can you really call it a 'city' if it's only got a hundred thousand people, and not a single factory?"
"Yes," Rod said, with conviction.
Yorick shrugged. "All right, so we're down to definitions. Me, I think of industrial ugliness as a 'city'—you know, steam engines, power looms, railroads, factories…"
"No, I don't know." Rod shook his head. "I didn't study that much archaeology. But I can play straight man—'Why would you expect a man from an industrial civilization to not even notice that a woman was a woman?'"
Yorick frowned. "Well, maybe not 'expect', but at least not be surprised by. In the industrial culture, Major, you make progress by putting each item into its own separate pigeonhole, so you can control it and assemble it with a lot of other things into whatever new gadget you want—and what you do with your tools, you also do with your minds. So the industrial man starts seeing 'emotion' as one aspect of the mind, and 'intellect' as another, and he puts each one into its own separate pigeonhole in his soul, where it can't get in the other's way. So you might not be surprised to find that a leader who was currently dealing with a major problem, might have sex safely pigeonholed out of the way for the time being."
"But to the point where he wouldn't even notice that a woman was a woman?" Chornoi stared, appalled.
"Oh, he'd notice it, all right—but he'd ignore it."
"Even to the point of not responding as a man?"
Yorick shrugged. "What can I tell you? It's possible. But the Wolman culture isn't industrial—it's tribal, with a very basic technology that concentrates on wholeness and individuality. They see everything as weaving together into one great big configuration—and sex as a natural part of life, just like every other part. Feelings and thoughts are naturally interwoven in a culture like that. The one leads to the other, in an endless circle."
Rod pursed his lips. "Are you trying to tell me that Hwun wasn't reacting like a true tribal chieftain?"
Yorick stood still with his mouth open. Then he closed it, disgruntled. "Well, yeah, something like that. Right."
"Well, I'd say you pinned that one right on the donkey. But there's something that really bothers me about that guy's attitude." He scowled off into space, chewing at the thought mentally for a few minutes, then shrugged his shoulders with a sigh. "I can't pin it down."
"Give it time," Yorick advised. "It'll come home."
"Wagging a tale behind it, no doubt."
The door at the top of the stairs slammed, and Rod was on his feet, one hand on his dagger.
"Nay, my lord." Gwen laid a hand on his forearm. "'Tis more likely a friend than an enemy."
Boots appeared on the stairs, marching down, with loose green trousers tucked into them. Then a white apron appeared, tucked over an ample belly; then a barrel chest and bull shoulders, with Cholly's grinning face on top of them, and a huge tray piled high with steaming goodies in his hands. "Thought yer might like a nibble. After all, the sun's almost up."
"And our time with it?" Rod reached out to help lift the tray down.
"Here, now! Away with yer!" Cholly swung the tray up out of his reach. "Can't leave these things't' base amateurs, yer know! Sit down, sit down! The pleasure in a meal is as much in the service as in the cuisine."