Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
Later, after most or all of the children were born, that man’s wife would shop for someone much like Mouche, who now turned before the mirror trying to envision himself after another five years or so. When dressed in a clean tunic and a graceful mantle, he made a good appearance. Several times during the park promenades, he had caught people looking at him. Some of them had been women, though there had been a few men as well. He had, as instructed, dimpled at the former and ignored the latter. Madame did not sell to homosexuals, unless the Hunk was being purchased by a woman as a gift for her husband—an erotic aide, as it were, in the necessary business of procreation.
He struck a fencing attitude. He liked fencing, and his fencing master was pleased with him. He rose on his toes and turned, then bowed and stepped and turned again. His dancing master had moved him to the advanced class. Mouche liked fencing better than dancing, but dancing was important, so he did it. Sometimes women held soirées for their friends and their Hunks, and the Hunks had to be able to put on a show. He cleared his throat and did a few lalas. The singing master had been pleased with him also, though Mouche’s voice was now beginning to crack. Beginning next year he would learn to accompany himself on the lap harp or lute.
All in all, except for recurrent fantasies of the sea, Mouche was reasonably content. He had gotten over feeling shamed, for in House Genevois his status was not considered shameful. How one is regarded by one’s peers is most important, and Mouche’s peers were friendly enough. The embarrassment he had thought he would feel forever had lasted only a cycle or two, though he often thought of Mama and Papa, wondering if he would ever see them again.
* * *
Mouche did see his papa again, for once a student went into Consort Country, he could receive visitors, as Mouche soon learned. He sent word to Papa, and Papa arrived shortly thereafter, looking unusually prosperous, with a new cockade on his hat and much news of the new calf and the new kittens and the successful repairs to the mill. Papa did not mention that Mama was pregnant, an event long considered impossible, but which may well have resulted from a lessening of worry and an improvement in diet. When little Bianca was born some months later, Mouche was not informed of that, either. Even though money could have been borrowed on the girl’s prospects, Mouche could not have been redeemed. Sales to Consort Houses were considered final. Repayment, even with interest, would not have been accepted by Madame, and the contract Papa had signed was not susceptible to cancellation.
When Bianca had a baby sister, a year later, and then a baby brother a year after that, Mouche was not told of either event. Though Papa continued to visit faithfully, appearing ever more prosperous over the next few years, he didn’t mention to Mouche that for all practical purposes, the new baby boy was now the g’Darbos-apparent, as Papa’s eldest son.
At sixteen, the boys entered upon the most demanding part of their education. Four hours of physical training each day were coupled with five hours of classroom work, and to this was now added the actual practice of amatory arts. The women who came to House Genevois to assist in this education were masked during the sessions, no one knew who they were except Madame, and Madame did not even hint at who they might be. Some were young and shapely, and some were not, but the quality of work expected from a Consort was to be the same, regardless. In fact, the highest prices would be paid for those from whom the pleasures given a thirty-year-old wife and a sixty-year-old grandmama were indistinguishable. What these women had to say about the students was perhaps more important than any other assessment they might receive.
Amatory arts required, Mouche found, a good deal of concentration, the acquisition of certain autohypnotic abilities, and careful attention to his physical health. There were certain drugs that helped in certain cases, either taken by the Consort or by his patroness, though Madame did not recommend their use except in cases of extreme need.
“In this respect, graduates of House Genevois are unlike the graduates of, say, House Fantuil. In House Fantuil they do a great deal of drug-induced work, but in my mind such sensationism—I do not call it sensuality, which is a natural effect—not only suffers in comparison with the natural modes, but also shortens the lifespans of its practitioners. Of course, given the clientele to whom House Fantuil sells, perhaps the drugs are necessary! I am proud to say that House Genevois never expects the impossible from its graduates!”
Mouche now paid strict attention to the lectures, usually given by Madame but occasionally by other women, concerning the nature or natures of women, for he now could put the theory into action. He decided women were more complicated than he had imagined possible. At night, in the Consort suites, there was a great deal of talk about these complications, about natural versus unnatural modes, and all the middle ground between.
Naturally, the boys discussed other things as well, with particular attention to the mysterious, the unmentioned, and unmentionable. There was exchange of misinformation about the invisible people. There was more of the same about the fabled Questioner, who was rumored to be interested in Newholme. This rumor had more substance than most, for Tyle had a sister married to the family man who managed the space port, and a trader captain had told the manager, who had told his wife, who had told Tyle.
“What does the Questioner do?” asked one boy.
“It destroys worlds,” whispered someone else, “if they don’t conform to the edicts.”
None of the boys knew much about the edicts, but most of them supposed Newholme didn’t conform.
“I mean,” said Fentrys, “we’ve got all these things we can’t talk about, but if we conformed, we could talk about anything.”
“So she wipes out Newholme?” asked Mouche skeptically.
“No. Not if we can keep her from finding out.”
This topic was hashed and rehashed until it grew boring and was replaced with newly heard stories about Wilderneers. No one had actually ever seen a Wilderneer, but stories about them nonetheless abounded.
In general, Mouche enjoyed his life. The Consorts-in-Training had, so Madame stressed, a better diet than other men, a more healthy lifestyle, a more certain future, and fewer sexual frustrations than anyone on the planet. The days went by without upheaval in an atmosphere of general kindliness, and the only thing that saddened Mouche were his dreams: often of Duster and sometimes of the sea. Each time he dreamed of the sea, it became wider and darker and bigger, until eventually he dreamed of a sea of stars with himself sailing upon it.
In accordance with Madame’s instructions, Mouche had managed to let go of his father and mother. He had ceased to grieve over the animals and the farm itself. But Duster and the ever widening sea … those things he wept over still.
T
he freckled, red-headed “boy” named Ornery Bastable had been bought onto the freighter
Waygood
at age seventeen and she had stayed there ever since. Because of her (his) early “mutilation,” a story that Ornery frequently told and by now had considerably embellished, she was allowed to be somewhat reticent about natural functions. She had no beard and her voice was rather high. Nonetheless, she was strong and resourceful, and though she could not participate in all the recreations indulged in by her companions, she was a good shipmate, always eager to offer a hand or stand a watch for a friend. Had Ornery been prettier, the subterfuge might not have worked, but “he” had remained a plain, lean, energetic person who over the years had become an accepted member of the crew.
In general, Ornery had found the life healthful and interesting. So far as recreations went, Ornery enjoyed the society of her fellows, she had found a close lipped and empathetic female Hagger in Naibah with whom she could occasionally be “herself,” and every now and then she traveled up the river from Naibah to pay dutiful visits to Pearla. Though most of her life was relatively routine, it was not without adventure, including, on one occasion, being marooned.
Freighters sailing westward from Gilesmarsh customarily refilled their water barrels a dozen days’ sail down the coast at a Sweetwater spring which was separated from the shore by a strip of forest so thick and overgrown as to be impassible except by the laboriously created trail maintained by the shipcrews who watered there. Ornery was part of a work party sent ashore on the duty of chop and fill, but despite the trail being well marked and Ornery herself having traversed it many times, she somehow got herself separated from the rest of the party. She sat down to figure out where she’d gone wrong, and just at that moment the world started to shake.
She was under a tree; a branch whipped off the tree, struck Ornery on the head, and she rolled down into the dirt, dead to the world, in which state she continued until the
Waygood
sailed away without her.
She wakened along about moonfall, figured out where she’d gone wrong and made an unsteady way to the beach, where she found a note from her mates saying they’d return in eight or ten days, and, “If you want picking up you’d better stay on the sand, but watch out for tidal waves, because there’s more tremors all the time.”
They left her a few rounds of hardbread, as well as a packet of cheese and jerky, so she wasn’t as badly off as she might otherwise have been. She had her belt knife, hatchet, and canteen. There was fruit in the trees. The spring was close enough for drinking water, the rations were sufficient, the knock on the head had left a painful lump but no lasting damage. She hacked herself a few fronds from the nearby trees, built a shelter of sorts high on the beach between two erect pillars of stone that had long served as a landmark for the spring, a space partly screened from the sea by a pile of other pillars, similar though recumbent. She then lay back in her lean-to awaiting rescue, staring at the moons at night and swimming in the sea in the daytime—a delight she almost never had the privacy to indulge in and one she considered almost worth being marooned for.
Three of the biggest moons were out when the ship left, one almost at full but the other two at waxing half and new, so the tides weren’t enough to make her move and she felt no tremors. On the third night, however, she wakened to a sound: not a loud sound, not even a threatening sound, but certainly an unfamiliar one. It conveyed, she thought, the sense of an exclamation. Or, maybe, an exclamatory question, as though something very large had asked from the direction of the sea: Who is that person camped on my beach? Or, more accurately, Who is that person camped
there
on my beach?
Ornery went from
there
to
somewhere else
in a panicky skulk that ended with her in the trees, prostrate upon some uncomfortably knobby roots, peering out at the place she had just left. The waxing half moon was low in the sky; the new moon had long since set, but the full moon was just past the zenith, casting enough light for her to see the bulky though sinuous shadow that flowed upward from the water to her left, squirmed across the beach to the stones, fumbled about with them for what seemed a very long time, then went back as it had come. This was accomplished without any noise whatsoever and without any evidence that the shadow knew or cared where Ornery was. Where there had been two pillars standing in the moons’ light, there were now five, each casting a bifurcated shadow like a lopsided arrowhead, pointing away from the place Ornery lay.
Ornery stayed where she was, replaying what she had seen in her head: the shadow coming out of the sea and squirming across the sand. Now that had been one thing, one single thing, she was sure of that. But then, when it had fumbled around with the rocks, some of it had separated itself and moved away from the other part of it, so it must have been more than one thing to start with.
Except for that very distinct impression it was one thing at the beginning!
At the first light of dawn, Ornery crawled back to her shelter. The rations were pressed quite deeply into the sand but otherwise undamaged. The fronds that had sheltered her were scattered and the area smelled like … well, she couldn’t quite say. Not a bad smell. Not a stink, but nonetheless, something quite distinctive and possibly to be avoided. Ornery gathered up her belongings and found a place at the other end of the beach to make her bed. Having done so, she fell asleep, without even thinking about it. She knew it was the only thing to do.
Later in the morning she woke with the word “Joggiwagga” moving about in her head. Moon dragon, she said to herself, wondering where she had heard such a thing. Her memory didn’t at that moment stretch as far as the invisible person who had nursed Oram and Ornalia as babies, telling them stories and singing them songs. She had been told to forget that time, and though she had by no means forgotten, she had obediently stopped thinking of it. The word soon evaporated, like dew, and she remained astonished at herself for having slept at all since she had a rather frightening memory of the night’s happening.
When the ship came by on its way back to Gilesmarsh she told her mates about the experience, and they teased her a good deal. Castaways always told stories about hearing things and seeing things and being wakened in the night, or having their things moved about. Ornery accepted this with good grace but without believing a word of it. She’d seen the stone pillars lying in the sand and she’d seen them standing erect, and each of the stones had been far too heavy for her to have raised it herself. Something had set them up, and Ornery had seen the shape—or shapes—of the somethings.
L
ate in his sixteenth year, Mouche fell prey to a peculiar illness, one with few and subtle outward symptoms, one to which, however inadvertently, he exposed himself.
It began one evening rather late when, in the course of restoring certain volumes of erotic tales to his bookshelf, Mouche jostled a particular carving in an unusual way, and the whole bookshelf rotated on its axis to display a gaping black doorway out of which drifted the sound of music and an enticing odor. The smell made his mouth water even as it made his nose wrinkle, as if he scented something marvelously luscious but, perhaps for that very reason, forbidden.