The Best of All Possible Worlds (36 page)

“Satisfactory,” I interrupted. “Beneficial, infuriating, passionate—I’m sorry, did
I hit a sensitive spot there?” I had grown courageous enough to touch him, and my
hand’s light passage over his side appeared to be causing him some problems if the
hitch in his breathing was any indication.

“There is something you must know before we proceed,” he said, capturing my hand.
“I am aware that many Ntshune societies and a few Cygnian ones practice short-term
monogamy. This is not the Sadiri way.”

“Don’t worry; it’s not the Cygnian homesteader way either,” I said. “And they wouldn’t
have matched us if we didn’t agree on that.”

“I know. But, Grace, what I am asking is this: Do you want a Cygnian marriage or a
Sadiri marriage?”

I silently questioned him with a puzzled frown. He let go of my hand and looked into
the distance as he tried to explain.

“We have a need to form a meaningful telepathic bond with something or someone. There
is a Sadiri saying: a man with a mindship is half immortal, but a man without a wife
is half alive. Some men can overcome this need by using meditation techniques, but
never before have so many men faced a future without hope of marriage. They had no
choice but to send us away from New Sadira. There were terrible incidents—men fighting
over women, assaulting women, harming themselves, even threatening mass suicide. Our
society was breaking down. I saw such things—things I still cannot speak of.” He gripped
his wrist, a sign of distress I knew too well.

“Then don’t speak of them,” I hushed him. “Not yet. Not till you’re ready. Never,
if it comes to that.”

He spoke very quietly, still not looking at me. “I have relied on meditation for many
years, and I can continue to do so for many more, but I ask you now: Will you bond
with me?”

I leaned against him, feeling the tension in his body subside. “I said yes, and I’ll
say it again. You know I trust you.”

He took my hand and pressed it to his cheek. I closed my eyes and felt a surge of
energy pushing from him to me and back again, very like the warmth and reassurance
of a rocking hug. At last, calmed and consoled, we moved away from each other. He
returned the document to its envelope and handed it to me.

“We will speak more on this later, after you have rested and settled in.”

He left to return to the smithy. I lay back on the grass for a few minutes, mind blown.
La, sir, this is so very sudden!
And
yet … it wasn’t, was it? We’d already moved beyond the baseline Sadiri courting rituals
identified by Freyda. I knew we had been heading toward a declaration of sorts. I
suppose I thought that the declaration would be multistage, perhaps an “I love you”
followed by a “Do you love me?” rather than a “Here, sign this document that’ll say
we’re married.” But dithering wasn’t a Sadiri habit, and neither were “I love yous.”

I heaved a huge sigh and sat up straight. I needed a drink.

By happy chance, so
did Freyda. First I bullied her into helping me get my stuff into my rooms, and then
we took a well-deserved break in her sitting room. She had already completed her own
move-in, and as I complimented her taste, she looked around at the decor and furniture
with contentment.

“I’m so glad Lanuri went along with my plan to move early and get things organized
before our wedding,” she said. “I made it sound as if it was the obvious thing for
me to do now that there’s a new biotechnician in place and I’m free to start my book,
but I think he knows my real motive.”

“And what’s that?” I asked, making myself comfortable against the cushions as she
poured the wine.

“I’m hiding,” she confessed in a semiwhisper. “From Zhera.”

I rolled the name through my brain a few times. “Isn’t she one of the female elders
who arrived recently?”

“She seems to be the head of them, and she’s
terrifying
. I thought they were supposed to be cuddly grandma and auntie surrogates for the
settlement’s young men.
She
seems to think it’s her job to whip all the new wives and fiancées into shape. I
saw her systematically interviewing a group of them at the Council Hall offices. Some
came out in tears.”

“Well, as long as she doesn’t second-guess the Ministry,” I
said. “I suppose she wants to stamp her authority on the community from the start.
Oh, and speaking of fiancées …”

Freyda was overjoyed at my news but not in the least surprised. “Finally! Did you
sign it?”

I grinned, feeling a bit bashful but very pleased at her reaction. “Well, not there
on the spot, naturally, but I will. After you guys. Don’t want to steal your thunder
and all.”

She waved a hand dismissively. “You and Dllenahkh were inevitable. Lanuri’s considered
you all but bonded for ages.”

“Hmm. So has Nasiha,” I said wryly, taking a sip of wine. “Are Sadiri suitors too
subtle for us, do you think?”

“I think it’s the lack of drama. Once they’ve got things figured out, they simply
go forward without making a fuss.”

I sat still for a while, heedlessly letting the chilled wineglass warm in my hands
and drip condensation onto my lap. I remembered when I first read Dllenahkh’s thoughts
in my dreams. He had been trying, I think, to figure out how to signal his desire
to move from friends to something more. I wondered if that had been when he’d booked
me. Cheeky of him to assume I’d say yes—and yet he knew my mind so well that he’d
probably been right to think in terms of when rather than if.

“Well, then,” said Freyda, eyes gleaming wickedly over the rim of her glass, “now
that we’re in the same boat, let’s talk about how much of our privacy we’re willing
to give up.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

She gave me a worried look. “Hasn’t Dllenahkh spoken to you about that? My God, Delarua,
don’t you
know
?”

“You mean the telepathic bond thing?” I said, clueing in at last.

“Yes, I mean ‘the telepathic bond thing,’ ” Freyda said in amazement at my unfazed
attitude.

“Yes, of course I know about it. Why are you looking so worried?”

Freyda set down her glass and leaned forward. “Are you sure he told you everything
about it?”

“Yes,” I said, beginning to grow irritated. “He said Sadiri men have a need to form
meaningful telepathic bonds. He certainly didn’t give me the impression that meant
having no private thoughts whatsoever.” I realized even as I spoke that he
had
said “we will speak more on this later,” but I was too embarrassed to admit to that
now.

“Well, there
is
some choice about how deep the bond goes, but considering what Dllenahkh’s wife did
to him—”

I spewed a mouthful of wine half through my nose and half through my mouth. I’m sure
it was as unpleasant to observe as it was to experience. “His
wife
?” I wheezed.

“Oh, shit,” said Freyda. She grabbed a double handful of napkins from the table and
pressed them on me. I cleaned myself up, glaring at her, but she avoided my eyes as
she babbled, “I’m so sorry. I … I think I’ll let Dllenahkh tell you about that.”

“No,
you’re
going to tell me. Now,” I said grimly.

She hesitated, but then she folded her hands together and looked at me with an earnest
expression of sympathy and concern. “You know most of them have marriages arranged
for them when they’re fairly young, right?”

I grew impatient. “Yes, of course. But he never mentioned a
wife.”

“She died in the disaster, like so many others. But even before that, they were separated.”

“Separated? What does that mean for Sadiri?” I demanded. “He said they didn’t do temporary
monogamy.”

“They don’t,” Freyda confirmed. “That’s why it was such a big deal when the marriage
and the bond were dissolved.”

I breathed out slowly. “Oh. Oh, poor Dllenahkh. So he was divorced is what you’re
telling me.”

Freyda looked uncomfortable. “There was a bit more to it than that. You see, bonded
Sadiri men can be possessive
—very
possessive. Dllenahkh found out his wife was unfaithful to him. He beat the other
man senseless.”

“What?” I gaped at her in disbelief. She
had
to be making it up. It sounded like a bad, sordid holovid.

“Broke his jaw,” Freyda said bluntly. “He was never charged for it. The Sadiri have
different rules for a crime of passion. It’s treated like a kind of temporary insanity.
When he came to his senses, he told her he was releasing her from their bond.”

“Oh,” I said, unable to find words.

“I’m sorry I’m telling you this. Obviously he doesn’t like to talk about it, and ordinarily
I wouldn’t have found out except that Lanuri told me. I think he was trying to be
completely honest with me so I could objectively assess the pros and cons of a close
bond.” She hung her head and glared at her wineglass. “It didn’t work. I’m even less
objective about it now.”

“It’s going to be lots of fun trying to look him in the eye now that I know this,”
I muttered. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

“It’s not an easy thing to tell,” she reasoned. “Please,
please
don’t let on that I told you. I feel terrible about this.”

“I’ll pretend I never heard a thing,” I said miserably.

Pretense
did
work for
a little while. There was so much to do in those early days on the homestead that
there was no time to revisit the bonding issue with Dllenahkh. That was my excuse,
a good excuse and an honest one, but eventually fate took matters out of my hands.
Dllenahkh continued to train others in the mental disciplines, and there was a meditation
hall on the homestead for that purpose. I didn’t use it myself. I could meditate just
fine in my own room, and there was also a meditation room in the
main house. But I did pass by it on occasion, and once I was walking with Freyda when
we heard the sound of a voice raised in anger. We exchanged puzzled looks, then naturally
drifted closer to listen to what was going on.

“—withhold more than you teach! You are only concerned about your own status and power
in this community.”

“I withhold nothing,” Dllenahkh’s voice returned calmly. “I can only say that reliance
on meditation alone is inadvisable.”

“And yet you managed for decades. You succeeded. Why not another?”

“It was never intended as a permanent solution to solitude, as you are attempting
to make it. The Ministry can help you select an appropriate spouse, and there are
also chemical suppressants available to ease the pain of your loss. I recommend that
you choose some remedy, and quickly.”

There was a crash, and Freyda and I instinctively grabbed each other and cowered.
It was a very good thing we hadn’t been standing right in front of the window or we
would have been hit by the heavy wooden bench that came through. We
did
get covered in slivers of glass. Then we heard people scuffling inside the hall.
Peeking through the broken shutters, we saw the beginnings of a fight. Dllenahkh was
trying to restrain rather than injure, but his student seemed quite serious about
doing some harm. The other students hovered uncertainly, mainly getting themselves
and the furniture out of the way but otherwise looking on anxiously, waiting to be
told what to do.

I instinctively surged forward, but Freyda caught hold of me. “Are you mad?” she demanded.
“You can’t go in there!”

She was right. Dllenahkh ducked a blow, and his antagonist’s fist left a sizable crack
in the paneling of the wall. With a firm hold and a quick pivot, Dllenahkh brought
him down to the wooden floor with a booming crash. Two students quickly piled
on, keeping him pinned with their weight, while Dllenahkh put one hand to his forehead
and the other around his neck, squeezing with careful timing until he slumped into
unconsciousness.

“Take him to the main house,” he ordered, not even out of breath. “Class is dismissed
for today.”

Then he looked at the ruined window and saw us. His eyes went wide. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” I said, brushing a tiny smear of blood from my wrist. He saw it and frowned.

“Honestly, we’re fine,” Freyda insisted. “Go deal with … whatever it is you have to
deal with. We’ll get this cleaned up.”

He looked like he wanted to say more, but instead he nodded, still frowning, and followed
his students out of the hall. Freyda turned to me, and her face changed. “Are you
sure
you’re all right?”

I didn’t know what to answer. I’d accepted Sadiri strength in a “be a dear and shift
the groundcar out of this trench for me” kind of way, but it was the first time I
had seen a Sadiri in full, uncontrolled rage. Freyda’s story came back to my mind
with a new vividness, as did Dllenahkh’s somber reminiscences about how the men had
behaved after the disaster. Worse yet, I had been willing to view Dllenahkh’s account
of events in the context of the severe trauma that all Sadiri had experienced, knowing
too well how their telepathy made them susceptible to collective anger and pain. But
what of Dllenahkh’s own loss of control, years and years before, in a sane and stable
society where women were not a scarce commodity? It was appalling to contemplate.

Freyda guessed at the train of my thoughts and began to babble apologies again.

“I’ll be okay,” I said. “Really. Let’s go inside and get this glass out of our hair.”

———

That night, I dreamed
of elephants stampeding.

I woke up suddenly in the dark, disoriented at first, then feeling—
knowing
—that something wasn’t right. I put on a robe and went barefoot up the stairs to the
roof terrace. It was a clear, starry night but cool enough that the wooden flooring
was already drenched with dew. A shadowy figure was lying atop the broad wall: Dllenahkh,
not yet dressed for bed, wide awake and staring up at the sky with no regard for the
four-meter drop below. I walked right up to him and looked down, frowning.