The Ruins Of Isis            The Ruins Of Isis
          Marion Zimmer Bradley
                  1978
 
 
          DOMINATION OR DESTINY
 
 
 
 
 
  The women of Isis held fast to a near-extinct
culture of matriarchal rule. Deep within their
sacred ruins dwelled the Builders, an ancient
spirit-a spirit that spoke only to women.
Cherished and worshiped, their soft,
warming voices belonged to the ruins of a
race which seeded the entire Galaxy.
 
  Now from the Planet Pioneer, Scholar
Cendri and her husband, Master Scholar
Dal, have come. Scientists... lovers. . .
man and wife. . .
 
  Through them Isis itself, steeped in beliefs of
bondage and supremacy, will be tried before
its sacred forebears, in the sanctity of their
ruins-while cataclysmic forces gather to
proclaim it a new world--or no world at all.
 
 
                     Chapter one 
 
 
  THE PILOT OF THE SHUTTLE SHIP WAS A WOMAN. CENDRI
had been prepared for this--intellectually-but the
reality was a shock. A small, hard-bodied woman, hair
clipped short, a band of metallic cloth around her
breasts, another, wider, around her hips, low magnet-
ized shoes, and a small crimson badge pinned on her
shoulder-band. The observer in Cendri, the anthropol-
ogist she had been trained to be, asked automatically,
uniform? Badge of office? I didn't think they had a space
service of any kind, they have so little contact with the
Unity.
  She wanted to clutch at Dal's hand, all the time
knowing perfectly well that this was the one thing, here
at the very entrance-officially-to the Matriarchate of
Isis/Cinderella, that she must not do.
  The Pilot was waiting, with raised eyebrows.
  "Scholar Dame Malocq?"
  Cendri gathered herself together. Fortunately the
pilot took it for granted that the brief disorientation of
the transittube from the Unity ship had simply left
Cendri dizzy and, for a moment, unable to speak.
Cendri knew that the moment of truth was on her-
truth? The moment when the impersonation must
begin. She said, steeling herself for the lie:
  "I am the Scholar Dame Malocq."
  The pilot, gravely and unsmiling, made the formal
gesture-hands clasped before the face-which, on the
planets of the Unity, was the universal greeting and
mark of respect. Cendri wondered who had coached
her.
  "Welcome to the Matriarchate of Isis, Scholar
Dame." Again, with detachment, Cendri took mental
notes. They don't use the name Cinderella. She hadn't
really expected them to, though the name was still
carried double, Isis/Cinderella, in the Unity records,
and on University.
  "And this-" the look the pilot gave Dal was cold,
clinical, impersonal; he might have been another
suitcase or travelpak, "-this is the Scholar Dame's
consort and Companion?"
  Cendri nodded in acknowledgement. She and Dal
had made jokes about this; it had sounded like a
light-hearted imposture, a formality, a technicality.
They had laughed together about the rigid laws of
Isis/Cinderella, the Matriarchate. But before the un-
smiling, uninterested eyes of the young woman pilot, it
had suddenly ceased to be funny; and Dal was standing
behind her where she could not catch his eyes, even for
the momentary reassurance of the shared joke. She
said "Yes. His name is-"
  But the pilot was not listening. "The Scholar Dame is
aware that the import of offworld males is technically
an infringement of the laws of the Matriarchate.
Concessions have, as the Scholar Dame knows, been
made to the respected status of the Scholar from
University; but certain formalities may not be waived. I
am required to fill out a declaration in the name of the
Scholar Dame." She whipped out a form and some
kind of writing instrument. "Does it have a property
tattoo?"
  "Does it have-what?"
  The pilot repeated, with well-concealed impatience,
  "A property tattoo or brand, an unremovable mark
signifying permanent ownership and responsibility. Is
my command of the Scholar Dame's language insuffi-
cient? Would the Scholar Dame wish me to summon an
Official Translator?"
  "No, thank you," Cendri said weakly, "the-the
term was unfamiliar, that is all. No, Dal is not-not
tattooed or branded. It is not-not our custom to
disfigure males."
  The young pilot's shoulders lifted in a faint shrug,
without interest. "As I told the Scholar Dame, conces-
sions have been made to her respected status; this
requirement has been waived by special action of the
Pro-Matriarch, as a diplomatic courtesy." Somehow
she managed to convey, without the faintest change in
her inexpressive, courteous tone, that she felt this
cOncession had been a mistake. Cendri wondered if she
was being hypersensitive. She clasped her hands for-
mally before her face and murmured that she was
appreciative of the courtesy of the Pro-Matriarch,
wondering who the Pro-Matriarch was.
  "Nevertheless, as the Scholar Dame certainly under-
stands, the formal declaration of responsibility, and
some form of permanent identification cannot be
waived, even for diplomatic purposes," the young pilot
said. "If you wish, we can be met immediately upon
landing by a malesurgeon, and arrange to have it
branded or tattooed upon the spot. The process is quite
quick and extremely humane, and the marking can be
either inconspicuous or ornamental, as the Scholar
Dame desires."
  Cendri blinked, looked helplessly at Dal, but-as he
had been carefully briefed to do-he was staring
straight ahead and pretending not to hear. The one
thing she could not do was to consult him. She had not
been prepared for this. She swallowed, and said, with a
firmness she was far from feeling, "We were not
advised of this requirement, and we cannot accede to it.
Since we are not intending to take up permanent
residence on Isis/Cinderella, it would not be suitable to
have him branded or tattooed."
  What will I do if they insist? Bluff it out, threaten to
turn around and go back to University?
  The pilot raised her eyebrows again, and Cendri
realized she had made two mistakes in one sentence.
She had used the name under which the planet was still
carried on the rolls at University, Cinderella. Even
more serious, she had made a mistake in language
against which she had been especially, and repeatedly
warned; she had referred to Dal as him, instead of by
the special neuter pronoun used for males except in a
specifically sexual context. The pilot was actually
blushing; and to apologize for the indecency was to
compound it. Better to let the pilot think Cendri
ignorant than vulgar.
  The young pilot struggled with a nervous giggle as
she said "In that case, the Scholar Dame must arrange
for a temporary marking of some sort. It can be
marked-" she very faintly emphasized it-"with an
earclamp or collar tag, but the most effective method is
for a subcutaneous electronic implant in one testicle.
This is an excellent training and disciplinary device for
a male not accustomed to civilized restraints, as it can
be located and controlled at any moment. "
  The implications of that swept Cendri with shock and
horror; but she managed, somehow, to keep her face
and voice calm.
  "No, I think not; that would be quite excessive."
  "I compliment the Scholar Dame upon her confi-
dence," said the pilot indifferently. "If she is willing to
be content with an ear clamp or collar tag-"
  "A collar tag, 1 think, will be quite sufficient,"
Cendri said, and didn't dare look at Dal. Not for the
first time, she found herself admiring her husband's
courage, and the scientific curiosity which had prompt-
ed him to accept this subordinate position.
  "-in that case, we can dispense with the attendance
of a malesurgeon," the pilot said, "I am licensed to
install an earclamp myself; I have done it many times,
and I assure you it would cause the male only tempo-
rary distress, if the Scholar Dame wishes for the added
security." Cendri shook her head, and the pilot,
although she looked doubtful, nodded in compliance.
She said, "I am also equipped with a diplomatic
collar-tag," whipped it out of a kind of utility pouch at
her belt, and locked it, on a narrow metal chain,
around Dat's neck; marked a number on it with a
carbide pencil. She said, "The Scholar Dame is, of
course, legally responsible for any damage caused by
her property; does the Scholar Dame fully understand
that it is liable to be summarily destroyed if it should
attack any citizen of the Matriarchate?"
  Cendri, in a daze, was wondering; how did we get
ourselves into this? But it was too late, now, to retreat.
The idea was ludicrous-that Dal was a dangerous
animal, likely to attack a citizen, and to be summarily
destroyed for it! The pilot's voice was pleasant, neutral,
but it seemed to Cendri to hold sinister menace. "Will
the Scholar Dame sign a form of legal responsibility?"
  "Certainly," Cendri said, trying hard to steady her
voice, and scrawled her name on the form held out to
her. One part of her noted the ancient custom
preserved--On University she would simply have pre-
sented her Scholar's identity number for registration.
But she was light-years away from University, and a
good way outside the Unity itself.
  Formalities concluded, the pilot favored her at last
with a smile. "We can get under way now, Scholar
Dame. I will signal the Unity Ship for breaking orbit in
minutes." Efficiently, she was stowing Cendri's luggage
in special compartments, carefully indicating a padded
seat, belts, restrainers. Cendri hesitated before getting
into it, looking anxiously at Dal, and the pilot
shrugged. "If the Scholar Dame is worried about her
Companion-you can put it in the seat over there, and
wedge it in with blankets. But I wouldn't worry. A few
bumps and bruises don't hurt them, you know; They
really don't feel things the way that we do. That is a
scientifically established fact, Scholar Dame, and we
have quite careful humane regulations to avoid acci-
dental harm to males."
  Cendri gulped and wedged Dal carefully into the
indicated extra seat. She said in an undertone, "I'm
afraid it's going to be a rough ride." This kind of shuttle
ship was not very smooth even with proper restrainer
seats. Without them, she didn't like to think about the
surge away from the Unity ship, the long deceleration
down into the atmosphere of Isis/Cinderella.
  Dal smiled, and the srnileheartened her. He said, in
a voice low enough not to be heard by the pilot, who
was getting into her own acceleration couch, "Relax,
love, we had this all out before we agreed to come here.
So far, I can cope with it. The shuttles on Pioneer
weren't very smooth, either, remember; it was only
when women started going offworld that we even
bothered with couches in the shuttles." He chuckled
softly, and the pilot gave him, over her bare shoulder,
an irritable glance.
  Just as if, Cendri thought, the noise of a barking dog
had distracted her.
  Yes, just exactly like that. . . .
  Cendri got into her own couch, carefully fastening
the restrainer straps and pads. What Dal said was right,
of course. He had grown up on Pioneer, and among the
men of Pioneer, endurance of hardships of this kind
were regarded as a test of courage and manhood. He
was used to this kind of thing.
  But he's not used to it now. . . .
  She told herself, firmly, to stop fretting. Dal had
assured her he would be all right. The pilot turned
briefly to check on her passenger, then spoke into an
intercom of some kind, evidently getting clearance
from the Unity ship and the port on Isis. Then she said,
"Brace yourself, Scholar Dame; the first surge is
powerful. After that the braking rockets will fire on a
count of three, after which we will spend approximately
four minutes in free orbit before we begin to decelerate
for landing. In slightly less than fourteen minutes we
will be landing in the city of Ariadne."
 
  As she had warned, the acceleration surge away from
the Unity ship was forceful. Cendri, tense with anxiety
about Dal on his restrainer-free couch, felt the surge of
violent nausea as the violent reversing sensations
turned her dizzy, then sick with the weightless feel of
free orbit. The pilot, seemingly oblivious, whistled an
odd little tune as she concentrated on her work.
  Cendri clamped her teeth in her lip, and thought, not
for the first time, FU never be able to handle this. Not
even with Dal's help. Never.
  Maybe the Unity is right, not to give assignments like
this to women. I know I'm going to make a mess of this
one!
  It's going to be rough on Dal if I fail at this-and
maybe worse if I succeed. Women on Pioneer are never
Scholars,' there hasn't been a Scholar Dame from
Pioneer in the history of University!
  Cendri and Dal had met on University, the scholar's
world, where all the knowledge of the known planets of
the Unity was gathered in a single central location.
Cendri had been already a Scholar, then, while Dal was
still only a Student. At first-she knew it-the very
difference had intrigued the young man from Pioneer.
Cendri's own world did not regard scholarship in a
woman as anything so very surprising, and there had
been a few-though not many-scholar Dames from
her home planet, Beta Capella; mostly in education
and linguistics, but it was not really unusual for women
to excel in the social sciences.
  She had found it intriguing when he had courted and
flattered her. She knew that she herself had been the
first woman he had ever known who was genuinely his
intellectual equal. She was flattered that he had turned
to her, rather than to one of the men, for help in finding
his way around the bewildering new world of Universi-
ty. And also, at first, she had been flattered that he had
tried to meet her on an intellectual level, as a fellow
Scholar, rather than as a man meets a woman. Later it
had seemed almost a slight, and when he had begun to
court her in earnest, she had felt relieved, as if, in some
way, he had confirmed the quality of her womanhood.
Soon sexuality had begun to shadow and compete with
their shared interests and tastes; and before very long
they were spending so much time together that it had
seemed logical to marry instead of maintaining separate
quarters.
  They had been married, now, just over a year. Dal
had been preparing for his examination as Master
Scholar, and Cendri knew he was already regarded as
the most promising Scholar in the Department of Alien
Archaeology and Artifacts. He had chosen to do his
thesis and graduate research on the very few remaining
extant ruins of the mysterious, and still hypothetical,
race known as the Builders. He had applied for, and
been accepted, as Research Assistant to the Scholar
Dame Lurianna di Velo.
  The Scholar Dame di Velo was a woman of consider-
able age, powerful, important, author of many contro-
versial, but impeccably scholarly, works on Archaeolo-
gy. She was considered the foremost authority on alien
artifacts; but she was notorious because she adhered,
publicly, to the controversial theory that the entire
Galaxy had, at one time, been seeded, or colonized, by
a single race of beings which had been given the name
of Builders. Master Scholars and Dames all over the
Galaxy attacked her thesis; but they could not fault her
scholarship or her respectable credentials; the theory
had acquired respectability largely because of her
defense of it. It had previously been considered ques-
tionable, if not completely crackpot.
  Cendri herself should have applied, two seasons
before, for a Scholar Dame's grant. But on her
marriage, she had applied for a season's leave of
absence, and had been granted it. Afterward, she had
delayed. Cendri's own field, the Department of Xeno-
anthropology and Comparative Culture, still insisted
that all research theses be done as fieldwork, and
Cendri did not want to be parted so quickly from Dal.
She was hoping that Dal's first assignment with the
Scholar Dame, while he qualified for his own creden-
tials as Master Scholar, would take them together to a
planet where Cendri could do her own thesis work at
the same time.
  And then she had begun to wonder, hesitate about
doing it at all. After all, Dal was from Pioneer; he had
come a long way in one generation, but culturally
imposed social attitudes were not changed overnight.
Considering that, perhaps one advanced degree was
enough in a family. There was always interesting work
to be done for a Scholar; she had no particular
ambition, now, to be a Dame. And she was not sure it
would please Dal if she became a Dame.
  Dal liked the Scholar Dame di Velo and respected
her work. But it was clear that he found it hard to
accept the notion that a woman could be his superior in
position and status; she knew he was chafing until his
own Master Scholar qualifications would make him the
Scholar Dame's equal. He said often, as a joke-but he
said it once or twice too often for a joke-what would
they think of me on Pioneer, taking orders from a
she-Scholar?
  Then everything had happened quickly. The Scholar
Dame di Velo had been requested, by the Matriarchate
of Isis/Cinderella, to come and examine the ancient
ruins on their world, which might, or might not, be of
Builder origin. The Scholar Dame di Velo had regard-
ed this as a vindication of a long campaign; Dal had
been considerably less enthusiastic.
  "The Matriarchate on Cinderella!" Dal had been
halfway between despair and disgust. Cendri, feeling
the lurch and sway as the shuttle ship shuddered out of
free orbit into deceleration, remembered the dismay
with which Dal had spoken of the Matriarchate.
  "A society run entirely by women! Sharriozf' He
had scowled and stormed for hours about this assign-
ment. "There won't be any chance at all for me to do
independent research, not in the Matriarchate! I'll just
be there to fetch and carry for the di Velo woman!" he
raged, "and here I was thinking I could get my Master's
quais before I went-"
  Angry as Dal had been, Cendri could not help being
excited.
  "The Matriarchate! Oh, Dal, if we could go
together-if I could get a grant to do my research
there-there are almost no records of study actually
within a matriarchal society-"
  "That's because there aren't any in the civilized
worlds," Dal had grumbled, "and I already asked the
Scholar Dame." His injured tone had said clearly, see,
I'm always thinking about you, and Cendri had cringed
even while she was grateful to him. "The Matriarchate
refuses to allow any anthropological research on Cin-
derella, something about being a working society, not a
freak to be studied-so you can't go openly as an
anthropologist. But the Scholar Dame said you can go
along; she's going to invent some minor job for you, so
you can be with me, and maybe you can take notes
enough to expand them into some kind of research
work. There's so little information about any working
Matriarchy that even a little information about them
ought to be valuable." And Cendri had been grateful
for even that crumb, until he had added gloomily, "If I
go at all, that is. I ought to throw up this job and get a
Research Assistantship with some good, qualified
man."
  But there had been really no choice. The Scholar
Dame di Velo was the only Scholar of repute working
on the Builders at all, and only her reputation had
made work on the Builders remotely acceptable. Dal
had to stick with the Scholar Dame, or do the last two
seasons of his research over again on something
else-not to mention that if he deserted the Scholar
Dame di Velo on such flimsy grounds, he would never
again get a decent Research Assistantship.
  The pilot glanced over her bare shoulder at Cendri
and said, "We will now be descending into atmosphere,
Scholar Dame. In a few minutes you will be seeing the
shoreline of Ariadne." Cendri, fighting-the growing tug
of gravity-unaccustomed after so long in the Unity
ship-winced again at the undeserved title. Obses-
sively, she went back to remembering, as if she had to
get it all straight before they landed.
  There had been all the preparations for departure to
Cinderella, which the Matriarchate had renamed Isis.
Taped lessons in the language, in what little was known
of their culture. Cendri remembered that, and remem-
bered, more clearly, Dal's increasing distress and
disquiet at the assignment, so that Cendri felt guilty
about her own growing eagerness. How could she be so
happy when Dal was so wretched?
  She had discussed the project with her own Research
Mentor, and he had agreed to give her tentative
approval-subject to review on her return, and the
amount of research she could actually complete on
Isis/Cinderella-to use this as her Research fieldwork.
  And then the accident, which had so completely
altered their plans. The Scholar Dame Lurianna di
Velo was, at present, in an amniotic tank on University
Medical Center, growing a new hand and a new eye,
and regenerating assorted internal organs. At her age,
that was a complicated and lengthy business. It had
looked as if the Isis/Cinderella project would have to be
abandoned; and Cendri had not known whether she
was glad or sorry. The Matriarchate had been duly
notified of the accident; and after certain delays, an
answer had come. It had told them that in lieu of the
Scholar Dame di Velo, the Matriarchate would gladly
accept the presence of her assistant, the Scholar Dame
Malocq.
  Cendri was, like most Scholars, a passable linguist;
but she had not been extensively trained in semantics,
and had not, at first, understood the implications of
this. On her own world, a married woman did not take
her husband's name at all, and Cendri still thought of
herself as Cendri Owain; Scholar Owain. But it was the
custom on Pioneer, and it had seemed very important
to Dal; so she had applied for, and received, identifica-
tion in Dal's name. Cendri Malocq.
  "Don't you see," Dal said, "in their language, there
is no special word differentiating Master Scholar from
Scholar Dame. The word for a higher degree would
translate something like Extra-Scholar, but it is trans-
lated Scholar Dame because on Isis/Cinderella all
honorifics are feminine. It didn't occur to them that a
famous woman, scholar-and they did know that di
Velo was a woman, they had made sure of it-would
not have a woman assistant. So in sending a message
accepting the Dame di Velo's assistant, they naturally
used the feminine honorific."
  "But why should they assume-?"
  "I thought you had studied the Matriarchate. One of
their basic assumptions is that all worlds in the Unity
are completely dominated by men, and that no woman
intelligent enough to be a Scholar would risk this
domination. So they believe di Velo's assistant, Scholar
Malocq, would of course be a woman-"
  "But you aren't-" she said, not quite seeing what he
was driving at, and he had said, "But you are. Don't
you understand? There is a Scholar Malocq, with
credentials. Isn't it lucky that you took my name? Now
you can go in the Scholar Dame's place-"
  "Dal, I can't," she protested, panicked, "I don't
know anything about Archaeology-"
  "But I do," he had said, in excitement. "I can give
you tapes, educator crash courses, hypno-leaming
sets-enough to give you the patter, enough to get by!
And I'll be right at your elbow all the time as your
Research Assistant-don't you see? I'll be doing the
work, and getting my quaIs, and you'll be fronting for
me! And you'll be able to do your own research, too,
you can observe everything because they'll take you
everywhere as a visiting dignitary-can't you see,
Cendri, what a wonderful chance this is, for both of
us?"
  She had still protested. It wouldn't be honest, it
wasn't fair to the Matriarchate. But her protests had
been haIf-hearted. A chance to study the Matriarchate
at first hand, an assignment where she could get
qualification as a Scholar Dame and which would not
separate her from Dall The authorities on University
had been all too willing to go along with the deception.
It was, aftet; all, the first time anyone with anthropolo-
gist's credentials had been allowed inside the Matriar-
chy. Anyway, it wouldn't have been easy to find a
replacement for the maverick di Velo; she was the only
Scholar of repute who would seriously investigate the
possibility of Builder ruins on Isis.
  And so Cendri had been qualified; hastily, and
provisionally, as Acting Dame for the term of her stay
on Isis/Cinderella; and here she was.
  The young pilot spoke into her intercom, meaning-
less technical phrases to Cendri, then said, "We are
now flying at an altitude of six thousand Universal
Meters over the shoreline of Ariadne, Scholar Dame, if
you would care to see an aerial view of the harbors and
coastlines. There is a viewport directly at the side of
your couch;' the latch releases upward."
  Cendri thumbed the latch, and the cabin of the
shuttle ship was quickly flooded with orange sunlight.
She slitted her lids against the light of the sun, and
looked down at a surface of sea which, from this
distance, looked one even green color. Small islands
were scattered, thick greenish patches, or dark rocky
outcrops; then she made out the shoreline, with brown-
ish edgings which she knew were sandy beaches, and
dark patches of some kind of vegetation. She could see
boats, at this distance only tiny toylike shapes, in the
harbor and out on the waves; there were, further
inland, smooth rolling hills, and strips which might
have been ploughed fields under cultivation, a
blackish-purple color.
  As they flew along the coast, Cendri noticed black
shapes, sharp-edged and regular, thrusting upward in a
curious pattern. There seemed a kind of geometry to
their arrangement, although she could not identify it.
  She asked, "Those towers-is that the city of Ariad-
ne?"
  The pilot made a negative gesture. "No, indeed!"
she said, "Could intelligent women live at such heights?
When the ground shakes, what would happen? Directly
below us is the territory known as We-were-guided; in
my grandmother's day, or so we are told by the Elders,
the ship which brought our foremothers to Isis was
guided here to these ancient ruins."
  Dal sat up, craning his neck toward the viewport at
Cendri's side; Cendri could understand how he felt.
She, Cendri, could see the mysterious Ruins--were
they those of the Builders?-which had brought Dal
here; and he, Dal, swaddled in blankets and wedged
into a spare seat like unregarded cargo, could not! Her
heart ached for him, but there was a part to be played,
and already the pilot was frowning disapprovingly at
Dal over her shoulder.
  "Tell it to lie down and be quiet or it may be hurt,"
she said, not as if she cared, and Cendri, feeling she
would choke on the words, said, "Lie down, Dal. It
won't be long now."
  As if she were speaking to a troublesome dog. Just
like that. And Dal was the Scholar for whom the
Matriarchs had sent-but they didn't know it!
  Cendri had never felt so much like an imposter as she
did at that moment. She tried to catch Dal's eye; but he
would not look at her.
  All this had see-med like a joke, on University. Now
it did not seem funny at all.
 
 
Chapter Two
 
 
  CENDRI HAD SEEN MANY SPACEPORTS THROUGH THE
Unity; mostly, they were very much alike. Chaotic,
confusing, with hurrying hordes of passengers, uni- 
formed personnel everywhere, and all manner of
concessions and services. By contrast, this seemed 
hardly a spaceport at all. A low concrete wall surround- 
ed a long expanse of thickly planted vegetation which I
felt soft and springy underfoot; paths were worn in the 
sand here and there, and there was one big area where 
there was no vegetation at all, only a blackened spot 
where the shuttleship had landed. There were about 
half a dozen other small shuttleships at one side of the 
enclosure, inside a long, low, roofed building open at 
one side to the weather; beyond the concrete wall was a 
view of distant hills, grey in the distance. 
  There were only two other buildings inside the 
enclosure; one looked like an enormous warehouse of 
plastic prefab; the other was a good-sized building with 
an assortment of vanes, antennas and other instrumen-
tation protruding from a sort of dome on top.
  Cendri and Dal were the only passengers anywhere
in sight. There were no slidewalks; the pilot herself
helped Cendri down the steps of the shuttle ship [Dal 
was left to scramble down as best he could] and 
beckoned to a tall, thin man in a loose, whitish pajama 
suit, a red baldric tied around his shoulder. He was
wheeling a small motorized dolly-platform.
  The pilot said, "The personal belongings of the
Scholar Dame from University are to be sent to the
home of the Pro-Matriarch Vaniya. Will you make
certain of that when a conveyance is available?"
  He bowed without speaking, and Cendri, staring at
the red baldric-she could not think of any world in the
Unity where men habitually decorated themselves in
this way-happened to intercept a glance between the
man wheeling the platform-some kind of porter,
apparently-and Dal. The man stared until he was sure
he had Dal's attention; then, with one hand, taking
care to avoid being seen by the pilot, made a curious
gesture. He held his right hand with all four fingers,
bunched, touching the thumb; then slowly drew the
thumb apart from them, murmuring something too low
for Cendri to hear.
  The pilot was waiting, and Cendri started and
hurried after her. The anthropologist within her was
taking notes. Of course; in a society where women
dominated, there would be many kinds of male bonds,
secret societies and recognition symbols among men.
Male bonding in groups appeared to be universal-
Cendri was too good a scholar to say that anything, in a
Galaxy-wide civilization, was actually universal, but
male bonding was certainly a widespread phenomenon,
and, Cendri had been taught, was the major form of
social cohesion. That was one reason why such planets
as Isis/Cinderella, with women socially dominant, were
extremely rare. She could think of only two, in fact; this
world where she now stood, and its own mother colony.
Persephone. Except for the ill-fated Labrys experi-
ment, she could remember no others.
  Dal would have to help her study the male groups. If
she was doing archaeological work for him, he would
have to make up his mind to doing some of her work.
She followed the pilot along the path, lifting her
thin-sandalled feet fastidiously. She had not expected a
world quite so primitive, and had been prepared for
slidewalks, at least.
  Why had the man with the red baldric greeted Dal?
Was,it simply a universal greeting between males?
  Inside, the building with the instrument domes on
top was divided into several separate areas by what
looked like low, movable screens of translucent paper
or plastic, painted with landscapes and flowers in bright 
colors. Beyond one such screen she saw an office filled 
with instrument consoles and television monitors; there 
was a low buzz of people, machinery, low-voiced 
conversation. In the larger space, a variety of people
Iwere coming and going, and it was here that Cendri
finally decided what seemed so strange about the place.
  It was not entirely the absence of enormous expanses, 
of concrete and skyscrapers; Cendri had been on other
worlds with little travel and no funds for expensive 
installations. Nor was it the absence of passenger 
traffic; there were many worlds whose citizens were 
content to remain at home, for cultural or psychological 
reasons. No, it was something else which made this 
world seem completely different. It was the absence of 
uniforms. 
  Two or three people were dressed like the shuttleship 
pilot, in brief metallic-cloth bands across breast and 
hip; but one of them was behind some kind of booth 
providing a service Cendri was not yet fluent enough in 
the written language to identify, and the other was 
emptying a trash container, so that this dress did not 
signify "shuttle ship pilot" or even "spaceport officer."
There were many people coming and going on uniden-
tifiable errands, but so far she had seen so many 
different costumes that it was dizzying. Many were 
dressed in a sort of loose pajama suit, shirt and 
trousers, making it hard to tell at once whether the 
wearer was male or female. Besides the pajama suits, 
and the brief functional breast-and-hip bands [she even 
saw a man wearing one such costume] there were loose, 
flowing robes, some hooded and some not; a few in.
kilts to the knee, leaving breasts bare [no sexual taboo
on this, for both men and women wore them]. She
noted one or two men with elaborately curled and
coiffed hair, but some of the women, too wore this kind
of hair-dress. There seemed to be no specific dress
difference between males and females. Cendri felt
confused. How could you tell anyone's function or
status without some kind of uniform to mark what they
were doing? On the Unity ship which had brought them
here, one could immediately tell ship's officers and
functionaries, from stewards or service personnel. But
everyone here seemed to be dressed chaotically, with-
out regard to function or even to gender. Cendri was
used to this on University-where most peopl~ fol-
lowed the dress of their native world, except actually
within official University areas-and at spaceports
where men and women of various cultures mingled.
But such diversity within citizens of a single culture
group was unusual; Cendri had been on field trips to
many different societies, and she could not think of a
single one where it was not immediately possible to tell
men from women by some immediate cue of dress, hair
style or manner.
  How do they tell the men from the women? she
wondered. There must be some cultural clue; she
simply wasn't experienced enough in this society, yet,
to guess what it was.
  She wanted to ask a million questions; she wished she
were here on a normal research assignment in cross-
cultural anthropology. But she remembered that the
Matriarchate had put themselves on record about that,
a long time ago, in one of their very few communica-
tions with the Unity:
  "The Matriarchate of Isis is not an experimental
society, and we will not allow ourselves to be studied by
scientists as if we were one of those glass-sided insect
colonies we give to our little daughters for toys!"
  Hurrying through a long corridor at one edge of the
building-she noted that it, too, was only semi-divided
from the offices and waiting rooms, by the thin,
translucent screens which looked movable-she
thought about that.
  Cendri's Mentor, Dr. Lakshmann, had grumbled a
lot about this. A most unscientific attitude, he had called
it; unworthy of any society,. ungrateful, anti-social.
Cendri had protested-she had been only a Student then.
Surely it was their own society, she had said, and they
had the right to keep people out if they wanted to.
Lakshmann hadn't been convinced. Paranoid, he had
called the Matriarchate. But then a society which had
convinced itself that women were mistreated within any
society as enlightened as the Unity, would have to be
paranoid. Cendri had tended to agree. After all, women
were the equal of men, by law, on University, which
represented the Unity at its best, its official policy. If
there were fewer Scholar Dames than Master Scholars
and Scholar Doctors, surely it was only that fewer
women were willing to compete for these advanced
academic prizes. Psychologically, Cendri had learned,
women were less competitive,. she had seen it in herself
after her marriage to Dal. Cendri herself had had no
trouble attaining Scholar rank; she was acknowledged
-and by men-to be the superior of most men of that
rank. Most women who became Scholars, and Schol-
ar Dames, were superior,. there were no mediocre
Scholars, the mediocre woman Students dropped
out. Didn't that prove that women, in the Unity,
were actually regarded as somewhat superior? Cendri
knew that she herself would have attained her quais
for an advanced degree if she hadn't done what wom-
en were too likely to do, and taken time off after her
marriage.
  Obviously, then, the Matriarchate's attitude was pure
paranoia. . . .
  They had reached the end of the corridor; the pilot
gestured Cendri into a small room, inside the translu-
cent semi-divided screens, and made again the gesture
of salute within the Unity.. hands clasped before her
face. Then, with a smile that made her look, for the
first time, like the young girl she actually was, she said,
"It has been my honor and pleasure, Scholar Dame, to
escort you and conduct you to the Chamber-
of-reception-for-honored-guests. I truly hope I shall see
you again while you honor Isis with your presence. The
Pro-Matriarch Vaniya has been informed of your
arrival; if you will be content to rest here and make
yourself comfortable, Scholar Dame, she will soon send
someone to welcome you. If you desire refreshment-"
she indicated a console against the wall, "the control at
the top will dispense hot liquids for your pleasure, and
the control at the bottom, cold ones. I myself, unfortu-
nately, must return to my assigned duties. Will the
Scholar Dame give me leave to go?"
  Cendri said, "Certainly, and thank you very much,"
and the pilot withdrew.
  There was no furniture in the Chamber-of-
reception-for-important-guests, but a few thick cush-
ions were scattered about the floor, which was covered
with a soft rug in neutral colors. Cendri went to
examine the screens; she had thought the landscapes
were printed on, but they were actually painted, not
very skillfully. Behind her Dal said, "Well, how does it
feel to be a VIP, Cendri?"
  Immediately she was contrite, apologetic. She had
almost forgotten Dal! She said hurriedly, "Oh, darling,
I'm so sorry. The reception should have been for
you-this is awful, isn't it? She was atrociously rude-
she treated you like a dog, or something!"
  Dal laughed, and Cendri was enormously relieved.
They could manage to weather this somehow, if Dal
could continue to treat it as a joke. She honestly didn't
see how she could endure it otherwise.
  "I gather men here are treated pretty much like dogs.
Even five hundred years ago on Pioneer, we never
branded our women, or made them wear property
tags!" He chuckled as he fingered the numbered tag
around his neck. "But I suppose a world of women
would have to go to extremes."
  "They certainly do," Cendri agreed indignantly, "I
don't think I'm going to like it here, Dal!"
  "Well, that's lucky! I had to take a lot of kidding in
the Scholar's Room in the College of Archaeology-
saying you'd get to like it, that if I had half a brain I'd
never let my wife loose here to see what it was like with
women on top. . . that sort of thing. I told them I
trusted you and you were a sensible girl, but just the
same--every one of those bastards thought it was
funny!" He shook his head, ruefully. "Laughing stock
of the whole Department, those last weeks before we
left!"
  "Oh, Dal, I am sorry-you should have told me-"
  "Nothing you could do about it, love. Anyhow, I told
them I'd have disguised myself as a woman with plastic
what-do-you-callems for a chance to get at the Builder
ruins, and sometimes I almost think I meant it," he
said, laughing.
  Suddenly she remembered. "Dal-the porter, the
man in the red baldric-the one who took our luggage;
he made some kind of sign at you; a signal, it looked
like a password-"
  "Oh; that," Dal said, "Yes, I noticed-"
  "What did he say? I couldn't hear him?"
  "He said, We were not bom in chains, " Dal told her,
"Must be some kind of religious society. Like the
Khorists, on Betelgeuse Nine, who greet everybody
with Infinity is Peace, remember? Of course, that's
more in your line than mine; I don't know much about
subcultures and subgroups and things like that." He
smiled. "Or, really, give a damn."
  "I had thought it might be some kind of male,
bonding society," she mused, "but it sounds-I wonder
if it is some kind of underground, a kind of resistance
movement against the government or something like
that-"
  Dal looked uncomfortable. But he said, "Come off
it, Cendri, outfits like that would be secretive; they
wouldn't walk up to a perfect stranger -and make
revolutionary statements at him!"
  Cendri frowned; revolutionary statements? Well, she
supposed We were not born in chains might be regarded
as a revolutionary statement on a world where men
literally wore tags or brands and were legally the
property of their women. She hadn't thought about it
that way. But certainly Dal was right; if it was intended
as a revolutionary statement it would hardly have been
a greeting to a perfect stranger, let alone someone from
another planet!
  "I'll need to find out something about how the men
live in this society-" she began, then suddenly felt
tired and shaky. This was not the time to argue. She
went to the console and said, "Let's have some drinks.
Hot or cold, Dal?"
  "Cold," he said, "but you look as if you could use
something hot, Cendri. Here, let me get it for you." He
installed her on one of the cushions and went to the
console.
  The control at the top dispensed, in a prefonned
fibrous cup, a hot liquid which reminded Cendri, as she
sipped it, of a hot fruit soup; but it was pleasantly tart,
and after sipping about half of it she felt sufficiently
revived to feel curious about Dal's cold drink and ask to
taste it. It was dark brown and tasted like iced cocoa,
but after a small sip she felt so stimulated that she
began to wonder what it contained. Caffeine? An
amphetamine-like alkaloid? Social drugs varied greatly
from world to world.
  Dal sat beside her, looking at the painted screens.
She looked at the small squarish letters in the corner,
saying, "You read the language better than I do; what
does it say?"
  Dal narrowed his eyes. "The name of the artist, I
guess. Yes; Painted by the-students, I guess--of the
school for the daughters of fisherwomen. Not much of a
painting, but good for schoolgirls, I suppose." He
shifted his weight, restlessly. "I wonder how long
they're going to keep us waiting? It seems to me this is
no treatment for a VIP."
  She shrugged. "That depends on what their cultural
attitudes are toward time and punctuality. In some
societies, we'd already have been kept waiting an
inexcusable length of time, and depending on our
relative status as VIPs and the status of the one
appointed to meet us, our official greeter would abase
himself in the dust, or commit suicide with chagrin. On
the other extreme, if it's a society with a very loose
attitude toward time and punctuality, nobody might get
around to remembering us for a couple of days. I
suggest we make ourselves comfortable, because we'll
have to relax and accept their attitude, whatever it is.
That's the first rule for fieldwork in anthropology-find
out the society's taboos and attitudes toward time, and
just accept them."
  Dal scowled angrily. "Damnation, Cendri, I made a
casual comment, I didn't ask for a lecture on anthropol-
ogy!"
  "I wasn't lecturing-" Cendri began, then sighed.
"Sorry, darling. Habit, I guess."
  "It's all right," he said generously, "just remember
you're not supposed to be an anthropologist at all, and
I don't think the Dame di Velo would know a taboo if it
walked up and spat on her!"
  Cendri looked at him in amazement. "Don't they
give instructions like that in your department? How can
anyone possibly get along on any strange world without
first knowing their taboos and cultural imperatives?"
  "We manage to get along," he said, tight-lipped, and
she sighed. "Dal, let's not quarrel. Please."
  "It seems to me that you were doing the quarreling,"
he said, and Cendri bit her lip and didn't answer. There
was no point in making him angry. This trip was going
to test his forbearance to the uttermost. It was humili-
ating enough for him to accept an outwardly subordi-
nate position on this trip, and even now he was wearing
the collar-tag, locked on and marked with a number
which proclaimed him, on this planet, legally her
property. She would have to bend over backwards not
to add further weight to his humiliation. She leaned
again to look at the paintings on the screens, stood up
to examine those on the other screen.
  Abruptly, it tilted toward her, fell; startled, thrown
off balance, she clutched at Dal, and they fell together
to the floor, the screen collapsing on top of them. There
was a rumble like distant thunder; all over the building
she heard cries, the sound of collapsing screens and
interior walls. Shocked, clinging to Dal, she thought; it
must be an earthquake! The drink console rocked back
and forth, but did not fall; it must be on rollers!
  The tremor went on for several seconds; subsided. A
little greyish powder sifted from the stone wall of the
building, behind the screen, but the exterior walls had
withstood the seismic shock; and now Cendri under-
stood the purpose of the screens. Rigid interior walls
might collapse, and have to be tediously rebuilt; Dal
lifted the collapsed screen off them with one hand.
  A young woman with a red baldric tied around one
shoulder appeared in the gap left by the collapsed
screen. She said quickly, without salutation, "Come
with me at once; there may be aftershocks, and the
building must be emptied!"
  Dal helped Cendri to her feet; Cendri met the
amazed stare of the woman with the baldric and moved
away from him. They followed her quickly through a
corridor cluttered with the fallen screens, some of them
splintered and tom; out of the building, and on to a
long expanse of vegetation. She said, "You are the
Scholar from University?" At Cendri's nod she said
quickly, "Forgive my ignorance of diplomatic courte-
sies, but you must stay here. I must go back and make
certain that all the pregnant women and visitors are out
of the building. If you will wait here, I will send
someone to you as soon as possible." She hurried away,
looking backward with a troubled glance.
  Dal shook his head in astonishment. "Some welcome
to this world! Do you suppose they have this kind of
thing very often? You noticed the heavy equipment set
on rollers?"
  "I noticed," she said. "They seem to have everything
ready for earthquakes! I seem to remember-" she
frowned; before coming hereshe had read-quickly,
scanning for anything of importance-everything she
could find about the settlement of Isis/Cinderella. The
planet then known as Cinderella had been considered,
for some reason, undesirable for colonization or home-
steading. If it was notably seismic, that was completely
understandable. Yet it had been the only planet
available for the Matriarchate. They seemed to have
developed sophisticated methods for dealing with
earthquakes--light interior construction, heavy equip-
ment on rollers, and she would be willing to make a
guess that they also had taboos about untended fires!
Even now she could see flames shooting up from one
comer of the building, and people were running and
shouting and dragging hoses, mounted on small motor-
ized platforms. The firefighting techniques looked
efficient and quick.
  Dal whistled in surprise. "Cendri-they are women,
fighting the fire!"
  "Well, Dal, it is a Matriarchy-"
  "But surely, for heavy manual work, dangerous
work-" he protested. "Surely men are physically
stronger, wouldn't work like that fall naturally to
them?"
  "I'd have thought so," she said, "but we don't know,
yet. I wouldn't comment on it, if I were you."
He said shortly, "I don't suppose anyone would
listen if I did."
  The women, in thick short protective coats of woven
fiber, cut away the tom screens and dragged them to
where they could bum out, unattended. There was
black smoke which looked as if some electrical fixtures
had caught fire, but it was quickly extinguished.
Abruptly it was all over; women with smoke-smudged
faces coiled up the hoses and trundled away the
platforms, and the people who had been sent out of the
buildings began to drift back toward them. A few
women were still spraying down the open hangar and
the shuttleships, to prevent any stray spark from
damaging ships or fuel.
  Cendri wondered if their luggage was safe; they had
brought a great deal of reference material, books,
tapes, recording equipment. Ought she to go and see?
But when Dal expressed anxiety she hesitated.
  "They told us to wait here, they'll send someone for
us. Look, I think that must be someone coming now,
that woman is pointing at us-see?"
  The woman she indicated was one of those who had
come last from the burning building; because of their
actions and obvious concern Cendri had tentatively
identified them as having something to do with the
machinery and instrumentation there. She was pointing
Cendri and Dal out to a woman in a pale-blue flowered
pajama suit, very loose, with a broad-brimmed sun hat
and her dark hair in a long braid down her back. The
woman spoke to her informant and then began to hurry
toward Cendri and Dal. As she came, Cendri could see
that the woman was very young-younger than Cendri
herself,and that she was heavily pregnant.
  She stopped a little way from Cendri, and waited,
saying hesitantly, "Scholar Dame Malocq?"
  Cendri identified herself noncommittally. Until she
knew more about the customs here, she knew it would
be a breach of etiquette to do almost anything. It might
also be a breach of manners to do nothing, but sins of
omission were usually less serious, in most cultures,
than sins of commission. Dal, she observed-not
having her extensive training in cross-cultural
protocol-had already bowed; but the woman's eyes
did not rest on him even for a moment.
  She said, "I am Miranda, third daughter of the
Pro-Matriarch Vaniya; my venerable Mother has asked
me to come and escort you in person to her country
home. As you can see-" she made a nervous gesture
toward the people jostling around the building, from
which a few gouts of smoke were still drifting, "we have
had some troubles, and since the quake was felt in the
City, too, the Pro-Matriarch was not free to come and
greet you herself. She sent me to welcome you, and beg
that you will forgive the apparent discourtesy."
  Cendri made a formal bow, hands clasped before her
face in the manner of the Unity. "The Pro-Matriarch
does me too much honor, Lady Miranda."
  "Rather, it is you who confer an honor upon us,
Scholar Dame," Miranda said. "A conveyance and
driver await us at the entrance, if the honored guest will
follow me."
  Cendri followed her, her brows ridged slightly;
something was beginning to puzzle her.
  Her manners are too formal. They don't fit what else
I've seen here; the absence of uniforms, the haphazard
way everything else seems to be run. Yet she welcomed
me as if she was familiar with Unity protocol.
  She wished she could discuss this with Dal; but the
way in which the shuttleship pilot and the Lady
Miranda had ignored his existence warned her; too
much attention to Dal in public could even endanger
her own status. She soothed her guilt, reminding
herself to have a good long talk with Dal about it as
soon as they were left alone.
  Will he even care? He's an archaeologist, he couldn't
care less about their social structures and customs. . . .
She thought, suddenly, that it might be a good thing
she had been sent here instead of the Dame di Velo,
who might not know how to cope with this unusual and
delicately structured society. And yet, if it weren't for
sheer accident, she would never have been allowed to
come here at all. She told herself she should be grateful
to Dal for devising the strategem which had brought
her here, but instead, for no reason at all, she found
herself nursing a resentment so intense that it shook her
to the core.
  ". . . honorable Scholar Dame?"
  "I am sorry," Cendri said, recalling herself with an
effort. "I fear my mind was wandering; what did you
ask me, my Lady?"
  "Your Companion-" she did not look at Dal, "may
ride with the driver, if it wishes; I trust it is tractable
and obedient?"
  "Very," said Cendri, and dared not look at Dal.
  "Tell it, please, to get into the front compartment
with the luggage-" she watched, with amazement, as
Dal climbed in without waiting to be told. "It actually
understands our language?"
  Cendri said dryly, "My Companion, Lady, is a
Scholar on University."
  Miranda raised her eyebrows in surprise, but made
no answer.
  The driver was a woman, stout and greying; she wore
rough dark clothes. She indicated with a careless
gesture that Dal might curl himself up in the seatless
hard space next to the gear levers where the luggage
had been stacked. Cendri herself was ceremoniously
ushered into a box-like interior, well-carpeted and
thickly cushioned with pillows and' soft textures. It did
not seem to Cendri that it would have crowded them
unduly to allow Dal to ride inside, but she did not know
what taboos this would have violated. She was begin-
ning to feel an immense curiosity, a curiosity so great
that she could barely restrain herself from asking
numberless questions which had nothing whatever to
do with her ostensible mission.
  Instead she said, as the Lady Miranda settled herself
awkwardly among the cushions-she was very
pregnant-"I trust the quake did not cause too much
damage."
  "Very little," Miranda said. "A woman in charge of
a painting crew was bruised when a vehicle rocked
against a wall, but she made certain none of her charges
was injured; a woman in the Communications Room
stayed at her post a little too long, broadcasting
warnings down the coastline, and inhaled smoke from
the electrical fixtures; but she will recover. Another
woman was hurt when a trash container fell over on
her-I believe her ankle was broken. And of course
there are dozens of screens to be recovered and
repainted, but that is work for the children of the city,
and actually they are always pleased when new screens
must be put up in public places, so our school children
will be happy."
  "Are there many such quakes here?"
  "Unfortunately, a great many." Miranda added, in
quick reassurance, "You need not be afraid, Scholar
Dame; you will be lodged in the house of the Pro-
Matriarch, near the ruins at We-were-guided, and the
ground never trembles, for those who built it hold the
ground under their protection."
  Interesting; if the society which built the ruins,
whether or not they were the hypothetical Builders,
had the technological know-how to locate their city
away from tectonic stress lines! Unlikely, though, that
they could be the Builders. The city was far, far older
than the Isis/Cinderella colony, which had been here
less than seventy standard years, but certainly not old
enough to be the mysterious Builders who were
supposed to have seeded the Galaxy millennia before
any known race. No surviving technology would have
enabled a society to predict tectonic stress and seismic
activity-or freedom from it-from any site -more than
a few thousand years in advance.
  And from what Miranda had said about the builders
of the ruins holding the ground under protection from
quakes-they evidently had some quasi-religious ven-
eration of the site. She wanted to know about that. She
wanted to know everything about this culture!
  Builders ruins! Builders! Who could possibly care
about a prehistoric race who might not even have been
human, when the whole Galaxy, the whole Unity and
beyond, were filled with endlessly fascinating cultures
which were still here, alive, working, to be seen and
studied! Again she felt the sense of frustration. Did
these women of the Matriarchate want to keep every-
one away from their culture until it was dead, and had
to be studied like that of the Builders, from almost
undiscernible clues left behind by their few imperish-
able artifacts?
  Not, she thought, looking through the clear plastic of
the vehicle's window, that the Matriarchate was likely
to leave many imperishable artifacts to be studied
millions of years later. Her first impression of the city
was of low, regular buildings, made of something like
sun-dried adobe, smoothed and decorated with bright
paintings, which varied so much in quality that Cendri
suspected each house was decorated, not by profession-
al artists or painters, but by its own inhabitants.
  The houses were arranged in clusters, irregularly, in
park-like gardens. The car moved leisurely along
narrow streets which seemed reasonably full of men
and women and little children, dressed in the same
confusing variety of clothing Cendri had seen on the
spaceport. There was no uniformity, though in general
those who were working-a man hanging lengths of
brilliantly dyed fabric on a wooden framework, a
woman pushing a barrow piled high with bright green
globes which could have been vegetables or
playthings-wore rather less than those few who were
doing nothing.
  The earthquake had not made havoc in the city-
probably due to the specialized construction of the
houses-but everywhere there were piles of rubble
being cleared away, and people hauling out broken,
tom or smoke-damaged wall-screens to be repaired. A
group of men were working in an excavation which had
evidently caved in.
  There were children everywhere; those beneath the
age of puberty went naked except for sunhats and
sandals, and looked browned and healthy. The older
ones were working alongside their elders, helping to
clear away earthquake damage. The younger ones were
playing games which looked, to an inexperienced
observer, like aimless running around, although a
group of small girls was squatting in a patch of sand,
playing some kind of game with flat stones, and a mixed
group of preadolescents were turning a jumprope and
jumping through it in precisely-timed patterns.
  It was late afternoon, and the sun moved, low and
slanting, over the roof of a low white building, sur-
rounded by ornamental shrubbery. "You have come
here at an unfortunate time, Scholar Dame," said the
Lady Miranda. "This is the Residence of the High
Matriarch of Isis, which is also the Temple of the
Goddess. It was she who sent for you-or rather, for
the Scholar Dame di Velo; but at this moment our
beloved Matriarch lies in a coma, near to death."
  Cendri did not know what, if anything, it was proper
to say. Depending on the society's attitude toward
death, such an occasion might call for condolences-or
for congratulations! She murmured non-committally,
"I am sorry to have come at an inconvenient time."
  "I fear the inconvenience will be mostly to yourself,
Scholar Dame," the Lady Miranda said, twisting the
end of her long braid. "I fear that if our Mother and
Priestess should die without naming a successor, it will
be a long time till we know which of the two Pro-
Matriarchs will assume her rank, ring and robe; so
everything is likely to come entirely to a stop until we
have consulted the Inquirers. And, I fear, your work
would be halted, too, until such time as we have
resolved the differences between the two Pro-
Matriarchs--my mother, Vaniya, and her rival and
colleague, Mahala. Those differences, so my mother
tells me, are very many, and go back to the days when
they were little girls squabbling over games on our
motherworld of Persephone."
  Cendri felt troubled. She had been intensively
trained in the ethic which forbade a sociological
student, or an anthropologist, to take either side
between rival factions on any world; was it proper that
she should actually be lodged in the home of one of the
rivals? Well, she supposed it had all been arranged long
before she came here, and indeed Miranda's next
words confirmed this: "I myself know nothing of
politics, nor of the many rivalries and differences
between them," she said, "I am the loyal daughter of
my mother, regardless of what the rights and wrongs of
the matter may seem to others. And my mother has
told me; on the last day when the High Matriarch could
speak coherently, it was of this she spoke; that you
should be brought here, and lodged at our house, which
is located so near to the ruins at We-were-guided that
from the upper rooms, the Ruins can be seen clearly,
and from our front gates, it is only a little walk along
the shore. It seemed to the High Matriarch that your
work could best be done from there. And of course this
has made the Pro-Matriarch Mahala very angry; partly
because she hates my mother, as I have said, and
perhaps, I think, because the Mother Rezali had not
confided the honored guests to her care. But then,
during all her years on Isis, the Pro-Matriarch Mahala
has made it a point of honor to disbelieve in the
Builders-"
  "You believe in them, then?" Cendri asked.
   "Oh, yes," Miranda said. "I have communicated
with them very often. But Mahala, you understand, is
one of those women who believes in nothing unless it
fits certain rules she has invented for herself, and so she
says that our contact with the Builders is all superstition
and nonsense. She has not examined the evidence, you
understand. She is, I believe, a very stupid woman."
  It took Cendri a moment to digest this unbelievable
statement. Communication? With the Builders? She
blinked at Miranda's matter-of-fact tone, forcibly re-
minding herself that the Builders-if they had ever
existed at all, which most reputable scientists
doubted-were supposed to have left their ruins no less
than two million years ago! Surely, surely, the Lady
Miranda's statement must have some symbolic, or
religious, interpretation! And she could not even
inquire about it until she knew precisely what weight
was given to religious matters in this society!
  She felt intensely fnistrated, but she made her voice
noncommittal again. "It will indeed come most conve-
niently to our work, to be located so near the ruins.
That was most thoughtful of the High Matriarch."
  "It was a decision demanding courage," Miranda
said, "and now it is likely to go for nothing-
depending, of course, on who is appointed High
Matriarch in her place. Her death at this time may undo
all the work she has done-she has believed for many
years that we on Isis should have more contact with the
Unity, but it has taken this long for the time to be ripe
for this opening gesture; inviting the Scholar Dame di
Velo here to explore the ruins. There are still those
who fear any kind of contact with the worlds dominated
by men; they feel they can only bring contamination to
our society-" she broke off and said anxiously, her
fingers nervously twisting her long braid. "Please-my
mother said I must be certain not to offend you, since
you are from a world dominated by males--and there
are those here who feel you will have nothing to offer
us but temptation-I'm not saying this at all well," she
said, with her diffident smile.
  Cendri said neutrally-the one thing she must not do
was to question, publicly, the prime postulate of their
society-"The worlds of the Unity are not, of course,
dominated by males, Lady Miranda. Oh, perhaps a few
hundred years ago, on such worlds as Pioneer and
Apollo, there were certain--certain inequities. But on
my own home world they were never very great, and on
University, men and women are quite equal."
  Miranda raised her feathery eyebrows in obvious
skepticism. She said, "I am not, of course, well enough
informed for intelligent comment on this, Scholar
Dame. But it does conflict with everything I have ever
heard."
  Cendri smiled. "And of course I could never con-
vince you, Lady Miranda. The simplest thing would
be for your world to send some-" she hesitated,
phrasing it carefully, "Some of your finest students
there, so that each woman might see for herself that she
is welcomed as the equal of any man, and accepted only
on the basis of her individual talent and aptitude for
scholarship."
  The Lady Miranda laughed. She said, "The very fact
that men are accepted as scholars points to prejudice
and inequity," she said. "It is a biological fact, long
proven by any impartial scientist, that the average
man's brain is smaller than the brain of a woman, that
female children are taller and heavier at puberty, and
of course after puberty, males are so much at the mercy
of their compulsive sex drives that it is impossible to
educate them. Male children, of course, can be educat-
ed, if it is skillfully done. But only in a society where
males make the rules could anyone accept the idea of a
true scholarship for adult functioning males."
  Firmly Cendri reminded herself that she was not
there to debate, or to defend the Unity, or the world of
University. She said diplomatically, "I am sure in your
experience you have found it so, Lady, but I do assure
you that on University we have many great male
scholars."
  Miranda nodded, and after a moment Cendri rea-
lized that she was being humored; that Miranda was
being diplomatic and polite. "Of course they have
taught you to think so, Scholar Dame, and you have
never had, I am sure, a chance to do research without
cultural bias."
  Since this was exactly what Cendri would have liked
to say to Miranda, she wanted to laugh. "Let us hope
for a day, then, Lady, when your scholars from Isis can
see for themselves."
  Miranda returned the smile, with spontaneous
friendliness. "I wish we might! It has been spoken of,
you know, in the councils of the High Matriarch-that
we should send scholars to University, have more trade
into the Unity, share problems with other worlds; we
need to know more about water-table technology, and
the mathematics of ' 'reserve technology and arid-land
cultivation; and more about pelagic ecology. The High
Matriarch believed, too, that we have a responsibility
to the women of the Unity, to show them the example
of a sane society in function, and that until they are
shown our example, they could never follow it. But so
many of the women here are paranoid on the subject!
They still believe-or, in the case of some politicians,
pretend to believe--that the worlds of the Unity are
just lying in wait to seize us again, and put us under
male domination, as they did with out first colony on
Labrys . . ." she paused, looked at Cendri and asked
"You know the story-?"
  "I only know that the colony on Labrys was de-
stroyed," she said. "The official story is that an
overanxious administration miscalculated the speed
with which their Sun was to go Nova, and resettled
them on a world with an unstable orbit. There are not
many records; most of those which remain call it a
colossal bureaucratic blunder, for which the Unity paid
a heavy indemnity. But indemnities, of course, cannot
wipe out the loss of life, and it would not be at all
surprising if some people called it a plot against the
Matriarchate. "
  "It is so called," said Miranda, soberly, "and there
are those who think me a traitor because I have said
that I, myself, would like to go and study on
University-"
  "I hope someday you may," said Cendri, and
Miranda smiled gaily and said, "I would like to see
other worlds. I am not afraid of male-dominated
worlds! I-" she laughed again, a merry, defiant sound,
"I defy any male to dominate me!"
  She sounded completely confident, and Cendri
thought how incongruous it was that this young woman,
delicate, pretty, pregnant, should express such defi-
ance. She would have said, if she had been on her own
home world, There are a great many men who would
really enjoy trying it, my dear, and you might enjoy it,
too, if you would give it a fair chance! In some things,
dominance is not so bad! Miranda was pregnant, surely
she must have found that out! But of course she could
not say this; so she only rejoiced that the Lady Miranda
was in a feminine gossiping mood- she supposed this
was a typical mode for a world of women-and
encouraged it.
  "You yourself would like to study on University?
Are there many women interested in that, do you
think?"
  "I am sure there are," said Miranda. "There are
many women from the College of Ariadne who have
volunteered to assist the Scholar Dame from Unity in
her researches, if she will have them. But there are also
those who fear that this is sacrilege, that your work
there will deprive us of the love and concern of the
Builders-"
  "The--" Cendri swallowed hard, "the--the love and
concern of the--the Builders?" For a moment she felt
certain that she must have misunderstood Miranda's
speech. Miranda's eyes were glowing.
  "Oh, yes! You will feel it, too, you are a woman-"
  Cendri blinked again. How could she possibly do any
dispassionate work on the Builder ruins when she
found them an object of religious worship-a worship
which, judging from Miranda's expression, fell just
short of idolatry!
  Frankly, she didn't care all that much whether the
Builder ruins ever got explored or not. That, of course,
was Dal's prime concern; as for Cendri herself, the
longer the exploration of the ruins was delayed by the
deathwatch on the dying High Matriarch, the longer it
would give her to explore and make notes on the
fascinating and supposedly impossible society of the
Matriarchate.
  The vehicle was stopping before a building somewhat
taller than the ones inside the city walls. The Lady
Miranda said, "Here is the Residence of my mother,
the Pro-Matriarch Vaniya. Welcome, Scholar Dame.
You must not be frightened," she added earnestly,
"even though it is built with an upper story, we are so
near to We-were-guided that the ground never shakes
here, and you are as safe on the second floor as in the
arms of the Goddess."
  Now I wonder, Cendri thought, is this an observed
seismic phenomenon, or is it an article of faith, because
of the supposed love and concern of the hypothetical
"Builders"? She could not ask; she would simply have
to take her chances. After all, earthquakes could strike
anywhere, on almost any world, and she had never
been afraid of living on an upper story; her small
apartment on University was on the eighteenth tier of a
hugh residence complex, and she had never given even
the most fleeting thought to earthquakes before this.
She assured Miranda seriously that she was not afraid,
and Miranda smiled.
  "And I am not afraid of all the threatened dangers
from the Unity, Scholar Dame."
  Cendri had been on the verge of alighting from the
vehicle; she stopped, her hand on the door-latch. She
said in amazement, "The dangers of the Unity? What, I
must ask, could we possibly have that is dangerous to
you?"
  "War ," said Miranda, and her face was suddenly
grave. "It is a historical fact, Scholar Dame, that every
society where men were allowed to rule has been
destroyed from within by wars, because of the competi-
tive, aggressive nature of the male animal. It is this, I
think, that they fear."
  Cendri blinked at Miranda and said, "But our
society-the Unity-is flourishing undestroyed, after
more than five hundred years of peace, Lady Miranda.
I cannot understand your logic at all."
  The Lady Miranda looked confused.
  "I told you I didn't understand politics. You must
talk to my mother about it. Come," she said, leaning
across Cendri and opening the door-latch, "let me
welcome you to our home, Scholar Dame."
  Cendri, moving her cramped knees carefully, got out
of the car, watching Dal, equally stiff and cramped, and
scowling as if he had had an unpleasant trip, getting out
of the front along with the hauled-out baggage.
  I have a lot to tell him. How long will it be before we
are alone to talk? [ don't dare to speak to him in public
here! She smiled at Dal, trying to encourage him, but
he avoided her eyes; and Cendri's heart sank.
  This was the beginning of the most complex and
difficult assignment she had ever had; her first work as
an independent professional, not a student. And she
wasn't even free to concentrate on it, because all her
emotional energy was taken up with worrying about
Dal's feelings! It was justified, she could sympathize
with Dal completely, but still, she could not help
resenting the drain on her energy!
  A short flight of steps-the first she had seen on Isis,
except at the elaborate Residence and Temple of the
High Matriarch-led up to the front door; the room
into which Miranda led them was spacious, hung about
with thin draperies and divided by the screen-like
movable partitions, in pale colors. The floor was
matted cleanly with what looked like woven reeds or
tatami matting. All around the room were evidences of
children's play, toys and cloth dolls, a child's shoe lying
abandoned at one edge of the room, but the children
themselves had been hastily cleared away; Cendri
fancied that she could still hear childish voices, raised in
surprise and protest at the interruption of their games.
  Yes, what is an Ambassador from another world to
them? A Scholar from the Unity, and her mission,
means less than nothing. When will I see these people as
they really are, and not as they choose to present
themselves to me? Will I have any chance at all, to do
that? A sociologist can fade into the background, have a
chance to observe. But I am here to serve elaborate
political aims-aims of the Unity, aims of the
Matriarchate-and studying the ruins is only a pretext.
What I am is living proof that the Unity will not
endanger their way of life. That is my real mission, even
though the Unity did not tell me so. I wonder if Dal has
guessed it yet?
  The Lady Miranda was looking around the untidy,
child-littered room distressfully. "Is it true that on the
world of the Scholar Dame there are rooms reserved
for formal meetings and policy?"
  She seemed so disturbed that Cendri paused a
moment to frame her reply carefully, to soothe that
disquiet. She said at last, "Every world has its own
customs, Lady Miranda, and there is no great authority
somewhere in Limbo to say with arbitrary words which
customs best express the human spirit." She felt
sententious as she mouthed this banal cliche-it had
been an epigraph in an elementary text of Comparative
Anthropology-but it lightened the careworn look on
the Lady Miranda's face. She said, "Excuse me for a
moment, I must see if my mother is able to receive
you-" and hurried past the screens, leaving them
alone. Cendri looked quickly at Dal, but he raised his
eyebrows noncommittally and said nothing. In the
distance-privacy must be difficult or impossible in
houses with this kind of open construction-she heard a
low-voiced colloquy, then Miranda came hurrying
back.
  "Will the Scholar Dame forgive my mother? The
earthquake has caused much damage in the fisher-
woman villages along the shoreline, and the Pro-
Matriarch has been urgently summoned to see what
damage has been done and what help must be given to
the poor women there; many boats were smashed in the
harbor. She has left word that she will return at sunset,
unless some very great urgency should delay her, at
which hour she will be pleased to ~lcome you and dine
in your company. Meanwhile, may I make the Scholar
Dame comfortable in the chambers which have been
prepared? And if there is any other way in which I may
serve the Scholar Dame, she has only to ask."
Cendri replied politely that she was content to await
the total convenience of the Pro-Matriarch. She was
getting very tired of these elaborately formal speeches,
which seemed to rest uncomfortably upon Miranda's
lips. She added that it would be very good to rest after
the journey.
  "If the Scholar Dame will follow me-"
  The rooms lay at the top of two flights of stairs,
elaborately and carefully balustraded, and one of them
closed off with a device which was evidently a kind of
nursery gate to keep small children from tumbling
down. On these upper floors she saw the first solid
interior wall construction she had seen anywhere on
Isis/Cinderella, although the walls were masked, in
part, by the light movable screens which seemed the
normal wall-decor for this world. Walls and screens
were painted with murals that looked like children's
work; and, tired as she was, Cendri was still taking the
mental notes of the trained anthropologist. Children
were very much in evidence, not banished to a separate
part of the household or community. Miranda opened a
door which had been gilded, and said, "These rooms
have been prepared for the Scholar Dame and-and
her Companion." For the first time she glanced, briefly
and shyly, at Dal, and Cendri had the odd impression
that she wished to extend him, too, some courtesy, but
did not know what form it ought to take.
  She thought in wonder, and some indefinable irrita-
tion, haven't these women ever seen a man before?
They act, quite literally, as if they had never set eyes on
a man, and that is preposterous, there are men allover
the place! What is it?
  I can't expect to understand it, after only an hour or
two. . . .
  The room was hung all round, inside, with curtains;
literally a cyclorama of curtains, surrounding the entire
room. Miranda showed Cendri how they could be
pulled back-"So that you can have darkness and
privacy, or light, at your wish," she said, and adjusted
them, with what seemed an automatic gesture, to admit
indirect light while keeping out the glare from a
window which faced the sun. Behind another fold of
the curtains she indicated a door, saying, "Here you
may refresh yourself as you wish; the Scholar Dame has
no objection to sharing bathing facilities with her
Companion? If it is so, I am instructed to tell you that
there is a male facility at the foot of the stairs-"
  "I have no objection," said Cendri quickly.
  At the center of the room was a bedstead; quite the
highest and narrowest bed Cendri had even seen. She
wondered how she would possibly sleep in it without
falling out. Miranda indicated racks for clothing,
shelves-Cendri noted that they were carefully braced
on what looked like gimbals and had movable arms
which could be extended to hold the books in the
shelves, a reasonable precaution for a world prone to
continuing seismic tremors-a mirrored enclosure with
a padded seat, and at one corner of the room an alcove,
cushioned deeply and filled with luxurious pillows, as if
the entire alcove had become a thick, comfortable bed.
The Lady Miranda said, with a quick glance at the
alcove, "When our Mother informed me that the
Scholar Dame had brought a Companion, it was this
room we set aside for her to inhabit, a room with an
Amusement Corner." She glanced, quickly and surrep-
titiously, at Dal, and suddenly, looking at the piled,
luxurious pillows, Cendri understood, and felt almost
inclined to giggle, or to blush in embarrassment.
  The separation-that high, narrow, obvious bed, and
the sybaritic "Amusement Corner"-tells me more
about how this society regards sex, than a whole series of
erotic films, or any number of lectures about sexual
customs! She saw that Dal had understood, too, for his
mouth twitched a little at the corners, and Cendri was
suddenly afraid he would laugh out loud while Miranda
was still in the room. She said, hastily, "You are too
kind, Lady; everything seems more than comfortable."
  With a few more formal phrases, and assurance that
their luggage should be brought soon, the Lady Mir-
anda turned to go, with a final request that if everything
was not as the Scholar Dame liked it, she had only to
request assistance.
  "We are honored and content," Cendri said. It was a
risk to include Dal in the pronoun, but by including the
"Amusement Corner" in her room-again the hidden
mirth bubbled up inside her-they had taken at least a
tacit notice of his existence! She said with a formal
gesture, "We ask only one thing; if we offend in
anything against your customs, we ask that you accept
that it is done in ignorance and without intent to
offend. "
  It was the first time she had ever had occasion to use
this little memorized speech suggested for contact with
any alien society, and in her years of training she had
come to think of it, too, as a cliche, so banal and
stereotyped as to be virtually meaningless; she was
surprised when it drew the first genuine, spontaneous
smile from the Lady Miranda.
  "You are kind, Scholar Dame. I trust you will be
happy here." Again the quick, embarrassed look at
Dal; she added in a whisper, as if greatly daring, "Both
of you," and, coloring, withdrew.
  When the door had closed, Dal drew a long,
whistling breath. He dropped into the "Amusement
Corner" cushions, saying explosively, "What do you
think of all that! Sharrioz! What a world!" He chuckled.
"If they want to get into the Unity they're sure going to
have to change their ways!"
  Cendri started to protest-there was no evidence
that they wanted to get into the Unity at all-then held
her peace. This was just a way of working off the long
tension of being treated like a nothing, part of Cendri's
baggage, a mere convenience for her amusement or
pleasure. Poor Dal! she thought, and was eager to
make it up to him, but didn't quite know how.
  "Let's look and see what kind of bath they've given
us. Some studies judge a culture by the quality of their
plumbing, you know."
  "I know," Dal said, good-humored again. "I told
you that, remember. The ruins on Serpens Delta Four
had eight separate and distinct class~s of latrine and
bathing facilities, each for a different class of society,
and judging by the ritual objects we found, there were
rigid taboos against one caste going near the bathing
facilities of any other caste! We might as well explore
this one before it gets to be an artifact!"
  "We really do the same work, in away, don't we,
Dal?" she said, voicing a thought that had come to her
before. "I study cultures while they're still going on,
and you study them after they've stopped, but it's the
same work, isn't it, darling?"
  "I suppose so," Dal said, kindly but without enthusi-
asm. "Although, of course, there is no way to measure
a society objectively while scientists must observe it
through subjective judgments, either their own or the
judgments of the society in question. No society can
ever be judged except in historical perspective," he
added, and Cendri, who had heard this before without
agreeing with it, and knew she would never agree with
it, let it pass without comment. Together they went to
explore the luxurious bath assigned to them by the
Pro-Matriarch.
  "If a culture could be judged by plumbing, we'd have
to give this one high marks, wouldn't we?" Cendri said
at last; it was unbelievably elaborate, containing not
only elaborate toilet and bathing facilities, but showers
of different sizes and heights, and some fixtures about
whose use she was not certain, though she guessed that
one very shallow, waist-high tub, with guard-rails and a
headrest, and faucets fixed to give only warmish water,
with no hot or cold, must be a special fixture for bathing
very young babies without danger of dropping, chilling
or scalding. Others she could not even make intelligent
guesses about; body-care facilities could be judged only
by actually observing their use.
  Dal looked dubious. He said, "I'm not sure; societies
which place too much value on luxurious body-care
have usually been decadent, historically speaking.
Viable and vigorous societies tend to be more spartan
in emphasis; but the overemphasis on physical comfort
is what I would expect of a society where females define
the major priorities."
  Cendri frowned, not sure she understood. "All
societies work for physical comfort as they define it,
don't they, Dal?"
  "You know better than that," Dal chided. "The
pursuit of luxury appears, normally, only after a culture
has expended its primary energies. Women are usually
out of the main stream of culture, since the real work of
a society is done by men, and only when the real aims
of the society are accomplished do the men have leisure
to pamper their women by creating non-essentials such
as physical comfort. Historically, when this happens, a
culture has begun to die, since the men have nothing
better to do than to pursue the goals and aims set by
women. . ."
  Cendri said tentatively, "But perhaps in a culture
where the primary goals were determined by women,
priorities would be differently ordered-"
  "That is precisely what I was saying," Dal said with
weary patience. "A culture where women's priorities
took precedence would reach decadence at a very early
stage. This society is still new, but I notice already the
early signs of decadence; a very low level of organiza-
tion, and an unstructured hierarchy without visible
incentive status, which fits very well, with the other
signs of decadence; undue emphasis on physical com-
fort, and a lack of time-values; for instance, the idea
that if you are made comfortable while you wait, you
will not protest at the wasting of your valuable time as a
trained specialist. This indicates, of course, a contempt
for the Unity's values, and for the Unity's time--"
  They were interrupted by two people who brought
their luggage, a man and a woman; when they with-
drew, Cendri had lost all interest in the argument-she
had heard it in her study of Cultural Institutions-but
Dal would not be silenced.
  "There are certain priorities which, in a colony as
new as they, must take priority over anything as
unnecessary as physical comfort. First comes con-
quest-if there are no actual enemies to involve
them in war, then the terrain and the climate must be
conquered and reduced to submission-then expan-
sion, and the achievement of hierarchy, and directives
for structuring social goals. A society which gives
priority to things which are important only to women
would never achieve any of these stages in a vigorous or
viable form." He smiled. "And such a society never
lasts long, so study it while you can, Cendri; it's not
likely, with these priorities, to achieve anything lasting
enough to have any kind of historical value or perspec-
tive." He added, indulgently, "Of course, you wouldn't
be interested in historical perspective, would you,
Cendri? Women aren't-it's excusable, of course,
probably necessary for biological reasons, but women
always tend to live in the present, and leave historical
perspectives for men. And women never seem even to
define this as a fault!"
  Cendri wondered if he included the Scholar Dame
Lurianna di Velo, one of the most notable archaeolo-
gists in the Unity, among those women who were
unable to see anything in historical perspective, but she
had' sense enough not to say so.
  "Did you hear anything of what the Lady Miranda
told me about the situation here?"
  As she had feared, this revived Dal's major griev-
ance.
  "How could I, bumping along in the luggage com-
partment beside the old hag who was doing the
driving?"
  "I'm sure you saw more of the city than I did," she
said, but he was not mollified. "I didn't come here to
look at scenery!" he grumbled, "No, not a word of it."
  "I thought not, or you would not be complaining
about their having kept us waiting," she said. Briefly
she explained what the Lady Miranda had told her of
the deathwatch on the High Matriarch, and the possi-
bility that whoever took her position might have a
totally different attitude toward the Unity.
  Dal asked sharply, frowning a little, "What is the
attitude of the Pro-Matriarch-this one, the house
where we are staying? What are her feelings about the
Unity?"
  "I don't know, Dal. The time didn't seem quite right
to ask. I should imagine, from the way the Lady
Miranda spoke-she herself said she would like to
study on University-that she is not completely preju-
diced against the Unity: but I don't really know."
  "I should think that would have been the first
thing you would have wanted to know," said Dal,
frowning. "Don't women ever come to grips with es-
sentials?"
  Now she was provoked. She said, "I don't know what
women do, Dal; I only know I used my best judgment
about what I could and couldn't ask! After all, we are in
a strange society here, and have to find out something
of their forms of courtesy and social restrictions! I did
the best I could!"
  "I'm sure you did," Dal muttered, but it was clear he
didn't think that was good enough. She said, trying to
placate him, "I don't know what Vaniya's political
attitudes are, but she was willing to let us use her
house as a base for the study of the Builder ruins, be-
cause it was located so near; the Lady Miranda said
that the upper rooms here actually looked down on
the ruins."
  She moved to the window, and drew aside the
curtain. They were high up above an enclosed garden,
hedged with greenish-gray shrubbery, brilliant with
flowers and green leaves. Further off lay a long section
of shore, with sandy beaches and a long expanse of slow
rolling surf, and a small fishing village, houses clustered
and crouching under a cliff, and one tall building, a
kind of lighthouse or watchtower. It looked quite old,
and weathered.
  And further away still, down the shoreline, lay low
hills, and on the nearest of the hills, something else. A
cluster of thick, black, upthrusting shapes, blackened,
squarish; higher than any of the houses of Ariadne, and
more regular; and at this distance, windowless, blank,
featureless; strange, in their unvarying geometry, their
curious proportions. They were not like anything else
Cendri had ever seen.
  "Dal," she said. "Come here, look at this. Are these
the ruins which the Scholar Dame di Velo called
Builder ruins?"
  Dal came to the window, his muscular hand holding
back the pale folds of curtain. He was silent, staring,
and Cendri, watching his face, saw the jawline tighten,
the eyelids twitch.
  At last he said, his voice muffled, "They are-ruins.
More than this I could not possibly say. The Dame
di Velo had seen what she considered evidence, to
convince her that they were what we needed to prove
that the Galaxy had actually been seeded by these
people. It would not-not be accurately scientific even
to hazard a guess. But yes, they are the ruins of
Isis-the ruins we came here to see."
  Abruptly he turned from the window, letting the
curtain swirl down into place. He strode heavily to- the
"Am'usement Comer," blundering into one of the light
interior screens as he went and steadying it with an
unregarding hand. Why, Cendri wondered, with firm
interior walls and curtains, were the screens here at all,
when they had no function of separating off interior
rooms? Or did the women of Isis feel that a room
simply did not look to them like a room, or feel to them
like a room, without the customary screens? She knew
she was focusing on this silly question to hide her
anguished awareness of Dal's pain.
  He said, his face pressed intt> the cushions of the
"Amusement Comer," "And to think I can't-can't
get out there and do anything about them, can't even
go out and ltJok at them-it's all going to be up to you,
Cendri, and you don't even really care at all, do you? I
should never have come, I should never have
come. . . .
  She wanted to weep, to protest; I do care, Dal, I do.
But she knew the words would be empty on her tongue.
Quietly, she turned away from him, knowing he would
never forgive her for having seen him break like this.
His work meant so much more to him than anything
else, anything in his life. Next to his despair, her own
work seemed suddenly trivial, meaningless. But the
only thing she could give Dal now was a sense of
privacy. Very quietly she went to the far end of the
apartment-glad, now, of the interior screens which
divided it into several sections-and started unpacking
their things and stowing them in the spaces provided.
   
 
 
 
                Chapter Three
 
 
 
 
HOURS LATER, WHEN mE LIGHT OUTSIDE HAD DIMMED
somewhat, Cendri heard on the lower floors of the
house a variety of sounds-footsteps, voices, move-
ment and bustle-and knew that the Pro-Matriarch
Vaniya had returned. She knew they would soon be
summoned to dine formally with her, so she bathed in
the luxurious bathroom, did up her long fair hair in an
elaborate coiffure, and put on a gown suitable for
formal dining on University. Later she would learn, she
supposed, what was proper for such occasions here.
But it was not, from what she had seen, a society where
minute differences in dress conveyed many cues about
status. As she smoothed the narrow pleats in her
elegant close-fitting dress, she wondered at that. It had
seemed to her reasonable that a society structured by
women would have paid enormous attention to dress.
Wasn't that one of women's special concerns every-
where?
  Dal had recovered his spirits and was stowing their
collection of reference works and making sure the
cameras and recording devices had suffered no harm in
the packing. He seemed busy and self-absorbed; she
hated to disturb him, but finally said, "Dal, shouldn't
you get ready?"
  He shrugged. "What makes you think they'd invite
me? Or have you forgotten I'm only the dog?"
  She couldn't blame him at all for that. "Let's say I
have a hunch, Dal. After all, they went out of their way
to notice you by giving me a room with an-" she
hesitated, then laughed, a forced laugh, but she knew
they must make a joke of it or it would be unendurable,
"an Amusement Comer."
  He laughed too, as she had hoped, and came to drop
a kiss on the back of her neck. "It's a bit more
elaborate than a dog's bed! If you're good, I may let
you sleep in it with me!" His hands lingered, and
Cendri felt an overflowing relaxation, a lessening of
tension. At least he was not blaming her!
  "I will try to make them realize you are a Scholar in
your own right, Dal."
  His smile was a little sour. "Why bother? Enjoy it
while you can. Women are always saying they don't get
enough recognition, there aren't nearly as many Dames
as Master Scholars-this might be your only chance at
Scholarly eminence!"
  That ruffled her a little; she would have been a Dame
by now, had she not taken off time after her marriage!
Then, with humility, Cendri thought; that's what he
means, a man, a serious Scholar, wouldn't have done
that. Women just aren't as serious about Scholarship as
men! "Well, Dal, we will simply have to prove it to
them."
  He laughed, stroking her hair. "We can't upset the
whole basis of their society, darling. Do you think I
give the weight of a hydrogen atom to what they think
of my scholarly credentials?"
  It felt so good, to have him laughing with her again!
And of course Dal was right, there was no way, and no
need, to challenge the basic postulate of the Matriar-
chate; but she supposed any young anthropologist in a
society which was wholly irrational, would feel this
way! The daydream,. that she, single-handed, could
show them the e"or of their ways, prove a major
influence to bring them into the mainstream of the
Unity. . . . She laughed at herself and turned so that
Dal could tie the ribbons of her sash. .
  She looked at herself in the mirror with satisfaction;
no woman of the Matriarchate could say she had not
taken the trouble to honor her hosts! Hostesses, she
amended. Dal, too, was resplendent, with the Univer-
sity decorations which proclaimed him Scholar and
Master, and the insignia of his homeworld Pioneer; he
had dressed as if for a Scholar's Banquet, and she was
proud of him.
  The Lady Miranda came for them; after bowing to
Cendri, she turned to Dal, with a shy gesture. "The
Scholar Dame, and her Companion, are bidden to dine
with the Pro-Matriarch this evening, and I am bidden to
say to you that my mother's Companion, Rhu by name,
is eager to entertain and find company and friendship
with the Scholar Dame's Companion."
  Thank God, Cendri said to herself, someone at last
has taken special notice of Dal, and men, at least, can
dine with women! For a time she had wondered if this
society had revived ancient interdining taboos; in some
societies men and women did not eat together, but it
was usually because women were considered unclean,
or unfit to join the dominant males; she had been afraid
this culture had simply reversed all cultural taboos!
  Lady Miranda had taken down her braid, and her
long hair flowed down her back; she wore a loose,
waistless gown of pale blue, nearly translucent, which
made her pregnancy very conspicuous. She must be,
Cendri thought, very near to term; she .looked enor-
mous. Miranda's eyes lingered on Dal for a few
minutes, shyly studying his decorations, and Cendri felt
annoyed. Are the men kept out of sight so much that
I'm going to have to worry about women admiring Dal?
Even pregnant, Miranda's pretty enough that if she
seriously tries to get Dal's attention, I ought to worry!
  Downstairs, in an enormous long room, scattered at
low tables and sitting on cushions, many women, and
some children were gathered. There were two or three
pre-adolescent boys, but she saw, at first, no other
adult male. Miranda led them through the clustered
small tables, heads turning to watch as they passed, into
a small alcove at the far end, where a man and woman
were sitting.
  Cendri's first thought-is this a polygamous society,
is he the husband of all these women and father of all
these children?-was quickly dismissed; the man was
very young, considerably younger than Dal himself.
But it was the woman beside him, rising to her feet to
greet them, who drew Cendri's eyes.
  Vaniya, Pro-Matriarch of Isis/Cinderella, was a
woman of middle age, her face lined and slightly stern.
She had the head of a magnificent lioness, framed in a
heavy cloud of thick, frizzy, amber-colored hair. She
was tall and strong-looking, her forehead high, her
nose long and arched; her eyes deep-set and flashing
brilliant blue. Her thick body was draped with violet
silks, falling in elaborate folds which did not suit her;
but she looked imposing. She raised her hands and
clasped them before her face, in the Unity's greeting.
  Her voice was a light soprano, which nevertheless
was strong enough to be audible everywhere in the
room; the voice of a trained singer or public speaker.
  "It is a pleasure to welcome the Scholar Dame
Malocq from University. In the name of our High
Matriarch Rezali, I make you welcome for yourself,
and for the Scholars you represent."
  Cendri said, aware that after the trained resonance of
Vaniya's voice her own sounded like a child's, "It is a
pleasure and an honor, my Lady."
  The Pro-Matriarch's face, stern and unsmiling till
now, relaxed in a smile. Her face was unsymmetrical,
and when she smiled she looked lopsided and untidy,
but good-natured. "And now I am sure you have had
quite enough of formalities, my dear Scholar Dame.
Please sit here beside me." She indicated a large, soft
blue cushion. Awkwardly, Cendri lowered herself.
There were societies with chairs, and there were
societies without chairs, and she was glad of her young
and athletic knees. The Pro-Matriarch turned her
piercing eyes on Dal, who raised his hands in the Unity
gesture of greeting; after a moment the Pro-Matriarch
returned the gesture and Cendri relaxed.
  "May I know the name of your Companion, Scholar
Dame?"
  Cendri said firmly "He is the Master Scholar Dallard
Malocq."
  Variiya raised her shaggy eyebrows. Her complexion
was tawny, roughened somewhat with age. "Dear me,
all that? What do you call it, my dear?"
Cendri colored with annoyance and dismay. "Da-
llard, or Dal."
  "Dal." Her smile was charming and hospitable.
"Rhu, you must entertain Dal for me while 1 talk
seriously with the Scholar Dame," she said, turning to
the young man on the cushion beside her.
  Women were moving around the room, setting bowls
of fruit and platters of undefinable substances on the
tables, taking their own places. There seemed to be no
servants, or if there were, they sat at the table with
their betters and were not distinguished by dress or
manner. Lady Miranda took a seat beside Cendri,
saying courteously, "Allow me to serve you, Scholar
Dame," and began to fill her plate with food.
  "I trust the rooms prepared for you are comfortable,
my dear Scholar Dame," Vaniya said.
  "Very comfortable indeed; very luxurious."
  "I hoped you would find them so," Vaniya said.
"They are the rooms which I myself inhabited with my
Companion when I was somewhat younger, but such
luxuries, of course, are more suitable for younger
women, and I felt it proper to allot them to the honored
guest of the Matriarchate. And, to her Companion.
Your Companion is charming and attractive," she
added, "but I find it surprising that you brought no
assistant for your work among us, Scholar Dame."
  Cendri, feeling Dal's eyes upon her said firmly, "I
thought it had been made clear, my Lady, that my
Companion is--" she stumbled over the lie, "-is my
assistant, and that I shall require his company and
assistance as all times in the Ruins."
  "A man, for assistant? But how surprising!"
  "Dal is a Scholar in his own right," Cendri said.
Vaniya's smile was a little uncertain. "One under-
stands, certainly, that there are male Scholars on
University, which is why we requested the Scholar
Dame di Velo for work here. But it did not occur to us
that a woman Scholar would choose a male for assistant
at het serious business!" Now Cendri identified her
expression; Vaniya was scandalized. "Don't you find
it-" she actually blushed, "distracting"
  Cendri thought, helplessly, Oh, damn, this is ridicu-
lous! The one thing she must not do was blush, now, or
she admitted her vulnerability to this idiotic cultural
and sexual taboo! She bit her lip, hard, and the pain
dispelled the blush she felt rising to her cheeks. Her
voice was level. "Not at all distracing, my Lady; our
work is kept apart from-" she fumbled for a moment;
the language of Isis had no word for marriage. "From
companionship. "
  Miranda lowered her eyes; Vaniya frowned slightly
in puzzlement. "I am not narrow-minded, I hope; I am
not one of those who believes that learning makes a
male somehow unmanly, and on some subjects I can
converse with Rhu-" her eyes dwelt on him, fondly,
"almost as with an intelligent woman. But that is not
what I meant, not entirely. You come from a society
dominated by men, Scholar Dame-at least one where
the academic prizes are mostly reserved for men. So it
would seem you might well have chosen a fellow
woman for the prestigious post of your assistant, rather
than choosing a man who could have won scholastic
honors on his own. I understand how rude it must seem
for me to criticize your choice, and I can well under-
stand that a young woman might well desire for her
Companion to be trained in her own field so that she
might have the pleasure of his attendance on an
assignment far from her home world. But you could
have brought a capable woman for assist~nt, my dear;
we would willingly have extended hospitality to your
Companion, simply for your convenience and-" she
smiled, indulgently, "the amusement of your leisure."
  Miranda was blushing; she said something almost
reproving to her mother in an undertone. Cendri was
debating half a dozen answers, realizing-and the
memory stung-that the Scholar Dame di Velo had
chosen a male for her assistant, and that she, Cendri,
had originally intended to accompany Dal in much the
same capacity that Vaniya now indulgently allotted to
her "Companion." But any answer would only satisfy a
selfish desire to defend her own customs against
Vaniya's-an ignoble desire for an anthropologist!
  Finally she said, "Within the Unity, Lady, men and
women do not compete for posts of honor. We try to
assign work to the person best qualified to do it,
regardless of male or female, and it would never occur
to me that I should appoint a woman for assistant, any
more than a man would choose a male assistant
because-" she broke off, remembering that the male
pronoun was not used except in a sexual connotation,
"because the male was male."
  Vaniya said, thoughtfully, "Yet there is a proven
biological difference which simply unfits men for cer-
tain tasks. It would seem to be kinder not to force men
to compete in spheres where they are not qualified."
She glanced at Rhu and Dal, saying, "You two must
really not take this personally, but, Scholar Dame,
don't you find it tends to unfit a man for his real
function, when he is allowed to develop his mind too
much?" Cendri noted the deliberate use of he and his.
"Men are such magnificently physical creatures at their
best, and many women feel that allowing them to
cultivate womanly talents such as art and music will
make them weak and even impotent. Of course, there
are exceptions-" she looked dotingly at Rhu. "But are
the men of the Unity still--still pleasing to women?"
  Cendri saw that Oallooked ready to explode; she
looked warningly at him, but he only smiled. "Lady
Vaniya," he said, "five hundred years ago on my
homeworld of Pioneer, our men shared at least one of
your beliefs, that the cultivation of art, music and
scholarship would indeed make men womanly and
weak. Only in the last hundred years on Pioneer have
men been allowed to cultivate serious scholarship, and
my own grandfather looked with scorn on the idea that
a real man could be a Scholar, far less an artist or
musician. "
  "Then your world-Pioneer-retains some traces of
matriarchal rule, Oal?" inquired Vaniya seriously, and
Cendri had trouble keeping her face straight. Oal
refused to look at Cendri, but his voice was sober. "I
am not enough of a Scholar to discover any such traces,
Lady."
  Oh, damn you, DatI Cendri thought, trying not to
choke on stifled laughter, nobody alive could be
enough of a Scholar to discover traces of matriarchal
rule on Pioneer, because there weren't any! If ever a
culture was patrist and woman-suppressive, it was that
one! This was wicked of Oal! Making fun of the
Pro-Matriarch, right to her face!
  But thoughtfulness displaced her laughter. It wasn't
just reversal of woman-suppressive cbltures, then; it
was an exaggeration, of trends already present in the
Unity, on worlds such as Pioneer, which went to
extremes; if all the softer and more scholarly talents
were unmanly, and men's sphere restricted to the
warlike and competitive, this too could tip the balance
of stereotyping for sex-roles. . . .
  Again she was angrily conscious of all the questions
she could not ask. Her stay here was going to be a
frustrating experience! She applied herself to the food
on her plate; it was good, though unfamiliar. In any
case, Cendri's training had conditioned her to eat
virtually anything edible to humans without distaste or
disgust; people had such widely different ideas of the
palatable that any cross-cultural student had to be able
to join in any kind of meal with apparent, if not actual,
enthusiasm. She noted that most of the food seemed to
be grains and seeds, with portions of fruit and greens,
and wondered if there were taboos on meat eating.
  "Scholar Dame-"
  "My Lady-?"
  "Forgive me; these formalities seem un-natural,"
Vaniya said, "Our society does not use them; my
daughter-" she looked indulgently at Miranda, "stud-
ied your forms of courtesy and convinced me that I
must use them, at first, to make you welcome; and one
can understand that on a world like University where
many cultures meet and mingle, a veneer of formalities
would smooth social relationships. But I am hoping you
will find friends here, as well as interesting work. Have
you a personal name, Scholar Dame, and would you
find it offensive if we used it to you?"
  "My name is Cendri," she said, "and I would not
object at all . . ." she felt a flow of elation which had
nothing to do with the question. I was right! I knew
these formal manners didn't fit what I had seen of this
society-the clothes without social distinctions, the hap-
hazard layout of the city! As when she had first used
memorized textbook cliches for intersocial structuring,
and had found they were not lifeless formulas, but
actually worked, she was excited. It made her work
seem real to her-her real work, not the lifeless Builder
ruins.
  "Cendri-it is a pretty sound," Vaniya said, "Has it
meaning in your language?"
  "It means--a spark, a flash of flame, a live coal,"
Cendri said, searching for equivalents in Vaniya's
language, and Vaniya touched her hand lightly. "As I
can see you are in troth, through the formal manners
the Unity has put on you. 1 felt sure you were a woman
like ourselves, though my daughters were sure ,that,
corning from the Unity, you would be either weak,
submissive, dominated by men-or else harsh and
competitive, corrupted by striving against them in daily
life."
  Cendri knew Vaniya meant a compliment, but to her
it did not sound much like one. She felt herself as
competitive as any man, and as qualified to compete.
But she accepted the words in the spirit in which they
were given. "My Lady is kind. "
  "But if I am to call you Cendri, you must call me
Vaniya; or perhaps when we know one another better
you will call me Mother, as all the women of my
household do, even those who are not the daughters of
my womb."
  It was a cue for Cendri and she picked it up. "Then
all these women are not your daughters, Vaniya?"
  "Daughters of my household, but not of my body,"
Vaniya said, and seemed not ill pleased to expand on
this theme. "You have met Miranda, who is the
youngest daughter of my body, and who is bearing my
heir," she said. "I have three other daughters of the
body, although one has gone to live in the household of
her life-partner, with her children, and one is away
tonight in the city. And this-" she indicated one of the
other women at the table with them, "is my eldest
daughter Lialla, and her life-partner Zamila."
  The two women she indicated smiled shyly at Cendri.
Cendri noted that they were seated very close together,
and they were taking turns feeding a very small child
with a spoon. Life-partner. So the women do pair off,
then. Where do they get all these children? Artificial
insemination? Where in this world are all the men?
  If the men are kept away from the women as carefully
as this, maybe it is no wonder they are regarded as
dangerous animals. . . . but that train of thought em-
 barrassed her .and she turned her thoughts to analysing
all the names she was told. Most of them were
three-syllabled and euphonious, like all the female
names Cendri had heard there.
  " Also within my house are two foster-daughters and
their grown children and life-partner&-" she told
Cendri their names, but Cendri was losing track, and
found it hard to assimilate so many names and complex
relationships. "... and my foster-sisters, and the
grown daughters of the life-partner of my mother, and
three or four women of our remote kin, who have come
to live with us so that we may share companionship and
work in fields and household, and visit the sea in
company. My youngest male child, Lar, went to the
Men's House nearly fifteen turns of the sun ago, so that
no males now live under this roof except my dear
Companion-" again, the doting smile at Rhu- "and
three grandsons not yet a decade in age. I should also
mention our household Inquirer, Maret-" she indicat-
ed a grossly fat, fair-haired person at a nearby table,
who was rocking a small sleepy child in an ample lap.
"Maret is a woman-by-courtesy; it was born Mar, my
foster-sister's eldest male child, but many years ago
it was given the privilege of wearing woman's gar-
ment&-" (Cendri wondered how anyone ever told
the difference, since all garments appeared unisex, but
maybe the differences were too subtle for an outsider to
see) "-and of performing sacrifices at the shrines of
the Goddess, to be called Maret, and to live here
among us as a sister."
  And now that Cendri looked carefully she could see
that the grossly fat person was breastless and that there
was a faint shadow, carefully shaven, along the jowly
jaws. An effeminate? Or a eunuch? Was the transfor-
mation from male to woman-by-courtesy surgical or
merely psychological? And what kind of functionary
was a household Inquirer? She concealed the sense of
revulsion which rose, uncontrollably, in her at the sight
of this gross ugly man who had renounced his gender to
live among woman. Apparently this society rewarded
feminine behavior even in men, and she should have
expected it.
  What's the matter with me? I'm an anthropologist, I'm
not supposed to make judgments like this. It must be
fatigue. She listened to Vaniya saying, "But enough of
me and mine, you will learn as you live among us."
  She sought for a neutral topic. "Miranda told me that
your High Matriarch lies very ill. Is a stranger allowed
by custom to inquire about her health?"
  Vaniya sighed. "Our beloved Mother and Priestess
has fallen into a coma. She is neither recovered nor
dead; it is uncertain whether she will even recover
consciousness to designate whether I myself, or my
colleague and fellow Pro-Matriarch Mahala will assume
her ring and robe. This is a doleful state for one who
has served the Goddess for more than eighty years; yet
I cannot bring myself to regret it, Cendri, for it has
brought us the one thing we must have; time"
  "I do not understand-"
  "Our beloved Mother's last conscious words were to
bid me make you welcome to the ruins at We-were-
guided, and lodge you with me," Vaniya said, "and
even Mahala dares not disobey that command, while
our Mother and Priestess still breathes. But when she
breathes her last, then-then we cannot know who will
assume her ring, and if it is Mahala-if it is Mahala, her
plans for We-were-guided do not bear thinking about!"
Vaniya frowned, then, with an effort, smiled at Cendri
and said, "So you must make haste, my dear Cendri, to
explore the ruins and verify that they are, indeed, the
ruins of the Builders-which we know, but once this
is confirmed by an independent outside scientific
study-"
  Cendri asked, trying to make her voice level and
courteous, "Is the Pro-Matriarch Mahala opposed to
the study of the Ruins?"
  "You must not trouble yourself with our politics,"
Vaniya said, and though she smiled, the words were a
warning; a keep-off sign, Cendri thought, despite their
cordiality.
  She said, "Surely you understand, Vaniya, that such
as archaeological exploration is a long piece of work;
there is no way we could possibly do this in a few days,
or months!" Dal had spoken in terms of years! "Ar-
chaeology is the most deliberate of sciences; ruins
which have stood for millions of years cannot be
evaluated in a little while! And if your High Matriarch
is likely to die at any time-how long is she likely to
live.
  "Our surgeons will not even hazard a guess, although
Lohara said she might linger for a season or more; and
of course, it is possible she will recover her conscious-
ness and speak me her successor, in which case-" she
smiled, rather grimly. "I have one of my own house-
hold stationed near her bedside, so that if she does so,
Mahala could not conceal it!"
  Rhu said, "And no doubt the Lady Mahala has
likewise stationed one of her Inquirers for a similar
purpose?"
  "No doubt, sacrilegious bitch," Vaniya said, then,
with an effort, added, "But you must not trouble
yourself about politics either, Rhu, this is no proper
welcome for our honored guests. Miranda, will you sing
for us, my child?"
  Obediently, Miranda took a small stringed instru-
ment from a case..near the window, sat down with it in
her lap, and began to sing. Her voice was very pure and
clear, evidently well-trained, though not, Cendri
judged, of performing quality for public display. She
sang several songs, all short, all mournful, in a strange
melancholy minor scale. To Cendri's questions, she
explained, in a soft, diffident voice, that they were
mostly rhythmic songs of work-women; songs of the
looms, of the herdwomen, songs of the sea and the
nets, songs for weaving cloth and spinning it. She
added, to Vaniya, "Will you not have Rhu sing for our
guests?"
  Rhu protested to Vaniya in an undertone, but she
said briskly, "Don't be shy!"
  "I would prefer to listen to the Lady's singing," he
said, not looking at Miranda.
  "Miranda should not tire herself now."
  "My lyrik is in my room-"
  "Use mine," Miranda said, timidly, and Rhu glanced
at Vaniya for permission, then took it, protesting
faintly, "If I re-set the strings for my voice, the Lady
will have the trouble of re-tuning them afterward for
herself-"
  "I don't mind," Miranda said, not looking at him,
"Please sing, Rhu."
  "As the Lady and the honored guests wish." With
courteous resignation, Rhu began to tune the instru-
ment he had called a lyrik, bending his head close to the
strings. Cendri watched him beneath lowered
eyelids-she suspected that staring at him was at least a
social error and perhaps more. Rhu was, she suspected,
four or five years younger than herself and Dal; thin
and dark, his hair elaborately curled and waved. He
wore a tunic of metallic blue fiber which left his tanned
shoulders bare; a tight belt of silver plates circled his
narrow waist, and his long slim legs were bare, except
for silvered sandals ornamented with pearls. He had a
narrow, curly beard and small moustaches, and his thin
face looked sad. He asked Vaniya, "What shall I sing?"
  "Whatever you like, my dear," she said indulgently,
"A hunting song, please, men always like them.';
  Nodding, he began a long ballad which, as nearly as
Cendri could make out, celebrated the pleasures of the
chase, of the spear, of carrying the slain beasts home in
triumph. Cendri had no interest in the subject, though
she tucked away the random knowledge that while
these women lived in cities, much of their life still
entered upon the agricultural cycles of the year.
  In spite of the boring recital of the pleasures of the
hunt, she had to delight in the voice, a superbly trained
baritone which Cendri judged would have won him
fame as a concert singer on virtually any civilized
world. Rich, full and golden, it swelled to fill the room
without being loud, or died to a whisper which was,
nevertheless, audible to the furthest comer; women
stopped talking to listen, and when one of the children
prattled something, its mother quickly hushed it.
  A voice like this, tucked away on Isis?
  When the song ended, she spoke a few words of
compliment to Rhu, who smiled with shy pleasure.
"The Scholar Dame is kind, but I wish she could have
heard my voice before it was spoilt by changing; as a
child I had truly a fine soprano."
  Vaniya said regretfully, "Yes, Rhu has splendid
technique, but of course it is wasted on a man's
roughened voice."
  Dal said directly to the Companion, "If you ever get
tired of living on this world, a voice like that would
make your fortune anywhere inside the Unity, Believe
me.."
  He blushed like a boy, "The honored guest is kind;
how may I thank him?"
  "Sing something else," Dal said, and Rhu glanced at
Vaniya for permission, then bent his head close to the
harp, and sang, in a low voice;
  
             I am only a man
             And I have no part in Paradise;
             Twice have I tasted bliss
             And twice have I been driven forth;
             Once when I left my mother's womb
             And again when I was driven forth
             From my mother's house.
 
 
  The golden baritone dropped to a mournful croon,
his hands swept the strings with an anguished cadence;
 
 
             When I am done with life
             Will the Goddess take me, perhaps,
             To her loving breasts?
 
 
 
  Cendri discovered that she was blinking away tears;
not only at the beauty of the voice, but at the agonized
sadness of the song. Dal, too, looked visibly shaken.
  "Men's songs are so sentimental," said Vaniya
lightly, "but that one always comes near to making me
cry. Men enjoy self-pity so much, don't they?" As Rhu
put the harp in the case and returned it to Miranda, she
filled a cup with wine and held it indulgently to Rhu's
lips. "Here, my dear. Rhu has given us so much
pleasure, I think he deserves a treat."
  Suddenly Cendri was filled with an overwhelming
revulsion. In spite of Vaniya's kindness, despite the
pleasant atmosphere and the excellence of food and
wine, she found it hard to conceal her sense of disgust
and shock. She had read about this phenomenon in her
textbook, one of the manifestations of culture shock;
she supposed it was due to fatigue.
  Vaniya looked sharply at her.
  "You are weary, Cendri. The journey must have
been long and fatiguing."
  "Yes" Cendri admitted...
  "Then you must go and rest-"
  "But before we leave you, Vaniya, may we ask if we
may begin our work at once in the Ruins--?"
  Vaniya !ighed regretfully, and said, "Alas, I still
have much to do with the disasters which the earth-
quake left behind; I shall have no leisure for some time
to take you there; perhaps in a few days I can arrange
to take you, and then, when you have been properly
introduced to this--which is a very sacred place to
us--you will be free to work there as you choose."
  Cendri, listening carefully to the words of the
Pro-Matriarch, realized; in spite of their solicitous
courtesy, she had just been warned not to try and go
thhre on her own. Why not? She told herself that it was
natural enough, the ruins which Vaniya called We-
were-guided were one of their greatest shrines or
sacred places; but the argument did not quite convince
her.
  Maybe it isn't the Pro-Matriarch Mahala who is
opposed to the exploration of the Ruins. Maybe it's
Vaniya herself! Twice, now, they've side-stepped a direct
answer on that!
  She made, resignedly, the only possible answer, that
they awaited a time of the Pro-Matriarch's conve-
nience. As they climbed to their room, she was
anticipating without enthusiasm Dal's probable com-
ments on that, and on the society as they had seen it
tonight; but Dal was silent and thoughtful. Finally he
said, when they were safely shut into their room, "Did
you ever hear a voice like Rhu's?"
  "Not since the Orpheus Musicians visited University;
they had a baritone almost as good."
  "And Vaniya keeps him for a pet and snubs him-a
talent like that! I'd like to kidnap him and smuggle him
off to University! Might cause a diplomatic crisis,
though. There must be some kind of penalty for
alienating the affections of the Pro-Matriarch's Com-
panion. And speaking of Companions-" he put his
arm around Cendri's waist.
  "If you're very nice; I may let you sleep in the
Amusement Comer with me."
Cendri laughed, putting her arms up around his
neck. "Don't you be arrogant with me, love, on this
world I could have you put out at night like a puppy
dog!" But she let him scoop her up in his arms and
carry her to the padded alcove. It was considerably
more comfortable than that high, narrow bed!
  "This seems to be my only proper function on this
world," Dal murmured against her lips, "I might as
well take advantage of it!"
  "Don't be ridiculous, darling," she whispered, draw-
ing him down to her, "We'll call it a second honey-
moon."
  Dal had made a joke of it. And yet there was a trace
of bitterness behind the words which told Cendri that in
Dal's heart it was very far from being a joke.
 
  Late in the night, Cendri rose and went to the
window. She looked down on the ruins of the ancient
site which the Pro-Matriarch had called We-were-
guided. Dal slept, satiated and, she hoped, a little
comforted and pacified. How would she keep him from
going mad with frustration here? When she herself
would be doing his proper work, and he must pose as
her assistant and subordinate. . . . she had been foolish
ever to accept this deception!
  Dal had insisted. He had said it was enough for any
Scholar simply to have the privilege of working on the
Builder ruins, and in any case he would have the credit
for the work when they were back on University. Yet
she quailed at the thought of seeing his pride wounded,
day after day, in a society like this where he was
reduced to the status of a housepet like Rhu, a boy kept
for a woman's pleasure! She marvelled at Vaniya-the
woman was many times a grandmother, and her
Companion young enough to be her grandson!
  Well, in the Unity it was not unknown for some rich
woman to dote on a handsome and talented youth, and
to keep him as a sort of pet. But there it was always
done with a little more respect for the young man's
pride, and the woman usually felt some shame about it.
Cendri told herself that her revulsion was just a cultural
prejudice.
  She turned her eyes to the moon-flooded landscape,
which covered the low slopes behind the city with such
brilliance that shapes and outlines were clearly percep-
tible. At the center of the ruins of We-were-guided,
surrounded by them, and at their very center-
enshrined, the thought came without volition-lay a
familiar outline, dwarfed by distance; one of the old
models of starship.
  Was this the very ship in which the women of
Isis/Cinderella had come to their world?
  The original Matriarchate-Cendri remembered-
had been founded a few hundred years before, by a
group of historians who held a mad theory that the
original human stock had come from a world with a
primitive matriarchal culture, and that decay in human
cultures had set in when the worship of a Mother
Goddess, a planetary Earth-mother, had been over-
thrown and superseded by climatic changes which
convinced the primitive society that the worship of sun
and rain gods, regulating the weather, was more
important than the Goddess cults.
  So the Matriarchate is founded, then, in religious
fanaticism and it will never be understood except by
understanding its religious beginnings. . . .
  The Matriarchate had recruited women from allover
the Unity and settled on a planet which they renamed
Persephone. For a few generations they had remained
part of the Unity, and Cendri had read of a few
scientists who had been hired to work there and their
research lavishly funded-Persephone had been a rich
planet then-to re-discover what the Matriarchate
believed, or professed to believe, was the original
form of humanity, female in form, and without the
y-chromosome creating maleness.
  Some interesting research had been done, but the
parthenogenetic females created by this research had
proved sterile after the second generation, and the
Matriarchs had resigned themselves to retaining some
males in their society as breeding stock.
  About that time they had founded their daughter
colony of Labrys; after the bureaucratic blunder which
wiped out almost eighty per cent of the Labrys popula-
tion, they had become paranoid, and withdrawn from
the Unity-that was one version; the other was that the
Unity had ejected them for being in violation of the
First Principle, that all worlds participating in the Unity
should grant equality to all citizens. Persephone had
insisted on its right to determine who should be defined
as a citizen. And after that, there had been almost
nothing heard of them. The remnants of the Labrys
colony were repatriated, emt;ittered. Then, less than
fifty years ago, Persephone, undergoing climatic chang-
es, had taken over, on normal Unity homestead laws,
an uninhabited pelagic planet, almost without arable
land, known as Cinderella. As non-members of the
Unity, they had had to pay an enormous surcharge for
the privilege. They had promptly re-named it Isis, and
dropped almost out of contact. -.
  During the early stages of the negotiations about the
Builder ruins, Cendri had heard the Dame di Velo
raging about that. Even then-the Dame di Velo had
been a young woman when Cinderella was resettled as
Isis-she had known about the ancient ruins on Cinder-
ella and had convinced herself they were Builder ruins.
The Dame herself had tried to raise a fund to home-
stead Cinderella by archaeologists instead, and keep it
in perpetuity for a mine of information about the I
supposed Builders. But the colony of Persephone had
outbid them.
  "A tragedy," the Dame di Velo had called it, "the
greatest tragedy of my professional life; that a world
which was a mine, a veritable mine of archaeological
information, should be turned over to a crackpot
culture, for them to spin and weave and fish and ignore
the most famous artifact in the known Galaxy!"
  But scientific foundations traditionally found it hard
to raise money, and the Unity's basic stipulations stated
that no viable colony should be denied the right to
homestead any arable planet. So the Matriarchate
settled on Cinderella/Isis, and closed their doors to the
Unity. They traded, Cendri had read, in pearls and
nacre from their oceans, in magnesium, arsenic, seleni-
um and gold. Their jewelry was famous to the luxury
trade everywhere. They imported platinum and titani-
um, and certain fluoride compounds-Cendri was not
sure whether it was for their plastics industry or for
their teeth-and a few organic chemicals. But until the
negotiations which culminated in the invitation to the
Scholar Dame di Velo to come here, no citizen from
the Unity had set foot on Isis.
  Ceildri had grown cramped and cold, standing by the
window, and was about to return to the comfortable
nest of cushions where Dal still lay curled up, when she
saw a light below.
  The city of Ariadne was dark at night. Cendri had
expected that; most of what was usually called "night
life" was oriented to solitary males from the spaceport
districts, and based mostly on selling them sex and
entertainment. Remotely she wondered what the soli-
tary males on this world did for entertainment. There
seemed to be nothing akin to marriage as it was known
on Cendri's world and Dal's. Cendri had become
accustomed to extreme differences of sexual customs
from world to world. On University, for instance, her
best friend had come from a world where group
marriage was the norm and the worst perversion
imaginable was to make love in groups of fewer than
four. And considering the number of children she had
seen in the dining room tonight, there must be some
allowances for sexual contact.
  But whatever they did at night on Isis, they did it
silently and in the dark, without need of bright lights.
She had seen dim lights on the upper stories of the few
buildings that had them, but otherwise all was dark; so
the row of lights, slow, winding, bobbing quietly along
at a steady pace, drew her eyes and her attention. She
had thought it the torch of some kind of night
watchman-if night watchmen were men here-could
any world, even a matriarchy, be free of crime? But
there were too many of the small lights for that. She
drew back the curtain a little and leaned out the
window. It was a torchlight procession, winding slowly
through the gardens behind the Pro-Matriarch's house
and down along the shore.
  Well, she had wondered what they did at night in
Ariadne to amuse themselves. Now she had seen
something, though of course she had no idea what it
meant. A moonlight picnic? There were two moons,
large and beautiful, in the sky. A skinny-dipping party?
A religious festival? They might be going out to hunt,
fish, swim, eat, copulate, or pick mushrooms which
only flowered by moonlight, as they did on Cendri's
own home world at one season. Near the head of the
procession she could make out a tall, broad-shouldered
figure which might very well have been the Pro-
Matriarch herself.
  She watched the lights' winding along the shore,
where the surf tumbled and boomed softly with small
breaking whitecaps. They moved further away and
became small twinkling fireflies in the distance. Then
they reappeared, no more than tiny points of light,
winding slowly into the very center of .the ruins which
Miranda had called We-were-guided.
  And their spaceship lay there. Thinking of Miranda's
rapt expression when she spoke of contact with the
Builders, Cendri wondered; was this, then, the proces-
sion of some sort of religious cult which had grown up
around the ruins? Had they gone-Cendri found
herself shivering-to try and appease the supposed
spirits of the Builders for their imminent invasion by
outworlders bent on learning their secrets? Perhaps,
even, to appease their supposed wrath? Again she
shivered-ancestor-worship cults were notoriously
bloodthirsty! Were they offering sacrifices at the Build-
er's shrines? And what sacrifices? They seemed a
peaceful, enlightened culture, with an adequate tech-
nology, but religious cults were by definition outside of
a society's rational structure.
  Again she sought out the distant twinkling lights,
adorning ruins and spaceship. They had formed into a
circle. A garland of lights, Cendri thought drowsily,
watching it. She yawned, tired and thoroughly
chilled-Isis' culture did not evidently run to central
heating, though in view of the daytime heat and general
subtropical climate that was not surprising; but now it
was distinctly chilly. She thought longingly of the warm
cushions, and Dal's warm body, even in sleep wonder-
fully comforting and reassuring.
  Yet she stood as if compelled, watching the distant
torches that festooned the ruins like Festival lights on
the Sacred Tree of the Vhanni on Rigel Four-the light
that had begun to glow, like a reflection of the huge
pale moons, at the summit of the ruins. She was not
conscious of cold now. She stood in amazed fascina-
tion, watching,the light, the slow, suffusing, comforting
glow. It was like a voice in her heart, filling her with
kindliness, love, warmth. . . . her heart went out to-
ward the light, and for a moment she felt like the child
she had been, running to hide herself in the lap of a
nurse. . . . a fragment of Rhu's song lingered for a
moment in her mind, When I am done with life, will the
Goddess take me to her loving breasts. . . .
  Cendri started upright, shaking herself. Had she
been asleep? The moons had set, but the light lingered,
a faint glow around the ruins, the echo of the voice in
her mind-had it ever been there, or had she been
dreaming? Reason said, I was dreaming, but enough of
the warmth lingered that she was reluctant to dismiss it
as a dream. She was enough of a scientist not to trust
her own perceptions when they seemed to deny reason.
  She turned and called softly "Dal-"
  He came awake slowly, confused, "Cendri? Where
are you?" She could see him feeling about in the bed
for her beside him. Had she been asleep, standing bolt
upright at the window? Was a bizarre dream enough
cause to rob him of his rest? But she said softly, "I'm
here at the window, Dal. Come here, I want you to see
something-"
  "Sharrioz! At this hour?" He sat up, bewildered,
then padded softly, naked, across the room to her side.
"Sweetheart, is something wrong?"
  "Dal, look-toward the ruins--"
  Blinking, he pressed his face to the pane. "Lights--
down there in the ruins--"
  "I saw them leave the house-hours ago now, I
suppose. I have no idea what time it was, but the moons
were still in the sky. They went into the ruins--"
  "Well," he interrupted, "Why shouldn't they?
Vaniya said, at supper, that they were a religious
shrine. Maybe they go to say their prayers by moon-
light, or something. That's your job-to study this cul-
ture!"
  She reminded herself that his truculent tone was not
an insult; that he had been roused from a sound sleep to
see something Cendri herself had not been sure she
saw.
  "That isn't all," she said, "I saw a light in the
ruins-near the tip of that building, do you see, the one
with a tip like a broken horn. . . ." The light, to
Cendri, was still faintly there, and the sight of it some-
how roused again, in her, the memory of that brief,
ecstatic glow. . . .
  But she was not sure, not now. If she had fantasied it,
or if it had been an illusion, born of a glimmer of
reflected moonlight on some unknown shining surface
. . . she would not suggest it. Not unless he saw it
independently, and felt what she had felt, what she
seemed to feel faintly even now, would it validate her
own perceptions.
  "There is a light. . . no, not a light, a kind of glow.
Are you sure it wasn't moonlight, Cendri? Or per-
haps some kind of luminescent material-we have
no idea what kind of materials the old Builders may
have had." He broke off, yawning hugely. "Are you
sure you didn't dream it?"
  Cendri realized she was not sure. One moment she
had been full of the flooding light, warmth, the
suffusing joy she could not identify, happiness for no
known cause; the next moment cramped, cold, the
moon set.
  "I did see a glow-" she insisted forlornly.
  "I'm sure you did." Dal yawned again. "Maybe that
high place is reflecting the glow of the rising sun out on
the ocean, dawn can't be very far away." With sudden
solicitude he felt her cold hands, bent to touch her
chilled feet.
  "Darling, you're chilled through! Have you slept at
all, or have you stood here half the night watching
torchlight processions and things? Here, let me warm
you up."
  She put her arms around his neck; tenderly, as he
had done in their first days, he picked her up and
carried her to the cushioned comer, covering her,
enfolding her in his own warmth, taking her cold feet
into the curve of his body to warm them. Snuggled
close, she persisted. "Dal-when you were looking at
the lights-did you feel anything?"
  It was dark, but she could feel him looking at her
in amazement. "Feel anything? Cendri, you're half
asleep," he said tenderly, "Just that I can't wait to get
out there! Thanks, by the way, for making it clear to
the old girl that I am a Scholar and that you'll need me;
I was half afraid I'd never be allowed out there at all."
  "Oh, Dal! Could you doubt it?"
 "I wasn't sure. I mean-you're one of them, a wom-
an, they respect you.I thought you might take this
chance to try and prove what you can do on your 
own. . . .
  She thought, appalled, does he still not trust me? And
then, troubled by her own thoughts, does any man ever
trust any woman? Completely? Is that why men on some
worlds try so hard to dominate women. . . not arro-
gance but fear?
  "Dal, Dal-I couldn't do anything without
you. . . .
  "I wasn't sure," he said, shaking, holding her tight
-not now, she sensed, to warm her, but to reassure
himself. It shook Cendri's certainties. She had always
seen Dal so strong to her weakness, powerful where she
was without strength. But now?
  "Cendri, don't you think I know how much you've
resented this, resented not being a Dame when I
was made Master Scholar, I couldn't blame you if
you. . . if you took advantage. . .," he murmured,
and she clasped him tight, troubled and shocked
beyond words at her own thoughts. Was this place
corrupting her too, where these women gave her
illusions and delusions about her own power? Abrupt-
ly, frighteningly, she wished they had never come here.
  "Oh, Dal, hold me," she begged, suddenly, "Hold
me tight, don't let me go! I'm afraid! Dh, Dal, hold
me!"
 
 
                   Chapter Four 
 
 
 
  VANIYA'S DUnES CONTINUED TO OCCUPY HER, TO THE
exclusion of her alien guests, for the next ten days.
Cendri was not altogether displeased; she welcomed
the opportunity to study the strange society into which
she had been admitted. Already she was envisioning,
with pride, a report with her name on it, studying these
women who lived essentially without men; a report
which would surely make secure her borrowed status as
Scholar Dame.
  She kept copious notes, scribbling them in the
antique script of her childhood for secrecy's sake; she
still remembered that one recorded statement from the
Matriarchate-we will not be studied by your scientists
like one of those glass-sided insect colonies we give for
toys to our little daughters. A voice-scriber might be
found and turned on by accident; but there was no one
on this planet, not even Dal, who could read the
language and written script of Cendri's home world.
  Miranda continued to be friendly, and on several
occasions invited Cendri to join the life of the women
of the household, inviting her into sewing-rooms,
weaving-rooms, gardens and nurseries. Yet she knew
that the essential life of the Matriarchate eluded her.
They did not live their lives without men-considering
the number of small children in Vaniya's household.
And the general level of the society seemed somewhat
too unsophisticated for widespread acceptance of artifi-
cial insemination. A considerable number of them
must have quite active relations with men. But she
wondered how they managed it; one never saw a man
around this household, except for occasional menial
work.
  Yet Miranda's growing friendliness encouraged her
to think that sooner or later she would be allowed to
see beneath the outer surfaces of the society of the
Matriarchate. And Miranda seemed endlessly curious
about the Unity-almost as curious, Cendri thought, as
she herself was curious about the Matriarchate.
  One day they were in the garden of the Residence,
among the flowers and herbs of the ornamental walks,
when Miranda asked abruptly, "How long have you
and your Companion been together?"
  Cendri, automatically converting from the time-
scales of University, said, "About a third of your Long
Year."
  "Did you take him as Companion only for your-
your stay here on Isis?"
  Cendri smiled gently and said, "No; no, we intend to
stay together as long as we both desire it. It is not
common for a marriage to endure lifelong-" There
was, as far as she knew, no word for marriage in the
language of Isis, so what she actually said was life-
partnership. "-but it is not unheard-of either, and at
present we have no thought of separating at any time in
the foreseeable future."
  "Then your Companion is actually your-your life-
partner as well?" Miranda said, in astonishment. "How
strange it would seem to me-to anyone here, to take a
male as life-partner! Strange and far too-too-" she
paused, fumbled for words, finally said stiffly, not
looking at Cendri, "-too sexually exacting, even
exhausting. "
  Cendri wondered exactly what kind of idea Miranda
had of a man's sexual needs and demands-or, for that
matter, of her own. She knew sexual needs were mostly
psychological, and largely conditioned by the society
anyway, but did she really believe men were sexually
insatiable? She remembered that the shuttleship
pilot-or was it Miranda herself, on their first day
here?-had spoken of the impossibility of educating
men because they were so much under the compulsion
of their sexual needs. How could any woman have a
realistic idea of what men were like when she never
knew any of them at close hand? She said, "No, I don't
find it so, Miranda," but she was embarrassed anyway.
  Miranda said, "But-aren't you lonely, with no other
women in your household? It seems so un-natural to
me, and odd."
  Cendri was used to this; on University, one of the
commoner patterns was group marriage, and she was
accustomed to the mixture of pity and curiosity from
women in such marriages, feeling that Cendri must be
lonely with no other women, and bored with only one
man. She said tranquilly, "I have many women friends,
Miranda, but our pattern of life, Dal's and mine, has its
basis in the idea that one man and one woman, and
their children, form the basic unit of society, and that
the man and woman are closest to one another, best
friends and intimates, with everyone else somewhere
outside that bond."
  "But how can you really have woman friends when
you do not share the important things of your life with
them?" Miranda asked. "Can a man really-really be
close to a woman that way?"
  Cendri smiled at the young woman. They were the
same age, and Miranda was, by her own world's
standards, very well educated; yet she had never been
off her homeworld of Isis, and this alone would have
made her seem, to Cendri, provincial and somewhat
immature. She said, "On University we see many life
patterns; in mine it is taken for granted that a man can
be a closer friend to any woman than another woman."
  "But women are so much alike, they can understand
one another so well," said Miranda, and she sounded a
little wistful. "I am lonely-I was partnered at school,
but I was too young, I suppose, to choose wisely, and
we quarreled and separated last season; so I am bearing
this child aloQe. My mother and sisters have been kind
to me, but it is not the same." She hesitated and
seemed about to say something further, then sighed
and asked, "Have you no children, then?"
  Cendri told her no-she and Dal had agreed to delay
children until they had both gained the credentials they
wanted, and had decided on which world they wished
to live, or whether they would stay on University
indefinitely.
  "It would seem strange, to be forced to consult some
man's convenience for a decision of that sort," Miranda
said, and Cendri laughed and said, "Dal is not 'some
man' to me, but my life-partner, as you would say, and
I would not make any decision without consulting him,
any more than he would without consulting me. It is
truly mutual, Miranda, no matter what you have been
told about what you call the maleworlds. I am not
forced to consult his decisions, it is my choice."
  "But how very strange," Miranda said. "Among us,
most women take a life-partner when they are about
my age; but a woman can share decisions with other
women because we are so much alike."
  "Does not your mother share decisions with her
Companion?"
  "With a Companion?" Miranda said, raising her
eyebrows in incredulity. "No, no, of course not. But
she is old enough to keep a Companion, her decisions
at her age are her own; no woman my age would
keep a male." She laughed, nervously. "I suppose you
are used to many different life patterns and choices
then-"
  Cendri nodded. "If you were on University you
would see many of them, too. And yet you would, I
suppose, choose to remain with the one which gave you
the emotional satisfactions you learned to need from
childhood. Most people remain lifelong with the sexual
patterns they learn before puberty. It's very rare for
anyone to change. Some people have tried-a woman
from my world joined a group-marriage on University.
She was my friend, brought up to the kind of marriage I
learned, one man and one woman, yet she joined-for
a time-in a group-marriage where all the other
members had been brought up to think of this as the
only endurable or decent marriage." She was silent,
remembering. Jerri's brief attempt to cross cultural
lines had been a disaster; most such attempts ended in
suicide or mental breakdown.
  Cendri said after a time, "In the early decades of
University, such cross-cultural marriage experiments
were hailed as a broad step toward intercultural
understanding. There were so many tragedies that now
most people think, on the contrary, that they should be
forbidden by law. I suppose the real truth-if there is
any real truth-is somewhere in between."
  Miranda nodded, understanding that. She said,
"Yes, to me our way seems as right as if the hand of
nature itself had written it in our flesh, in our bodies,
our wombs, our hearts; and yet I can see that this is
because from my earliest days I have been taught to
think so, and to someone not so taught it would seem
strange and even disgusting. Does our way disgust you,
Cendri?"
  Cendri said honestly, "I don't know enough about it
to know how I really feel about it." She had, in any
case, undergone lengthy conditioning, during her train-
ing as an anthropologist, to free her of some 9f these
prejudices; but she could hardly say so. She wished she
could question Miranda about some of the things that
puzzled her; wished there was some way to do so
without rousing her suspicion that she was not quite
what she seemed. She wondered about their relations
with men, wondered if the "life-partnerships" between
women involved physical sex-she supposed they did,
close relationships and even sexual partnerships be-
tween the same sex were not unknown even on
University-but she did not know how to frame her
questions without violating some as-yet-unknown
taboo.
  Miranda stooped to a flowerbed beside the path,
picked a small pale blue flower. She stood turning it this
way and that in her hands as she said, "There are times
when I-I like to wonder what it would be like to live in
some of those other ways which seem So-5O unspeak-
able to our women. You say that your Companion is
your life-partner too. But-you are from the Unity,
from the maleworlds, does he not-not own you, then?
Are you bound to him by a bond you could not break at
will?"
  Cendri smiled and said, "To dissolve our partner-
ship, I would merely have to go before the Civic
Authority on University, and make with him a joint
declaration that we wished to separate; no more than
that. If one of us was willing and the other unwilling, it
might be a little more complicated-an Arbitrator
would have to hear the case-and if there were children
we would have to make mutually agreeable arrange-
ments for their care and education. But a marriage
cannot persist if either does not desire it; that would be
slavery. "
  " And you would let him go like that, if he wished to
leave you?"
Cendri countered, "Would any woman wish to keep
a man who no longer wished to remain with her?"
  "It would seem to me strange to consult the wishes of
a man, especially of a Companion," Miranda said, and
she was frowning a little. "I had thought perhaps it was
the reverse of-the way it is here; that perhaps in your
worlds a man owned a woman and was responsible for
everything she did. . . ."
  Cendri shook her head. "No, although I believe
there have been worlds-Pioneer, many generations
ago-where this was true. And in some cultures a man
is required to provide for the support and nurture of
any children he may have fathered."
Miranda said, "That does seem strange, for a man to
be responsible for a child; how can any man possibly
know that a child is of his fathering, unless he has kept
the woman locked away from everyone else?" Again
she seemed on the verge of saying something else, and
again hesitated, drawing back; Cendri wondered if
indeed the time were ripe to ask something about the
unknown mating customs of Isis, but instead Miranda
frowned a little and said, "It seems so natural that the
woman, who bears the child, should take all responsi-
bility. Yet I can see that your way could have its--its
attractions," she added, her lips curving for a moment
in a faraway smile. Cendri wondered who had fathered
Miranda's child; if, for a minute, she had actually
forced Miranda to think beyond her own cultural
prejudices. Then Miranda said, "But if you had-had a
child, and separated from your life-partner, as I from
mine, would you not simply do as I have done, return
to your mother and sisters so that they could care for
you and your baby?"
  Cendri laughed. She said, "That is the very last thing
it would occur to me to do. I am not even certain where
my own mother lives now; she could not wait for me to
be old enough to go to my chosen lifework as a Scholar,
so that she could return to her own! I have not seen her
since my seventeenth year! I suppose some day we will
meet again, as friends; but each of us has her life to
live; on our world we do not recognize biological ties
after a child is old enough to fend for herself."
  "That seems to me as cold-blooded as the fish,"
Miranda said with distaste. "How else are women
distinguished from animals, except by the nurture they
give their young?" She laughed, then said, "It is good
to hear someone challenge the ideas I take for granted!
I like talking of such things with you Cendri, I think I
shall always like to do so, but 1 should warn you, not to
speak too freely of ~uch matters to the women of .
household. Many of the women here would be shocked
and disgusted by the way we have been talking, they
would think you dirty and perverted for speaking of
such things-and me no less perverted for being will-
ing to hear them spoken! Don't tell them, will you,
Cendri?"
  She smiled at the off-worlder and sniffed deeply. "I
thought so; the fish-flavoring herbs are in flower, by the
South wall. Come, let us gather some and take them to
the women in the kitchen; they will want to gather them
while their fragrance is strongest, and dry them to
season the fish when next we visit the sea."
  She gathered a bouquet of the strong scented greyish
pink flowers to take to the kitchens, Cendri helping
her. When they came into the kitchens, one of the
women wrinkled her nose in disgust.
  "Pheu, you smell like a fish dinner, Miranda, you
smell as if you have been visiting the sea-"
  Miranda laugbed. "Well, and so 1 have, you can tell
that by looking at me," she said gaily.
  The other woman turned away, abashed. "What a
way to talk, Miranda! And before the distinguished
guest!"
  "You first spoke of it," Miranda said, laughing. "We
are all grown women here! And if we want herbs to
season our fish, we must then smell like the sea! And 1
like the smell, for it tells me the season for visiting the
sea is near-what is it, Zamila, does the smell make it
too hard for you to wait?" She crushed the strong-
smelling flowers between her palms, bruising them, and
as the aromatic smell spread through the room, the
women began a little nervous giggling which Cendri did
not understand.
  Dal, too, when Cendri got back to the upper apart-
ment they shared, wrinkled his nose against the strong
smell which clung to her hands.
  "What in a hundred worlds is that stink, Cendri?"
  " An herb of some sort, used for seasoning fish; I was
helping Miranda to gather it," Cendri said, abstracted-
ly. Did the talk of "visiting th~ sea" have something to
do with their seasonal religious festivals, then? "I
gather the scent is highly prized for flavoring their
meals."
  Dal sniffed. "I don't remember tasting it myself, and 
frankly I'm just as well pleased. Don't you get bored 
spending time with these women? Picking flowers and 
rubbish like that?"
  "Of course not, Dal, it's my work, and I'm getting
quite fond of Miranda."
  "Don't get too fond of her," Dal said morosely, "I
don't trust women who live without men. It doesn't
seem normal or healthy, and I'm not sure I like the idea.
of my wife spending a lot of time with women who pair
off like that. Miranda hasn't bothered you, has she?
Are you sure you can trust her?"
  After an incredulous moment Cendri realized what
Dal meant. She said, "That's so ridiculous I won't even
dignify it with an answer, Dal," and went to wash the
smell of the herb from her fingers.
  Miranda's lonely. She said so herself. And she
certainly went to some trouble to find out whether I was
rigidly prejudiced against their way of life. And her 
sisters have all chosen women for life-partners-oh, 
that's ridiculous, Miranda knows I'm not that kind of 
woman.
  Anyway, what makes me think I have any right to be
so condescending about what's normal? If men are kept
out of the society except for breeding, and the women 
spend all their time with one another, naturally they 
develop all their love and affection for each other. How 
can you love a variety of people who are regarded as 
dangerous animals who have to be registered as proper- 
ty? And naturally, where there's love, there's probably 
sex too. You've seen homosexuals before this! Don't be 
so damned smug and condescending, as if you had a 
right to approve or disapprove! It's their society! It's all 
very well for Dal to find fault, he's not a trained 
anthropologist. . . there's no excuse for you doing it!
  Just the same, she felt sorry for the women, not
allowed to keep a Companion till they were Vaniya's
age, and forced to get their love, even their sex, from
one another. No, not forced, they chose. . . did they
really choose, without open options in the society?
  I guess my own cultural prejudices go a lot deeper
than I ever realized. . .
  The Pro-Matriarch was not present that night at
dinner; but prodded by Dal, Cendri approached Mir-
anda.
  "Is there any possibility we could begin our work in
the ruins soon, Miranda?"
Miranda avoided her eyes, saying, "I really know
nothing about it, Cendri, you must ask the Pro-
Matriarch. "
  "I know you sometimes make decisions in her
place-" Cendri persisted, but Miranda said, "No, not
about such matters, only those pertaining to the
household. I really don't have the authority, Cendri.I
know how you feel about your work, but you must
await my mother's decision."
   Later when they were in their room again, Dal
fumed. "How long are they going to put us off? Why
did you let her put you off again?"
  "Dal, I went as far as I could. I know I made
Miranda very uncomfortable-"
  "Maybe if you made her uncomfortable enough,
she'd start demanding a decision from Vaniya! Cendri,
if we don't hear something definite in a day or two, I
think we ought to go to the other Pro-Matriarch-
what's her name, Mahala-and see if she can do
anything for us. Maybe we can use the rivalry between
them to get things moving!"
  "Dal, I really don't think we ought to. I don't want to
alienate V aniya-'-"
  "Damn it, Cendri," he exploded, "You're doing the
work you're interested in, you're studying these
people-"
  "Dal, lower your voice," she said sharply, "If they
overheard that, it would be the end of our welcome
here!"
  He dropped his voice almost to a whisper. He said,
"But what of my work, Cendri, the work we came here
to do for the Unity?"
  "Vaniya has been occupied with the damage from
the quake-"
  "Oh, come on! If quakes are as common as that here,
it wouldn't be up to the Pro-Matriarch to handle it all
personally! That's the excuse she's making-just to
delay us!" He went to the window and stared down
morosely at the distant ruins.
  "Have you found out, yet, why ttey call them
We-were-guided?"
  "I've had no chance to ask, Dal."
  "Why not? Sharrioz/" he stormed, "the ruins are
what you're mainly supposed to be interested in, here!
What do you and Miranda talk about?"
  Cendri sighed and said, "Nothing in particular, Dal,
nothing that would interest you." It was true, and she
resented it; all the things she was learning about this
world, all the strangenesses, the wonder of the differ-
ence, meant nothing to Dal; she had learned that in the
first few days. Suddenly she was overcome by a surge of
resentment so enormous it was all she could do to keep
from throwing something at him.
  He expects me to be interested, even enthralled, in his
damned ruins. Yet he won't take the slightest interest in
my work!
  Dal threw himself down in the padded alcove where
they slept. "Aren't you coming to bed?"
  "Later, Dal," she said, turning her back on him. "I
want to write up my notes for today. One of us ought to
do some work."
  He scrambled up; stood over her in a rage.
  "That's not fair! It isn't my fault we haven't started
the work we came here to do!"
  "I didn't mean that," she said, sighing. "I'm sorry,
Dal. Tomorrow I'll try to find out if Vaniya will see me,
and put it to her that we should really begin our work in
the ruins. And if not-well, perhaps you are right,
perhaps we should approach the other Pro-Matriarch."
  He said, a little placated, "Is the High Matriarch still
in her coma, neither living nor dying?"
Cendri nodded. "We may have to wait until she
recovers or dies, Dal. That may be what they are
waiting for."
  He grumbled, "And what if the political party who
doesn't want the ruins touched, comes into power
then? I think we ought to make some attempt to start
work; so that at least the Unity knows whether or not
they are genuinely ruins of the Builders, or just some
ordinary extinct civilization-"
  "I couldn't agree more, Dal," Cendri said, sighing
and putting away her notes. She could not write them
up in peace when Dal was in this mood. It seemed there
was only one way to placate his bruised pride. She tried
to make allowances for it; this was the only function he
was supposed to have here, it was no wonder that he
tried to make an impression the only way he could, to
leave the stamp of his body on Cendri, to make up for
his humiliation otherwise on this world. But she found
herself helplessly resenting it, enduring it, without
desire, feeling used and exhausted.
  But how would I expect him to feel, here? Loyally,
trying to stifle her resentment, she allowed him to lead
her to the padded alcove. Amusement corner, she
thought wryly, whose amusement?
  Hours later she woke, to a sound like a thunderclap.
A moment later she heard screens toppling over in the
main part of the room, the cries of children wakened
roughly out of sleep, and thought; an earthquake!
Again, so soon?
  Dal was sitting up at her side, listening to the sound,
everywhere in the house, of collapsing screens, rattling
dishes, crying children. There was a soft, urgent
rapping on their door. A low voice called, "You are
safe, Scholar Dame, the worst is already over, but you
must join us outdoors; it is better to remain outside
until we are sure there will be no aftershocks!"
  Cendri threw on a random garment, hurried down
the steps, Dal at her side. She heard crying children,
the sound of older children sleepily protesting. A
woman she knew only by sight clutched at her arm and
asked, "Will your Companion carry my little son? He is
too heavy for my arms, and too sleepy to walk!"
  Dal hoisted the child good-naturedly, only saying to
Cendri in a low voice, "They could have asked me!"
They went out on the lawn. It was an hour or two
before daybreak; the air was cold, and the grass
soaking wet with dew, the heavy smell of herbs hanging
in the air. The women of the household were gathering
on the lawn, in all stages of disarray and partial dress.
Vaniya, her hair standing up wildly around her head,
but nevertheless as composed and calm as if she were at
a diplomatic banquet on University, was moving from
group to group, talking in low, encouraging tones.
Rhu, at her heels, looked drowsy and unkempt,
barefoot, in a long white tunic. Vaniya came quickly,
but without visible signs of hurry, toward Cendri, as
Dal put the child down beside its mother.
  "You are unhurt, Cendri? Good. But truly, there is
no danger; there has never been any quake but the
mildest, so close to We-were-guided. I hope your
Companion was not too frightened? Most men are
afraid to sleep above ground level." She turned to one
of the women crowding close and said, "Send a
messenger to the Me's House, and reassure them
there is no need for alarm."
  The woman hurried away. Although V aniya seemed
calm, Cendri could see that something was troubling
her; her eyes moved restlessly from group to group.
Everyone seemed to be out of the house now; no more
women or children were coming down the steps.
Vaniya said, distressed, "I do not see Miranda-where
is she? Where is she? Rhu, do you see her? Cendri?"
  Cendri looked around for Miranda, but the tall
woman with the long dark braid and the heavy preg-
nant body was nowhere to be seen. Vaniya asked a
woman nearby, "Where is Miranda? Do you see her
anywhere?" and another, "Her room is next to yours,
did you not see her come down the steps?"
  "No, Mother, I thought her already gone-"
  "Goddess protect us!" Vaniya turned, her face
drawn with dread, and hurried back toward the steps.
"Miranda! Miranda!"
  Rhu ran after her; caught up with her at the foot of
the steps, remonstrating firmly. "Let me go! You must
not trust yourself inside again, there may be after-
shocks!"
  "You, Rhu? You? No, indeed, you would not be safe
there!" she said in amazement, "She is my daughter,
bearing my heir-I must go and find her-"
  Vaniya's eldest daughter, Lialla, caught Vaniya by
her arms. "Indeed, Mother," she said urgently, "You
must not risk yourself, you are needed here! Zamila
and I will go; but I think it most likely that Miranda
simply slept through the first shocks! I almost did so
myselfl" She turned to Rhu, and said, "Look after her,
don't let her follow us!"
  Vaniya remained, twisting her hands nervously,
ignoring Rhu, who was trying without success to
persuade her to move away from the steps, to sit down
and rest. Cendri came slowly toward her, and the Pro-
Matriarch said with staccato nervousness, "I am afraid
for her. She might have been hurt by something falling
in her room, she might have tripped and fallen on the
stairs, she might have been overcome by premature
labor-I knew I should insist that she have someone to
sleep in her room-"
  Cendri said comfortingly, "It is most likely that she
slept through the whole quake, Vaniya; it was the
screens falling which wakened me."
  "But Miranda is such a light sleeper," Vaniya
fretted. Then, slowly, turning toward the groups of
women, "I must go and see whether anyone else is
missing-"
  "That I will do for you," Rhu said firmly, and hurried
away. Vaniya sighed and watched him go, letting
herself lean heavily on the stone balustrade of the steps
to the Residence. She said defensively, "I should go,
but Rhu is really very capable and responsible-"
  He came back after a time, saying, "Every soul in
your household is here and safe, save only Miranda.
Has she been found?"
  Vaniya's answer was drowned by cries from the
women; Cendri felt the stone balustrade beneath their
hands tremble, with an obscene rippling and cracking;
Dal grabbed Cendri from behind and held her upright
as the balustrade broke away; Vaniya stumbled and
went down. Inside the front door of the house were
feminine screams; Vaniya gasped, "It is Miranda-,"
and struggled to her feet, thrusting away Rhu's hands.
She plunged up the stairs, but Rhu hurried past her,
shoving at the door; it stuck, cracked, finally came
open, awry on its hinges. Inside, in the gap, Lialla and
her partner appeared, leading Miranda between them.
She was limping, and Vaniya cried out, stumbling up
the steps toward her, clasping her daughter in her arms.
crying out in dismay.
  "Mother, mother, you must not be frightened,"
Miranda protested, holding her close. "I twisted an
ankle on a fallen screen, no more, and I felt it better
not to try the stairs alone, for fear of falling-" She
held her mother reassuringly, in a tight hug. "Really.
really, I am not hurt-my ankle pains me, that is all-"
  Rhu reappeared, thrusting himself through the gap. I
"The balustrades are cracked and fallen; no more harm !
is done," he reported. "Is it-is it well with the Lady
Miranda?"
  "Yes, thanks to your strong arms," Miranda said.
"We could not open the door, Mother, it stuck from 
inside until Rhu added his strength to ours. . . ."
  "The Goddess be thanked," Vaniya said with a long 
sigh of relief, holding Miranda a little away to look 
gratefully at her, "When I did not see you among the
household on the lawn, I thought I would die of terror! 
Is the child truly safe, Miranda? Shall I send for our
midwives, to be with you until we are sure that the
shock will have no ill effects?"
  Miranda laughed, holding her hands across her
bulging belly. "She is alive and well, and telling me in
no uncertain way that she does not like to be hurried on
the stairs," she said, gaily, "and I am out of breath, and
when we get inside again I will need a length of
bandage for my ankle, but I am not in labor, nor likely
to be for another change-of-the-moon! I was only
frightened when we found the door wedged shut, and if
there had been another shock it might have fallen on
top of us, the hinges were warped. But all is well,
thanks to Rhu-" she gave him a little quick smile; he
colored and looked away. "It is my pleasure to serve
the Lady," he said in his queer formal way.
  Miranda, limping heavily on her right foot, came
toward Cendri. "I trust you were not frightened,
Scholar Dame, nor your Companion. Weare safe here,
the ground rarely shakes so close to We-were-
guided-" she pointed toward the ruins. "See, they
have endured unfallen for more centuries than we can
measure, though some day you may indeed measure
how much time has gone by that they still bestow their
love and concern among us."
  Cendri looked up at the ruins, thinking, somewhat
bemused; yes, that's true. How is it that the ruins there
have never fallen? Did they build in such a way that
they can resist earthquake? Or did they choose a place
known to be free of quakes? It could, she thought,
hardly be that; so close to Ariadne, which had twice in
the past ten days been ravaged by a light quake. . . .
  "Look," said Lialla, "the quake must indeed have
been 'severe; you can see the glow of fires inside the
City wall. . . ."
  Freed of anxiety about Miranda, the Pro-Matriarch
was quickly recalled to her duty. She said to Rhu, "Go
quickly, and summon my car, and a driver! Has Maret
checked the instrument to find out where the quake was
centered?"
  "Here, Mother." The huge gross body of the
woman-by-courtesy came toward them, a sheet of
paper hanging from its pudgy hand. "The recording
instrument showed the center of the quake to be very
near here; possibly it was worse inside the city, but it
was not serious at all, the worst must be over."
  "Thank you, dear child," said Vaniya, patting the
puffy white fingers. "It must be over then, a quake of
that strength rarely has any aftershocks, and, the
Goddess be thanked, it was on land so that we need not
fear any great waves on the shore! But still I must go
and make certain all is well with the High Matriarch,
and I must see if there is any serious damage reported
to the city Mothers. Also I must be certain all is well
with my colleague Mahala." She looked uneasily at
Miranda. "I do not like to leave you when you are
hurt-"
  Miranda smiled. "Mother, don't fuss; it is only a
twisted ankle and my sisters can look after me perfectly
well. If you don't believe me, ask Maret, she will tell
you!"
  Vaniya turned uncertainly to the woman-by-cour-
tesy. "Maret, is it well with my daughter and my heir,
is it safe to leave her?"
  Maret smiled vacantly; the wide blue eyes went blank
and the face turned vacant, sagging unpleasantly: After
a moment Maret. said, in an odd, dazed voice, "Mir-
anda is well and her child has taken no harm. . . ."
  Cendri wondered; is Maret a clairvoyant or some
kind of soothsayer, or simply a charlatan? Shamans in
some cultures renounced their gender. . . . She bent
and picked up the long slip of paper which the limp
fingers had released when Maret let his-or was it
her?--eyes go blank. It appeared to be a perfectly
ordinary readout from one of the old style seismo-
graphs. Strange, the mixture of science and supersti-
tion, that Maret would be in charge of this and
simultaneously consulted for clairvoyant advice!
  Miranda took an unwary step and grabbed at the
nearest thing, which happened to be Dal. Abashed, she
took her hand away as if the contact had burned her,
and Cendri reached out and steadied her. She clung
gratefully to Cendri, saying, "I had better not try to
walk until my foot is bandaged-"
  Rhu knelt in front of Miranda, a strip of cloth torn
from his tunic in his hands, and began to wind it tightly
around her injured ankle. She looked shyly away, and
Vaniya beckoned to one of the women, who came and
briskly brushed Rhu aside, strapping the improvised
bandage into place and knotting it tight. Miranda got to
her feet, leaning on Cendri, and tested her weight on
the ankle. "That's better," she said, "Thank you,
Haliya." She did not glance at Rhu even momentarily.
  "Go and do what you must, Mother, now my ankle is
steady under me 1 can do whatever is necessary. Your
car is waiting, and you are needed in the city..~'
  Still reluctant, Vaniya gave Miranda's hands a final
squeeze, and climbed into the car. Rhu said, "Shall 1
come with you, Vaniya?"
  "No, my dear, what possible help could you be? Stay
here and look after yourself, keep the Scholar Dame's
Companion amused and out of the way," she admon-
ished gently, and closed the door.
  Rhu turned disconsolately back to them as the car
drove away, but Miranda, moving firmly on her
bandaged foot, had already begun moving among the
groups of women, speaking to one after another. Rhu
moved toward Dal; Cendri hoped Dal would not be
rude to him; Dal had, indeed, admired Rhu's singing,
but he had no respect for the Companion and had, in
fact, been scathing, in private, about him.
  Cendri listened to Miranda giving orders that if there
were no aftershocks quite soon; they should all go
inside again and try to sleep, but that no kitchen fires
should be lighted until they were all quite sure the
danger was past. Admiring Miranda's domestic
efficiency--she was arranging for the serving of cold
food, and for workwomen to inspect each different area
when it was sufficiently light, to discover any possible
structural damage to walls and foundations of the
Residence-Cendri looked up toward the ruins, above
them on the hill. The sky was paling, out over the
ocean, with the coming dawn; the pinkish glow was
reflected on the tops of the ruins, and Cendri wondered
how long it would be before they were allowed to go
there.
  Vaniya could use the duties connected with this new
quake to delay even further. But what could she do? It
was unreasonable to ask the Pro-Matriarch to neglect a
city where there had been an earthquake and fires.
  Not that Cendri cared; this was the opportunity of a
lifetime to study the Matriarchate. But it was hard on
Dab. . . She looked at her husband, who was listen-
ing, with a strained patience, to Rhu. Naturally, Rhu
assumed that Dal was his own kind; a Companion, a
man whose main function was the amusement and
company of a woman of high prestige. I should find out
about that. Are only women of high social position
allowed to keep a Companion? And what do the rest of
the women do?
  Dal had enough good sense not to rebuff Rhu-after
all, any insult to the Pro-Matriarch's Companion might
very possibly be an insult to the Pro- Matriarch as well.
But he tended to avoid him when he could do so
without being obvious. . . .
  Miranda came back to Cendri. She said, "I think it is
allover; that last afie:rshock was so mild it would hardly
have knocked over a screen. But you must be careful
on the stairs, the balustrades have fallen. I think we can
send everyone back to bed." She stood looking at the
seismograph printout which Cendri still held, absently,
in her hand, after Maret let it fall, saying, "This was a
land-based quake; we can chart them, and even to
some extent predict them. And many of them are far
away inland, where no women live. We must take some
care to warn the males before they go inland hunting,
but otherwise there is little danger. " Yet she looked
troubled. "It is the great volcanic quakes, deep in the
sea-bed, which really cause trouble. We have no way to
predict them, and no warning for the great tidal waves
which devastate our coastland. And sometimes small
quakes like this herald the great quakes and waves-"
  Cendri said, "In the Unity now, Miranda, there are
sophisticated computers which can chart and predict
the drift of all the tectonic continental plates, even of
undersea seismic activity, and compute the strength of
the resulting tsunamis-tidal waves-as well as precise-
ly where they will strike and with what strength."
  Miranda nodded. "I had guessed there must be," she
said, "even in the days when my mother came to Isis
from Persephone, there were some such machines. But
they are available only to the richest worlds, and after
the Labrys disaster, we had no resources to buy such
equipment. All our resources could not make them
available for at least another hundred years." She
looked, dejectedly, at the seismograph printout in her
hand. "Land-based quakes do little trouble, because of
the way our houses are designed, and our furniture,
and we have very rigid fire-laws. But every year there
are tidal waves which sweep away villages, destroy
boats, destroy the pearl-harvests. . . . I do not know if
Isis can endure another hundred years, until we can
somehow acquire such equipment!" She sighed,
adding, "And if we cannot hold out here, 1 do not know
what we will do-"
  Suddenly, recalling herself, she turned her attention
to her guest. "Cendri, it will be quite safe now for you
and your Companion to return to your rooms. Sleep
again, if you can; we will send breakfast to your room
at whatever hour you desire, and later in the afternoon
I will send workwomen to repair or take away any
broken screens, or replace anything which is
damaged. "
  Cendri said, "I suppose the Pro-Matriarch will be
absent most of the day? Is there any possibility that we
might be able to begin our work in the ruins soon?"
  "Not today, I fear," Miranda said, "Even if the
qamage in the city is minimal, she must make a visit to a
village down the coast which was nearly destroyed by a
quake sometime before you landed here. We have had
word that their boats and nets have been repaired, and
they are ready to begin their yearly pearl-harvest. Since
the High Matriarch still lies sick, unable to speak or
perform her duties, my mother must go there and give
her blessing to the boats and the pearl-divers. Have you
seen our pearl-divers?"
  Cendri shook her head. "I have heard of the pearls of
Isis, of course; they are said to be the finest in the
Galaxy. "
  "They are our major item of trade," Miranda
confirmed, "There are some who say that the export of
pearls should be stopped-that the pearls are the tears
of the Goddess, and that it is not right for them to be
sent offworld where She is not held in the highest
reverence."
  "The whole Galaxy would be the poorer, if the pearls
of Isis could not be sent anywhere else," Cendri said.
  "Isis would be the poorer, too," said Miranda
frankly. "Our world needs many things which we
cannot make for ourselves. Our pearls are our greatest
asset-indeed, almost our only hope of someday having
the equipment I spoke of, which may some day allow us
to predict and control the tsunamis which wipe out our
coastal villages and kill so many of our sea-farmers. I
fear I have not as much faith as those who feel we
should trust entirely to the mercy of the Goddess, or
even the love and concern of the Builders. But enough
of that," she added quickly, "Go and rest, my friend. "
She put her arm briefly around Cendri's shoulders and
hugged her. "If you are not too weary, later in the day,
would you like to go with me, and see the blessing of
the pearl-divers?"
  "I would indeed," Cendri said, "I have not yet
visited your seashore."
  Miranda blinked, a little, with an uneasy laugh, then
recalled herself. She said, "Well, a visit to a pearl-
diver's village is perhaps nearly as welcome an expedi-
tion. We will leave just after mid-day, unless another
quake should happen, which is not at all likely." She
turned to look toward Dal and Rhu, saying, "Call your
Companion, he may not know it is safe to go back in
the house."
  Cendri hesitated-she hated to summon Dal pe-
remptorily, as Vaniya did with Rhu, but it was true he
should be told. She beckoned to Dal, and relayed the
news.
  "We can go inside? Good; this is an unholy hour to
get up," Dal said, and put his arm around her waist as
they began to climb the stairs; under Miranda's startled
look Cendri quickly slipped away from his touch, trying
not to feel guilty at Dal's irritable look.
  She looked back, briefly, as they went through the
warped hinges of the door. No one remained on the
lawn now but Miranda and Rhu; Miranda's face,
lighted by the sunrise, seemed transformed, quite
without her usual aloof shyness; she was talking to
Rhu, absorbedly. After a moment Rhu put his hand
under her arm and began to assist Miranda toward the
steps. Suddenly aware that she was staring, Cendri
started and hurried inside.
  She told herself not to imagine things. Rhu was
Vaniya's Companion; Miranda was the Pro-Matriarch's
most cherished daughter and pregnant with her heir.
Rhu was deeply devoted to Vaniya, it was no wonder
he should exercise the most careful devotion and
protectiveness toward Miranda. And yet-something
Cendri called instinct made her lift her eyebrows, ask
herself: Rhu and Miranda?
  Nonsense, she told herself. She didn't know enough
about the relationship to jump to conclusions like that!
She followed Dal up the steps.
  In their room, Dallooked with dismay at the books
and recordings showered allover the floor. "I should
have taken those holders on the shelves more seriously!
It never occurred to me there would be another quake
so soon!" Disgustedly, he bent to assess the disorder.
"I don't suppose that while you were talking to Vaniya,
or that precious daughter of hers, you thought to ask if
we could get started in the ruins any time in the
foreseeable future?"
  "As a matter of fact, Dal, I did," she protested, "but
Miranda said that this afternoon she was supposed to
go and visit a pearl-diver's village, to bless their boats
or something-"
  "All right, all right," Dal said in disgust. "I get the
picture, you let her put us off again!"-
  "I let her?" That left Cendri speechless. "What was I
supposed to do, kick and scream and put up a fight
about it? Vaniya has duties of her own-I can't insist
she neglect them, Dal. Anyway, it will be interesting to
see the pearl-divers' villages-"
  "For you, maybe," Dal said, tight-lipped. "I'm not
interested in quaint native customs." He turned away,
lifting one of the fallen screens.
  "Leave it, Dal, Miranda said she would send work-
women to repair the screens and the other damage-"
  "I have to have something to do, don't I?" he asked
savagely. "You have enough to keep you busy-and do
you really think I'd trust those damned women with our
reference books and tapes?" He turned his back on
Cendri and began gathering up the scattered materials.
Cendri sighed, and said nothing. It occurred to her that
she was getting a lot of practice in holding her tongue
lately. She went and lay down, with no expectation of
getting back to sleep; but after a time she fell into an
uneasy doze.
  She was wakened by a soft, furtive rapping; she
looked around, but Dal had vanished into the other
room of the suite. She got up and went slowly toward
the door, but before she reached it, it was thrust
violently open, and a man sidled quickly through the
door, shoved it shut behind him.
  A man; the first she had seen, other than Rhu, inside
the Pro-Matriarch's residence. He was small and bent
and hunched, his hair grey, his eyes wide with fear,
looking all around himself with quick, furtive, darting
glances. His lips were a thin, terrified line; he had been
branded, and the brand was like a flaming scar across
the wrinkled forehead. Cendri had grown so used, in
these days, to seeing only women, that she was
frightened. His eyes looked so wild! Maybe here the
men really were dangerous animals, cultural traits were
more important than inborn ones. . . .
  "What do you want here?" she said sharply, and at
the way he twitched at her voice, she realized he was
more afraid of her than she could possibly be of him!
His voice was only a shaking whisper.
  "I must see the--the Scholar from the Outside
Worlds-from the maleworlds-"
  "I am the Scholar," Cendri said, baffled, "What do
you want with me?"
  "Respect, Scholar," he whispered, in his frightened
voice, his eyes darting here and there in terror, alert for
any movement, with little scared movements of his
head. "We had heard-it was rumored-there is a male
here from the--the outside worlds-if it is not for-
bidden-"
  "I think he wants to talk to me, Cendri," Dal said in
his deep voice, coming up behind her. He shoved her
aside-Cendri registered the man's shock at that-and
faced the man. "What is your name?"
  "Bak, respected Him," the stranger said, in a
somewhat stronger whisper. "Truly, you dare speak so,
you are here from-"
  "There is no time for that," Dal said quickly, and
from where she stood, watching, Cendri contrasted
Dal's quiet poise with the terrified Bak. "I am the
Master Scholar Dallard Malocq. Have you a sign for
me?"
  Recalling himself, the man made the curious sign
Cendri had seen at the space-shuttle port; bunching the
fingers together, touching the thumb, slowly drawing
them apart. He said, in his shrill whisper, "We were not
born in chains-"
  "Nor will you die in them," Dal said, "I do not know
if those are the words you want, but I think we should
talk. Cendri, go and leave us alone. . ."
  Slowly, Cendri moved away from the door as Dal
drew Bak into the: room. He said, "I have been
expecting someone. Come and tell me-'-damnation!
What is that commotion? Come in here, quickly-"
  He drew him quickly through the door of the
bathroom, as pounding feet raced up the stairs. Then,
rudely, the door was thrust inward, and two or three
sturdy women stepped inside.
  Cendri began to protest: "What is-"
  "Respect, Scholar," one of the women said, "but we
have reason to believe an escaped male has taken
refuge here. Our duties require us to search." Cendri
began to protest, but they moved quickly around the
room, opened the bathroom door, called to her com-
panions; after a moment they reappeared with Bak
struggling between them.
  "Be quiet, you," said the leader, roughly, jerking
him along with one arm. "It's the Punishment House
for you this time, Bak, and probably a flogging as well!
When they learn you've intruded into the quarters of
the Scholar from University-"
  Dal stepped toward them; made a menacing gesture.
He said, "Let go of him! He is my guest, and came to
talk to me! Take your hands off him, I said!"
  Cendri watched, paralyzed in horror, as the woman
thrust out her truncheon and gave Dal a vicious blow in
the stomach. He yelled and fell, doubled up, to the
ground. The woman said angrily, "Restrain your
Companion, Scholar Dame, or we will be forced to hurt
it!" Unprovoked, she gave the writhing Dal a savage
kick, jerked hard on Bak's arm.
  Cendri said, struggling for composure, "I don't
understand. This man-" she indicated the cowering
Bak, "has done nothing; it came and asked, politely, to
speak with my-my Companion. I do not understand
why a guest of the Unity should be hauled away as a
captive."
  The woman guard raised her face, her jaw set and
contemptuous. "You are not now in the maleworlds,
Scholar Dame, and males cannot intrude with impunity
into the houses of women. You-" she said to Bak,
whose defiance had collapsed, so that he stood shiver-
ing between his captors. "Who owns you?"
  He stood defiantly silent.
  "Speak, you!" shouted the woman guard, striking
him across the face. Obstinately he remained silent; she
came and jerked at his collar, forcing his head up. She
studied the red brand across his forehead a moment,
then said in angry disgust, "The Pro-Matriarch Mahala!
See, Scholar Dame, it's a plot to discredit you; we've
seen you here and we know you'd never have invited
this here-" she made a sneering gesture, "but there
are women all over Ariadne who might believe it! And
then there would be no chance for you to do your work
here without scandal! Take it away," she ordered.
  "We'll hold the creature till Mother Vaniya has time to
deal with it as it deserves!"
 Cendri moved to Dal, knelt beside him.
 "Dal-did they hurt you?" she begged. One of the
women, who held Bak's limp arm, guffawed; the leader
of the women guards turned, with a savage gesture.
"Hold your noise!" she commanded, "The Scholar
Dame's from off-world, you have no right to make
donkey noises about everything you don't understand;
just tend to your prisoner there, girl!"
  She ushered the women and their prisoner out of the
room. Cendri was shaking all over.
  Dal swore as he picked himself up. His hands cradled
his bruised stomach.
  "I never thought I'd want to hit a woman, but
Sharrioz! I'd like to cram that truncheon down her
throat!"
  "Dal, what was that all about? They said he came
from the Pro-Matriarch Mahala-a plot to discredit
me?"
  "That's nonsense."
  "Dal, what was it, ~hen? Do you know who he was?"
she surveyed him in dread. "You know you must not
get involved in their politics-"
  He frowned. "Look, Cendri, this is my affair; don't
meddle. I know what I am doing." He glanced at the
timepiece he wore, and said politely, "The Lady
Miranda will be waiting for you. Go along to visit the
blessing of the pearl-divers, or whatever it is, and don't
worry. I can look after myself, Cendri; I was doing it a
long time before I ever met you."
  "Dal-" she hesitated, frightened. "Oh, Dal, don't
get into any trouble," she begged. But he only repeat-
ed, smoothly, "The Lady Miranda is waiting for you."
 
 
 
                 Chapter Five
 
 
 
  THE VILLAGE OF THE PEARL-DIVERS WAS ONLY A LmLE
way along the shore; it seemed to lie at the very foot of
the ruins, and Cendri looked up at them in frustration.
How long would Vaniya continue to stall them off? If
Dal, she thought, could get into them, start the work he
had come to do, he would not be tempted to engage in
dangerous and, certainly, illegal intrigues with the men.
She thought, between dread and anger, that could get
us sent away from Isis. University makes it very clear
that the Scholars who go to study a culture must not
entangle themselves in politics. . .
  "Look," Miranda said. "We are in time; there is my
mother by the sea-waIl-"
  Vaniya, draped in impressive folds of crimson and
purple, was standing before a little group of slender,
naked women, hair cropped close to their heads,
formidable knives strapped to their waists. Cendri
could not hear what she was saying, but she passed
before the women, and one by one, they knelt and she
laid her hands on their heads and then on their knives.
Then they all knelt, and after a moment Cendri heard a
high, chanting lament.
  Miranda murmured, "They are singing a memorial
for the women killed in the last pearl-diving season. It
is a very dangerous trade; in this little village alone,
four women were killed last year. Would you like to go
nearer?"
  "Yes I think so-"
  Slowly, they picked their way across the shore,
littered with seaweed, driftwood, rocks and shells.
Cendri looked at the flimsy houses, built just above
high-tide mark, at the small boats, circular, and built of
wood and fiber. "Are they all pearl-divers in this
village?" she asked, looking at the women and children
clustered on the shore watching the ceremony.
  "Nearly all. They have been bred for generations for
the diving, and from the time they are very little girls
they are taught to remain under water for a longer time
every day. I can swim well, but when I was a small girl I
had a friend here in this village; she was in my school.
Even then she could stay under water for a time that
made me dizzy and my ears ring." Miranda said. "Once
I nearly drowned because I would not come up before
she did, and I lost consciousness; if the matron had not
fished me out I would have died. It was then I learned
that all the differences between women are not due
entirely to education and training, bur are inborn, part
of the self, and competition is useless, a game for
men. . . look, my mother is putting a blessing on their
knives. That is in order that the Goddess may keep
away the creatures of the sea, and they may not be
forced to shed blood in Her holy realms. . ."
  "Is your Goddess a sea-Goddess, then?"
  "She is the Goddess of the whole; the World-
mother," Miranda said, "When the First Mothers dwelt
on Persephone, they worshipped the Goddess by that
name; here She is Isis, the spirit that inhabits rocks and
soil, air and winds; but we worship her especially in the
sea, because it is from the Sea, so our scientists and our
wise-women alike tell us, that all life comes on any
world. "
  No wonder they renamed this world, Cendri thought,
struggling with a smile, who could worship a Goddess
by the name of Cinderella? She asked, "Is fishing
forbidden, then, if blood cannot be shed. . . ?"
  "Gh, no," Miranda said, "the Mother sends food
from the Sea, and," she added, with a quick shift from
religious faith to practical wisdom, "we have not
enough arable land to raise all of our food as yet. But
blood is shed there only in the last extremity. Mo.st fish
are taken with nets; it is less of an offense to the
Goddess, or so many of our people still believe, and -
will not eat spear-caught fish. And when we visit the sea
and the men are allowed to go spear-fishing, many
women refuse to eat the fish caught by blood spilled in
Her waters." She laid her hands over tIer pregnant
belly and said, "I shall not visit the sea this season, I
shall have a child at my breast-" she sighed. "Look,
they are lowering their boats; let us go up by the
sea-wall where we can tee them put out. The pearl-beds
are offshore, by the rocks--you will see them from
there."
  They climbed the stairs together. Miranda was heavy
now, and stumbled, and Cendri took her arm, steady-
ing her on the last steps, which were slippery with spray
and sea-wrack left by the tide. She asked "When will
your baby be born?"
  "With the next Full Moon, or so the Inquirers have
told me," Miranda said. "I will be glad when she is
here, I am weary of dragging around like this."
  Cendri wanted to know who the father was, but was
not yet sure enough of herself to do so; men were never
mentioned, and it was all too easy to forget their
existence! She noted, however, that Miranda spoke of
her coming child as "she"; would she be disappointed if
her child were a male? Well, she.would certainly find
out when it was born, she might even find out some-
thing of the customs surrounding birth.
  "Look, the boats are away, that is the closing hymn,"
Miranda said. "When it is over, Mother and Rhu will
come. down to us. Cendri, why did your Companion not
come down with us today?"
  "Dal-Dal gets headaches in the sun," Cendri
improvised uneasily. .
  "Still, most men are glad of an opportunity to come
to the seashore when they are forbidden otherwise."
Miranda said, shading her eyes to watch the small boats
sculling toward the distant rocks which marked the
pearl-beds. "One of our legends says that pearls are the
tears of the Mother at what men have done to her
beautiful worlds. . . I know that is only a fairy tale,"
she said defensively. "I learned at school how it is that
the small sea creatures make pearls and their lovely
shells of nacre. But it is a pretty story-" She smiled
shyly at Cendri and drew out a narrow chain from the
folds of silk at her breast. Delicately encased in a small
filigree case of silver wire, a large rose-colored pearl
shimmered like some sea creature itself. "This is my
loveliest treasure-"
  "It is beautiful," Cendri said, thinking she had never
seen quite so large and beautiful a pearl.
  "Tell me, Cendri, is it true that in the worlds ruled by
men, pearls and jewels are given to women by men,
to--to reward them for their sexual functions?"
  Cendri blinked, startled by the phrasing of the
question. At last she said, carefully, "I cannot say that
this has never been a practice among men. But I think,
most of the time, when men give pearl&-or any
jewels--to women, they give them because they love
them, because they want to see them even more
beautiful, because they want to give pleasure to--to the
women they love."
  Miranda smiled and cradled the pink pearl in her
hand, tenderly. "I am-I am very glad to hear it," she
said, her fingertips lingering on it as a cherished thing.
Cendri thought; I wonder what man gave it to her? A
gift from the father of her child, perhaps? Again she felt
the sense of frustration; in the study of any society, one
of the first things an anthropologist had to know was
something about their mating customs, and so far, it
seemed, children sprang into being by spontaneous
generation! And even with Miranda, friendly as the
Pro-Matriarch's daughter had been, Cendri did not feel
secure enough to break the taboo.
  Vaniya, resplendent in her brilliant robes, slowly
came along the pier toward them. She said to Cendri,
"So my daughter has been guiding you and showing
you our rites-do you like our pearl-divers?"
  "They are certainly brave," Cendri said with a
shiver.
  "They are born to this work, and trained from
infancy for it," Vaniya said, "and they are well-
rewarded; there is no work in our society more highly
regarded than to descend into the bosom of Isis and
bring up her tears for all women everywhere to admire,
and to the ends of your Unity, our pearls are consid-
ered the finest. In fact, our divers are so well-rewarded
and so admired that it is all we can do to persuade them
to take off a year, now and then, to bear daughters to
inherit their craft! Some day, perhaps, our scientist will
find a way to avoid wasteful bearing of sons in crafts
where the blood lines are so important. We can create
parthenogenetic females for this craft, of course, and
that would give us more divers for a short time, but the
daughters so born would be sterile. And many of our
fisherwomen are ignorant, and feel that such concep-
tions are an offense against Nature. I can understand
why no woman wishes to take a season off from her
work, even though we pay them well for their resting
time, only to discover she has not borne a daughter to
inherit her craft but only a useless male. Some have
even been know to kill their male children. I am forced
to judge such women and punish them, but it goes
hard!"
  Miranda said, "In the worlds of the Unity it is
possible to insure the conception of male and female at
will-is this not so, Cendri?"
  "Yes, certainly."
  "That would have a certain limited social useful-
ness," Vaniya said, "it might well be encouraged
among such as the pearl-divers. But it could have
dangers too-would any woman be content to bear a
male if she could win status and recognition with a
daughter? And then where would we be? You are not
old enough to remember, Miranda, but when the Grey
Plague killed only males, many women were frenzied
with fear they would be doomed to live childless.
Fortunately the Goddess was merciful, and twice as
many males were born in the next three seasons, but we
have had a frightening scare. Men, too, have their place
in the balance of nature, and you must never forget it,
Miranda."
  "Oh, Mother," said Miranda impatiently, "You
older women are always so afraid that any new way of
doing things will be an offense to the Goddess! If She
had not intended women to use their minds, she would
have made us all stupid! I think if you had your way, we
would all bear our babies squatting in the reeds like our
foremothers!"
  "You might do worse," said Vaniya, smiling serene-
ly. "But I have no wish to live in reed huts, and if I were
the reactionary you think me I would not have brought
Cendri here. And I know it is true that in the Unity
children can be conceived male or female at will. But I
do not know if it is so great a blessing. Is it usually a
matter of choice on your world, Cendri?"
  "Not entirely," Cendri said. "It has been prohibited
on some worlds and strictly regulated on others,
because of the desire of men or women for one sex, or
the other, has indeed disturbed the balance of nature.
Now it is used rarely, and by special permission; if a
family has had two children of one sex and wish for
another. Although on a few worlds it is taken for
granted that every woman will bear one son and one
daughter."
  "I suppose that is fair," Vaniya said, "though it
seems dull and regimented to me. And of course men
are useful to the world, also," she added, with a
carefully polite glance at Rhu, hovering, as usual, in the
background. "I myself find as much pleasure in Rhu's
company and conversation as that of another woman,
but of course Rhu is quite unusual; and II am growing
old and can afford to ignore convention a little." -
  Rhu said, in his slow, hesitating voice, "Have you
forgotten that it was Gar, of the household of Gracila,
who designed a way to deal with fluoride effluents in
the plastics industry, so they would not pollute the
waterway of the Goddess?"
  "I have just finished saying that there are extraordi-
nary men in the world, my dear," Vaniya said, patting
him carelessly on the cheek. "The Goddess knew what
she was doing when She created humankind both male
and female." She turned her attention to Miranda
again. "My child, where did you get that exquisite
pearl?" She touched the rose-colored gem with an
admiring finger.
  Miranda widened her eyes, saying innocently,
"Didn't you give it to me, Mother?"
  "You know perfectly well I did not, child, I have
never seen it before. "
  "I think it must have been a gift from one of my
kin-mothers," Miranda said, quickly slipping the chain
inside the neck of her frock, "but I have forgotten
which one, I think I have had it a long time. Are you
growing forgetful, Mother?"
  "Don't be impudent, child," Vaniya reproved, but
she smiled. "If it was a sea-gift you could have said so,
Miranda, we are all grown women here! A man, of
course, would not have known its value." She slipped
her hand through her daughter's arm, as they turned to
go. "Hold firmly to my arm, the stairs are slippery here,
and I would not like to see my granddaughter endan-
gered by carelessness. You should not have come up
here now, dearest."
  "I wanted to show Cendri the boats-"
  "Yes, it was a kind thought, but still-to endanger
yourself so," Vaniya fretted.
  Cendri heard a gentle voice at her elbow. "May I
offer my arm to the Scholar Dame? It is indeed slippery
here; and while it is right and natural that the Pro-
Matriarch should offer her support to the one who
bears her heir, I am sure that she would be most
unwilling to see the distinguished guest suffer a fall."
  Cendri took his arm, without hesitation; Rhu, from
everything she had seen, was the soul of propriety, and
would never make such an offer if it was not suitable.
She took his arm, steadying herself against the slipperi-
ness of the seaweed under foot. "The sea-view is
beautiful; I am grateful to Miranda for bringing me
here, even if it was unwise to risk herself on the steps."
  "The Lady Miranda is always most kind," Rhu
murmured, and looked away. Suddenly, with sharp
perceptions, Cendri remembered the morning, and the
sunrise on Miranda's face as she talked to Rhu, and
thought; he loves her.
  And yet, on a world where love is not much regarded
as part of the social structure, it must be .difficult to
love. . . On Cendri's world, and on many of the
worlds of the Unity, love between man and woman
served a useful social bond, social cohesion, establish-
ing mating bonds and making social arrangements for
the care and nurture of children. Serving this purpose,
love was respected and admired, and on many worlds
indissolubly bound up with sexuality. But here, where
social bonds and sexuality seemed not to be allied,
could love, as such, exist at all? Even in the Unity,
there were some who considered romantic love a
myth. . .
  "The Scholar Dame is silent," Rhu ventured, "I had
hoped your Companion would accompany you; I feel
remiss, that I have not sufficiently bestirred myself to
entertain him. Perhaps I could arrange a hunt, or some
form of expedition to divert him. . ." he broke off,
turning his head toward the sea.
  "The tide!" He leaned forward, touched Vaniya's
shoulder, and said, urgently, "Look at the tide!"
  "What's this? What's this?" demanded Vaniya,
turning around in irritation at his unaccustomed urgen-
cy; then she saw what he had seen, and gasped,
"Goddess protect us all!"
  The tide had gone far out-far, far out, sinking and
sinking as if it were draining into some bottomless pit
over the horizon. Stranded fish were gasping and dying,
squirming ropy sea-things laid bare, and Cendri could
see, at the foot of the rocks near the grounded boats of
the pearl-divers, the long, ridgy rows of shelled crea-
tures, thrusting up through an inch or less of sea-water.
  After a moment of shock, Vaniya quickly mastered
herself.
  "Miranda," she ordered, "Get back up the beach-
inside We-were-guided, if you must; but go, go quick-
ly!" She turned to Rhu and said, "Get her to safety, at
once!"
  Miranda pulled away from her mother's hand. She
said, "Send your Companion to safety if you must,
Mother, but I have a responsibility-these are my
people, too!"
  Vaniya touched the younger woman's swollen body.
She said, "Your responsibility, Miranda, is to her!" She
added quickly, to Cendri, "Go with them, at once!
There is great danger here, it is no place for men or
pregnant women! Within We-were-guided you will be
on high ground."
  Cendri stared, confused. "Danger? In low tide-"
  "It is not only low tide," said Vaniya, breathless. "It
is the tide-drop; far out at sea the earth shakes, and
before long a great wall of water will smash the shore
here! Go, quickly! See-" she pointed, "they have
seen, they are hurrying to the shore! I must stay here at
least until I am sure they are on their way to safety!"
  Miranda insisted "Mother, my place is at your
side-"
  Suddenly Cendri knew what was happening. She had
read it somewhere-that the extra-low tide, sucking
and draining back and back, was the warning-usually
the only warning, and it was a matter of minutes-of
the dreaded tsunami or tidal wave! She looked uncer-
tainly at Vaniya, understanding Miranda's qualms;
despite her strong presence, Vaniya was not young!
Making up her mind quickly, she took Vaniya's arm,
saying urgently, "Take your child to safety, Miranda! I
will stay beside your mother and make sure she gets to
high ground before the water strikes!"
  Miranda smiled, gratefully; quickly pressed Cendri's
hands and hurried away with Rhu. Vaniya spared only
seconds to follow them with her eyes; Miran.da leaning
heavily on Rhu's arm as he guided her across the
slippery beach and up toward the hillside at the top of
which lay the ruins of We-were-guided. She turned
back to Cendri, accepting her presence without ques-
tion, and Cendri thought, yes, of course; I am a young,
able-bodied, unencumbered woman; my place, on this
world, is at the center of any danger! She felt fright-
ened, but determined to remain and prove herself
worthy of being a woman in this culture.
  "What can I do, Vaniya?"
  Vaniya pointed to a tower built above the cliffs.
"Your legs are younger and faster than mine; run,
Cendri, and make sure they have seen-find out why
they have not rung the alarm! Then come back and we
will make sure that everyone seeks higher ground-we
will guide them up into the ruins, no wave has ever
come into We-were-guided!"
  Cendri ran down toward the tower; her feet slipped
on seaweed and her thin sandals were cut to ribbons by
the sharp rocks; she ran on, limping and stumbling, and
knew her feet were bleeding. On the steps of the tower
she hesitated, seeing the door swinging open; was
anyone inside at all? She could see the bell inside the
tower, but no one seemed near it.
  "I wonder what has happened to the watch?" said a
worried voice behind her, and Cendri turned to see a
young woman with closecut curly red hair, in a dark
pajama suit. "If she were there and alive she would
have rung the bell already-<:ome, quickly! If she is in
no state to ring it, we must somehow manage to do it
ourselves. . ."
  Together, panting, they hurried up the twisting,
worn stairs. Of course, a watch-tower would be the first
thing built in a village given to tidal waves. . . this one
must be very old. . . the woman at her side thrust the
door open, drew a harsh breath of consternation.
  "Look, it must have been the earthquake this
morning, no one thought to come and make sure she
was not hurt. . ."
  Cendri felt her throat catch as the woman with red
hair pointed. On the floor of the small, bare room, a
woman lay at the foot of an overturned shelf; her skull
was crushed by a heavy pot which had evidently fallen.
Cendri saw in one glance that she had been old, and
skinny; blood matted her grey hair at the scalp, blood
spattered her shabby robe, but she must have died
instantly. The red-haired woman went to her side, but
Cendri said urgently, "No! We can't do anything for
her! Where is the bell?"
  The red-haired woman, looking greenish sick, got
shakily to her feet. "You are right-but it goes
hard-there, up those stairs-"
  Trembling, Cendri set her foot on the stairs. They,
too, had been damaged by the earthquake; some of the
wooden struts were missing, and dreadful gaps showed
below, but they climbed, setting their feet carefully
against the need for haste, clinging to one another for
balance on the rickety structure. They came out into
the open bell-tower, and Cendri saw the ropes dangling
from above. She grabbed them, yanked. She heard the
cry of warning as the red-haired woman grabbed her
round the waist from behind, holding her firmly, even
so, the recoil of the great bell-rope nearly knocked her
off her feet. Above her the great clanging of the brazen
sound made her cry out, clap her hands to her ears as
the echoes reverberated, clanged, howled at her. They
~wung the rope again, getting into the rhythm of the
swing now, hearing the bell ring wildly along the shore,
raising echoes and starting sea-birds, screaming, from
the rocks.
  The red-haired woman pulled her hand off the rocks.
"Now we must go-they have heard," she said, and
pointed below; Cendri, stunned and deafened by the
bell, could not hear, but she could see women and
children running from the houses in the village. She
looked, aghast, at the boats marooned on the rocks, the
women stumbling hopelessly toward the shore.
  "Can't anything be done to save them-?"
  "Maybe some of them will get to shore," the woman
said. "But we must go! Quickly! The tower is high, but
the structure has been damaged by the earthquake, and
if the wave strikes it, it may be washed away! Hurry!"
  Cendri needed no urging. They hurried down the
stairs, slipping on the damaged stairs, emerging with
claustrophobic thankfulness into the sunlight. Women
and children were hurrying toward higher ground,
struggling up the slopes toward the black, angular loom
of the ruins. Cendri ran back toward Vaniya.
  "Come, you must go, Vaniya-" .
  "Why had Grania not rung the watch-bell?"
  "She could not," said the red-haired woman, hurry-
ing up beside Cendri. "Respect, Mother and Priestess,
you must come to safety too, your life is not yours to
risk, but belongs to your people! Look, everyone in the
village has come out to safety!"
Vaniya let them guide her along, with a sorrowful
look at the marooned boats.
  "And they had just repaired their nets and boats,"
she said, sadly. "There will be hunger in the village this
winter, and I fear all of Isis will suffer if the pearl-
harvest cannot be gathered!" She stood, her head
turned to the women making for the shore, and her lips
moved as if she were praying; but when Cendri and the
red-haired woman urged her on, she went with them,
stumbling.
  It is too much of a shock for a woman her age. . .
Cendri thought, Yet she, too, felt an overwhelming
dread; would the pearl-divers, the crews of the boats,
make it to shore, or to high ground, before the wave
struck the shore, smashing through the houses and
buildings and washing everything out to sea?
  The path upward toward the ruins was steep, but
looked well-traveled, and Cendri remembered the
procession she had seen, her first night in the Pro-
Martriarch's residence, the torches winding along the
shore like a garland of lights; they must have come
along this way. . . She was aware of pain in her
bleeding feet, and of Vaniya's faltering steps, leaning
more and more heavily on her; yet at her concerned
question, the Pro-Matriarch said only, "I am very well;
I"only wish I knew everyone in the village was as well as
I, and as able to reach safety. . ."
  "Take care on the stones here, the path is broken,"
the red-haired woman said, guiding Vaniya's steps
carefully, then looked across her at Cendri. "Goddess
guard us! It is the Scholar Dame from the Unity-how
could you let her risk herself in danger, Mother"
Vaniya?"
  "There was danger for everyone," said Vaniya,
looking gratefully at Cendri. "And it is as I thought, the
women of University are as brave and competent as any
of us!" She gave Cendri's arm an affectionate squeeze.
"You have saved many lives today with your bravery,
child. You said Grania could not ring the alarm-" she
added to the woman with red hair. "Why not, pray?"
  "Because she was dead," the woman said, "She had
evidently been killed by falling pottery in the quake this
morning, and no one thought to gQ and see if she was
safe. . ."
  Vaniya sighed and said, "Sad, sad; she and I were
schoolfellows. But there is no time now even to
mourn." She turned back, watching the women and
children climbing hastily up the path, and moved away
to make room for them to scramble inside the ruined
city. Now they could see below them the giant wall of
water, towering, looming a hundred feet high, rushing,
racing at fearful speed. It smashed across the rocks and
the abandoned boats with a crash; swept along across
the shore and Cendri saw the tower engulfed in water,
saw the houses break like matchwood and dissolve into
a foaming spray of spars and boards, saw boats rise and
spin away on the water like chips afloat in the surf. The
sound was like the end of the world. She saw the tower
itself sink and go as if it had melted into the water, and
shuddered; if she had resolved to risk staying there, she
would not have lived a minute in the furious boiling
waves. It crashed down along the path, surging up,
lapping halfway up the hillside, a foaming maelstrom of
white spray; slowly, the boiling water subsided, smooth
and innocent, then began to race back toward the
shore. Cendri stood, appalled, seeing as it withdrew
that every trace of human structure was gone from the
shore; scattered beams and planks remained, but as the
surging white water boiled down, there was no single
house remaining, not a sign of tower or boats, gardens
or sea-wall. The shore lay bare and littered, wet and
foaming, with fish washed up dying on the land.
  Vaniya covered her face with her hands; but only a
moment later, resolutely lowered them and straight-
ened herself, with gallant resolution.
  "Well, it is over," she said, "and when the next tide
comes in, some, at .east, of the boats may be recov-
ered. When the village is rebuilt, it must be re-bl,lilt on
higher ground, and a more effective lookout kept. We
can all see the damage to structures we have built; now
we must find out if there has been much loss of life."
She moved toward the clustered women and children,
and Cendri saw a group of men, huddled at one side,
waiting.
  She said, "Where is the village Elder-Mother?"
  "I am here, Vaniya," said a small, stout, grey-haired
woman. And Vaniya said, "Take the roll of your
village. The Goddess be thanked," her eyes falling on
the group of women, naked to the waist, with the
strapped-on knives that marked them as pearl-divers.
"Some of you, at least, are safe-"
  "We saw the tide-drop, and at first thought it a low
tide so that we could harvest the pearls without diving,"
said one, of them, "But then Narila said it was no
normal tide, and insisted we should leave our boats and
run for the shore-1 did not want to abandon my boat,"
she admitted honestly, "it was new-built; but I went
with my sisters, and halfway to shore we heard the
watchbell ringing-"
  Vaniya moved from group to group, counting and
assessing the losses. After a time she came back,
slowly, to where Cendri waited, and looked in horror at
her cut sandals and bleeding feet.
  "But you are hurt! And I did not even notice! How
could I have been so neglectful, when you had so
heroically helped us!"
  "It is nothing," Cendri said, though her feet smarted
with the sea-salt in the cuts. "My shoes are too thin for
walking on the shore, that is all!"
  The red-haired woman who had helped Cendri to
ring the bell and to guide Vaniya to high ground
stooped and pulled off her own sandals, saying, "Take
mine, Scholar Dame, No, truly, you must take them, I
am from a village like this and I am used to walking
barefoot on these stones, my feet are hardened; really,
I only wear shoes for the sake of vanity, when I am
teaching my classes!" She made Cendri sit down, pulled
off the thin torn sandals and strapped her own on
Cendri's feet. After her first protest, Cendri was glad to
accept them, seeing that the red-haired woman walked
without the slightest sign of discomfort on the rough
stones.
  She knelt on her heels beside Cendri and said, "I
have been hoping to see you, Scholar Dame, I was one
of those who volunteered to work with you in the ruins;
Mother Rezali sent word to the Women's College
asking for students there who could help you in your
work. My name is Laurina, and I am a teacher of
history. But we were told you had not yet begun your
work in the ruins."
  Cendri blinked, startled. Everything had been hap-
pening so fast that she had not even realized that she
was actually on the threshold of the Builder ruins! She
looked up to where, only a few hundred meters behind
her, the great ruins rose; strange, looming, dark,
immeasurably ancient, lost in Time... Her first
thought was an almost wild protest; no! I shouldn't be
here, it isn't fair, Dal should have been here first. . . it
meant so much more to him. . . .
  But there was nothing to be done about that now.
  Vaniya said, looking at Laurlna, "I have had po
leisure to bring our guest here, what with quakes here
and in the City, and the High Matriarch still at death's
door. And even now-with all these women homeless
-" she looked around the huddled women and chil-
dren, the little group of men clustered apart from them.
"I regret-" she said, and for a moment, again, Cendri
felt a flash of anger; she thought, we came halfway
across the Galaxy to study these ruins, and they put us
off for one thing after another. . . .
  It seemed for a moment that she could almost hear
Dal saying, A world where women established the
priorities would never get very far, or accomplish
much. . . and" then she was ashamed of herself. The
Builder ruins had waited. . . waited a very long time.
At least two million years, if they were truly the ruins of
some ancient race which had seeded the entire Galaxy
with life years ago; but even if they were simply the
ruins of some ancient civilization established on Isis
long ago, they had waited patiently for centuries,
millennia, and they could wait long enought for Vaniya
to see to her homeless fisherwomen. There were
priorities higher than scientific research, after all, even
if the outsider from University couldn't see them!
  She said, "Of course you must see to your people,
Vaniya. But since I am so near to the ruins, may I look
around at them for a little?"
  She could see, in the blink of an eye, that Vaniya was
not pleased; that she was almost helplessly reluctant.
But she had no excuse whatever; and furthermore she
had just expressed her gratitude to Cendri. "To be sure
you may. But stay near the entrace until someone who
knows her way around can show you how best to go
through the site. It will be dark soon, and you could
easily become lost inside."
  "I will go with her," Laurina said, and Vaniya
nodded; then one of the women from the wrecked
village called to Vaniya and she turned to them,-
reluctantly turning her back on Cendri and Laurina.
  "Come," Laurina said, "I have been here more than
once, I know how to get inside. Come, there is a door
in the wall-"
  As she climbed through the opening, Cendri won-
dered again at the stability of the structures. They
might not be ruins of the legendary Builders. But they
were old--5o old that Cendri's half-experienced eye
could not judge how old they were. She had had a quick
hypno-learner course in archaeology, and she could see
at a glance that they did not belong to any of the known
civilizations or cultures; they were not Sarnian Empire
or Pre-Voltian, as most extremely ancient ruins had
turned out to be on isolated planets in this sector of the
Galaxy.
  Yet, old as they were, she was struck at once by how
new they looked. They had not, it seemed, endured
millennia of earthquakes and volcanic action on an
unstable and seismic planet. They had not been buried
under the sea for generations and risen, wave-beaten
but recognizably artifacts of intelligent life, like the
Windic ruins of Aldebaran Nine. They might have
been abandoned less,than a hundred years ago. The
paving stones in the empty spaces between the build-
ings were up-ended by the inexorable growth of grass
and small underbrush growing up, but the buildings
themselves-huge, black-glassy structures, upended,
high, untouched by the centuries-were smooth and
beautiful. Ruins? Cendri thought. Ruins? They are far
less ruined than the Residence of the Pro-Matriarch
after the last quake!
  How have they survived all these years?
  She looked around again, trying to make notes in her
mind. Dal would be eager to hear every detail,
everything she could tell him-it wasn't fair!
  She said to Laurina, who walked at her side, "Y (jU
say you have been here before. Is it all like this?"
  "No," Laurina said. "There are lesser structures
behind the two great towers here. Across this
courtyard-"
  Slowly they crossed the courtyard, and Cendri said,
"You told me there are women in the college who have
volunteered to assist me-" She wondered why she had
not been told.
  "Indeed there are," Laurina said. "We were sure
that the Scholar Dame would need some unskilled
help, although you must have brought some qualified
assistant from the worlds where women are-" She
stopped, hesitated and said, "From the worlds of the
Unity, where men rule."
  Cendri smiled and said, "In our worlds neither men
nor women rule, Laurina, but everyone does such work
as-she-'' she said, stumbling, remembering the male
pronoun was thought indecent, ''as she is qualified for.
My Companion is my assistant. But we will certainly
welcome such help as the women from the college of
Ariadne can give us."
  "I have heard," Laurina said, "that in the Unity, and
on University, most of the majority of the-the Extra-
scholars are men."
  "Well, it is true that there are more men than
women," Cendri said, wondering if this was going to be
the same argument that she had had with Miranda,
about how poorly men were qualified for scholarship.
Instead Laurina said, "And still you became a Scholar
Dame?" She pronounced the words almost With awe.
"In worlds where women are not considered first for
scholastic prizes you still won such prizes?"
  Cendri said, "Yes," feeling guilty without knowing
why; after all, she would genuinely have been a Scholar
Dame by now if she had not taken time off after her
marriage.
  Laurina gazed at her, almost rapt with adn:tiration.
She said, "This is an inspiration to all of us, honored
guest, because it shows us-it shows us that perhaps
there is hope for us outside the Matriarchate, that
perhaps what the elders fear is not quite so dangerous.
See, a woman from outside, and you are not a slave or
in subjection to any man, and you have won academic
standing on your own! You are an inspiration to every
young woman of the college of Ariadne, Respected
Scholar Malocq!"
  She was so dazed with admiration that she stumbled
on a stone and Cendri laughed and helped her up. She
said, "I am really very ordinary, there are hundreds of
women like me on University, Laurina. And you must
call me Cendri."
  "Really? May I?" She sounded so awed that Cendri
laughed again, trying to put her at her ease. She said,
"And I will be glad of the help of the women at the
college, far more than of their admiration; but I hope
they realize that a scholar's work on an archaeological
site is not all observation and inspiration! They should
be women who have no objection to hard manual
labor, for we may have to do a lot of digging and
searching, through layers of the past. . ." But even as
she said it, she wondered; this site seemed so perfectly
preserved. . .
  Laurina said, "I think you will find that our young
women are not afraid to get their hands dirty in a good
cause! It is only the weaker sex which is overly
concerned with what work is suitable to its pride or its
image!" She added, "Actually, there has been a
considerable amount of competition for the honor of
actually working with the Scholar Dame-"
  "Cendri," she corrected smiling.
  "Cendri-oh!" Laurina broke off, staring, and after
a moment Cendri saw what had attracted her stare,
even before Laurina's startled "Miranda!" After a
moment of shocked staring, she turned her eyes away,
in embarrassment. In a small alcove in the courtyard,
on the edge of what Cendri recogn~ed as a fountain,
though the jets of water had been dry for hundreds or
thousands of years, sat Miranda and Rhu, close togeth-
er, their hands clasped, gazing into one another's eyes
in what Cendri instantly recognized as complete mutual
absorption.
  Even if Cendri had been inclined to think it entirely
innocent-and she had had no reason to think
otherwise-Laurina's shocked turning away, and the
swift, guilty way in which Rhu raised his eyes from
Miranda's face, would have told her that this was
clandestine-and shocking. Miranda rose to her feet,
struggling for self-possession. Cendri wished desparate-
ly that she could do or say something to ease that look
of guilt and shame on Miranda's face.
  I don't know what the sexual taboos are here. But it's
certain that Miranda has broken them, whatever they
are!
  Laurina said calmly, "I think the Pro-Matriarch is
waiting for you, Rhu." He raised his eyes, momentarily
lambent with the first real defiance Cendri had seen on
the face of any male on this world; then, with a glance
at Miranda, he dropped his eyes and went, scrambling
up the steps and out of the fountain court.
  "Laurina-" Miranda said.
  "Yes; I was visiting my great-great grandmother in
the village and I made Cendri's acquaintance when we
went to see to the alarm bell," Laurina said calmly.
  Cendri asked Miranda, "Do you know Laurina,
then?"
  Miranda said, "We were at school together." She
was recovering her composure, but her face was still
flushed. "I was too short of breath, after coming up into
the ruins, to do anything else, and the sight of the water
made me feel sick and faint-"
  "Really, Miranda," Laurina interrupted, her voice
high, not looking at her friend, "You don't owe me any
explanations, it is for your mother to say, but is it really
fair to Rhu? Oh, I admit he is pretty enough, but ygu
know how easily such men have their heads turned by
such attentions! You know he will be blamed if
anything happens to you!" She turned and began to go
back, and Cendri said, slowly, "I suppose Vaniya will
be anxious about you, Miranda. You really should go
and let her know you are safe."
  "Yes, I suppose so." Miranda pressed her hands
across her back as if it hurt her, and began slowly to
cross the courtyard. She sighed and walked with her
head cast down, after a moment raising her eyes
defiantly to Cendri.
  "It isn't what you think! Rhu has never touched more
than my fingertips! And it was not his choice to become
a Companion-I"
  "Miranda," said Cendri gently, "I'm not sitting in
judgment on you!"
  "But Laurina is so sure I have shamed myself and my
kin-mothers, and so magnanimous about not revealing 
the guilt we do not have--" Miranda sputtered. "I am 
not ashamed.
  "No. Why should you be?" Cendri said, and walked 
slowly at her side. The sun had set; twilight was falling 
over the great, dark shapes of the ruins, and she 
shivered, suddenly, with cold. Miranda stumbled in the 
near-dark and Cendri put an arm around her, feeling a
sudden surge of affection and sympathy. She said, 
I'Miranda, lean on me, you mustn't fall." She noticed 
that Miranda's hands were clasped protectively over 
the pink pearl at her throat. She said softly, "Was it
Rhu's gift, then?"
"Yes. He came by it honestly," she added at once.
  "It was given him by the Elder of the Weaver's Guild, 
who is very rich, for a song he wrote for her 
daughters-he is not only a singer, he is a maker of 
songs as well! And he gave it to me--it was not a 
sea-gift," she added, defensively.
  "You love him," Cendri said gently, after a moment.
Miranda nodded. In the darkness, Cendri could not
see her expression, but her voice was filled with pain.
  "I do not understand it myself; they say this kind of
love is for a woman to give her child, her sisters, her
kin-mothers. This is why I had hoped you could
understand this, you seem to think it is not strange to
love a man-"
  "No, Miranda," said Cendri gently, "it doesn't seem
strange to me."
  But on Miranda's world, Cendri thought, romantic
love served none of the social functions of family
formation and child-nurture which it served elsewhere.
Here, the major bonds of social cohesion were family
bonds between women, and sexuality had little or no
part in them. A woman who found herself irresistibly
drawn, emotionally, sexually, personally to a man,
might well believe that this was a strange and unlikely
perversion; might find herself at a loss to understand,
or even express, her own desires and hungers.
  She asked softly, "Is Rhu the father of your child?"
  Even in the darkness, Cendri could sense Miranda's
shock and horror. "What do you think me? What
woman could possibly know a thing like that?"
  And now Cendri really did not know what to think or
say. She turned to Miranda in the darkness. "Come,
they will be worrying about you. Let me help you on
the steps, they are a little irregular."
  Miranda clung to her, trustfully, and Cendri felt a
strange flooding emotion; protective, tender; an emo-
tion new to her, and disturbing. She wondered if this
was how these women felt about one another. Or is this
how I would feel about a daughter if I had one?
Unwilling to explore the emotion, she turned to
thinking of Dal. How troubled he would be when he
discovered that she had been into the ruins! He is going
to want to know everything, she thought, and I won't
have much to tell him, I won't be able to tell him nearly
enough!
  And suddenly she did not really care. The ruins could
wait. They had waited a long time--not, perhaps, the
two million years of Builder ruins, but still, they had
waited a long, long time! They could wait a little
longer. She, Cendri, had an opportunity which might
never come again to a woman of the Unity, and she
intended to make the most of it!
  Dal could wait. But he wouldn't wait much longer;
circumstances had forced Vaniya's hand, and now there
could be no excuse for further delay.
 
 
 
               Chapter Six
 
 
 
  JUST INSIDE THE WALL OF THE RUINED CITY, WHERE
Vaniya had gathered with the women from the de-
stroyed pearl-divers village, they had lighted torches
and fires. Laurina came out of the darkness to join
Cendri; and Vaniya beckoned Miranda to her side.
  She said, "We mustgo and speak to Them, give them
thanks for the shelter they have given us from the great
wave. Later we can all go down-for the time being,
the homeless can be housed on the grounds of the
Residence. But this comes first. Cendri-" by torch-
light her eyes gleamed, "You are here to learn about
Them, so you must have a place among us now; and it is
fitting, since you have risked yourself for our people."
She took Cendri's hand in hers. "Come and join us
when we speak to Them." With a little frisson of
excitement, Cendri realized that Vaniya was speaking
of the Builders.
  Can she really believe this? That a civilization a
million years dead can hear? For a moment the scientist
in Cendri struggled with scom-Vaniya, Pro-
Matriarch, capable administrator, stateswoman-and
she could be so superstitious? Then Cendri admonished
herself to wait and see. Religious faith gave life and
emotional force to a culture; and Vaniya might well be
speaking symbolically of a form of observance, without
any superstitious or irrational component at all. . .
except insofar, Cendri reminded herself, as any reli-
gious observance is irrational.
  She let herself be drawn into a place-of honor?-at
the head of the procession, between Miranda and
Vaniya. Laurina walked close beside Cendri. Rhu, she
realized, had withdrawn into the shadows and walked
alone, separated from the women-but equally sepa-
rate from the men of the pearl-diver~ village, who
followed at a distance, barefoot, shabby, rude and
uncouth. .
  I feel sorry for Rhu. No place among the women-but
even less among the life of what they call the Men's
House. Of course. He has what they consider a privi-
lege, and they envy him-to live among women. But this
privilege makes him an outcast among those who would
otherwise be his peers. Paint a monkey green, and the
others will tear it to bits.
  They walked by torchlight into the very center of the
ruins, through black shadows and empty echoing
spaces, along a path that felt strangely smooth under
their feet. It was very quiet; no one spoke, not even a
whisper, and to Cendri the silence was strangely full.
She told herself not to be superstitious, but she found
herself thinking it was easy to understand how primitive
emotion had peopled all ancient things with ghosts. It
was as if the ancient Builders were watching them, as if
the darkness beyond the torchlight were peopled with
the ghosts of those ancient people, ringed about with
invisible eyes that watched the women winding their
way through the city which had once been theirs,
wondering and waiting.
  At the very center of the ruins lay an open space, vast
enough to have been a spaceport. And there, by the
shadowed torchlight, Cendri saw what she had seen by
moonlight from the upper window of the Residence;
gleaming faintly by reflected light, the structure of the
antique-fashioned ship. Was this, indeed, the ship
which had brought the foremothers of the Isis colony
here? If so, it was no wonder they held it in reverence.
The pilot of the shuttlecraft had said it; they were
guided there. . . what folly had prompted the colonists
to set their ship down at the very center of a ruined
city? Cendri knew almost nothing of the art of piloting
ships, small or large, but she did know that on a world
with no established spaceport, you found the largest
uninhabited tract of wild country you could find, and
put it down there!
  She felt Vaniya's hands on her elbow, guiding her
forward toward the old ship. The hands forced her
gently to her knees. She was half annoyed, half in a
curious state of suspended belief. . . an anthropologist
must be ready to join the people of her research at
prayers. . . .
  She blinked; it seemed that a dim light had begun to
glow and shimmer around the structures of the ancient
ship. Natural phosphorescence; reflected moonlight,
she told herself firmly.
  And with the glow came the warmth, the light, the suf-
fusing tenderness. She felt a flood of love poured out on
her, and poured it out lavishly in return. Some frag-
ment of wonder in her cried out, "Oh! Who are you?"
and the answer came, a steady pulsing glow,' I am,.
that is enough. Love me, love me as I love you. . . .
  It was cold. The torches had died to a glimmer, and
Cendri blinked herself awake, shivers of ice running
down her spine. What had happened? She was walking
slowly away from the dead city, outside the walls,
moving as if in a dream. Next to her Miranda moved,
her face by moonlight dazed and enraptured. Laurina,
too, looked irradiated. Vaniya turned her eyes to
Cendri, and smiled, with so much tenderness that
Cendri felt a lump in her throat; she wanted to throw
herself into Vaniya's arms, and sob out "Mother;
Mother, I love you-"
  "What is the matter with me?" Cendri thought,
dazed. What's happened to us? Whatever it was, it
happened to all of us, not just me! Look at them!
  Some form of hypnotic experience? Some mass
hallucination? Or had anything happened at all? Had
she, suggestible and lonely, isolated from all her nor-
mal sources of emotional satisfaction, gone into some
kind of religious daze with these women? Firmly, she
struggled against the need to let go, sink herself into
this hypnotic flood of joyous love.
  Nonsense, absurdity. . . .
  She forced herself to look around, firmly calculating
what could have happened. Of course it was some kind
of illusion; and equally of course, this was what
Miranda had meant when she spoke of the love and
concern of the Builders. But whatever had happened, if
anything had happened, it was certainly not the spirits
of the Builders, from two or three million years ago,
sitting there around the old spaceship and pouring out
floods of hypnotic love and emotion on the women who
came there!
  Most of the women shared the dazed look of
excitement and delight which was on Miranda's,
Vaniya's face-Cendri supposed that she looked much
the same. Most of the girl children over eight or nine
had some trace of it; they looked sleepy and joyous.
The smaller children were restless and crying, and their
mothers were leading them along or carrying them. The
men... .
  It was all too obvious that whatever the experience
had been, none of the men had shared it; one or two of
them looked awed, but most of them, stumbling along
in the semi-dark after the women, looked cross, tired
and bored with the waiting.
  She was almost too tired to think straight. There was
no way she could evaluate it now. Was this why the
Matriarchy regarded this as a holy place, a sacred
precinct? She wished she could discuss it at leisure with
Laurina, who was a scientist and historian and might
have some sort of objective attitude, but this was
neither the time nor the place.
  Now that the ecstasy had subsided a little-or the
hypnotic illusion-she realized that her feet, tom on
the rocks and imperfectly protected by Laurina's
too-large sandals, were very sore. She was limping
painfully by the time they came into the grounds of the
Residence, and her eyes felt sore and ached in the lights
streaming from every window. Servants came flocking
out with cries of welcome and Vaniya's older daughter,
running to welcome them, cried out with relief.
  "We were so frightened, Mother-we knew you had
gone to the pearl-divers village and afterward, when we
saw the wreck the great wave had left, we feared you
had been hurt or drowned-"
  Vaniya seemed to have returned entirely to herself.
She gave orders that tents should be set up on the
grounds of the Residence, that the men should be
housed in the Men's House, that the sick, the pregnant
and the elderly should be taken into guest-rooms within
the residence itself. She commanded food to be served
for all, and while they were waiting for it, one of the
women whose task it was to assist Miranda in the
running of the household, came up to Vaniya and said,
"Respect, Mother, we have had trouble here; an
intruder, a male belonging to the Pro-Matriarch
Mahala, broke into the house, and managed to gain
entry to the quarters assigned to the Scholar Dame
from University, and to her Companion."
  Cendri blinked, the last vestiges of her daze van-
ishing. So much had happened since this morning that
she had forgotten the intruder, the branded man called
Bak, who had come to talk to Dal and given him that
peculiar password. Vaniya looked displeased, but said,
"I might have expected that of my colleague; I am only
curious to know why she did not think of it sooner. Did
you question it?"
  "No, we held it for you to deal with, Mother."
  Vaniya shrugged. She indicated the refugees clus-
tered on the lawn of the Residence and said, "As you
can see, I am very much occupied with these homeless
people. But I suppose you must bring the intruder to
me."
  The woman summoned the fierce-looking guards
who had burst into Cendri's rooms and taken Bak away
over Dal's protest; but they came back quickly.
  "Respect, Mother-the prisoner has escaped!"
  "So?" Vaniya said, almost without interest. "I
suppose it has run home to the bitch who loosed it upon
us in the first place, but there will never by any way to
prove it. But how did it escape? Was the cage damaged
by the quake? Who saw to the fastenings?"
  "I did, Mother," said the main guard, "Respect, but
I saw to the hasps myself and they were all in good
order. Some human hands let it out of that cage, and
that's a fact." She glared at Cendri, her face grim. "The
Scholar Dame's Companion tried to interfere when we
took it away. I'd like to know where that one was when
the prisoner got loose!"
  Vaniya said, "Go and fetch the Companion."
  Cendri said, "Vaniya-"
  "Hush, my dear, if your Companion is innocent it
won't be hurt. I might have suspected Rhu, but it was
with me all day." She sighed, told her oldest daughter
to continue arranging for the housing of the refugees
from the pearl-divers' village, and went into the house,
with Cendri and Miranda.
  Dal, brought before Vaniya, firmly denied any
knowledge of the prisoner.
  "I have been working in the room allotted to us, all
day," he said. "I have not seen anyone since the guards
took the prisoner away." And to all of Vaniya's
questions he repeated the same thing.
  One of the Guards said, "I have the means to make it
talk." She flicked the rope at her waist suggestively.
  Vaniya frowned a little. She said, "I am not fond of
such business, but I suppose I really have no choice."
She glanced at Cendri and said, "As a matter of form,
since it legally belongs to you-I suppose you have no
objection to having it interrogated by force?"
  Cendri looked, appalled, at the barbed whip in the
woman-guard's hand. She said, "Indeed I do have an
objection!"
  One of the guards snickered. There was a little
nervous giggling. Vaniya said gently, "Come, come,
my dear, you must not be squeamish. It is the only way
to get the truth from one of them. I am sure Mallida
will not hurt it any more than strictly necessary!"
  Cendri said sharply, "What you do not realize is that
my Companion is not property, but a citizen of the
Unity, and a Scholar on University. His word is as good
as my own; he is covered by diplomatic immunity!" She
realized too late; male pronouns were indecent. Just
now she did not care.
  Vaniya looked at her, frowning a little. She said,
after a moment, rather sadly, "I had hoped you were
enough one of us, my dear, not to stand on technicali-
ties of that sort. But it is true that you live by different
laws. Can you truly trust your Companion's word?"
  Cendri set her chin and said; "Yes."
  "Ask him before us if he had any part in the freeing
of the prisoner, then."
  Her heart pounding-my system must be flooded with
adrenalin-Cendri said, "Dal, did you have any part in
the freeing of the prisoner?"
  "I did not," he s~id, but Cendri noticed he did not
look her in the eye. Oh, God! she thought, he's lying.
This put her in a terrible position. If she backed up
Dal's word, and he was later proven a liar, she had
destroyed the credibility of University citizens-not to
mention making it impossible to accept her statement
that a man's word could be trusted! Yet if she pro-
claimed Dal a liar, what was the alternative to having
the truth beaten out of him by the fierce Mallida's
barbed whip? Ferociously she thought; I don't give a
damn what happened to that poor bastard, I'm not
going to have Dal hurt!
  She said, "I accept my Companion's word." But, she
thought, I'll have to talk to Dal about it later!
  Vaniya shrugged. She said, "It doesn't matter much,
since the prisoner accomplished nothing of what he had
come to accomplish. Set it free, Mallida."
  Cendri found her hands were still shaking as Vaniya
beckoned them to her side, saying, "And now let us
forget all this unpleasantness and have our dinner."
And, though the meal was good as usual, she found she
could not eat.
  "I feel to blame," said Rhu in his gentle voice,
speaking to Cendri in an undertone, "I have been
remiss in my duties as the host of the Scholar Dame's
Companion. After all-" he spoke directly to Dal, "I
am your only possible peer and friend here, since, like
myself, you are excluded from the Men's House. I
should have made more efforts to entertain you, Dal;
perhaps set up a hunt to divert you."
  Dal said awkwardly, "That's all right, I didn't expect
it--"
  "But Vaniya charged me with your entertainment,"
Rhu said, "and idleness breeds trouble in males. . . I
am sorry for any trouble you have had. And now that
the Scholar Dame has be~n inside the ruins-"
  Dal started, glanced sharply at Cendri, and she felt a
clutch of dread. She had been going to tell Dal herself,
when the time was ripe! She had known he would be
distressed, that she would visit the ruins without
sending for him, but she had hoped she could make him
understand the unplanned, almost accidental character
of her visit there! Now his face was lambent with wrath;
she could tell the signs, even though he managed to
keep his voice calm when he spoke to Rhu.
  "I did not know; Cendri had not seen fit to tell me."
  "Oh, I am sorry ," Rhu said apologetically, "I meant
only-now, I suppose, the Scholar Dame will have need
of your services there, since I understand you have
been trained to function as her assistant. I envy you,"
he added, sighing. "Since there will be women from the
College of Ariadne to assist the Scholar Dame, may I
volunteer my services to entertain the Scholar Dame's
Companion? I would like to come-"
  Vaniya said indulgently, "The Scholar Dame will
have enough to do in looking after her own Compan-
ion, my dear, without being burdened with your care as
well."
  For a moment Cendri thought Dal would explode;
she grabbed his wrist, out of sight between the cush-
ions, and squeezed his hand warningly. He was silent,
and Vaniya said, with a glance at Cendri, "May I
indulge my dear Companion in this whim, then? If it is
careful to keep well out of your way-"
  Cendri could feel Dal's obvious distaste, and at the
same time, she did not feel inclined to go against
Vaniya's wishes. She hesitated, caught in the middle,
but finally found it most politic to say, "Rhu will be
welcome, of course."
  "I thought so." Vaniya said, smiling, "since you will
have Laurina and perhaps other women from the
college of Ariadne to assist you with the real work."
  Cendri knew this was making it worse, but what
could she say? She knew it would make trouble with
Dal, and she was tired and exhausted, and her cut feet
ached miserably in Laurina's sandals. She wanted to get
away and fall into bed, and she knew there would be a
scene with Dal. Dal tended to take out on her all the
frustrations of the days, when he must keep silent and
pretend to be nothing but a frivolous attachment for
Cendri's leisure time. Tonight when they were alone, it
was more than sullenness, it was rage.
  "Confound it, Cendri, I tried to make it clear I didn't
want Rhu along, and r:tow, our first chance to visit the
ruins, you've spoiled everything by saddling us with
that damned little parasite! Now Vaniya will expect me
to spend my whole day entertaining him and keeping
him out from under foot, and I won't get a damned
thing done!"
  "Dal, I'm sorry," she pleaded, trying to conciliate
him, "I truly am, but all the work we do here is
dependent on Vaniya, and I didn't feel I could refuse
her this small courtesy."
  "Small courtesy! My first chance t9 do some of the
work I came here to do-"
  "Dal, Vaniya accepted my word that you had
nothing to do with the prisoner's escape. Diplomatic
immunity is broken on the suspicion you had anything
to do with their politics-you know that! She could
have insisted that you be questioned by force, and there
wouldn't have been a damned thing I could do about it!
I felt lowed her something!"
  "Diplomatic immunity be-" he swore, grimly, a
gutter obscenity from Pioneer. She caught his arm,
pleading.
  "Dal; Dal, tell me-did you set that man free?"
  He set his mouth. "It's better if you can say honestly
that you don't know, Cendri. Keep out of this, I told
you!"
  "Oh, Dal, you know you mustn't meddle in their
politics-" She felt frightened, apprehensive, but Dal
only shrugged. "I know what I am doing. And in all the
confusion this afternoon, when they heard about the
tidal wave-well, as I said, the less you know, the less
they can blame you." He turned away to ready himself
for bed; stopped, shaken, at the sight of her bleeding
feet.
  "Cendri! Darling, what happened?"
  "I cut my feet on the rocks," she said, and found
herself telling him about the tidal wave. He listened,
tightening his mouth when she told about going up into
the rickety bell-tower with Laurina to ring the alarm.
  "Sharrioz!" he swore. "I was standing here at the
window and saw the wave hit and the tower go! And
you were in that thing?" He held her hard enough to
hurt. "Cendri, Cendri! Damn a world like thi&--
sending a woman into such danger!"
  She leaned on him, the exhaustion and pain of the
day suddenly coming down on her. It was a temptation,
to let him comfort and coddle her, forget his own
humiliation in solicitude for her. Yet, even while she let
him lead her into the bath, while he washed and
bandaged her cut and torn feet, she rebelled against the
female deviousness of that.
  "Dal, women here are expected to take risks as a
matter of course. I didn't want them to despise me, or
think; the women of the Unity are an inferior species!
They already think women in the Unity are subservient
and owned by men!"
  He seized her shoulders and held them. "Are you
more concerned in proving points about the Unity, and
women Scholars, or about the work we came here to
do? Cendri, when I saw that wave hit, when I knew
you'd gone there with Miranda-you'll never know
how I felt! Cendri, you're my wife! I can't let you risk
yourself that way!"
  Suddenly she was angry, ftamingly angry. "Dal, I
have a right to take my own risks! It's my decision, isn't
it? Or do you really think you own me, as they seem to
think men own women in the Unity?"
  "I have a right to be concerned about you," he
retorted, "Or would you want me not to care?"
She sighed, inwardly shaking, but not willing to keep
the argument alive. She said, "It doesn't matter, love;
I'm safe. And now everything's all right; tomorrow we
are going into the ruins, and it was all for the best,
because now Vaniya can't delay any more. And you
can get started on what you came here to do."
  "I suppose that's true," he said, reverting to his
earlier grievance. "But you've arranged it so I'll have to
spend the time looking after Rhu-"
  "Dal, I thought-"
  "I know what you thought," he stormed, "you
thought you'd get rid of me, not have me hanging
around to show up how little qualified you are for this
work, so you could botch it up any way you wanted to
without having me around to critcize-"
  "Oh, Dal, no--" she protested, flushing. Actually
she had been a little afraid that she would have to turn
to him so often for help and advice that their carefully
concocted story would not hold water; what would they
think if the Scholar Dame from University continually
consulted her supposed assistant at every possible
moment and before making even the simplest deci-
sions?
  "This place is corrupting you," Dal accused,
"they've told you so much garbage about how self-
reliant- and independent women ought to be that you're
beginning to believe you can get along without my help!
I ought to walk out and let you show yourself up for the
fake you are! Are you so damned cocksure you think
you can do it all yourself?"
  "Dal, that isn't fair," Cendri said, feeling tears
welling up behind her eyes.
  "Fair-" he shouted, "how fair have you been to
me?" All his frustration came out in a rush. "You've
tried to make me into a simpering effeminate like Rhu,
trailing you around and picking up any crumbs you're
willing to throw my way! I'm not like that, Cendri, I'm
a man of Pioneer and you're my wife, and the first thing
we're going to have understood-"
  "Dal, lower your voice," she begged, in sudden
deadly fear; interior walls were flimsy here, and
although they were speaking in their own language, the
Scholar's speech of University, Dal's tone spoke-
literally-louder than words. On Isis men did not raise
their voices like that to women!
  "And don't you tell me to lower my voice! Do you
think you can order me around the way Vaniya does
with Rhu?"
Cendri Put out her hands to conciliate him, then
suddenly something inside her snapped. She was weary
of these nightly scenes where she tried to placate his
hurt pride and then endured his angry lovemaking as if
every night he should stamp on her body the imprint of
his own strength, leaving her bruised, humiliated,
without desire.
  She flung her head back.
  "All right, damn you, Dal! Do anything you please.
Raise your voice. Yell. Rave. Storm. Carry on like one
of your great-grandfathers on Pioneer threatening to
beat his woman and show her that her proper place is in
his bed! See what it gets you! Once already today I put
my credibility on the line and risked everything I've
accomplished here, to keep them from beating you to
rags! We're not on Pioneer. We're not even on
University! We're in the Matriarchate on Isis, and do
you realize that if I raise my voice, I can have you put
outside in the male kennels to sleep there? If you lay a
hand on me, Dal, I will call for help, and you have
already had a taste today of how they treat a male who
misbehaves!" She was shaking. "I am tired of this, Dal!
I'm doing my best for both of us, and every night, every
night I have to face this, and I'm sick of it, Dal, sick of
it!"
  Dal lowered his hands. His face was dead white.
  "You've just been waiting for a chance to do this to
me, haven't you, Cendri?"
  She shook her head. "I've been bending over
backward not to do it, Dal. But I've reached my limit! I
can't take any more!" She bit her lip hard, trying not to
cry. "It's not my fault things are the way they are on
Isis! But you're blaming me for it! You wanted me to
come here, you forced me into this position, into this
impossible position, and now you are making it impos-
sible for me-" her voice broke and she sobbed.
  White-faced, Dal reached for her; she flinched, and
his jaw dropped in consternation. He whispered,
"You're really afraid of me, Cendri? Love, what's
happening to us?"
  She fell against his shoulder, weeping. "You begged
me to come here, you begged me, you promised me it
wouldn't make any difference who got the credit for it,
you said it would be the two of us sharing our work, and
now you're treating me as if I were your enemy-" She
couldn't go on.
  He held her gently, trying to soothe her. "It's this
damnable place," he said, "You're beginning to act like
these accursed women here. I can't understand you any
more, Cendri! Would you really have turned me over
to them?"
  She shook her head, her eyes blurring with tears. But
when he would have carried her to the padded corner,
she began to cry again. Not this, not that he should
soothe his hurt pride again with lovemaking. . . . He
tried to coax her, calm her, but she continued to shake
her head, sobbing, and at last, angrily, he let her go and
went wrathfully off to his corner.
  "So now you're going to use sex to discipline the wild
animal?" he flung at her in a rage. She did not trouble
to reply, though she knew that was not how it was at all;
rather, he had been using his sex as a weapon to impose
his will on her, and when she refused to be manipulated
that way, turned the accusation back on her. Silently,
she went and climbed into her high solitary bed. It was
just as narrow, just as cold and uncomfortable, as it
looked. She thought longingly of the warmth of Dal's
body, but she knew she could not give in now. In the
end she cried herself to sleep.
 
 
                  Chapter Seven
 
 
  HE WOKE STILL SULLEN, AND Dill NOT SPEAK TO CENDRI
as he moved around the luxurious bath. But when she
came back after a long hot bath he was standing at the
window, looking down at the ruins, shrouded in thin
morning fog. He could not keep back a smile as he
turned to her:
  "Today's the day, Cendri! Somehow I never thought
we'd actually get inside them, I thought they'd keep
stalling and stalling us-"
  "I'm glad, Dal," she said, and he came to her,
contritely pulling her into his arms. "Cendri. I'm sorry I
bullied you last night. I won't do it again. It just got to
be too much for me, that's all."
  "I'm sorry too, Dal." She leaned her head against
the warmth of him. "I just-exploded, that was all. The
waiting makes me nervous, too."
  "And then when you wouldn't sleep with me
afterward-it was just the breaking point, that's all.
But it's over. Let's try never to get out of synch with
each other again, shall we?"
  "I'll try, I promise."
  "I still think we could have made it up, if you'd been
willing-"
  Softened and warmed by his touch, Cendri still found
a small core of anger remaining. Did he really think
that things could have been settled by coming together
sexually, when nothing of the basic conflict had been
dealt with? Was that really a universal male failing?
Gently, she freed herself from Dal's arms. "We mustn't
get off to a late start, Dal. It's going to be a long day.
Have you the recording equipment ready?"
  Instantly diverted by the memory of his long-awaited
work, he went off to assemble it, while Cendri thought,
surprised and shocked at herself, How devious I amI
That's a female way of handling it, and I despise it! She
had always despised such elusive female maneuverings.
Yet how quickly the technique had come to her hand
when she wished to make use of it!
  She had known all along that this place was damaging
Dal. Now, uneasily, she explored the possibility that it
might be having an effect on her too-or was it simply
making her see, with her surface consciousness, things
she had done unconsciously all her life? Damning the
whole Matriarchate under her breath, and Dal along
with them, she started gathering together the materials
they would need.
  They made a considerable assembly stacked on the
floor of their suite, and Dal surveyed them with a
frown. "We'll never be able to carry all this. Do you
suppose Vaniya will lend us a couple of people, or
servomechs if they have them? I'd prefer servos, it goes
against the grain to have other people carry things for
me. If Rhu's bound and determined to come, maybe I
can talk him into carrying some of this stuff!"
  "That might be useful. Anyway, some of the woman
students from the College of Ariadne were supposed to
be showing up to assist us."
  "To assist you, you mean," he grumbled, then
deliberately made himself grin. "Well, at least it will be
only young women flocking around to share your
prestige and admire you! I often thought that if the
Scholar Dame di Velo had had a jealous husband she
could never have had the kind of career she had! FunnY
thing," he mused. "She's not good-looking, she seems
as old as the Windic Ruins, and as for sex appeal, my
grandfather might have thought her a fine-looking
woman, but certainly no younger man ever did! And
yet, when she started talking, nobody ever noticed any
younger woman, no matter how beautiful she might
have been. I was often surprised that you weren't
jealous of her, Cendri."
  She slipped her hand within his arm and murmured,.
"I was, a little. Didn't you know?" And privately she
thought; Vaniya has something of that quality. It's the
quality of power, of force of personality, which has
nothing at all to do with personal attraction.
  "Poor woman," Dal said, "I wonder how the Scholar
Dame is getting on? I can't forget that I got my chance
through her misfortune! "
"She'd want you to do your best by it, and enjoy it,
Cendri comforted him, and he sighed, "I know," as
they went down toward the huge dining-hall and its
morning component of frisky children and Vaniya's
assembled family and hangers-on, trying for a word
with the Pro-Matriarch before her duties took her away
for the day. As they went to the places now reserved for
them by custom, Dal muttered, "Actually, I wish we
could eat a bit informally in our rooms and be on our
way without all this fuss, but I suppose Vaniya would
be mortally offended!" 
  "Yes, I'm afraId so." 
  "Why can't they just give us what help we ask for,
and leave us to get on with the job? After all, it's what
they brought us here to do!"
  "Dal, you're thinking in terms of the Unity and of
University again," she chided, trying not to sound as if
she were lecturing him. "That special idea-that time is
a limited commodity and wasting it is somehow morally
wrong-belongs only to a very few cultures in the
Unity."
  "Well, they're the cultures that get things done," he
argued. "They sent for an expert from the Unity, why
don't they just let you do what they sent for you to do?"
  She shrugged. There was no way to convince Dal; he
was in essence the male from Pioneer who valued
attention to business and strict efficiency and a regulat-
ed approach to time, and she had long since accepted it.
Her own world was time-oriented-although perhaps
not so compulsively as Dal's-but at least she now
regarded it as a preference, not a moral absolute!
  Vaniya, at the low table where she sat, with Miranda
and Rhu and one or two other favored members of her
household, such as the guests from the Unity, was
listening to petitions, as she did every morning at
breakfast. Cendri listened as she let Miranda fill her
plate with small, crisply-fried shellfish. The petitioner
just now was a man, in a brief tunic outfit, and Vaniya
listened, frowning, as he presented a petition from the
Men's House of-Cendri did not know what the area
represented, or whether it was a single household, a
district, a village or a whole city-to organize a hunt.
  "Are your rations really so inadequate?" Vaniya
asked. "I do not like to think of anyone suffering from
hunger. At the same time, I am most reluctant to grant
this permission just now. Our reports from the seismic
equipment warn of continuing quakes in that district,
and it is unwise to expose yourselves to danger until the
conditions are a little more settled. During one of the
last quake seasons, almost a hundred men were killed
in the inland Land Reclamation district, which is why
the project has been cancelled. If we cannot allow any
of our subjects to go inland for anything as vital as Land
Reclamation--although I have asked for some woman
volunteers next season-<:ertainly we cannot allow it
for the frivolous purpose of a hunt!"
  "Respect, Mother," said the man, stammering, "but
our hunt is not-not frivolous. The Inland area pro-
duces nothing and cannot even be reclaimed. The meat
that grows there of its free will is a valuable addition to
the protein reserve."
  Vaniya made a wry face. "A most uneconomical use
of land reserves," she said, "and I am personally not
inclined to substitute use of slaughtered creatures for
the crops the land might grow if it were reclaimed.
Even when one understands the additional need for
protein in the male's food system, it seems to me
irrational. It is not particularly reasonable, to rationa-
lize your love of hunting by such arguments. I am sorry
to deny your people a pleasure, but I am afraid I must
refuse, for the present. I will give orders to supplement
your protein rations by one-fifth, which should suffice
in such a season as this, with extra allowance for
athletes and manual laborers and growing youths. Will
that content you?,   
  "Respect, Mother Pro-Matriarch, but I have here a
letter from our Supervisor stating that the crops this
season will not support an increase in the protein
allowance." He bowed and handed it to her, and
Vaniya frowned over it, letting the food on her plate
turn cold. Finally she said "I am sorry; I am so
accustomed to men who rationalize the desire for
hunting with specious arguments, that I had not been
prepared to see a genuine need." For her, Cendri
knew, that was a gracious apology. "Well, I suppose
you must organize your hunt, then, but be sure to
consult the City Mothers before your route is fully
planned, and make certain to avoid known eruption
areas."
  The man bowed. He said, "In gratitude, may we
invite the Pro-Matriarch's Companion to be our hon-
ored guest on this hunt?"
  Vaniya glanced at Rhu, and said, "No, I think not,
he is not really strong enough for the journey. He
would burden you. You didn't really want to go, did
you, Rhu?"
  Rhu lowered his eyes to his plate and murmured, "I
am at your command, Vaniya." ,
  "Then I think not," said Vaniya, "But we have an
honored guest of the City of Ariadne at our table.
Perhaps, Scholar Dame, your Companion would enjoy
the diversion of a hunt after being cooped up in the city
like this since his arrival?"
  Dal's glance at Cendri said plainly, a command, "Get
me out of this!" The first day in the Ruins-and some
point of protocol might send him off on a Hunt? She
could see that in his face as clearly as if she were
reading his mind.
  She said coolly, not looking at the man, "I am sorry
to refuse, but 1 thought it had been made clear that my
Companion is my trained assistant. 1 cannot by any
means dispense with its presence as we are beginning
our work."
  Dal looked grim. Well he might, Cendri thought,
when it was taken so completely for granted that
Cendri had the right to give him orders like this. She
tried to catch his eye, give him a reassuring smile-after
all, when all was said and done they had to make a joke
of it-but his eyes were resolutely averted.
  Misunderstanding-fortunately-the frown on his
face, Vaniya said cheerfully to Cendri, "I hate saying
no to men, don't you? They sulk so. Perhaps another
time a hunt can be organized especially for your
Companion, when the land is safer."
  The man bowed and withdrew. Cendri saw him
gesture surreptitiously, unobserved by Vaniya, who
was applying herself heartily to her breakfast. After a
moment she saw Rhu return the gesture, below the rim
of the table. His lips moved; Cendri could not hear
what he said-in fact, she thought, he had probably not
spoken aloud-but she was perfectly sure that what he
said was, "We were not born in chains."
  The light was growing, and the sun clear of the
horizon. Vaniya firmly stamped one or two more
papers and handed them to her private secretary, a
childlike young woman, fair-haired, and well advanced
in pregnancy. "We have heard nothing of the promised
students from the Women's College. At what hour did
they commit themselves to be here, Calissa?"
  Calissa said, "Laurina, who teaches history at the
college, is already here. 1 believe she brought a
message-"
  Laurina came into the dining-room. She was wearing
a wide sunhat and, Cendri was glad to see, stout shoes.
She bowed to the Pro-Matriarch and said clearly, "I am
ashamed for my colleagues. And for your colleague,
Vaniya."
  Vaniya said, looking as if she were bracing herself
against bad news, "What has Mahala done now,
child?"
  Laurina was squirming. She was very fair-skinned
and somewhat freckled under the short curly red hair,
and her pale skin was pink between the freckles. "As
you know, Vaniya, Mahala is one of the Trustees of the
College, and she has sent word-" she lowered her eyes
and twisted her hands, in agonized embarrassment,
"that none of the woman students shall work with the
Scholar Dame until Mahala has had a chance to speak
with her, and make certain that-that-"her voice gave
out and she glanced pleadingly at Cendri. "Scholar
Dame, I am ashamed!"
  Cendri was angry-for Dal's sake; they needed some
kind of help in the ruins. She was also angry at the
insult. She said, "Does the Pro-Matriarch Mahala think
I am likely to harm the-students, Laurina?"
  "That woman!" Vaniya grated, "shameless, insolent,
discourteous to our honored guests, dishonoring the
will of the High Matriarch-what excuse does she give?
What reason can she possibly have?"
  Laurina said uncomfortably, "That until she has seen
and-and spoken with the Scholar Dame she does not
consider it wise to expose her students to the hazards of
male scholarship."
  "In the name of the Goddess," Vaniya exploded,
"How can scholarship be male or female? That is like
speaking of the feminine nature of the atomic table of
the elements, or the maleness of a volcano! Laurina,
truthfully, has my fellow Pro-Matriarch gone mad?"
  "I am not qualified to judge, Vaniya. But I am
ashamed of my students for hiding themselves like
shellfish at low tide!" She looked at Cendri, hesitantly.
"Will you have me as their unworthy representative,
then?"
  Cendri smiled at her, realizing how much bravery it
must take to defy the Pro-Matriarch Mahala. In a
society like this, where law seemed to be at a minimum
and everything handled by personal relationships with
superiors and mothers and older kin, it must have
seemed a shocking thing to Laurina to go against such a
ban. "I hope you will not get in trouble for coming
without the others, Laurina."
  Laurina's smile glowed at her. She said, "I don't care
if I do or not," and Cendri sighed a little, even while
Laurina's gesture moved her. Evidently the young
woman had developed a full-fledged case of hero
worship. She would have thought Laurina, who was
about her own age, was too old for such a school-girlish
attitude, but perhaps on a world where one's immedi-
ate social superiors were all women, this kind of thing
lasted longer.
  Laurina added earnestly, "It was not absolutely
forbidden. But the Pro-Matriarch spoke, and of course
everyone was afraid to make her angry, so the matrons
at the college suggested it would be wiser and more
courteous not to go. But I am my own woman, and I do
not see how merely listening to what the Scholar Dame
has to say can damage me. I do not suppose she will
force her opinions upon me, if I cannot accept them in
conscience!"
  Cendri wanted to laugh at the young defiance of that.
She discovered instead that she was moved. "I am
happy to have your help, my dear, and perhaps when
the other students see that I have not damaged you in
any way, they will decide that their consciences and
their duty will permit them to come."
  "But this is sheer politics!" Vaniya fumed, "How
dare that woman set the whole city at odds this way? Is
she hoping that if Rezali dies without naming a
successor, some grand outcry from the people will place
her upon the High Matriarch's seat? What will it profit
her to do this?"
  Cendri thought it prudent to ignore that. She could
not, after all, make any legitimate comment about local
politics. She told Vaniya that, since the promised
students had not appeared, they would need some help
in carrying their gear and that it was ready to transport;
bringing Laurina with her to their room, she gave her
charge of the graphic recording equipment. She hated
to feed the young woman's crush on her by singling her
out for special attention this way, but Laurina, as a
student, was better fitted to deal with such a responsi-
bility than Vaniya's unskilled servants and poor rela-
tions who had been assigned to the task.
  Surreptitiously she saw Laurina examining the equip-
ment. Dal was organizing the materials, putting them in
order for use. Somehow everything got organized-
even Rhu volunteered to help-and they started
through the garden toward the shoreline and the path
which led upward toward the ruins at We-were-guided.
Vaniya stood and watched them go. Cendri thought she
seemed distressed; but whether it was at the action of
her fellow Pro-Matriarch, or something else, she could
not be sure.
  Of course this is not what she wants. We-were-guided
is a holy place to her. How can I make her understand
that we will not desecrate it? Or will our very presence do
that?
  She knew Dal would never understand this. He was
trained in all the traditional disciplines of archaeology,
but he was oriented only to measurable things; micro-
metric measurements of the skulls of tomb inhabitants,
computer analysis of tools to judge the size and
physiology of the hands, limbs or appendages that had
used them, measurements, judgments based on arbi-
trary standards.
  But could he really understand, from these things,
the true essence of the past? Could computer analysis
of a tool and the hand which held it ever provide the
complex reasons why a society assumed its form? She
had applauded louder than any other student in her
section when a famous anthropologist, returning from a
study of the customs of the Delta Kamellins, a curious
crew of aboriginal humanoids in the Orion system, said
he wasn't interested in the statistical analysis of the
comparative length of their sexual appendages, or of
how frequently they used their anterior, as contrasted
to their posterior appendages; his interest was in the
complex social and emotional factors which caused
them to choose one appendage over the other, and
those things were not subject to such analysis.
  So with Cendri. She was interested in the complex
and living culture of the Matriarchate. She could have
been equally interested in a past culture like that of the
hypothetical Builders. But Dal was not, she felt,
interested in the life of the Builders at all. He did not
care what kind of beings they had been, or what
motives lay behind their ruins or the daily rituals they
had once performed in those ruins. He wanted to know
what they had done, and when, and even to a certain
limited degree how. But the why would forever escape
him; and the tragedy of this was that he would not
miss it.
  And she knew it was useless to argue with Dal about
all this. She could only-if she were fortunate-follow
his study and analysis of the ruins, and come to her own
conclusions about the things she wanted to know about
the Builders. And even that was a poor substitute, she
thought with a bitterness so deeply submerged that she
was not fully aware it was there, for spending her own
precious and irrecoverable time on Isis doing his work
instead of her own research into the live, growing, real
culture of the Matriarchate which was all around them.
How could Dal be content to waste his time on beings
which had been dead for years, centuries, millennia?
  As they began to climb the hill toward the ruins, she
turned and got a glimpse of Dal's face. This, she
reminded herself, finnly, was his moment. She had
been doing her own work since she landed, her notes
were full and precise, and even though there were
tremendous gaps in her knowledge of the Matri-
archate-their mating customs, for instance, still lay
in utter darkness-5he had still more than tripled all
extant knowledge of the daily life of the Matriarchate.
Until this very morning Dal had not had the slightest
chance even to begin his work. And even now, he must
pretend to take a subordinate position to Cendri.
  She herself had spent an enormous amount of time
on the ship outbound, on tapes and hypno-learners,
and she felt she could give a passable imitation of a
professional archaeologist. But she new within herself
that she was just that, an imitation of one.
  She saw that Laurina, close beside her, was appar-
ently bubbling over with a thousand unspoken ques-
tions, politely repressed in honor-or awe?-of the
Scholar Dame from the Unity. If she were a real
Scholar Dame, she thought, at least part of her
commitment would be to teaching, and not merely to
her own research, and she realized that this, too, was
an important part of her mission to Isis. They were
going to judge the quality of the Unity's scholarship by
her. Cendri Owain. The Scholar Dame Cendri Malocq.
  Laurina, encouraged by her smile, asked shyly,
"May I ask the Scholar Dame--" she had evidently
been well briefed, and reminded herself overnight, of
the forms of courtesy in use on University, "what
instruments she carries for use in her research?"
  The formal terms of courtesy should have made
Cendri feel at home, as she would have felt with a
teaching assistant from her own college on University.
Instead, for some reason, it made her feel lonely,
excluded, apart from the easy companionship of the
women to which she had been briefly admitted, here on
Isis. She said, "You were to call me Cendri, Laurina.
And yes, of course, you may ask me anything you like.
The instrument in your care--" she indicated the
graphic-recording console, "is to record, as permanent-
ly or temporarily as I wish, whatever I see or hear
today. It is like photographic camera equipment-do
you not have that on Isis?"
  "Yes, of course, our little girls use them for toys, and
also they are used in nurseries or hospitals, when
patients or infants must be continually observed with-
out disturbing them," Laurina said. "But where are
your supplies-"
  "That is the way in which they differ; no perishable
supplies or sensitized material for storage of the record
is needed," Cendri told her. "Once it is activated, we
need only activate a certain sequence to replay, pro-
jected on any desired space, a complete holographic
record of what we have seen and heard. We can
even-not here, but on a world with the adequate
compensating machinery and equipment-reproduce,
to a small and limited degree, replicas of certain
artifacts, so that the cultural treasures of one world
need not be removed so that other worlds can enjoy
their semblance. And if, a hundred or a thousand years
from now, some new research light years away should
cast additional light on what we find here, scholars on
University could, to some extent, find out what we have
discovered here, even if these ruins should have been
since obliterated by tidal wave, earthquake or time."
  "That is not likely," Laurina said, "Already we know
that within We-were-guided, the ground never quakes,
and no tidal wave can reach so far."
  Cendri thought, I wish I could be sure of that. But she
knew already that this was an article of faith with the
women of Isis, and in fact, the ruins themsleves could
not have stood so long unless located in a spot
singularly immune to the general seismic properties of
the rest of the continent of Isis.
  They were approaching the ruins now, crossing the
area directly in front of the enormous black-glass gates.
She dropped back beside Dal, and said, in a low voice,
and in their own language, to avoid overhearing, "You
should go in first, Dal, if we can manage it. I owe you
that."
  He smiled briefly at her, and said, "That isn't
important now. But before we go in I want to get
graphics of the exterior-look at those gates!"
  "I'd say, whatever they were, they were larger than
human, wouldn't you?" she asked, looking at the vast,
towering arches far above their heads. He made a
negative gesture.
  "Can't tell anything at all by ceremonial doors and
gates; tQ find that out, we'll need to find the doors they
used all the time, every day." But it was not a reproof,
just an impersonal comment, and Cendri thought, with
a sigh of relief, he's himself again. This was what he
needed. There had been a time when they had shared
their studies like this; before their marriage, before she
had--though temporarily-abandoned her own.
  She saw Rhu and Laurina, and Vaniya's servants,
burdened with their equipment, watching them, won-
dering what the alien scholars from University would
do now. Suddenly she wished she could get rid of all of
them, get rid of the pretense that she was the Scholar
Dame from University, and he her unregarded assist-
ant, so that they could be free to interact in their own
normal pattern, without pretense or sham. But when
she said so to Dal, almost yearningly, he shook his
head.
  "Out of the question. Let's not get involved in side
issues now, Cendri, there's a job to be done."
  He was right; there was no point questioning the
postulates on which they were free to explore the ruins
of Isis. After all, wherever they might have gone, there
would have been some kind of adverse working condi-
tions. She said, "You want graphics of the exterior.
Shall I teach Laurina to use the recorder so that I can
be free to make written or voice-scriber notes?"
  He frowned. "That might be a good idea," he said,
"but I hate to trust it to a stranger, and a woman at
that."
  "Dal, any qualified assistant we get here is going to
be a woman," she reminded him, and he chuckled.
"Right you are. And you did tell me she was a
professor of history at the college here, so she must
have a considerable amount of intelligence." He turned
around, glancing at Laurina, and beckoned her close.
"Show her how to work the thing, will you, Cendri?"
  Laurina looked shocked. She whispered, "Do you
allow it to talk to you in that tone?"
  Cendri felt a moment of despair. The brief moment
of naturalness between herself and Dal had suddenly
evaporated again, into the pretense that was their life
on Isis! She said, with a trifle more sharpness than she
intended, "My assistant is a scholar in his own right on
University, Laurina, and as such he is fully qualified.
We do not make distinctions of this kind on University.
There is work to be done, and we have no time to waste
in preserving such artificial distinctions. The important
thing is that together we are qualified to make these
explorations, and which of us gives the orders is a
matter we do not really stop to consider." She thought:
maybe I can actually make a point about scholarship on
University!
  Laurina looked crushed. She said, almost in a
whisper, "I did not mean to offend the Scholar-I
mean, I did not mean to offend you, Cendri. Forgive
me-"
  "That's all right." In a sense, Cendri knew, she was
using Laurina's hero-worship for her to enforce a point
of view which went against all Laurina's cultural and
ethical preconceptions. Was she justified in doing this?
Could the end ever justify the means? There was no
time to explore complex cultural and ethical questions
now. She said, with a pleasant smile, "I presume you
would like to know how to use the graphics-recorder?"
  "I would indeed," Laurina said, and she looked
awed, "if you will trust me with it."
  "Very well, then." Cendri moved to her side, and
began demonstrating the complex controls. She found
Laurina a quick pupil, and after a few minutes had no
hesitation in turning it over to the woman for the
recordings.
  "From now you record everything that we see and
explore," she instructed. "First of all, get the gates
from all angles. . . ."
  Slowly, working together, they recorded the giant
gates, the two huge black-glass towers just inside the
gates, and the courtyards inside them. Then, slowly,
they began to explore the streets of the ancient
city-although "streets"was hardly the word for the
huge, regular, but strangely ordered spaces between
buildings. After a very brief survey, Dal beckoned
Cendri to his side. She went, ignoring Rhu's shocked
stare.
  "I want to check out a preliminary impression," he
said, low-voiced. "First of all, what strikes you first
about these ruins?"
  She knew immediately what he meant.
  "Their newness," she said, "they don't look as if they
had been here more than a couple of thousand years at
most. I'd amost say a couple of hundred, but that's
impossible; they were here when Cinderella was dis-
covered and mapped."
  He nodded, biting his lip. He said, "Right. And on a
planet as seismic as this, how in the hell did they
manage to escape the quakes?"
  She hazarded, "Some form of building that can resist
almost infinite earthquake stresses?"
  "Impossible," Dal said, "Technology can do a lot,
but not that kind of resistance. It's like the question of
the irresistible force and the immovable object-how
immovable would they have to be, to resist a Force 9 or
Force 10 quake? The very definition of such a quake
is-total destruction of all man-made structures and
virtual destruction of the land configurations. I'm going
to have to get a look at the seismic patterns-you told
me they had basic seismographs-but statistically
speaking, a planet like this should have at least one
Force 9 quake every two or three thousand years, and
for this particular area we could make a statistically
defensible prediction that nothing, and I mean nothing,
could survive from one civilization to another, giving
each civilization Rakmall's Limit of twelve thousand
years."
  "Would Rakmall's Limit apply to a nonhuman
technology, Dal?"
  He scowled and nodded, evidently thinking deeply.
"To a nonhuman civilization, perhaps not. But I can't
think of a technology which could survive Rakmall's.
I'll have to explore all these structures-1 hesitate even
to call them buildings, now. Maybe we can get a clue to
the level of the technology which built them. I do think
we can confidently say they were not human or even
humanoid. Look-" he swept his arms in an all-
encompassing gesture, "The size, the arrangement of
the structures-it makes no sense for any culture I have
seen. I can say confidently one thing; they are no
known civilization or technology." He sighed deeply.
"Sharrioz! How I wish I had a fully accredited team
with me! An expedition, say, of ninety to a hundred
men, equipped in all specialties-"
  Abruptly he dismissed all that. He said, "Let's get
on. Let's go straight through, making a graphic record
of the exterior of every structure, and we can code
them at our leisure."
  Again they started through the ruins, pace by pace.
The sun climbed, began slowly to decline. Dal finally
yielded when Cendri demanded a brief stop for rest and
refreshment, seeing that Rhu was exhausted and
sweating in the subtropical heat, and even Laurina,
fascinated by what they were doing, and bent on
proving she could handle the graphics recorder, looked
wilted.
  Vaniya's servants had provided ample and pleasing
food, and Cendri would have liked to sit down by Dal
and talk over the morning's work; but as Rhu ap-
proached them, reluctantly, she recalled the social
prohibitions of the Matriarchate. She and Dal could
perhaps be dispensed from these prohibitions for the
duration of their work. He was also their Companion,
and had a right to share her meals, she assumed, but
she remembered Vaniya's scandalized question about
whether or not she would find it distracting. If she
sought Dal's company out of working time, she gave
weight to that belief. She turned to Laurina, and they
sat together on some oddly-proportioned steps (did the
original inhabitants of this place have legs fourteen feet
long, or did they fly?) spreading out their lunches,
while Dal, trying to conceal his annoyance, resigned
himself to Rhu's company. She noticed that Vaniya's
servants, mostly women, separated themselves, draw-
ing near to Cendri and Laurina-though not near
enough to listen to what they were saying-while the
few men among them kept strictly separate.
  Dal after a period of time, checked his timepiece and
the angle of the sun. "If we are going to finish the
preliminary survey today, we have no more time to
lose. Laurina, you make a graphic of the steps from all
four directions before we leave here. "
  "How dare you," Laurina flared. "I do not take or-
ders from any male! We are not now in the male-
worlds!"
  Shocked, dismayed-this was what she had been
most afraid of-Cendri sprang to her feet. She had an
irrational impulse to throw herself between them-to
protect Dal? Laurina had scrambled upright, and was
facing Dal in angry indignation:
  "Laurina," Cendri said sharply, and suddenly knew
what she must say: -
  "If you wish to work with us, you must to some
extent respect and accept our customs! I explained to
you that on University, we do not make these distinc-
tions. Furthermore, my-my assistant-" she almost
choked on the words, but this at least was necessary,
"did not give you an order, but made a courteous
request of a fellow worker. If you are not prepared to
grant the same courtesy to my assistant as to myself, we
can dispense at once with your assistance!"
  For a moment Laurina remained motionless, staring
at Dal in angry defiance, and Cendri had a moment, her
heart pounding, of dread. Vaniya's servants, she
thought, looked ready to tear Dallimb from limb, and
Rhu had turned as white as the bleached limestone of
the courtyard under their feet, and was bracing himself
against a column as if his bones and muscles no longer
had the strength to hold him upright.
  Then Laurina dropped her eyes. She said, hesitantly,
"I am sorry, Cendri-I forgot. I am-I am not ac-
customed- "
  Relief washed like a spring-tide through Cendri's
body and mind. She said gently, "I know; custom of a
lifetime is very hard to break. Dal, too, was heedless;
among these surroundings, a request should have been
relayed through me." She gave Dal a hard look-did he
know what he had almost precipitated? But at least
they had proved a point. . . or she hoped they had. If
this point had to be made again and again, it might
indeed be better to dispense with Laurina's assis-
tance-or the assistance of any native of Isis/Cin-
derella!
  She was glad she had left her voice-scriber running. It
was sound-activated and would provide a complete
record of the episode for her mentors on University.
She wondered what it would provide in the way of
semantic analysis. She watched, a little fearfully, as
Laurina went toward Dal, not sure which of them she
now wanted to protect, for Dal was glowering; but
Laurina said, with shy formality, "If the Scholar
Dame's assistant will inform me which angles of the
steps should be recorded, I will endeavor to supply it
with the adequate graphics."
  Dal looked a little taken aback, but he was willing to
meet Laurina halfway; was, Cendri realized, aware of
the enormous emotional step the woman of Isis had
taken. He answered with perfectly correct formality,
"We should have a recording from each direction, and
one from the top of each flight of steps, in order. If the
respected teacher will avoid facing the instrument
directly sunward, the quality of the recordings will be
greatly improved."
  Rhu, Cendri realized, was watching the episode with
a surprise which reminded her of-for a minute she
could not remember what it reminded her of. Then she
knew. The male, Bak, who had penetrated into their
quarters with a message for Dal, and had been cap-
tured. He had looked like that at Dal, when Dal
brushed Cendri aside and took over questioning him.
  Poor little devil! Maybe Rhu will learn something
from this, too, about life on University.
  Is that fair, to expose him to that kind of hope, when
his world is so narrowly circumscribed? Life for him, at
least, will never change!
  But for the present the recording proceeded smooth-
ly, and they worked their way, court by court, open
space by open space, through the ruined city, with
Dal-she knew-describing his impressions on a voice-
scriber set to a throat-mike so that he could subvocalize
and make his personal notes; Cendri making the record
by voice in the language of Isis for the use of such help
as they might later have from the students and assist-
ants there, and Laurina handling the graphics recorder
which would provide visual holograph commentary on
everything they had seen that day.
  The sun had begun to decline downward, substantial-
ly altering the quality of the light, when they came to
the enormous open space at the very center of the
ruins, where the antique spaceship lay. Cendri ap-
proached it hesitantly, against her will feeling some-
thing of the wonder and awe she had felt there last
night. Or had it all been hallucination, illusion, delu-
sion, a kind of mass hallucination? Tentatively, she
glanced at the spaceship, at the faint light she had seen
in the ruins, but, though deep canyons of shadow lay
across the city, darkening the area around the space-
ship, there was no sign nor glimmer of reflected light.
  Had it all been illusion, then? She glanced at Laurina,
and saw, in shock, that a faint trace of the ecstasy and
awe were outlined on her companion's face. Laurina
said in a whisper, "I wish I could be sure that They did
not feel our presence was irreverent, Cendri."
  Cendri felt like saying a fervent, "Me, too!" But she
knew this was completely irrational. She glanced at
Dal-had he too been touched by the wonder of the
site, by any trace of that contact?
  Evidently not; Dal, was murmuring into his voice-
scriber, transcribing his personal notes on each suc-
cessive feature of the ruins. He looked happy and
completely preoccupied with what he was doing; but as
Cendri approached him, he broke into a grin.
  He said in their own language, "Cendri, is that what
it seems to be?"
  "The spaceship? Yes, of course."
  "That doesn't belong to the ruins. It's not more than
three hundred years old, and it looks in worse preserva-
tion than they do!"
  She had noticed that herself. She said, "As a matter
of fact, it has been here sixty-nine years, sidereal Unity
time. It is the ship which carried the Isis/Cinderella
colony here."
  "Hell of a place to land a starship," Dal commented,
voicing the thought Cendri had had', "What do you
suppose made them pick out a spot like this?"
  She could not comment on that without going into
the belief of the Pro-Matriarch that they had been
guided there, and that would inevitably have led to
some kind of discussion of her own experience there.
  And unless Dal himself sensed something in the area,
she could not bring it up: He would call her imagina-
tive, superstitious. . . she couldn't face that, not now.
And if he does feel it, how will he be able to make his
exploration of the ruins? she wondered. She herself
could hardly force her dragging feet to cross the great
expanse of-was it stone? Concrete?-around the
starship.
  Dal furrowed his brow and murmured, "What is it
they call this place?"
  "We-were-guided," she said, and he raised his brows
and said, "Extraordinary. I wonder what made them
think of that? That would be your province, of course,
alien psychology. . . ." and went a little closer to the
starship. "What a very strange place to land. I wonder
why?"
  Laurina was moving around, slowly recording the
ruins and the ship from all angles. Cendri made a note
of the time and angles, but her mind was busy
elsewhere. Faintly, dimly, like an illusion, a dream
within a dream, she remembered the night before,
when a flooding warmth and joy had gone all through
her. . . .
  Laurina said, "I wonder, sometimes, if They are
angry that after They had brought us here, we did not
do as They probably wished, and come to live with
Them here. . . ."
  Cendri blinked at the question. She started to say,
that was ridiculous, then realized that Laurina's answer
to that particular question could tell her as much about
the society of Isis as Dal could learn about the ruins.
She said carefully, "Why didn't you do so then? Live
here inside the ruins, that is?"
  "I don't know, Cendri; it was, of course, before I was
born," Laurina said. "Perhaps only the High Matriarch
could tell you, for it was her predecessor, I believe,
who made the decision. I can only guess, as a historian,
that perhaps the buildings seemed, to them, unsuitable
for human occupation. Or it may be that They did not
wish to be disturbed except at their own time and in the
proper way. It is obvious that They are much older and
wiser than our people."
  Cendri decided not to think much about that answer
now. A time would come when she could sit down with
one of her mentors on University and subject it to
intense semantic analysis.
  But it also occurred to her to think; Vaniya must
have been alive when the decision was made. Perhaps
she would know. . . .
  Dal came toward them, as they moved through the
abandoned area of the spaceship's landing, and went
toward the remainder of the structures. He spoke
directly to Laurina.
  "Have you been inside any of the structures?"
  Laurina shook her head. She said, "I have been told
that it is impossible to enter any structure in We-were-
guided. "
  Dal frowned and considered. Then he turned reso-
lutely to one high, towering structure, and laboriously
dragged himself up the high steps. Cendri crawled up
after him, and after a minute, Laurina, bracing the
graphic-recorder console on her arm by its strap,
struggled up behind them. They crowded together on.
the small platform at the top.
  "No doors," Dal said, glancing up into the dark
expanse above them. "I ought to find out what's
inside."
  But when he pressed forward, he frowned, flattened
himself, then said, "Come feel this, Cendri."
  She touched it with gingerly fingers. "What is it, Dal?
It feels like glass, but I can't see anything."
  "Unusually clear glass, maybe," he said, "or some
invisible material which bends light around it-it's not
transparent, though-" he pressed his face against the
unyielding barrier. "It just looks as if there's nothing
there. Extraordinary."
  Cendri nodded. "What is it, then? Force-field?"
  "How should I know? I hate to try and use a laser on
it; but somehow, sooner or later, I've got to get inside
one of these structures. . . ."
  "We have some force-field disruptors in the equip-
ment," Cendri said, "They'll break almost any known
kind of stasis field, if that's what it is."
  He nodded, signalled to one of Vaniya's servants
who was carrying assorted equipment, and took out a 
small graduated series of force-field breakers. He 
ordered Cendri and Laurina down off the platform, and 
aimed the disruptor field at the barrier. There was a 
growing light and a painful subsonic whine, but no
result. Dal tried one after another of the field-breakers,
but with equal lack of results. 
  "No luck," he said at last. "Whoever put that thing 
Up there, they meant it .to stay. Maybe when we get a
little further along, I'll pick one of the smaller buildings 
and try to cut into it with a laser."
  Laurina said, hesitantly, "But suppose They do not
want us inside?"
  Dal turned on her, and he looked about to explode;
but fortunately he remembered in time where they
were. He said, with careful patience,"If They don't
want me inside, I'm afraid They will have to tell me so
Themselves."
  "But They do not speak to men," Laurina said,
looking shocked, and Dal grinned. He said, "Then
They will have to tell Cendri, and she can tell me-all
right, Laurina? Meanwhile, it's going to be dark fairly
soon. I knew all along it would take more than one day
just to make preliminary explorations. Shall we go back
to the gates before it gets dark? I have lights with the
stuff, but it's been a long day and there's no sense in
overdoing it."
  No one moved, however, and Cendri realized that
none of them were conditioned to seeing a man make
such a decision for an entire expedition. She said,
"Let's get going, then. Laurina, you know the way
back, would you like to lead the way?" And they
started back toward the gates.
  There was still some light left outside the gates, and
the sun was not wholly down. On the shore below
them, the women of the wrecked pearl-divers' village
were moving along the shore, gathering up what the
tide had brought in from the wreckage of their village
and their world.
  "They are fortunate," Laurina said. "A great deal of
timber has been brought back by the waves-look, they
are hauling it up above tide-mark-and now not so
many men will need to risk their lives inland, cutting
more timber and beams. We have had great waves
before, though never such an enormous one. Within a
few days, some preliminary shelters will be built, and
by the next season, the houses will be ready to live in,
and the life of the village will go on. Although I
suppose the High Matriarch will order that the next
watch-tower be built up higher, perhaps almost as high
as We-were-guided."
  Cendri said in dismay, "You mean they'll go down
and live there again?"
  Laurina looked grave. She said, "Yes, Cendri, they
have no choice. We cannot abandon the pearl-beds
which were planted there, which have been there for a
generation now. Without our pearls, Isis has nothing.
A little gold from sea-water, a little magnesium, a few
biologicals-but it is our pearls on which we depend,
and these and the other villages down the coast are our
lifeblood."
  This is no planet for colonization, Cendri thought.
The Scholar Dame di Velo had been right. This planet
should have been turned over to a scientific foundation,
for study of the Builder ruins-if they are Builder
ruins-and never turned over to a colony at all. It's
never going to be a viable settlement.
  She doubted very much if they could even manage to
hold out long enough to get the tsunami-prediction
equipment which, Miranda had thought, would make
such a difference to their world and their people.
  She said something of this to Dal, low-voiced. He
said, "If they really were Builder ruins-well, that
might make a difference. We have nothing else which
can be authenticated as being directly of Builder origin.
If they had been Builder ruins, I am sure the Unity
would have offered to resettle the Isis Colony else-
where, at its own expense, on a planet more suitable to
their agriculture and their 'Yay of life, in exchange for
unlimited opportunity to study the Builder artifacts-"
  "Do you really think they would accept such an offer
from the Unity after what happened on Labrys? They
have reason to distrust the Unity-" Abruptly she
heard, as if by delayed action, something else he had
said.
  "You say if they had been Builder ruins. . . Dal, do
you know-that they're not? And if they're not, what are
they? Do you know?"
  "No, to both questions," Dal said, "But whatever
they are-Cendri, don't be naive! They are too new to
be Builder ruins! Unless-" and he wet his lips,
hesitating. "I hardly dare to believe-to hope-"
  "Dal, what is it?"
  "Only one thing could have preserved them like
that," he said, "It is only a theoretical construct, no
known civilization was able to use it-"
  "What, Dal? What are you talking about?"
  "Time stasis," he said.
  "Time-" she broke off. "Oh, Dal!" she said,
chiding, "I thought it had been conclusively proved that
was impossible by all the laws of physics-"
  "Impossible by the known laws," he said, "but they
used to say that about trans-light speeds and antigravity
and antimatter black holes-"
  She said, "Goodness, Dal, isn't it enough to chal-
lenge all the accepted scientific theories about the
Builders? You've seen what that did to the Dame di
Velo! If you're going to start talking about wild theories
like Time stasis-"
   "No, no, no," he interrupted, almost pleading, and
she thought, I never realized how much this meant to
him! "Don't you see what it might mean, Cendri? It
would mean that the Builders left all their records and
artifacts for us, when we could get around to a
technology that would understand them! We'd have to
break into it, but they've left a key for us, we just have
to learn to use it! All the Builder technology-think of
it, Cendri! But it will mean none of our force-field
breakers will be any good, no laser ever made will cut
inside-we'd need theoretical physicists of the highest
order here, but if we get in, the whole Builder culture is
waiting there for us! Think of it, Cendri!" He was pale
and sweating with excitement.
  She felt almost angry. Wasn't it enough, she won-
dered, that she was prepared to tolerate his attachment
to one crackpot theory, the existence of the hypotheti-
cal Builders who had seeded the Galaxy with intelligent
life, without being required to be patient and tolerant
with another one? Time stasis indeed!
  Although, come to think of it, it might possibly
explain why the ruins were so very well-preserved!
  But it was getting dark, and all of Vaniya's people
were standing there, waiting. She said, "Do we need to
do anything more today, Dal?"
  "No, you can send all the people who are just
fetching and carrying, back home," he said, "but I
think we'll need Laurina to arrange about tomorrow."
  Cendri dismissed Vaniya's people. Rhu, though
reluctantly, begged leave to go with them; Vaniya, he
said, might require his presence when she returned
from the city. Dal, Cendri and LaUrina sat on the steps
in the courtyard with the dry, forgotten fountains
where she had seen Rhu and Miranda-was it only
yesterday?
  "We have hardly made a beginning," Dal said,
"though we have graphics of all the exteriors, I think.
Tomorrow-1 think we need a plan and a schedule."
He pulled out writing instruments and a storage-note
copier. "Let me see; tomorrow I want to take soil
scrapings, and try to get access to a computer to analyze
them. I have to bring up a laser, and see if we can cut
into one of the smaller buildings. Maybe X-ray equip-
ment first, to see if we can get a line on what's inside;
we don't want to risk damaging the contents of any
building. I want to try and adapt the force-breakers,
too, to work with a couple of little-known frequencies;
we tested only the most common ones today. That will
take two days. Meanwhile we will have to send to
University for everything known of the other suspected
Builder ruins, though I have copies of the Dame di
Velo's notes, and I'll have to recheck them. Or can I
put you on that, Cendri? You, LaUrina," he added,
"You are a historian?"
  She whispered, in shock, "Yes-"
  "I want you to take tomorrow off and check your-
do you keep your information in libraries or computer
terminals or what? I want to know everything that's
happened at this site since the Isis colony landed here,
and eveything you were told about the place before you
landed here. Is that fairly clear to you?"
  She nodded, and Dal went on, rapidly outlining a
clear, comprehensive schedule for studying the ruins,
bit by bit, before actually getting inside any given
structure. Cendri, who knew that the sound of his voice
would activate her voice-scriber, listened, admiring the
brilliance and clarity with which Dal, after only a single
day of observation, could mount a comprehensive pIal!
of attack against the secrets of the ruins of We-were-
guided.
  He finished winding up the plan, and stretched,
yawning. "We'd better get back, then. Supper is going
to look awfully good, now we've actually gotten-
something done," he said, "Ready, Cendri?"
  She nodded, and they got to their feet. But as
Laurina got up, she reeled against Cendri, and Cendri
saw that the red-headed woman had gone pale, her
freckles standing out like blotches in the lowering
sunset.
  "Laurina, what's wrong? Have we tired you too"
much, this first day?"
  "It isn't that," she said faintly, looking after Dal as-
he started down the hill. "Cendri-Cendri, I am--I am
frightened. I had never believed that a male could-
could make a clear and comprehensive plan like this,
full of logic and good sense. An adult, functioning
male."
  Cendri said with a sigh of weary patience, "I told
you, my-my Companion is a Master Scholar on
University."
  "I can understand-on worlds where males make the
rules, their kind of scholarship is accepted as best, it
must be," she said, shaking, "but this-this is real. It is,
perhaps, a little too linear, a little too left-brained, but
it is real scholarship, real intelligence. It frightens me,
Cendri, because I could not have done as well myself.
And if a male- an adult male, subject to the compul-
sive sex drives which keep them from leaming-can do
this well, then where is the virtue or benefit in being a
woman? I'm frightened, Cendri. Do you really want to
destroy all the scholars on Isis this way, letting them
know that a man can so easily equal or almost surpass
their best accomplishments?"
  "I do not see how any scholar worth the name could
be destroyed by having her assumptions challenged,':
Cendri said, but then she did understand. Laurina's
whole way of life was based on the assumption that
women were a superior kind of being, that no man
could possibly be capable of her kind of rational
thought.
  Dal had said something like this about Pioneer; that
when it was brought home to them that there were
women actually as strong and capable as men, some of
the men of Pioneer felt their masculinity challenged.
Was this the kind of culture shock Laurina was facing?
  Cendri could see that Laurina's self-confidence, her
very self-concept, had been shaken to the roots. Could
she survive that, undamaged? Could the culture of Isis
survive being told such things?
  Was a way of life, good in itself and workable,
expendable just in order to make a point the Unity
wanted made?
  She put her arm around Laurina, feeling the young
woman lean on her. Protectively, she started down the
hill, saying, "Laurina, it's not that serious-" but she
knew Laurina could not take it in, not yet. Laurina's
open hero-worship gave her, Cendri, a responsibility.
How could she let Laurina be damaged this way? She
wondered if Laurina would be there tomorrow to work
with them-or if she, Cendri, shouldn't dismiss the girl
for her own good. But wouldn't that be true of any
worker they got from Isis? Sooner or later they would
have to know the truth.
  Had they really been sent here by the Unity to destroy
the culture of Isis.
  Was a culture which lived by a lie really worth
preserving, then?
  The first law by which an anthropologist lived
was-do nothing to damage the culture you are sent to
study.
  But if they live by laws which cannot survive against
other cultures-what then? The history of culture was
full of cultures which had been destroyed-vandal-
ized-by forcing them into contact with irreconcil-
abIes. The history of the Galaxy was the worse for that
destruction. Distressed beyond words at what she
seemed to have done without meaning any harm, she
said nothing except, "I think you are over-tired,
Laurina. Maybe it will all look better to you tomor-
row."
  She had not been sent here to show the Matriarchate
of Isis the error of their ways! They had a right to their
own truths and their own culture! It was not up to her
to destroy it!
  She would speak to Dal, and warn him about what he
had done. Meanwhil~he stumbled, realizing that she
herself was wearied almost to exhaustion. There was no
way she could make rational judgments about compar-
ative truths and ethics now. She said, "I'm tired, aren't
you, Laurina? I'll be awfully glad to get into a hot bath
and some fresh clothes, and have one of Vaniya's good
dinners."
 
 
                 Chapter Eight
 
 
  BUT THEY DID NOT GO TO THE RUINS AT WE-WERE-
guided the next day.
  Dal was in high spirits that night as they washed off
the grime and dust of the ruins. He sang, and teased
Cendri good-naturedly about her "admirer." And at
Vaniya's table that night he spent some time, of his own
free will, talking with Rhu-which, Cendri thought,
would ease somewhat the friction of having it known
that her Companion did not like Vaniya's. Later,
before they slept, he said thoughtfully. "I think I may
start teaching Rhu to operate some of our equipment.
Maybe all the kid needs is self-confidence. He's not so
dumb, he's just been taught never to open his mouth,
that's all." And Cendri was greatly relieved.
  But the next morning, as they were making their
preparations for the day, and Vaniya was receiving
petitioners, a messenger entered the hall who made
Vaniya frown and Miranda look deeply troubled. But
Vaniya, as always, was calm.
  "Well, Clarita, I know you for my worthy colleague
Mahala's messenger; how can I serve you?"
  "Respect, Pro-Matriarch, my message is not for you,
but for the honored guest of the Matriarchate," said the
woman. "I bring a message and an invitation for the
Scholar Dame from University."
  Vaniya frowned and said, with obvious reluctance,
"The Scholar Dame has begun her work and is
engaged. "
  The woman Carita said smoothly, "Is this the
message I am to bear to the Pro-Matriarch Mahala,
then, that you would not allow me to deliver the
message to the honored guest of the Matriarchate?"
  Vaniya chewed her lip and said, with ill grace, "No,
of course not. Cendri-" she turned toward them, "the
Pro-Matriarch Mahala, my colleague, has sent you a
messenger."
  Clarita turned toward Cendri and made the Unity's
formal gesture, hands clasped before the face. Cendri
had grown so accustomed to the informality of the
Matriarchate and Vaniya's household that it startled
her, seemed completely inappropriate. Clarita said,
"The worthy Pro-Matriarch Mahala regrets that she has
seen nothing of the Scholar Dame from University,
while her colleague Vaniya has had the privilege of
entertaining the honored guest and showing her the
hospitality of her household. It is now the pleasure and
the privilege of the Pro-Matriarch Mahala to state that
she has arranged a formal entertainment for the
Scholar Dame this afternoon, and to invite her and her
Companion to attend as guests. We have arranged an
athletic competition in her honour, and her Companion
is respectfully invited and urged to compete in any
event of its particular interest and skill."
  Cendri blinked. An-an athletic competition? And
Dal invited to compete? She looked uncertainly at
Vaniya. Dal was wearing his Get-me-out-of-this! look.
Cendri felt completely at a loss. She said in an
undertone to Miranda, who was-as usual-sitting
close beside her, a mark of honor, "Now that our work
has begun, I hate to break if off like this. Is there any
way I can refuse without making trouble?"
  Miranda shook her head. She said, in a troubled
voice, "No, I'm afraid not. This is the highest mark of
honor that can be given to an individual, to arrange
such an entertainment for her particular, special bene-
fit. In a sense it is an attempt to reproach my mother
that she has not done so-as if my mother had been
neglectful, not paying enough honor to our honored
guests. To refuse would indicate that you have allied
yourself entirely with my mother's political adherents. I
don't understand politics, but I know that this is
something you cannot do, coming from the Unity."
  This was the second time that Miranda had specifi-
cally disclaimed any knowledge of politics, but Cendri
thought that she had nevertheless a very good grasp of
them. She liked Vaniya; the Pro-Matriarch had showed
her kindness, it seemed, far beyond ordinary courtesy
to an official guest. So had Miranda. And yet the
official policy of the Unity absolutely forbade aligning
herself with any specific political faction. She raised her
eyes to Mahala's messenger and said with resignation,
"Tell the Pro-Matriarch Mahala that we shall be
honored. "
  Dal looked glum; but he had heard Miranda's words,
and was resigned to the loss of a day. The messenger
Clarita said, "I shall bring word of your acceptance to
the Mother Mahala. She bade me say further that you
are requested most cordially to lunch with the Pro-
Matriarch in private before the Games--"
  Damnation, thought Cendri. She knew Dal was
counting on at least a half day to consider and
consolidate the previous day's work. She was tempted
to plead the press of work; but Clarita added, pointed-
ly, "Thus you will confer upon the Pro-Matriarch
Mahala an honor which has already been given to the
Mother Vaniya," and Cendri resignedly told the Mes-
senger that it would be a pleasure.
  "Would your Companion care to compete in any of
the events? Does it swim, box, wrestle or race? Some
excellent prizes have been offered by the Council of
Elders, and it is welcome to compete for any or all of
them."
  Nonplussed, Cendri glanced at Dal, who was frown-
ing in amazement. She floundered for a sufficiently
diplomatic answer. "My Companion is not sufficiently
familiar with the rules of contests of such sort on this
world, and requests politely that it may be excused."
  Clarita bowed. She said, "The Pro-Matriarch will
await you at the noon hour, then, and you will be her
guests in the Official Box." She added to Vaniya, "The
Pro-Matriarch Mahala cordially requests that you,
Mother, your Companion, and such of your daughters
as wish to see the entertainment shall be invited to join
them in the Official Box as well."
  Vaniya said, "Tell my colleague 1 am obliged to her
and I shall be present if my duties allow." When Clarita
had gone she sat frowning, letting her food get cold, not
speaking. Finally she said to Cendri, "I suppose this, or
something like it, was inevitable. My colleague has
been jealous of me since we were little girls on the
mother-world of Persephone. I had thought--actually,
I had hoped-that when she prevented the students
from the college from coming to assist you, Cendri, that
she had simply decided to wash her hands of the entire
project, and take her chances that the High Matriarch
will recover long enough to name her as successor."
She frowned. "I must go at once to inquire about our
Mother, see if Rezali's condition has changed. This new
maneuver by Mahala means that she is not quite as
secure as she might be. She wants to make certain that
she will have some connection with the Scholar from
University-" Cendri realized that by now, Vaniya was
simply thinking aloud. With an effort, the older woman
smiled at her guest. She said, "In any case, my dear,
you and your Companion are certain to enjoy the
games. "
  She excused herself, and Cendri, resigned to the loss
of a day, consulted Miranda about the proper dress for
such an event, and went to make ready.
  To her surprise, Dal was less irritable than she had
feared. "We can't spend all our time working," he said,
"and I know you wanted to see something of what the
men do here. It will take us a day or two to evaluate
yesterday's data, anyhow."
  Cendri nodded, deliberately trying to look on the
bright side. This might even remove some obstacles
from her way; she remembered the message Laurina
had relayed; until she had seen and spoken with the
Scholar Dame, Mahala was unwilling to trust to the
scholarship of a male-centered world. This might serve
to reassure the other Pro-Matriarch that Cendri was not
a threat to the Matriarchate. While she robed herself in
the light cool robe which Miranda had suggested for
such an event, she had to dismiss a recurrent thought
that she was being disloyal to Vaniya.
  Fiercely she berated herself. She was an anthropolo-
gist, a scientist of University. She wasn't supposed to
form any alliances here that would jeopardize that;
allying herself with any faction whatsoever would ob-
viously be unethical. Theoretically she should have
the same kind of regard for the unknown Mahala as for
Vaniya, for Miranda.
  Restlessly she went to the window and looked down
at the distant ruins of We-were-guided, lying bland and
unrevealing in the sun.
  It is a bond between us. We have stood together before
their shrine, felt-felt something. It was real, it wasn't an
illusion.
  And yet I am not supposed to form such bonds. . . .
  "Athletic competition," said Dal, coming up behind
her. "Why, of all things, an athletic competition?
You're supposed to be the anthropologist, Cendri, why
should their entertainment take that form?"
  "I don't know, Dal."
  "I could understand it, if it were the women of the
society competing-demonstrating their strength and
aggression. But why do they have men competing?"
  Cendri could only hazard a guess. "Possibly it's the
one form of aggression they permit men in this society,
a socially allowable form of outlet? I'll have to see it
first, Dal, I can't make guesses."
   Since none of the cars would hold all of the Pro-
Matriarch's party, Vaniya elected to go in one vehicle
with Miranda, leaving Dal and Cendri, with Rhu to
escort them, in the other.
  They had not been in the city of Ariadne since their
first day there, the day of the earthquake. Much of the
rubble had been cleared away, but the amount of
construction being done startled Cendri, and she asked,
"Is this all the aftermath of the quake the day we came
here, or the small one the other night, Rhu?"
  "Oh, no; there was a great quake here, almost one
of our Long Years ago. Had Vaniya not received a
warning from the Inquirers and from We-were-guided,
the city would have been destroyed. As it was, many,
many lives were lost. Now I see they have the recycling
plant in operation again, to process gold and magnesi-
um from seawater for export." His face gave a cynical
twist. "But our balance of payments is nothing to me. I
am much more interested in the rebuilding of the
Symphony Hall. Vaniya has promised that if I continue
to please her-" Cendri thought she had never heard
anything as bitter as Rhu's voice, "she will arrange to
have my first two symphonies performed, as well as the
cantata I am now finishing."
  "Do you compose too, Rhu?" Dal asked, and the
Companion sighed and said, "I turned to composing
after my voice was' destroyed by growth. There was
really nothing else for me."
  Dal said impulsively, "I wish you would not say that
your voice was destroyed. It has only matured and is
more beautiful than ever."
  Rhu stared bleakly out the window. "A man would
say so."
  Cendri said quickly, "Rhu, you have the most
beautiful voice I have ever heard. On any world in the
Unity it would make your fortune; thousands would be
at your feet in admiration."
  Rhu looked at her, his face twisting. "I cannot
believe there is any civilized world in the Galaxy where
a rough voice like mine is preferred to the beautiful
soprano I once possessed."
  Cendri said, feeling the sadness in his words clutch at
her heart, "I wish you could sing on University; you
would soon believe the truth of what I say."
  "The Scholar Dame is kind," Rhu said, shaking his
head sorrowfully, "but it is too late for me, even if
somehow I could have that experience; I do not think I
could ever believe it, now."
  Dal laid a hand on his shoulder. He said, with a
warmth that astonished Cendri, "Rhu, my friend-look
at me." Cendri could not see his hands; he kept them
out of sight; but she guessed quickly at the gesture as he
said softly, "You were not born in chains-"
  Rhu looked, in terror, at Cendri. He said, "No,
no-not here-"
  Dal was motionless for a moment. He said, "Cendri
is not-" then sighed. "Very well. When we arrive at
the Residence, if you wish."
Shocked and hurt by this mark of distrust, Cendri
realized she should have known it all along. Dal had a
mission here which had nothing to do with the Ruins.
  I knew it, that day when the fugitive Bak was
caught. . . .
  This is against the laws of the Unity! she thought, then
berated herself as naive. Who but the Unity could have
sent Dal on such a mission, primed with the passwords
he would need? So much, she thought wrathfully, for
the University code of ethics, of noninterference in the
basic codes of a society!
  Are they going to interfere in the Matriarchate, try to
twist it their way? She wondered how Dal could stoop to
this-to entangle himself in Unity politics. Dal was a
scientist! The ethics of a Scholar of University should
certainly supersede the political struggles of the Unity!
Isis had a right to structure their society in their own
way! How could the Unity dare to send agents dedica-
ted to destroying it, altering it, arbitrarily, to fit Unity
standards?
  She turned away, afraid that Dal could see the anger
in her face, relieved as the car drew to a halt and Rhu
said, "This is the Residence of the Pro-Matriarch
Mahala. "
  It was, in its own way, as imposing a dwelling as
Vaniya's home, although longer, lower, all on one
floor. There were wide lawns and flower and herb
gardens, shrubbery and playgrounds were a group of
half-naked children were playing. The walls were
decorated with murals, as usual on Isis, but the quality
of the painting was so much better that Cendri
surmised-rightly, as she later discoverd-that Mahala
had gone against custom and had her walls decorated
by a professional painter rather than by members of the
household.
  There were no steps here. Cendri remembered that
most houses in Ariadne were built without stairs or
upper rooms because of the constant danger of earth-
quake. In the large front hall, a young woman greeted
them formally and ushered them inside, saying, "The
honored guests from University, Mother Mahala." Rhu
was ignored as if he had been one of the small children
on the lawns.
  The. Pro-Matriarch Mahala rose easily from a large
cushion where she had been sitting, examining some
papers, and came toward them. She was a small, wiry,
dark.,haired woman, in a brief kilt that left her withered
breasts bare; but, perhaps in deference to Unity
custom, she had thrown a scarf about her upper body.
Her voice was light, low and quick.
  "It is a pleasure; you honor me, Scholar Dame, and
you, Master Scholar of the Unity." Cendri blinked; it
was the first time in their stay on Isis that Dal's position
had been spontaneously recognized.
  And yet this was the woman who had sent a message
forbidding the women of the college of Ariadne to
associate with male scholarship? Cendri felt completely
confused.
  "I had hoped to meet you before," Mahala said, in
her quick light voice. "I do not know how much my
colleague Vaniya-how she hates me!-has told you
about the political situation, but I presume it is not
much."
  "She has told us that your High Matriarch lies at the
point of death and that she has not named either of you
as her successor," Cendri said.
  "That is true. Unfortunately, before lapsing into
unconsciousness, Mother Rezali insisted you must be
lodged with Vaniya, because her Residence is so near
to the Ruins of We-were-guided. I have tried to
encourage you to visit me, but I do not suppose mJl:
messages reached you; finally I was forced to arrange
things in a way even Vaniya could not ignore. I
apologize for placing you in this position, Scholar
Dame." She smiled, then looked at Dal and said, with a
sudden grin, "And I suppose I should also apologize on
behalf of my people for the position in which you have
been placed all along, Master Scholar, but the customs
of the Matriarchy are what they are, and I could not
abate them for the sake of a single guest, no matter how
worthy. I trust it has not been too much of an
inconvenience, Scholar Malocq."
  Dal said, politely, "No more than any Scholar would
accept for the privilege of exploring the ruins of the
ancient people who built the site, Mother Mahala."
Cendri noted that he used the title spontaneously an~-
with ease, as he had never seemed able to do.. with
Vaniya. Cendri, too, was not immune to Mahala's
charm. If Vaniya was, as Cendri had occasionally
thought her, a magnificent golden lioness, Mahala was
like a small friendly kitten; but Cendri warned herself
not to underrate this woman's intelligence or shrewd-
ness.
  Mahala waved them both to seats on the cushions at
her side. She said, "Now we will talk a little before this
entertainment. I am sorry that you chose not to
compete, SchoJar Malocq-" her eyes dwelt for a
moment, appreciatively, on Dal. "You are handsome
enough to give us all a treat on the field of competition;
but I suppose you felt you could not join in the
unfamiliar contest. A pity. Another time, perhaps, you
will give us that pleasure." As food was brought in by
women of her household, she served them herself, and
said, "I had thought that my message denying you the
assistance of the women of the college would have
brought you to me at once, Scholar Dame."
  "It did not occur to me," Cendri confessed. "I am
not very skilled in politics; I thought it simply an
expression of hostility."
  Mahala laughed. "I was too subtle, then; I was
hoping to create a situation which would bring you to
me, to confront me-even in anger- so that I could see
you away from Vaniya's influence. I am quite aware
that she holds the ruins of We-were-guided in a
completely superstitious awe, and I feared she might
attempt to delay exploration indefinitely." She ges-
tured. "Do eat while we talk, we do not have a great
deal of time. I don't suppose you know why I am
anxious to see the ruins explored?"
  It was Dal who said, "Surely you don't have any
scientific curiosity about the Builders, Lady?"
  "Not a smidgin of it," Mahala said frankly, "but if
they are genuinely the ruins of a race which seeded the
entire Galaxy, then Isis will become the center of
scientific interest allover the Unity. We are a poor
planet, Scholar Dame-" Cendri noted that in spite of
her defiant decision to treat Dal as an equal, and her
attempt to include him in the conversation, she found
herself automatically addressing Cendri; even to the
enlightened Mahala, it did not come easy to speak
directly to a man. "We are a poor planet. We have few
exports., And you have experienced our earthquakes,
though we can deal with them and even predict them a
little. And, worse, our terrible tidal waves."
  Cendri said, "Yes; 1 saw a village wiped out by one,
it was terrible indeed!"
  "I heard about that," Mahala said. "So you know
that our pearl harvest for this year is reduced by at least
a third, until the pearl-divers can rebuild their boats
and their nets. We need the kind of predictive seismic
equipment the Unity can give us. Yet we are caught-
caught between the quake and the great wave! We
need, we desperately need, what the Unity can give us.
We cannot afford to buy it-you have seen that, I
think!"
  It was Dal who said, "Lady, the Unity has grants for
member worlds, to allow them to rebuild their worlds
and bring a homestead world up to the necessary level
of efficiency. Surely the predictive equipment would so
much improve your agriculture and your industry,
freeing you from the continual destruction of quakes
and tsunami, that it would pay for itself within a very
few of your Long Years."
  "This may be true," Mahala said, "but we are not a
member world of the Unity, Master Scholar, nor likely
to become one, for reasons I am sure you are intelligent
enough to understand have no personal insult. We are
what we are. We cannot accept the conditions under
which the Unity would grant us membership."
  Cendri said quietly, "Respect, Pro-Matriarch, but I
do not quite understand. What is it that you cannot
accept about the Unity conditions?"
  "They would demand that we re-structure our socie-
ty to admit males to a completely equal franchise. We
cannot accept that the Unity has a right to decide whom
we shall admit to citizenship. Our history tells us that
every society where men are admitted to equality soon
comes under their domination. Males-again, please
understand, this is no offense to you personally, Master
Scholar-are not content with equality; they cannot
endure a society where they do not dominate. And
every society dominated by men has soon come to
accept male values of aggression, competition, and,
eventuatfy, war. And this has destroyed every culture
known in the Galaxy, one after another-you are a
scientist, Scholar Dame, you are familiar with Rak-
mall's Limit?"
  The question was put to Cendri, but it was Dal who
answered, "I know what Rakmall's Limit is; it is the
extreme outside margin of the time during which a
culture can resist entropy. But with respect, Mother
Mahala-I do not believe Rakmall's Limit is deter-
mined by the position of men in a culture."
  "The scientific research done on Persephone has
determined otherwise," Mahala said. "A culture rises
from the animal into matriarchy; as the matriarchy
decays, men take over, entropy begins under the name
of progress, technostructures and entities multiply
needlessly, social experiments begin, and from there
the political, historical and evolutionary process ap-
pears to be predetermined. It was upon this research
that the Matriarchate began the Persephone experi-
ment, an attempt to build a culture which could resist
decay, progress, and entropy, by indefinitely delaying
or eliminating the stage at which males seized power
from the primitive mother-right. Patrilineal cultures
always signal the beginning of entropy and decay, and
the death of a culture by aggression and war."
  Cendri listened with fascination. In a few minutes,
Mahala had told her more of the basic assumptions
behind the culture of Isis than she had learned from
Vaniya's household and her own observation in many
days. But she found herself quite unable to agree with
Mahala's analysis.
  Damn, she thought, I wish I were here as an
anthropologist, openly. I could talk to Mahala and she
would understand. She felt a pang of disloyalty to
Vaniya.
  She said, hesitating, "I am-I am something of a
historian, Pro-Matriarch. In primitive pre-space cul-
tures, the matriarchal societies, too, underwent degen-
eration, when they in turn began to oppress men. . . ."
  Mahala smiled. "But we do not oppress our men,"
she said, "Our men are completely content and happy,
because they know they live under a rational culture
which will never destroy itself, and that we are here to
protect them from their baser impulses, and free them
for what they are best suited to do." She gestured to a
hovering servant, and added kindly, "Let me help you
to a little more of this delicious melon, my dear Scholar
Dame."
  Dal said, "Are you aware, Mother Mahala, that the
Unity has been instrumental in reversing some of the
very abuses of which you accuse it? On my world of
Pioneer, which joined the Unity approximately four
hundred years ago, the Unity demanded the enfran-
chisement of women as a condition of admission for
Pioneer, and the men of Pioneer agreed; not cheerful-
ly, but we agreed, and women on Pioneer are now free
to be the equals of men. Are you saying that cultural
customs are so sacred that Pioneer should have refused
to enfranchise our women, to preserve our customs of
long standing?"
  Mahala narrowed her eyes. She said, "I know only
a little of Pioneer. However, I cannot believe that what
the Unity did made so much difference, after all. It is
hardly equality for women, if they are simply freed to
live as equals in the kind of culture designed by men
for men; a woman, to be equal in such a culture, can
only be equal by doing the same things men do; and
equality in a corrupt male-dominated culture is proba-
bly not worth having. Women can fulfill themselves
only in a culture designed by women; the difference is
that in a culture designed by women, both men and
women can know true fulfillment." She added, with a
charming smile, "But there is no need to argue politics
now. I do not expect you to agree with me, Master
Scholar." She turned to Cendri and said, "However,
Scholar Dame, I am sure you can see my point. If the
ruins at We-were-guided are of sufficient scientific
interest, then the Unity will, perhaps, give us trade
allowances, including the earthquake-predictive equip-
ment we need, in return for concessions, for scientific
study, without demanding that we violate the basic
principles of our social structure."
  Dal said frankly, "It is quite possible, if the ruins
prove indeed to be those of the Builders. I-" he broke
off, with a glance at Cendri, and she said, "I am not yet
ready to form any conclusion about the actual age or
origin of the ruins at We-were-guided. It seems most
likely; from their state of preservation, that they are of
much more recent origin than the Builders; old,
indeed, and perhaps unique in the known worlds of the-
Unity, but probably not ancient enough to be those of
the Builders-if, indeed, the culture called the Builders
ever existed, which is rather doubtful and remains to be
proved."
  She was proud of herself; for once, she thought, she
had managed to sound precisely like a professional
archaeologist. She caught Dal's eye; he was smiling, a
faintly superior, tolerant grin, and she felt stung. What
had he expected her to do?
  "In any case," said Mahala, "I shall hope that they
prove of sufficient interest to draw the scientific com-
munity to us, and give us the equipment we need
without concessions which would ruin our culture and
doom it to follow the rest of the Unity to the death
decreed by Rakmall's Limits. At least, my dear Scholar
Dame, you are studying the ruins left by the
Builders-or whomever the makers of the ruins may
have been-and not offering incense and flowers at
their shrine! And now, I see that my worthy colleague
has arrived, so allow me to escort you to the games in
your honor, and I wish you a most enjoyable and
entertaining afternoon."
  As they were driven to the amphitheater allotted
for the day's games, Cendri was thoughtful. Mahala's
charm had made an impression on her-enough of an
impression that she felt seriously disloyal to Vaniya, for
whom she had come to feel genuine affection. But Oal,
she knew, was in a deeper predicament. Mahala had, in
a sense, offered him-by way of an offer to the Unity
his uttermost desire; a free hand for Unity scientists
to come here openly and study the Builder ruins; to
bring a fully equipped team here and give them sys-
tematic study over a period of years. Yet she had tied
this concession-one Cendri knew Vaniya would
never have made-to a condition Oal, with his fairly
obvious undercover mission to the men of Isis, could
never accept: a pledge, on the part of the Unity scien-
tists, not to meddle with the social structure of Isis and
the enslavement and disenfranchisement of their men.
  In the Official Box above the amphitheater, where
they had an excellent view of the huge oval playing
field, she and Dal were seated in a position of honor.
Vaniya was at her side, with Miranda, too, joining
them in the box. The stands were packed with women
of all ages, from young girls to old ladies, shouting and
applauding enthusiastically as a large number of
athletes--all male, and all naked except for colored
ribbons tied around their heads--paraded in the am-
phitheater. Cendri blinked with surprise; this was the
last form of entertainment she had expected here. But
on reflection it made sense; as much sense as some of
the spaceport-area sex displays of female beauty. It
was, perhaps, even a little more tasteful, since they had
come together, at least ostensibly, for athletic competi-
tion, and nudity in athletics had come and gone, as a
fashion, since pre-space days. Flower sellers vended
their colorful wares through the amphitheater; Miranda
bought a basket of blossoms and offered it to Cendri,
displaying their use by tossing down flowers to particu-
larly handsome specimens parading, readying them-
selves for the early contests; pretty adolescent boys
running races and displaying agility at leaping and
vaulting.
   Dal whispered under his breath to Cendri, "Damn it,
this is embarrassing!"
  "I don't see why it should be any more embarrassing
to you than it was supposed to be embarrassing to me
when you took me into a show once in the port district
and were admiring the pretty girls there," Cendri
whispered back, and Dal's face took on a dull color. He
muttered, "I never thought you minded that, you didn't
tell me."
  Some of the women discussed the fine points of the
athletes with considerable technical understanding;
they played a leaping game with rackets-Cendri had
seen something like it on University, hitting a ball back
and forth over the net-and prizes were awarded by
Mahala herself, varying from the trivial, garlands of
flowers and shells for the boys' contests, to silver and
gilt badges and medals, huge boxes of confections and
baskets of fruit, and elaborate sports equipment for the
contests among the older men. The women shouted
and cheered, threw down flowers and colored ribbons,
and urged on their favorites in loud voices. The mert
strutted and preened, displaying their prowess and
good looks without any undue modesty. Cendri found
the display embarrassing, and was embarrassed, too, at
the frankness with which the women admired the men.
  "What a pity your Companion does not choose to
compete, my dear," Vaniya said, eyeing the men in the
arena with a look Cendri could only describe to herself,
privately, as lecherous, and looking regretfully at Dal.
"He is so very handsome. Dear Rhu, alas, is quite
hopeless at athletics, but then," she added, sighing,
"one cannot have everything."
  Cendri looked at Rhu's downcast eyes and flinched at
Vaniya's tactlessness. She caught Miranda's eye as
Miranda murmured something under her breath to
Rhu. It was a disturbing thought. Did Rhu, with his
intelligence and his musical talent-yes, and his good
looks, too-really feel inferior because he could not
compete in the parade of athletic and sexual display 
lown there in that arena? 
  The afternoon was to culminate with displays of
boxing and wrestling, and Cendri gathered that these
were the major events for which everything else was
only preliminary, and the prizes for these were really
valuable. A sort of intermission was going on now; the
women bought iced sweets, chattered enthusiastically
about their favorites, flung flowers at athletes waiting in
the amphitheater, and watched displays of dancing and
parades by-Cendri gathered-the Men's Houses of
various households in the city. Dal rose, and murmur-
ing an excuse, slipped out of the box-Cendri supposed
he had gone to look for a rest room somewhere. Rhu
called after him, then rose and with a word to
Vaniya-who nodded indulgent permission-went
after him. Cendri, watching Vaniya leaning over the
rail and watching the handsome men in the arena,
thought Vaniya was kind really, despite her tactless-
ness. She was unfailingly kind to Rhu, it would
probably never have occurred to her that she was
showing contempt for him. Indeed, Vaniya was kind to
everyone of her household, she was a conscientious
leader of the women of the city.
  Is she the superstitious fool Mahala thinks her?
simply can't believe it!
  Miranda stirred uneasily, and Cendri thought; her-
baby might be born at any time; she must find this a
long afternoon, sitting on these hard benches-for even
in the Official Box, where the benches were cushioned,
they were hard, not particularly comfortab1e for a
pregnant woman. She slipped out of the box, and
Cendri went after her; she was anxious to see what she
could of behind the scenes. 
  The rest room facilities were luxurious, as every
where on Isis, with large mirrors at which many of the
women were preening themselves and lavishly re-
applying cosmetics; this was, Cendri realized, one of
the few social events where she had seen cosmetics
worn at all, and clothing was more elaborate than she
had yet seen. Miranda was delicately outlining her large
blue eyes with a shadowy variety of colored pigments,
an effect which Cendri found bizarre but pretty; female
adornment varied so much from world to world that it
was hard to tell just what kind of social or sexual cu~s
any given adornment was supposed to convey. Laurina,
the young teacher from the college of Ariadne, was
there too; she greeted Cendri with her usual blend of
wide-eyed awe and puppyish friendliness, and Cendri
was glad to see her. She glanced uneasily in the mirror
at her own face-her society did not wear cosmetics
except to repair an obvious defect, to cover a freckle or
birthmark too small to bother about removing, or color
streaked hair to a uniform hue; at Miranda's suggestion
she had worn a little pink cosmetic on her cheeks, and a
little gilt glitter on her eyelids, but even this modest
paintwork seemed blatant and overdone. Laurina,
however, commented on how pretty she looked.
Women were crowding around the mirrors, and Cendri
realized, from the narcissistic chatter and attention-
quite unlike the usual haphazard attitude to clothing-
that this was an event intended for display on both
sides. She filed away everything she saw for later
analysis. It was the first event she had seen at which
men and women frankly displayed their attractiveness
to one another.
  And yet--she saw too, not only in the secluded rest
room but on the stairs, as she went back with
Miranda-the women were excited and some of them
over-wrought, but in spite of their awareness of the
men, they made no overt move toward them. In a nook
of the stairs, however, she saw two or three couples-
pairs of women--seeking partial privacy for intense and
passionate kissing and fondling. Cendri, who had never
seen public lovemaking between women before:, was
embauassed, turning her eyes away from the couples.
She had seen so many different sexual patterns on so
many worlds that nothing in the gamut of human sexual
behavior could really surprise her, but this seemed
stranger than anything she had seen yet. She would
have thought that the presence of the men would have
turned the women toward them, caused them to fix
their attention on the handsome males in the arena. At
her side Miranda sighed:
 "At times like this I am lonely," she said in an
undertone, "I even miss myoId partner-" And then,
in a low voice, "Or I regret that-that there is no way
Rhu and I can be together like this! What is the matter
with me, Cendri, that I am so unlike my own people? I
find that I envy you and your Companion more than I
can say!"
 Cendri said nothing-what could she say? At last,
hesitating, she said, "Every society has its own rules,
Miranda, but they are made by the people in the
society, there is nothing necessarily ordained by divine
authority about any of them; and in every culture I
have ever seen, there are some who do not fit into the
patterns of its society. I don't know what you can do
about it, in this world you live in, but you shouldn't feel
bad about yourself because you are different."
  Miranda blinked fiercely, clinging to Cendri's arm.
She said, "I wish-I wish-I don't know what I wish.
Maybe I wish we were part of the Unity, so that Rhu
and I could go away together somewhere, to a world
where it wouldn't be shameful for us to want to be
together all the time--I feel so disloyal to my mother,
when I say this!" She struggled for self-control, stand-
ing between Cendri and the balustrade of the stairs.
Women returning to their seats edged past them,
maneuvering-Miranda was so pregnant that it was not
easy to pass her on the narrow stairs-and giving them
indulgent looks, winks and smiles. Cendri realized that
they accepted that she and Miranda were one of the
couples she had seen. But she had no time to worry
about that, though it was embauassing; she was
concerned with Miranda, who was crying noiselessly,
tears streaming down her face. Helplessly, Cendri dried
Miranda's eyes with her own scarf, urging, "Come
along, come back to your seat, Miranda. Don't cry like
this here, don't-"
  Miranda gulped and struggled with her tears. She
said, sniffling, trying to smile at Cendri, clinging to het,
"How do you know so much about people, Cendri,
when I thought you would only know about dead
civilizations, and people who have been dead for
millions of years-"
  It was like ice-water; could Miranda possibly guess
that she was more a student of cultures than of
archaeology? She urged gently, "Come back to the
seats, Miranda--I have lived on University, that is all,
and we have so many different kinds of people and
societies there." She urged Miranda up the rapidly
emptying stairs and corridors. At one crossroad she
stopped, looked down; it led-evidently-directly
down toward the quarters where the athletes readied
themselves for the arena, the dressing rooms-or, since
they performed naked, the undressing rooms?-and saw
Dal. He was at the center of a group of men, clustered
tight around him, and for a moment she felt brief
unease. Rhu had made it clear that despite his pre-
ferred status as a Companion-or perhaps because of
it-he was not welcome or even safe in an ordinary
group of men from a Men's House.
  But it was also immediately obvious that Dal was in
no danger. They flocked around him; athletes, naked,
sweaty, or wrapped in loose towels or capes, still
wearing the ribbons and garlands of the arena; other
ordinary men of Isis in their drab clothing. But one and
all were wide-eyed, clustering around him with some-
thing like reverence. Was he lecturing them, conspiring
with them, making incendiary statements? Or was it
simply a kind of hero worship-they were simply eager
to see, touch, listen to a man from the worlds where
men were not woman's property? In all the time she
had been on Isis she had seen no such male assembly.
Was it even permitted? Would Dal get into trouble over
this? Or did anyone on Isis even know or care what
men did among themselves?
  Was Dal an inspiration to them, then. . . ?
  He turned, made his way slowly through them; they
reached out to touch him, reluctant to let him go, but
made way deferentially, did not hinder him. Cendri
realized that they must get back at once to their seats,
the important part of the show was beginning. Also she
was reluctant for Dal to know she had been watching
him. At Miranda's side she went quickly along the area
behind the seats and back into the Official Box.
Miranda hung back, saying in a whisper, "I don't want
my mother to see that I have been crying-" and
pushed Cendri forward to sit next to the Pro-
Matriarchs. Dal and Rhu slipped into the Box, taking
seats at the back; and Cendri noticed out of the comer
of her eye that Rhu slid into a seat close to Miranda.
  She leaned back and whispered to Dal, "Where have
you been? I saw you with the men-"
  Dal's eyes were hard. "Keep out of this Cendri. I
mean that."
  The final contests began. Cendri, seated in the
prominent Official Box, could see the women around
the arena, watching the struggling men, wrestling,
struggling, locked together, were leaning forward in
fascination and excitement. Cendri could see all the
signs of frankly sexual arousal-flushed faces, moist
lips, dilated eyes. She had never seen women react this
way; the nearest thing she had ever seen to it was when
she had watched men at some of the sex-display
entertainments in the spaceport night-life areas. The
women here applauded, made loud appreciative com- -
ments, whistled and shrieked, threw down flowers and
garlands in excitement. Cendri, comparing the reac-
tions of the women to the reactions of the men in the
cruder sex-display areas in the Unity, realized they
were virtually identical. She had always believed-
naively, she now realized-that women were immune
to visual sex stimulation of this kind.
  Well, what had she expected? This had been the only
contact she had seen between men and women. They
didn't associate in any normal way with men. Somehow
or other they must have sex with them-and it's
physical sex, they didn't react very favorably when
Miranda mentioned artificial conceptions in the
Unity-but I still don't know under what conditions it
takes place. Judging from this, the taboos are very
strong and definite! She thought of this and recognized
that she was behaving, almost automatically, like the
trained anthropologist and cultural expert she was, but
on a deeper level, she realized, there was something
more personal.
  Poor women, they haven't any idea of what men are
like as people. . . .
  The winner of the final wrestling match, a huge
muscular fellow with great bulging biceps and pecto-
rals, and a gleaming golden mop of curls, obviously
dyed, was being garlanded with flowers and serenaded
with a song by the men of the city. He looked around
the stands, winking, leering, mugging in a way she had
seen no man on Isis do, soaking in the appreciative
squeals of the women in the stands. He came directly
below the Official Box, and Mahala rose and spoke a
few gracious words, handing the prize down to him-it
was a complete and fairly expensive hunting outfit,
warm clothing, boots, bow and arrows, sleeping bags,
tent, and a number of other items whose uses Cendri
could not even guess. She noted, from Vaniya's quiet
explanation, that the items of clothing had been
provided in duplicate for each of the major entrants so
that each could take home his prizes for immediate use.
A lottery was being held to give away the unclaimed
prizes, and the men in the arena were laughing and
strutting and jostling one another good-naturedly, but
the women in the stands, the events over, were rising
and crowding toward the exits.
  "Let us wait a few minutes," Vaniya said. "Miranda,
you do not want to be jostled in the crowds now."
  "When is your baby due?" Mahala asked, coming to
Miranda and taking her hand in a gracious gesture.
  "Not very long now," Miranda replied. Her tears
were dried now and she looked calm, though weary. "I
had thought it might have come already by now, but
they come when they will."
  Mahala turned to Vaniya and said, "So you will have
an heir at last, if it is a daughter. How proud of her you
must be!"
  "I am indeed, cousin," said Vaniya. Cendri knew
that in the language of Isis this did not denote
relationship but was a term of courtesy between equals.
"And our Inquirer, Maret, tells us the child will be a
girl, so it is indeed my heir who awaits birth." She stood
at the rail of the box, looking down at the handsome
naked men good-naturedly pushing one another out of
the way as the remaining prizes were distributed and
every competitor received boxes of confectionery and
bright ribbons and garlands. With everyone standing
near the exits it was crowded in the box, and Cendri
was shoved against the other women. She felt a body
pressed tight against hers, knew it was the ample form
of Vaniya; the Pro-Matriarch put an arm around her
waist, and Cendri let herself lean on the older woman.
Vaniya's cheek pressed hers, and Cendri, responding
for a moment to what seemed a spontaneous gesture of
affection, let her head rest a moment on Vaniya's
shoulder. Then she realized, startled and more than a
little shocked, that the heavy body was pressing hard
and purposefully against hers, that Vaniya's hands had
strayed to her breasts and were fondling them gently,
but insistently. She tensed in embarrassment, her first,
startled response to pull sharply away, in outrage and
dismay. Then she remained very still, thinking faster
than she had ever thought in her life.
  In a sense it was a compliment, a mark of total
acceptance, that Vaniya should treat her this way. Such
an event seemed to be a legitimate occasion, among the
women of Isis, for near-public displays of sexual
arousal; and Vaniya, forgetting or ignoring her alien
origin, was treating her as one of their own.
  At the same time, she thought ruefully, textbooks on
anthropology gave no hint as to how one should react in
such a case. She knew she ought to feel revulsion, rage,
disgust; instead, what she felt was a kind of helpless
tenderness. She stood very quietly in the circle of
Vaniya's arms, neither responding to nor rejecting the
caress, and after a moment Vaniya, aware of her
reaction-or lack of it-took her hands away and
smiled, almost in apology. She said softly, slipping her
hand through Cendri's arm, "Forgive me, my child, I .
had really forgotten, for a moment, that you were not
one of us."
  Cendri gave the plump arm a gentle, momentary
squeeze, and they moved out of the box on to the stairs,
as Vaniya said in an undertone "I am an indiscreet old
fool. Are you very angry with me, little Cendri?"
  "Angry? No, Vaniya, I'm not angry," Cendri said
gently, and Vaniya, squeezing her arm again, moved
away from her to Miranda's side.
  "Cousin," said Mahala, "You have waited so long
for an heir, and you are so beset now with cares, your
guests from University, that you cannot enjoy this
fortunate time; if it is your will, I will gladly have the
honored guests from the Unity to lodge with me, so
that you can give all your attention to Miranda and her
coming child, and to making ready for the birth-
festival. Would that release you from care, cousin? I
will willingly relieve you of this duty."
  "I am sure of it," Vaniya returned with a dulcet
smile, "but it was our Mother's will that I should have
them where they can be convenient to their work, and
personal cares and conflicts must come second to my
duty to our High Matriarch. I am sure there are many
other duties and responsibilities to your hand, cousin."
  Cendri thought; they really hate each other, don't
they? She watched the rival Pro-Matriarchs descending
the stairway, and again the image touched her mind;
Vaniya as a great tawny lioness, Mahala--she had seen
Mahala, in private, as a small friendly kitten; here she
saw her as a sleek, prowling black panther!
  They moved to the stairs and she found Dal at her
elbow. His face was tense, storm-clouded. He said, in
an angry whisper, "I saw that wretched old dame trying
to paw you, and you didn't seem to mind at all, you
were letting her put her hands allover you, and
grinning at her-I knew the women here were filthy
and corrupt, but damn it, Cendri, when you join in that
kind of thing-"
  "That's enough, Dal," she said, in a sharp under-
tone. "For them it's normal. Vaniya wasn't crude about
it, and from her it was a compliment. If I wasn't
offended, how dare you make an issue of it?"
  "Compliment!" Da:l said in outrage. "It's their
world, they can do anything they damn please, but
when you stand there letting her maul you, and stand
there smiling up at her, looking pleased-and say you
weren't offended-"
  "Lower your voice," she ordered sharply. "Have you
forgotten where we are?"
  "How in the hell can I forget?" But he did drop his
voice to a whisper again. "Lousy, corrupt-and you're
my wife! How could you-"
  "Dal, for mercy's sake, what was I supposed to do?
Yell, slap her, make a scene, precipitate a diplomatic
incident? When she saw I wasn't reacting, she let me go
and apologized for forgetting I wasn't one of them.
Can't you see that's a compliment, Dal?"
  "Some compliment," he grumbled, unappeased, and
held her back so that they were some distance between
the two Pro-Matriarchs, who had reached the bottom
of the stairs and were exchanging-Cendri supposed
from their looks--formal courtesies prior to entering
the waiting official cars. Dal said, "Listen, Cendri, I
think we ought to think seriously about leaving
Vaniya's house-I'll be damn glad to get out of the
place-and moving to stay with the other one, Mahala.
She's a reasonable woman, in spite of her fears of the
Unity. We can relate to her in a way we never could to
Vaniya, with all her superstitious nonsense about the
Builders and their sacred site."
  "Dal, I reall~ don't think-"
  "Look, after all, it's a way of demonstrating that we
aren't really allied to Vaniya's political faction. And
today something happened which made me realize-"
  Cendri never heard what happened or what he
realized. At that moment loud cries of dismay and
lamentation rose, spread through the crowd. She heard
Vaniya cry out in grief and felt fear clutch at her
heart-what had happened? Had something happened
to Miranda? No; Miranda was standing next to her
mother, crying out, adding her own voice to the rising
chorus of lament. She hurried down the stairs toward
them.
  Mahala raised her eyes to Cendri and said, her voice
low and tense, "Catastrophe, my dear Scholar Dame.
Our Mother and Priestess, the revered and beloved
High Matriarch Rezali, has left us and ascended to join
the Goddess. We have just had word; she died but a
few moments ago, without ever recovering conscious-
ness."
  "And so," Vaniya said, her face pale, "We are
without a High Matriarch. And there is no way of
knowing, cousin, which of us would have succeeded to
her ring and her robe."
  Cendri looked at the two rivals, in shock. She had
not known the dead woman, the late Mother Rezali
was nothing to her. But what would this mean to her
work? What would this mean to Vaniya and her
household?
  Mahala said blandly, "I must go home at once. I am
certain that the Mother Rezali will attempt to commu-
nicate with me from the great barrier, and I must be
ready to receive her word. I pray-" She turned to
Cendri and bowed, "Excuse me, Scholar Dame, that I
leave you without ceremony. Vaniya, I confide to you, ,
as Mother Rezali wished, the care of our honored
guests, since I am sure you will have no other duties at
the moment."
  Cendri saw Vaniya's large broad face flush pink with
wrath; but she merely bowed to her rival and said
nothing. When Mahala had stepped into her official
vehicle and driven away, Vaniya took Cendri's arm in a
tight clasp. Miranda came close to her mother, flushed
with anger.
  "That woman! How dared she? You must go home at
once, Mother, I am sure that the Mother Rezali will
communicate with you-Maret must be told at once to
await the word-" Quickly, she gestured to the waiting
car, motioned Dal and Cendri into it, ushered her
mother inside. Rhu clambered in last, taking his place
close to Vaniya and saying soothingly, "Do not disturb
yourself, Vaniya, you must remain calm to await
word."
  "Yes, yes," Vaniya said distractedly, "I cannot
believe that Rezali will appoint that woman High
Matriarch in her place-yet there is always the
chance-"
  She saw Cendri's puzzled face and said, "Forgive me,
my dear, but I fear that until the Mother Rezali has
made her will known, your work must come to a halt."
  "Make her will known?" Cendri said, "I thought-
the word you received,-I thought the High Matriarch
was dead!"
  "Why, so she is," Vaniya said, "but when a woman
of our people is appointed to the post of High
Matriarch, she secretes a duplicate of her ring of office,
and her robe of power, in a place known only to her.
And then, should death take her before she has
designated her successor, her spirit will appear to her
chosen successor, and tell her, or an Inquirer in her
household, where the ring and robe have been hidden.
So that whichever of us first discovers her ring of office,
and her robe, where they have been hidden, becomes
High Matriarch in her place. And I must go and await
some communication from the other side of the great
barrier, telling me that our beloved Mother Rezali
wishes me to carry on her work among our people, and 
whispering to my spirit where I may find her ring of 
office to show the City Mothers."
  She fell silent, deep in thought, her eyes going blank,
and Cendri, blinking, thought; what a development!
Now all their work depended on a kind of mediumistic,
treasure-hunt! .
  Dal whispered in her ear, "What a hell of a way to
run a government!"
  And for once she did not feel even a little like
arguing with him.
 
 
                  Chapter Nine
 
 
  THE NEXT FEW DAYS DAL AND CENDRI SPENT IN THE
ruins, measuring, taking soil-scrapings, making com-
puter analyses of the buildings and structures. Dal
adapted a force-field breaker to attempt again to enter 
the structures without damage, trying frequency after,
frequency, but decided to delay any attempt to cut into 
them until he had X-ray pictures of the interior.To
devise these in a way that would penetrate the un-
known force-field, he said, might be a long task and
demand conferral by long-distance relays with sources
on University.
  "We could do more damage trying to get into them
than we realized," he told her, "if we could break the
force-field and just walk in, that's one thing. But if
they're in time stasis, nothing we could do will break
into them because, essentially, they're not in this
dimension at all."
  That sounded like nonsense to Cendri and she said
so. "If they're not here, how can we touch them, lean
on them, press against them-"
  "Cendri, I don't have time to give you a complete
course in temporal mechanics. Just take my word for it,
unless living on Isis has made you unwilling to trust
male scholarship." But he laughed, and Cendri knew it
had become a joke between them again. She was
profoundly relieved.
  "I wish we could get a good temporal mechanic
here," Dal continued. "The trouble is, the only ones I
know on University are men, and I don't suppose any
of them would be willing to wear some woman's
property tag, although to get a chance at a site which
might actually be in time stasis, I know some mathema-
ticians who would do more than that. I don't know any
temporal mechanic who is a woman-" he continued,
as they came out of the site late in the evening, and
turned to Laurina. "Are there any specialists in mathe-
matics on your world-the mathematics of temporal
conditions and stress?"
  Laurina looked bewildered. She could talk to Dal
now without too much self-consciousness, but as always
when she was confused or felt insecure, it was to Cendri
she turned before answering. "Truly, I don't know; I
know so little of mathematics. My own specialty is
history. I can inquire at the college if you like, though."
  "Do that," Dal directed. "The help of anyone who
had a grounding in temporal mathematics would be a
help in determining if this place really is in time stasis."
  "It cannot be that," Laurina argued, "or how could
the inhabitants communicate with us?"
  Dal made a wry face and did not answer. He did not
argue with Laurina's beliefs; but he would not dignify
them by comment, either. He simply said, "I'd take it
as a great favor if you could put me-us-in touch with
the most highly regarded mathematician at your col-
lege. He-I mean she-would certainly have tried to
investigate something of the math of temporal stress, I
understand it's the most exciting field in mathematics in
the last two or three hundred years."
  Laurina said, with the queer stiff formality she still
sometimes used with Dal, "I am certain that any
scientist would consider it an honor to work with the
respected Scholar Dame from University and her
Companion. "
  As the great pale sun of Isis drew lower in the sky,
they came out of the site and saw a procession passing
along the shoreline road toward the City of Ariadne. As
they drew near, Cendri saw that it was mostly men
afoot, although there were a few cars and surface
vehicles of the kind used on Isis. Most of them were
young, and wearing the brief kiltlike garments worn by
manual laborers of either sex. The few men among
Vaniya's servants went down to speak with them and
after a moment Dal followed. To Cendri's surprise, the
men called out greetings to the women, and Vaniya's
servants answered; after a moment, shyly, so did
Laurina. Cendri's face must have shown her curiosity,
for Laurina explained, unasked.
  "They are men from the great dam project, about a
hundred kilometers south of the city, coming here for
the festival. They will camp along the shoreline, it is the
only time of the year when they are allowed spearfish-
ing in the coastline waters. And in four days now-has
no one told you?-is the highest of our holidays, when
we visit the sea and invoke the Goddess as bringer of
life. But certainly-" she hesitated, diffident. "You are
the friend of the Lady Miranda, surely she has invited
you to join with us in this festival?"
  Miranda had mentioned it, once or twice, in such a
way that Cendri knew it was somehow connected with
the unknown mating customs of the Matriarchate,
concealed by the society. Cendri felt a flicker of
excitement. Was she, then, enough accepted by them
that she would be allowed to witness this festival?
  Laurina said, "But no, the lady Miranda is so near to
the birth-time that she will not join, this year, in the
festival. I had thought her child would have been born
long before this." She went on, "It is our Longest Day,
and this year it coincides with the double Full Moon,
when both our moons show their smiling face; which
happens only once in every nine or eleven years,
alternately. So this year the festival is particularly
sacred; I hope that by then we will have a new High
Matriarch to perform the rites. We visit the sea three
times in a year, but this, the Longest Day, is the holiest
and most blessed of our festivals. Cendri-" she
hesitated, then smiled, "you are here alone, without
sisters or kinswomen, and it is for us to offer you
hospitality and companionship. Since Miranda has not
thought to do so, let me be the one to invite you to join
us at this highest of festivals."
  Cendri felt the flicker of excitement again. Actually
to be allowed to witness their highest festival! Never-
theless she felt compelled to ask, "Is it permitted for an
outsider, Laurina?"
  "I feel that the Goddess could hardly smile on a
woman who did not join us in her worship on this day,"
Laurina said seriously. "All women are of one blood,
and since you are here on this world she has blessed
with her presence, it seems to me unthinkable that you
would choose not to join us."
  So not only was she invited to join them; it might
even be taken as an affront to their Goddess if she did
not! She thought, if I had come openly as an anthropol-
ogist, to study them, they might have taken pains to
conceal some of their rites from me! Perhaps it is as
well I did not. . .
  As she returned to Vaniya's house, she was ponder-
ing this. The sexual customs of Isis were evidently some
form of visitational marriage, then, preceded, and
formalized, evidently by the rite called "visiting the
sea." She said to Laurina, "So many men! I had not
known there were so many! Do they all live outside the
city, then? Are they colonists, living in separate
villages?"
  "Men, colonize anything?" Laurina said with a blank
look, halfway between amusement and incredulity.
"No, but some Men's Houses have been taken there
under their overseers, or leased by their owners, to
work on the great dam. They are building dykes and
when they have finished, it will provide flood control all
along the delta of the great river which we call Anahit,
and energy as well. Some of our best engineers are
working there, but of course they need immense crews
of male labor. Men are reasonably good at manual
labor, provided they are carefully supervised by trained
women. Of course their attention span is short, and
they must be lavishly provided with amusements and
rewards, but mostly the men like to work on such
projects; it gives them a chance to use their muscles,
which is what they do best; they have a natural instinct
for manual work, as you can see by their gift for
athletics. They are not as graceful as women, but their
strength makes up for that. And they enjoy the extra
rations of sweets, and the extra opportunity, outside
the city, for hunting. So everyone is happy; the men
because of the fun of building the dam, and the womep
because we will have power and flood control."
  Cendri wondered briefly how the men would have
reacted to this analysis, but they had arrived at
Vaniya's house. But before she had finished washing
off the grime of the day's work in the ruins, Miranda
knocked at their door and came in.
  She looked troubled and distracted. "Cendri, will
you come? My mother is very distressed, she wants all
of the women in her household with her now-"
  "What is it, Miranda?"
  "Mahala has sent word that she has found the High
Matriarch's ring and robe. We must all go to the
Council to verify them-I cannot travel now." And
indeed Miranda was ungainly now, dragging heavily
around. "Lialla and her partner will be with her, but
still--she is fond of you, Cendri, will you go in my
place? And it may interest you, to see the solemn
formality of investing a High Matriarch-"
  "I will go," Cendri promised, and Miranda went
away. Dal frowned at her and said, "Damn it, Cendri,
do You really want to align yourself so much with the
losing Pro-Matriarch's faction?"
  Cendri said quietly, "Miranda said it; she is fond of
me. And have you forgotten, Dal, why I am really
here? If I have any opportunity to see the workings of
this society, then I must do so."
  "I suppose so. But I'm worrying. If you make an
enemy of Mahala-"
   "I'm not planning to make an enemy of Mahala, Dal.
I am going with Vaniya in the place of an ailing
daughter ," Cendri said with careful patience, and Dal
frowned again, angrily.
  "I don't like that, damn it! She's getting entirely too
fond of you to suit me! I haven't forgotten how she
treated you at the athletic contest-I suppose it's to be
expected, that women who live apart from men should
develop morbid homosexual tendencies, but you're my
wife and you can't expect me to approve of letting you
run around with a woman like that!"
  Dal, for goodness sake! A woman like that-what
in the world, any world, do you mean? Do you honestly
believe the Pro-Matriarch of Isis is going to attack an
honored guest sexually?"
  "Well, I suppose not, but-I saw the way she acted
the other day-"
  Cendri sighed, knowing she could never make Dal
understand. She understood the impulse of affection
and excitement that had prompted Vaniya to embrace
her, an intimacy which would have been taken for
granted in Vaniya's own world; an overture, not an
attack, and when Cendri had not responded, Vaniya
had behaved unexceptionably! She said, "I'm not going
to argue with you about it, Dal, it's customary in their
world, and you have no right to make invidious
remarks about it. When the men are considered
unsuitable for companionship, naturally they find their
closest emotional ties among one another. I could cite
half a dozen parallels among men, if I wanted to-the
warrior caste of Kahornia, for instance, who aren't
allowed to approach women except for one season in
every four-"
  "I know," said Dal, grimacing, "I don't approve of
them either; I haven't cultivated the virtue of scientific
detachment, and I hope sincerely that I never do, if it
means tolerating that kind of thing!" Then he shrugged
and laughed. "All right, love, there's no sense quarrel-
ing." He came and put his arms around her, kissing her
hard. "I'm really not worried; I know you too well for
that. But don't develop too much scientific detachment
or tolerance, darling."
  Cendri was relieved, even though she knew perfectly
well that Dal did not understand. He was, after all, not
trained in cross-cultural comparisons. She supposed
this grudging tolerance was all she could expect, and
she was glad he was not making an issue of it. She
robed herself in her most elaborately formal garments,
suitable for a Dame's Investiture on University, and
went down to join Vaniya.
  Vaniya indeed looked solemn and distracted, but she
held out her hands to Cendri with a warm smile. She
said, "It is good of you to come in-a daughter's place,
my child; it was Rhu who suggested it might entertain
you to see this solemnity, and he has pledged himself to
entertain your Companion in your absence."
  Now I wonder, Cendri thought, as she joined
Vaniya's other daughters in Vaniya's car, does Rhu
intend to spend the time with Dal, learning more about
the position of men in the Unity-or is he taking this
opportunity to be with Miranda?
  On the ride to the city they passed still more of the
groups of men, inbound from all over the continent,
and Vaniya, waving graciously as the men bowed to her
passing car, said distractedly, "It will be a scandal if we
do not have a High Matriarch and Priestess for the
ceremonies this year-"
  Cendri asked hesitantly, "Is there any doubt of this?
Miranda told me that-that the Pro-Matriarch had
found the ring and robe of -of her predecessor-"
  "So my worthy colleague says, indeed." Vaniya
curled her lip. "Yet it would not be the first time that a
Pro-Matriarch had presented a forgery. Some women
will stop at nothing. As for me-" her broad leonine
face was stem, "I have not heard the word of our
Mother and Priestess, although I have awaited the
word with solemn fasting and prayer." Indeed she
looked worn, by sleeplessness and hunger. "But I
would yield my place at once, rather than win it
unworthily, or without the word of my predecessor. If
Mahala has truly the ring and robe of Rezali, then I
shall be the first to do homage and swear loyalty to
her."
  Cendri had seen the Residence of the High Matriarch
from outside; but until now, when she came as a
member ofVaniya's entourage, she had not yet entered
the building. She walked wjth Vaniya up the long
marble steps, between the columns, noting that like
many other imposing structures on Isis, they were
mounted in what looked like gimbals. She had to admit
that it made sense, on a planet as earthquake-prone as
Isis, but also it took away something-at least in
Cendri's eyes-from the elegant formality of the struc-
ture.
  Perhaps, she thought, this is why so much of their
society, so much of their formal structure, seems to my .
eyes ill-designed and catch-as-catch-can. On a planet
like this, nothing is permanent. Except, perhaps, the
ruins at We-were-guided. No wonder this is a sacred
place to them.
  A small crowd of children-not naked in sunhats and
sandals, now, but dressed in their best and looking, as
dressed-up children always do, vaguely uncomfortable
-had gathered to watch outside the Residence, watch- -
ing wide-eyed and solemn. A great many of them,
Cendri noted, had come into the great hall of the
Residence and were standing there to see what was
going on, and it was typical of Isis that nobody thought
to shoo them out of the center of the great hall. Down
the very center of the hall was a long row of statues in
glass cases. Statues? No; they were elegant wax effi-
gies, elaborately robed, each glass case and effigy set
into a pit protected by sand so that it would fall over
and survive undamaged and unbroken. They were
surrounded by the usual screens and their bases were
also decorated with the usual casual art, each one
(Cendri could read the written language now well
enough to tell) decorated by a different children's
school.
  Vaniya said, in a low voice, "Some of these effigies
have come with us all the way from our mother planets
of Persephone and Labrys. Here is our first High
Matriarch, our beloved foremother Alicia." She point-
ed to a woman whose hair, arranged in an elaborate
triangular coiffure, was silvery white, wearing an
archaic robe. "She was born on the Unity world of
Pioneer, I believe, in the worst of the old days." Slowly
they passed through the hall of effigies, and Vaniya
named, one by one, the High Matriarchs of Isis,
standing here for all time as they had appeared to their
daughters in life. Each wore an elaborately embroi-
dered robe, of the same archaic pattern as the fore-
mother Alicia's, although the details of the embroidery
of each robe, so Vaniya told Cendri, were unique, and
chosen by each High Matriarch to be individual to
herself; after a High Matriarch assumed her office, the
duplicate of her robe and ring were destroyed and she
had one made for her own personal use, bearing an
individual motif.
  "And here stands our mother Rezali, as she ap-
peared in life," said Vaniya, pausing and bowing briefly
before the final statue. Cendri beheld a withered, little,
elderly woman, dark-skinned and shrunken, her scant
hair all white. "She bore her ring for eighty years; in
the time since we left Persephone she has been our
Mother and Priestess, the longest reign of any High
Matriarch in the history of the Matriarchate."
  Passing the statue-a macabre custom, Cendri
thought-they came face to face with Mahala and her
entourage. A quick look told Cendri at once that the
other Pro-Matriarch, unlike Vaniya, had not awaited
her call with sleepless prayer and fasting; she looked
calm, rested, refreshed. She went toward Vaniya and
embraced her in the formal way she had done before.
  "You seem weary and worn, my sister," she said
sweetly. "This will be over soon, and you shall go and
rest, and be free of the cares you have borne since our
beloved Mother Rezali fell too ill to make her wishes
known."
  How she hates Vaniya, Cendri thought. She has
virtually told Vaniya that as soon as she is verified High
Matriarch, she will be relieved of all official duties. I
suppose politics is the same everywhere.
  Vaniya said gruffly, "I hope you have not put your
household to the trouble and expense of readying for a
move from the Residence of the Pro-Matriarch yet, my
sister. No doubt you will soon be moving, but there is
still some doubt as to the destination." Her face was set
and grim; and Mahala frowned. Without answering,
she turned on her heel and led the way into an inner
chamber, where a group of women, most of them
middle-aged or beyond, sat in a circle on low cushions.
Vaniya turned to Cendri, and to Lialla and her partner,
motioning them to seats outside the circle, and went
forward, with Mahala, to take the two vacant cushions
to either side.
  One of the women seated on the cushions said
solemnly, "The Pro-Matriarch Mahala has claimed that
our late Mother, Rezali of blessed memory, has
communicated with her from beyond the great barrier
of death and designated her successor by revealing to
Mahala the location of her ring and her robe. Produce
them, Mother."
  Mahala gestured to a member of her entourage, and
Cendri saw, in surprise, that it was a fat, blobby, sexless
person, neither male nor female.. . an Inquirer, a
neutered man?
  Mahala said, "My Inquirer, Karay, holds them for
your judgment."
  One by one, the women examined the objects.
Cendri could see only that they were a heavy ring,
deeply engraved, and a robe of stiff material, heavily
embroiderd with metallic threads.
At last they came to Vaniya. She bent over them,
solemnly, giving them her full attention. At last she
raised her head, and her eyes were lambent with anger.
  "These are forgeries," she said, "and clumsy for-
geries at that! The ring is a good forgery; but a forgery
none the less. The ring of our revered Matriarch, as you
may see from the effigy in the Hall of Matriarchs, bore
a snake with three eyes; this serpent has two. The
embroidery is done with copper-colored threads; the
embroidered robe of our Matriarch, again I call the
Hall of Matriarchs to witness, is done with a twisted
thread of two strands, one copper and one burnt orange
color. I do not even speak of the patterns, which any
little child could see for clumsy imitations of the real
thing, no doubt hurriedly done by Mahala's own sewing
women, or if she does not trust them that much, by her
daughters and foster-daughters. Councilwomen of Ari-
adne, I ask that these be rejected for the clumsy
imitations they are! Mahala-" she turned her eyes on
her rival, "how dare you bring this stupid imposture
here!"
  Mahala said calmly, "I will await the judgment of the
Council, my sister and rival."
  One woman said, "They are obvious forgeries! How
can Mahala insult our intelligence this way?"
  "Oh, come," another one interrupted, "is it not
possible that the Mother Rezali might have passed
these imitations because of her own failing eyesight and
memory? I suggest we accept Mahala's word that these
are what they claim to be, and hail her as our new
Pro-Matriarch!"
  Will it depend, Cendri thought, only on the will of
the Council, and not on the objective fact? It is certain
that Vaniya believes; she has prayed and fasted and
awaited word. Is Mahala more realistic, or simply more
cynical?
  Vaniya said, with an obvious effort to steady her
voice and speak calmly through her tremendous wrath,
"The will of the Council makes no difference. The law
clearly states that every member of the Council must be
satisfied that what the candidate presents is the authen-
tic ring and robe of the former Pro-Matriarch."
  "Then," said Mahala, turning directly to the Coun-
cil, "I beg each of you to be satisfied, Mothers. The
high festival is upon us, already the men have come into
the city to visit the sea; if there is no government, no
High Matriarch, and the city is in a state of anarchy, we
may have a rebellion on our hands."
  One of the Council mothers said, "This is sacrilege
you speak, Mahala!"
  "Sacrilege? Nonsense," Mahala said contemptuous-
ly. "We are making fools of ourselves before the
Scholar Dame from the civilized worlds. Is there really
any woman here who truly believes that the sp,irit of the
dead will speak to an Inquirer, or to anyone else? In an
age when starships can come and go between the
Galaxies, will any woman stand up here and tell me she
truly believes this superstitious rubbish? It is for the
Council to accept me, or reject, and I beg of you not to
ask for further ghost-stories!"
  Vaniya stood up, her eyes blazing at Mahala. She
said, "I will not sit and listen to this! You, the council of
Elders of Ariadne, have been twice insulted by this
woman, first by imposture and then by blasphemy! I
call upon you, my sisters, to name me your true High
Matriarch, on the grounds that Mahala has proven, by
coming before us with a forged ring and robe, that she
knows the Mother Rezala will not speak to her spirit!"
  "I notice," Mahala said calmly, "that even you,
Vaniya, have not had the hardihood to claim that she
has spoken to yours. You are not a madwoman
either-not yet, although if you go on awaiting a
ghostly voice to appoint you High Matriarch, you will
be so soon."
  "Peace, both of you," said one of the Elders, sternly,
"the High Matriarch has been chosen like this since we
founded the High Matriarchate!"
  "I remind you," Mahala said, the honey in her voice
now a little sour, "that Rezali's reign has been so long
that no woman in this room had yet grown her breasts
when Rezali was chosen to rule over us; we were still on
the mother-world of Persephone then. We know only
that this is how the Council said a High Matriarch was
chosen. It is quite possible that it has always been what
I say it is now, a pious fraud to baffle outsiders!"
  "This is heresy," said one of the women, and another
simply stared in shock, her mouth falling open.
  Another said slowly, "Perhaps there is some truth in
what Mahala says. In living memory, no woman has
been appointed by any suGh method-"
  The debate dissolved in general clamor. Vaniya
finally made herself heard.
  "I have been summoned here upon a false pretense,"
she said, "and there are affairs which demand my
presence elsewhere. I hold myself in readiness to meet
when I am justly summoned; meanwhile, I bid you
farewell." She gestured to the women in her party;
Cendri rose along with them and followed Vaniya out
of the Council Hall. The children gathered in the Hall
of Matriarchs stood in small staring groups, watching
wide-eyed. As they got into Vaniya's car, they saw
Mahala and her party leaving by another door, and
Vaniya audibly sighed with relief.
  "A calculated risk," she said to Cendri. "She is
persuaSive, she might after all have persuaded the
Council to see matters her way. But if she had done so I
could have gained nothing by staying there." Again the
weary sigh. "I must think what to do." She leaned her
head against the cushions and closed her eyes, and no
one spoke on the ride back to the Residence.
  As they alighted from the vehicle, Lialla put her arm
around her mother.
  "Vaniya, dearest Mother," she entreated, "will you
not eat something and take some rest? We are all in
Jyour hands now; you must preserve your strength for
the difficult days which will come."
  Vaniya stroked her daughter's cheek indulgently, but
she shook her head.
  "No, my dear, there are more serious things on my
mind" than food and sleep. I must consult with those
who are wiser than I. All of you, I beg you, go to bed."
But she stretched her hand to Cendri and said, "Stay
with me for a little while, Scholar Dame."
  She rarely used Cendri's title; that she had done so
now indicated to Cendri-and, Cendri thought, to the
other women-that she was not rejecting her daugh-
ters, on a personal level, for a stranger, but that she
wished to speak with Cendri as representative of the
Unity, of University. Cendri followed her into the
great, deserted dining-hall. Vaniya lowered herself on
to a cushion, sat with her head leaning against another.
After a time she said to Cendri, "Believe me, Cendri, I
am not ambitious. My sister and rival is a good
administrator and a worthy and honest woman; I say
this in spite of her clumsy attempt to befool us all
today. She truly believes--and I feel this is tragic, it
bespeaks so much of the poverty of her mind and
heart-that there is nothing beyond what she can see
and feel. I would willingly turn the mundane adminis-
tration of the government over to her. She is younger
than I, and, I think, stronger and more fit to rule in the
secular duties assigned to a High Matriarch. If it were
only this, I would step down today and spend my
declining years surrounded by my granddaughters and
fosterlings. But I cannot sit by and say nothing while I
she robs our spiritual life of its meaning. Fit she may be
for Matriarch; as Priestess she has proven herself unfit,
not only by her actions of today, but by her attitude
over all the years. She seems not fully aware that
without vision and awareness of the things which are
beyond material well-being, the soul and spirit of
humanity dies." A long silence, and for a moment
Cendri thought the woman, exhausted, had fallen into
sleep. Then she said, "It is this, I think, which has made,
so many of the worlds ruled by men intolerable to our 
lsociety; that they rested on material well-being, and
gave no thought to the spirit and soul of their people. 
The Goddess knows, I am eager for their physical
well-being; I know there have been priesthoods where 
a pretended concern for spiritual wealth has been used
to defraud mankind-and I say mankind deliberately,
for no woman will allow such a spiritual death-to
defraud mankind of material comforts and allow riches
to fall into the hands of the powerful. And so one of the
major precepts of the Matriarchate is that the spiritual
and the material well-being of our women go hand in
hand, always, and this is why the High Matriarch has
also been High Priestess; to remind the woman who 
holds this dual office that material comforts without 
spiritual riches are barren of benefit, and that spiritual 
worth without due attention to the bodies of our sisters .
is a lie and a sham. I fear that Mahala wishes to
separate them, to destroy the whole ethical basis of the
Matriarchate, and I am afraid; but she will not do it
while I live, Cendri."
  Cendri said, "And you cannot produce the true ring
and robe?"
  This time Vaniya's sigh seemed ripped from the very
depths of her being.
  "I cannot. Even Maret's far-seeing is silent on this.
May the Goddess forgive me, I too have had doubts
like Mahala's. Perhaps indeed once Rezali had put off 
her suffering flesh she has no further thought for her
daughters left motherless in this world-or ," she added
with a ghost of her old grin, "it is superstitious
nonsense to believe the dead concern themselves with
the fate of the living. Perhaps the ancient foremothers
in their wisdom felt that the woman who could seek out
and engage the finest clairvoyants was best fitted to rule
over us."
  Cendri had never believed in survival after death, but
had seen extra-sensory perception and clairvoyance
proven again and again; that issue was no longer in
doubt, and so Vaniya's conjecture seemed a very likely
idea.
  Vaniya rose, abruptly. "Will you come with me,
Cendri, while 1 seek the council of those who are wiser
than I?"
  Cendri .looked at her in blank astonishment. "I,
Vaniya?"
  "Mahala has accused me of ignorance and supersti-
tion, says that 1 am making our world ridiculous before
the scholars from University. I want you, who are one
of those, to see for yourself that it is no mere
superstition which sends me to seek the aid of those at
We-were-guided; will you come with me, my alien
daughter?" She held out her hands to Cendri, and the
younger woman, astonished, yet touched by this ap-
peal, clasped them.
  "Of course, Vaniya."
  Silently, Vaniya went around the big room, taking up
a warm cloak against the chill of the damp night; gave
one to Cendri. She took a torch in her hand, and they
went out through the damp garden.
  A thick sea-fog had drifted in, and the garden was
thick with white mist. Cendri could not see more than a
few feet beyond her face, but Vaniya moved unerringly
along the familiar paths, toward the shore. As they
followed the path, now familiar to Cendri, and began
slowly to ascend the long hill that led to the ruins,
Cendri recalled the first night in Vaniya's house, when
she had stood at her upper window, watching the
procession winding into the ruins.
  Vaniya seemed to know every step of the way. As
they climbed, they came up above the mist, and
Cendri, looking down, saw it lying, like a thick white
blanket, along the shore, flowing and drifting in the
moonlight. Above them, clear in the light of the
growing moons, lay the ruins; dark, massive, strange,
and as she moved silently along the canyons of the dead
city, Cendri shivered.
  Vaniya looked at the moons, their pale gibbous faces
floating silently above the dark spires of the immeasur-
ably old buildings. She said in a low voice, "The highest
of our festivals is upon us; it frightens me, sometimes,
to think that there might be no priestess to bless our
rites." She turned to Cendri in the dark, reaching for
the younger woman's hand. She said, and her plump
fingers felt cold, "I am not an ignorant woman, Cendri;
my mind knows as well as yours that the rites are holy
because the minds and hearts of our women, and our
men, make them so, and it would be no word of mine,
nor of Mahala's, which makes them sacred. Children
would be conceived and born, the crops would grow, all
things would go on in order, no matter who performs
the rites, or even if they are not performed at all. I am
not the superstitious ninny Mahala thinks me-.-Cendri,
my child, it was I who piloted the ship which bore us.
from Persephone to this world! I was a young woman
then, I had no thought that I would ever hold any
office, far less this highest of offices. It was Mahala who
always sought for the power of leadership, and I was
content that she should have it, so long as she bore in
mind what our people needed. But-Cendri-even
though the world would go on without the blessing of
the rites, our people need them. We need all things
done decently and in order, and a people react as they
have been taught. Every year since we came from
Persephone, our lives have been structured according
to the world we found. As on our mother world we
were structured to the turn of the seasons, planting and
reaping and sowing, here we are structured to the turn
of the tides, the rise and fall of the sea. The priestesses
do not make this happen. I do not believe that even
when the mass of folk were ignorant anyone believed
that it was the word of the priestesses which made all
this happen, but it is their word which gives license or
restraint. I know what happens to a people which
believes it is responsible to no one except themselves,
and their own whim and will. Yes, if we wished, we
could change our society to one based not on the will of
the Goddess and the cycles of nature, but on our own
will, strongly enforced by laws which the women have
made for themselves. Such laws are tyranny, always;
we live more content under the gentle hand of nature,
by the name of the Goddess, than under laws which we
have devised by ourselves and must enforce by fear and
threat of punishments. I think Mahala feels this would
suffice, but I have seen how the laws made by man at
last reach a point where crime is not regarded except
whether 'or not the appropriate punishment is en-
forced.",
  Cendri nodded, slowly. A government ruled by
custom and tradition, without crime and without
rebellion, and without need of law or enforcement. She
did not know if she would care for such a world, but the
problem of crime and enforcement was an enormous
one on every world in the Unity. The women of the
Matriarchate had solved it in their own way, which was,
by and large, quite successful. They had, at least, a
right to complete their experiment without interference
from the Unity.
  Vaniya spread her cloak on the top of the flight of
steps which led into the open square leading down into
the ruins of the spaceship which had brought them
there. She sat down, inviting Cendri to sit beside her.
She said, "I piloted the ship that brought us here to Isis,
Cendri. I was a young woman then, I had no children. I
had been chosen for education by the Mother Rezali,
and had learned a good deal- about the workings of the
Universe. And so I, and half a dozen others, were
entrusted with the ship, while the others were drugged
to insensibility-you are too young to remember that in
those days the drives were less endurable by a person in
waking state, and all except the most necessary person-
nel were kept under sedation."
  The technical language sounded strange on Vaniya's
lips. She went on, her voice quiet and thoughtful in the
moonlit darkness, her face a pale large blob rather like
the pale moons in the sky.
  "I was alone during much of all that long trip; I had a
great deal of time to think, about the world we had
left, the world to which we would go. And at last our
ship-there it lies below us," she gestured, "was
floating in orbit around this world, and I looked down
on the strange planet below, wrapped in its clouds, its'
oceans moved by unknown storms and quakes and tidal
waves, and I was afraid. I was afraid, Cendri, for all I
knew of the mechanics of the Universe, and for all the
education I had received, and for all my belief in the
society we had built on Persephone, against the general
trend of the Unity. I was filled with terror and with
doubt. Would it not be better for us to return and
submit ourselves to the laws which the people of the
Unity had made for mankind? 1 even wondered, and
doubted the Matriarchate. Were men and women truly
so different, that the laws made by men could not be
enforced for women too, and give women freedom
enough to do as we would? Should we not return, and
work for more of a place for women within the Unity,
rather than removing ourselves so completely from its
entire structure? So I pondered, while I looked down at
our new planet below us, and I prayed, though I was
not a religious woman then. I knew that we would need
all the help we could get, whether from ourselves, or
from some force greater than we were. And then,
Cendri, I was answered."
  "Answered, Vaniya?"
  "Answered, my child. By those who dwell here,
whom you call Builders. They spoke to me, as they still
speak to any woman who will come and kneel before
them and seek their counsel. They reassured me, and
quieted my doubts. They guided the ship here, and they
proved to me--" her voice was shaking with intensity,
"that our way of life, the Matriarchate, was what we
believed, ordained of old before men had seized power
from the women."
  Cendri felt a curious cold prickle running up and
down her spine. She whispered, "Proved to you,
Vaniya? How did they prove such a thing to you?"
  Vaniya's voice, too, was not more than a whisper.
She said, "They spoke to me, as I know they have
spoken to you; I saw your face when we came to the
ruins, the day of the great wave, when the village was
destroyed, and you proved yourself one of us by risking
your life to ring the alarm. But in all the years we have
dwelt on Isis, Cendri, in all the years we have come
here to worship, they have spoken to no male. No male
has ever heard their voice. And thus we know, Cendri,
we know beyond any possible shadow of a doubt, that
the Builders of our race ordained women to rule, and
that the Unity was wrong, wrong, wrong! Tell me--"
she turned her face, pale in the moonlight, to the
younger woman, "during all your time in the ruins, has
your Companion ever heard their voice?"
  Cold and shaking with chill, Cendri whispered, "No.
Never."
  "And you have heard it. I know you have heard it,
child, I have seen it in your face--"
  Cendri whispered, reluctantly, her spine prickling, "I
have--I have heard."
  Vaniya nodded, slowly, drew Cendri to her feet, her
arm around the younger woman. She held Cendri close
to her, within the heavy cloak she wore. Together,
arms enlaced, holding each other against falling in the
darkness, they went down the steps toward the site of
the old spaceship.
  "Come, child. Come. I know now that they will help
me, that they will speak to me; they, who know all, will
surely help me to find the tokens of the Mother, so that
I may continue to guide my daughters. They will
reaffirm my leadership, let me remain Mother to my
people. Come, Cendri. Come and see."
 
 
                    Chapter Ten 
 
 
  CLOUDS DRIFTED ACROSS THE FACE OF THE NEARER MOON;
the further, shining valiantly, gave a light substantially
dimmed as the women, clinging together, moved
toward the dark loom of the old spaceship. Cendri
wondered why-and how?-the ship itself had become
a focus of the presence, whatever it was. Or had the
mysterious Builders simply drawn the ship down to
themselves? We-were-guided, the Matriarchs called the
ruins, thus commemorating the contact with the alien
presences.
  Builders. Dal was right, then, and these ancient ruins
were the site of those who had seeded the known
Galaxy with their offspring. Her skin prickled, and she
felt cold creep along her veins. Had this alien race
actually cast their seal on the Matriarchate as their
preferred people?
  The torch in Vaniya's hand flickered and went out,
but Vaniya, her steps unerring in the darkness, guided
them on. As they neared Cendri began to feel again the
sense of an overwhelming, welcoming warmth that
lapped about her, crept up into her whole body, so that
she no longer felt the cold or the dampness of the dawn
wind off the ocean. She no longer needed to see; her
feet were drawn forward by some volition outside of
herself. She struggled for a moment to cling to herself,
to her own perceptions, not this alien thing that seemed
about to overcome her, to suffocate her own personali-
ty.
  I don't believe in Gods. . . religions are an element
of social control-even Vaniya, who is their priestess,
said so tonight. . . And yet something drew her on,
something outside herself, a glow within, a warmth, a
sense of being lapped in deep, loving tenderness.
Vaniya had fallen to her knees; Cendri was not
conscious of any act of will as she fell beside the other
woman, kneeling there rapt in the warmth.
  I love you. . . you are loved, you belong to me, you
are mine. . . Cendri struggled to keep an atom of
awareness back from the intensity of this, the sensation
of being swallowed up in it . . . no use. She drifted in
rapture. She never knew how long she knelt there,
suffused, overcome, in the presence which wiped out
her critical judgment or her disbelief. . . how could
she disbelieve? It was there, it was real, it was. . .
transcendence. . . .
  The sunrise blurred her eyes, and she felt them fill
with hot tears. It was gone; she was alone, kneeling
beside Vaniya on the chill surface of the ruins, and the
towering mass above them was only an old hulk of a
spaceship, long past its usefulness. She felt cold and
alone, the last traces of the warmth and the presence
slowly withdrawing in little ripples from her mind and
her senses.
  At her side Vaniya sighed, struggling to her feet with
a faint groan of pain from stiffened joints. Cendri
turned quickly and helped the old woman regain her
feet.
  Vaniya pressed her hand affectionately. She said in a
whisper, her face still blank with the last traces of the
rapture, "How strange-and how' rational. Mother
Rezali indeed confirmed my leadership, knowing how
Mahala hates and fears the serpents of the shore." Her
eyes blinked, focused on Cendri. "In the sea-caves, so
They have told me, I will find the ring and the robe, the
true ones and no forgery."
  "Must we go, then, and find them?"
  Vaniya shook her head. "I will send Maret, and my
daughters whom I can trust; you have done enough,
little Cendri." Her hand on Cendri's shoulder, Cendri
supporting Vaniya's steps, they came slowly up out of
the ruins, into the reddening fog along the shore. The
sun was rising; it was damp, and as they retraced their
steps along the shore, the incoming tide lapped at their
shoes and soaked the edges of their long cloaks. In the
garden, every blade of the greyish grass and every leaf
was soaking, and the opening blooms of the fish-
flavoring herbs gave a sharp, penetrating fragrance to
the shrubbery. Vaniya breathed it in and laughed
softly. "From the smell of the garden I can tell the
seasons-you will join us in the festival, little daughter?
Truly you are one of us now, since the Old Ones have
spoken to you." She gave Cendri an affectionate hug,
and Cendri smiled up at her, and said, "Laurina has
asked me to join you-"
  Looking into Vaniya's face, she was suddenly aware
of how old Vaniya must be. She looked strong and
vigorous, indeed; but long fasting and sleepless nights,
had told on the iron strength of the Pro-Matriarch.
"Mother ," Cendri said, using the older woman's formal
title for the first time, "I beg you, go and sleep, and
have something to eat! You are so tired!"
  Vaniya sighed, and said, "As soon as I have sent the
women of my household to reclaim Rezali's ring and
robe. . . my daughters will need my strength in the
days to come." And with a faint shiver Cendri realized
that Vaniya did not mean Miranda and Lialla and her
children and grandchildren, but all of the women of
Isis, who, if she were High Matriarch, would be her
daughters.
   . . . and I too, I am her daughter. . . Cendri thought
with an atavistic prickle, tension gripping her whole
body. As they came up into the house, the women of
the household came flocking into the main hall; but at
the look on Vaniya's face they drew back, and Cendri
knew that they still saw, in Vaniya's eyes, the ecstasy of
contact, the Presence still clinging to her.
   This is the true religious experience, the only thing
which keeps a religion from being mere imposture. . .
the actual touch of something beyond the world we
know. . . and it is real. . . real. . . .
  Vaniya said briskly, "Call Maret, at once; go with
her to the sea-caves along the shore, ten and a half
kilometers beyond the pearl-divers' village. In the third
cave southward, exactly twenty meters from the en-
trance, the three-eyed snake is painted on the wall. Dig
down two meters and you will find a chest in which
Rezali's ring and robe are concealed."
  Lialla whispered, "The Mother Rezali has spoken to
you, then, Mother?"
  Vaniya shook her head. "No. But She who is wiser
than the Mother Rezali in life or death sent the vision
to my mind as I knelt to seek guidance in We-were-
guided. Go at once, my children. Lialla, Zamila, bring
me food; I must eat and recover my strength." She
swayed, and her daughters supported her. Vaniya said,
"Send at once for Miranda, she too must be told the
news. . . Cendri, my child, go and rest!"
  Cendri left the old woman to the attendance of her
daughters and grandchildren, the flocking women of
her household, and slowly climbed the stairs to her own
room. She felt deathly cold and exhausted, completely
unable to assimilate the experience. She was complete-
ly free of doubt; she knew that Vaniya's women would
find the ring and robe as Vaniya had said, buried in a
chest two meters below the surface beneath a painted
three-eyed serpent twenty meters inside the third cave
ten and a half kilometers south of the pearl-divers'
village.
  Clairvoyance, yes. I have always been willing to
believe in that. But this. . . this presence. . . .
  Dal stood up slowly from his place in the padded
corner where he slept. His face was stormy.
  "Cendri, where have you been? I was worried about
you, and when I saw you coming back from the ruins
with Vaniya, across the garden-"
  She shook her head. "Dal, Vaniya has found the ring
and robe of the High Matriarch. She took me with her
into the ruins to consult the-the presences there-"
  He shook his head in confusion. "Cendri, what is it
with you and that woman?"
  If it had not been so deadly serious she would have
laughed. She said, "Dal, do you really believe that
Vaniya and I are having a flaming love affair? Do you
realize she is old enough to be our grandmother?"
  "That hasn't stopped her from keeping Rhu for a
lover, has it?"
  "Rhu is her Companion; I don't Teally know what
their sex life is like and I honestly don't give a damn.
Anyway, that isn't the point. You can't have it both
ways, Dal; if you think she's keeping Rhu for a lover, it
hardly makes sense to think I am involved with her,
does it?"
  "You are certainly loyal to her!"
  Cendri said seriously, "It's true; I love her. But not
the way you evidently think, Dal, and that's too
ridiculous for words!" She would have laughed, again,
but she sensed his jealousy, the deep sense of uncer-
tainty Dal felt, was very real to him. She went to him
and put her arms up around his neck. "Dal, darling!
That isn't important now! I told you; Vaniya has found
the ring and robe of Rezali!"
  Morosely, Dal swore. "I hoped the other woman
would get it, we might make some headway with her!"
  "I'm not so sure," Cendri said slowly.
  "A society which picks its leaders on the word of a
clairvoyant is a pretty silly society, all things consid-
ered."
  "It isn't for you to judge them," Cendri said sharply.
  "No, damn it," Dal said angrily. "But Mahala is a
sensible woman-"
  Translation, Cendri supplied to herself not speaking
aloud, Mahala recognizes Dal's superior position and
takes it into account, flattering him. But she did not say
so.
  "Dal, I was in the ruins, and the Builders spoke to
Vaniya! They told her where to find the ring and the
robe
  But even as she spoke she saw the skepticism
creeping over his face, and sighed. He frowned.
  "The Builders spoke to her? Oh, come, Cendri!"
  "They did," she insisted stubbornly, "I was there-
  "So what did they say to you?" he demanded, and
she sighed, abandoning the effort. How could she
communicate to Dal, in words, an experience that was
far beyond them, a feeling, an emotion. . . . 
  "Look, Cendri," he said reasonably, "your pal
Vaniya is a consummate hokum artist. She was trying 
to impress you. Maybe she has some clairvoyance-a 
lot of people do. But I've been in those ruins, too, day
after day. Nobody and nothing ever spoke to me. 
  She started to say, the Builders never speak to men,
and stopped herself, Dal would never believe that. He
shook his head in amused contempt.
  Come and sleep, Cendri, you're asleep on your 
feet. . . wandering all night long in the ruins with 
Vaniya! If she's found Rezali's ring and robe, you've 
got to hand it to her, I suppose. I won't deny I'm sorry; 
Mahala is the kind of person I can get along with, and I 
was planning, if she became High Matriarch, to start 
laying the groundwork for a fully equipped scientific
expedition to come here to work on the ruins. These
ruins are older than any civilization I've ever seen or
read about; there's a possibility they are Builder ruins,
if they have actually been preserved by Time stasis or
some such thing. A civilization two million years old.
Cendri! And you expect me to pussyfoot around
because these stupid women here have made it into a
Temple for their idiotic religion?" He shook his head in
disbelief. "But Vaniya's a True Believer, and I hate the
idea of having to work with her!" Abruptly, he stopped
his growing excitement and said in a kind tone,
"Sweetheart, you're asleep on your feet, come and
rest. We'll talk about it later sometime, if you want to."
  Later that day, Cendri, who had slept till mid-day,
saw the group of Vaniya's household servants and
her daughters, returning, carrying with them a great
chest which looked, in fact, as if it had been buried for
a long time inside a cave, or somewhere equally damp,
for the metal fittings were rusted and the outside was
covered with a layer of mud. But Miranda told her, ex-
ultantly, that it had indeed proved to contain Rezali's
genuine ring and her embroidered robe, and that
Vaniya had already sent to summon the women of
the Council.
  "I hope this will be settled before the festival,"
Miranda said. They were standing on the steps, and
Cendri could see, on the road that led past the
Pro-Matriarch's residence, more and more men flock-
ing into the city. Cendri felt a sudden inner dread.
  Dal was evidently working for the Unity, fomenting
rebellion among the men! If he were to encourage
rebellion at the time of the festival, when the city was
filled with men from the delta and the great dam-
building project, he would virtually have an army at his
command! Her disquiet increased that night as they sat
at their evening meal, and saw Dal and Rhu talking in
quiet tones, apart from the women. Rhu had some
connection with the underground movement, which she
identified only by the password she had heard once or
twice: "We were not born in chains."
  But-Rhu? The gentle Companion, the musician,
the man wholly without violence? He did not take part
in athletic contests; he seemed to lack the physical
strength which was the most valued sign of maleness
here. Could he truly be working for a movement which
would have to succeed, if it succeeded at all, only by
violence and a bloody coup d'etat? And would Dal-
Master Scholar of University, committed to their ethic
of self-determination for all worlds-would Dal ever
lend himself to any such thing?
  In this world, Dal is legally my property. I am bound
to obey the local laws, I will be held responsible for
whatever he does. Isn't it my duty to find out? Yet she
shrank from the scene she knew Dal would make if she
were to question him.
  I am a fool, to be frightened of Dal, to be so
submissive. I always thought myself any man's equal.
Why can I not act that way? Why does the very thought
of his anger destroy me this way?
  Toward sunset, a messenger came from the Council
of Elders; on the morrow, they would meet with
Vaniya and her entourage to determine whether the
true ring and robe of the High Matriarch had indeed
been found. Grimly, Vaniya ordered her strongest
women to stand guard over the chest.
  "I would not be surprised at all if Mahala sent envoys
to steal it," she said, her mouth tight, and glanced at
Miranda. "I wish you were past the birthing time; while
you are here like this, we are vulnerable--"
  Miranda's blue eyes were wide. "You do not believe
Mahala would resort to violence, surely?"
  "I do not believe she is incapable of it," Vaniya said,
troubled.
  But the night passed peacefully, and in the morning,
Vaniya, accompanied by her older daughters-again,
Miranda felt she should not leave the house, since the
birth seemed daily imminent-set forth. Cendri, again,
was invited to accompany them.
  She had a curious sense of repetition, as if she were
replaying a tape on her graphics-recorder equipment,
as they entered the Hall of Matriarchs, to face the
women seated on cushions, while Vaniya solemnly
proffered the ring and robe for examination.
  Cendri watched Mahala while the Pro-Matriarch
took the robe on her lap and unfolded it. She had noted
before that there was something feline about the
younger Pro-Matriarch; now Cendri had a curious
inner picture of a cat with claws extended and every
hair on its back rising, as 'Mahala, her face taut,
examined the embroideries.
  At last, her eyes narrowed to slits in her triangular
face, she said, "It seems, indeed, to be the true copy of
Rezali's ring and robe; although you, Vaniya, having
seen them on our late High Matriarch's effigy, could
have duplicated them-"
  Vaniya said dryly, "If after five minutes of examining
them through the glass case, I could go home and
duplicate them in less than a single day, then I should
be superhuman enough that I might indeed make a
better High Matriarch than any rival claimant. But I
make no claims of more than human power. As you can
see from the chest, it has been buried a long time; and
this is the authentic ring and robe. I call upon every
woman here to acknowledge that I am duly designated
by the spirit of our late Mother Rezali, and to
acknowledge me as the true and only High Matriarch of
the city of Ariadne and the government of Isis."
  Mahala leaped to her feet, her eyes flaming in anger.
  "This is superstitious flummery," she cried, "I
protest! I call for this matter to be settled by the
Council, who must acknowledge that I am at least no
madwoman! And surely if Vaniya believes that the
ghost of a dead woman has whispered to her spirit
where she shall find these things-is she fit to rule over
us with all the authority of the High Matriarch?"
  Vaniya said quietly, "If you will listen to me, my
sister, you will see that I made no such claim. I have no
notion whether the spirit of Mother Rezali survives
anywhere in this world or any other. I simply state that
I hold in my hand the authentic ring and robe of the
Mother Rezali, and by the custom and tradition of the
Matriarchate which we are all here to uphold, the
power of the High Matriarch descends to me. I do not
really see that there is any further room for debate."
  Mahala said, her narrow face flushing, "How came
Vaniya by these tokens?"
  Vaniya said, "I am not required by custom or
tradition to explain this, only to satisfy the Council that
they are authentic."
  "No," said Mahala angrily, "I question this whole
matter. Why should possession of the tokens of the
High Matriarch prove that Vaniya would make a better
High Matriarch than I? I submit that the Council
should settle this matter without reference to this
trash!" Angrily she flung the ring across the room, tried
to throw the robe after it; it came unfolded and flopped
awkwardly into the center of the room, where it lay in a
crumpled heap.
  Vaniya said quietly, "We have chosen our High
Matriarch in this manner for a long time, Mahala, and I
for one do not propose to change it. If you had found
the true tokens I would willingly have accepted your
rule."
  "That," said Mahala, harshly, "is because you are a
superstitious fool. Why do you think I tried to counter-
feit the ridiculous trash? Because it would have saved
trouble and given you all-"She flashed a quick look all
round the circle of elders, "a-chance to accept me
because you believed me superior. I demand now that
the Council choose which one of us is best fitted to rule
over Isis in the place of Mother Rezali, and let us hear
no more of spirits and clairvoyants and ghostly coun-
sel!"
  Vaniya smiled, a faint contemptuous smile, "But
who gave the Council, alone, the right to settle a matter
which, if it must be settled this way, should be settled
by agreement of every woman on Isis? For that matter,
why only the women of Isis? The men are our sons, too,
and we are responsible for their material and moral
well-being, to say nothing of their spiritual health. If
every woman on Isis, and every man, chose Mahala by
acclaim, probably I would not object, although I am
not sure that the women in the villages know enough
about the problems facing us to know which of us is
better fitted to handle them-"
  "The Council should settle it," Mahala insisted.
"They represent the women of their villages-"
  "Do they indeed? Nowhere in the founding of the
Council has it been agreed that the women of the
villages have entrusted it to the women of the Council
to choose a High Matriarch to rule over them; and if
they did it would still be a mockery." She looked
around the Council, and said, "I am not inflexible, nor
am I powermaddened, though I am not sure you can
say the same about my sister and rival. But if every
woman on the Council here agrees that I am not fit, and
chooses Mahala for rule, I will withdraw."
  "No, indeed," said one of the women, and Mahala
said angrily, "I call for majority choice!"
  Vaniya sighed and shook her head. "This is a tyranny
devised by the maleworlds, Mahala, that a larger force
shall enforce their will on a smaller or weaker one. If
you can persuade more people to accept your view,
does that mean that it is therefore the right view, or
only that you can make us pretend to accept it lest we
be ill-used by the majority? Do you wish to undermine
the whole ethical basis of the Matriarchate, my sister?"
  Mahala said inflexibly, "I do not feel it is right that
our High Matriarch should be chosen by a superstitious
ritual which no sane woman on Isis continues to
accept."
  Vaniya smiled. "I think I am a sane woman. Will you
come to We-were-guided with me, and test the evi-
dence of your senses?"
  "In such a matter," Mahala said, "I do not trust my
senses. "
  Vaniya asked, "What do you trust?" The question
was mild, interested; it was not a challenge, but it put
Mahala on the defensive. "I trust the will of the women
of Isis," she said angrily, and Vaniya stlid thoughtfully,
"Even those who have not been trained to think of such
things, because they have been taught that we are
willing to take on ourselves this heavy burden? Had
they all been trained from girlhood to assume for
themselves the burden of our world's fate, then
perhaps-but they have not. I will not lay it down until
I am assured that they are able and willing to take it
upon themselves."
  One of the women of the Council said quietly, "We
could continue to argue this point for the rest of the
season, and no other .work would be done. How shall
we resolve this? Our decisions have always been made
by custom and tradition; by this method, we have no
choice but to choose Vaniya as High Matriarch." She
raised her hand as Mahala opened her mouth to
protest, and said, "No-wait. Mahala too has justice on
her side; if too many of tpe educated women of Isis
have come to distrust our traditions, they are no longer
a sound guide for judgment. A custom is no longer a
custom when only a few of the old women accept it.
And yet the festival is upon us, the city is filled with
men, and the women are preparing to visit the sea; and
this debate leaves our people motherless while we sit
and debate how we shall choose a foster mother for our
women, and for our men too. We cannot accept
Vaniya's rule if Mahala refuses to swear loyalty, even if
these tokens-" reverently, she went and picked them
up, folding the robe and laying it back in the chest, "no
longer serve as basis for the choice. Nor can we accept
Mahala's rule, unless Vaniya can cede her claim and
swear loyalty."
  Heavily, Vaniya shook her head. It seemed to Cendri
that she spoke with regret. "I cannot obey a decision
which violates my conscience and the ethical basis
of the Matriarchate. I cannot agree until we have
reached a decision which satisfies the conscience of ev-
ery woman in this chamber-" she looked slowly from
face to face, "and does not impose a violation of
conscience, undesired, on anyone outside it."
  Mahala flickered a catlike smile. She said, "And
while we await the struggle with a hundred thousand
consciences, we enter the festival motherless, and the
business of Isis, trade with the Unity, the disposition of
a hundred small matters in the city and the country,
must all await these hundreds upon thousands of
individual consciences?"
  Cendri thought, it was the old argument between
majority rule, anarchy or tyranny, the age-old struggle
between efficiency and personal liberty. Most societies
sacrificed something on both sides and accepted a form
of participatory democracy; the tyrants sacrificed per-
sonal freedom, the anarchists sacrificed efficiency.
Every form of government had its price.
  But governments changed. And this one, after a long
period of changelessness, seemed to be changing, to be
demanding more efficiency-or was it only Mahala and
a fractional small few who were changing?
  Vaniya said, quietly, "I do not think the problems of
trade and industry must all be settled overnight. The
Unity has been there for centuries and will be there in
another season, or another Long Year. There is no
reason to make a hasty settlement which will demand to
be settled again when all emotional reactions have
stabilized. I suggest that for the moment my sister and I
continue as Pro-Matriarchs, as we have done during all
these moons of Rezali's illness."
  But the festival! Are the men to be motherless at our
highest festival?" demanded one of the women. And
Vaniya said, "Since Mahala has spoken of our faith as
superstition, perhaps it would not trouble her too
greatly if I were to assume the burdens of officiating at
the festival this year?"
  Mahala shrugged. She said, "That part of a High
Matriarch's duties, indeed, I am more than willing to
cede to any who believes in it. Indeed, if I am chosen
High Matriarch, my first act will be to appoint a High
Priestess to deal with these matters, so that I may spend
my time upon important matters of state. My fellow
Pro-Matriarch may indeed take upon herself these
duties for the moment."
  Vaniya said with equal calm, "This attitude-that
you will separate such duties--is the main reason why I
cannot accept you as High Matriarch, my sister. But 
since I firmly believe that in the end the women of Isis
will confirm my right to the High Matriarch's powers, I
feel it my duty to'take this part of them upon myself. Is
this agreeable to all of you?"
  One after another, the women nodded in agreement,
until one woman said, "It must be perfectly clear that
the matter is not yet settled! There are many who will
believe that Vaniya's appearance as priestess at the
festival will prejudice Mahala's eventual right to make
such a claim for herself"
  Vaniya frowned slightly, but she said, "So be it; I
shall officiate only as Pro-Matriarch, and not as High
Matriarch. Is this sufficient?"
  Mahala laughed. She said, "Do you really think
anyone here, or any of the women of the households in
the city, or any of the men who are coming in their
hundreds into the city to visit the sea-do you really
think any of them cares about the ceremonies in the
Temples, or anything else? You know as well as I do,
what they care about, Vaniya, and I hope to live to a
day when all of these ceremonies are stripped of the
ceremony and religious custom we have woven around
them, and reduced to their essential social usefulness."
  Vaniya asked gently, "As they have done in the
maleworlds, Mahala?"
  Mahala's laugh was like breaking glass. She said, "I
do not believe-as you apparently do, Vaniya-that
the maleworlds of the Unity have a monopoly on
common sense, or that the women of Isis cannot show
ourselves as practical as they are."
  Vaniya rose to leave the hall. She walked gently over
to Mahala and laid her hands on the other woman's
shoulders. She said in a soft, kindly voice, "And when
we have done so, Mahala, when we have stripped our
society of everything which does not contribute to our
material and social well-being, when we have the
ultimate in a practical and common-sense culture-
then, my dear sister, my dear colleague, how will what
we have differ from the worlds we find where men rule?
What then, Mahala, my sister? What then?"
  Mahala blinked, without answering; but Vaniya
dropped her hands and walked away, leaving the other
Pro-Matriarch staring after her.
 
 
                Chapter Eleven
 
 
  ALL THE LONG DAY OF ISIS THE CEREMONIES HAD BEEN
going on. Cendri had gone to see the ceremonies in the
great hall of the High Matriarch's Residence, where
women draped the statues of the past Matriarchs with
flowers in the Hall of Matriarchs, and joined the crowds
where, for the first time since she had been in the city of
Ariadne, men mingled with women in the crowds in the
streets. All that day a suffused excitement had been
growing.
  Greatly daring, Cendri had strung her voice-scriber
around her neck, wishing that she could record the
ceremonies with a graphics recorder, to play them back
at her leisure and try to decide for herself what they
meant. Again and again in the streets she saw the men
exchange the greeting, "We were not born in chains,"
but she was aware that she was probably the only
woman who had noticed. On Isis, it seemed, men were
so unimportant that no woman no~ed what a man did
unless he was directly speaking -to her, or otherwise
concerned with her.
  It was late in the afternoon when they returned to the
Pro-Matriarch's Residence. Miranda made a few min-
utes to speak to Cendri.
  "You are to join in the festival? I thought you would.
Think of me while the men are spear-fishing. . . I feel
guilty that I am keeping our house midwife from the
festival. She says I may give birth tonight, but she has
said that every night for the last moon, and I still drag
around like this," Miranda said, sighing. "I long for it
to be over, I was sure that by now I would have my
child at my breast."
  "Will you be alone here, then, Miranda, with only
the midwife? I will stay and keep you company, if you
really want me to-"
  "No, no, my friend," Miranda said, laughing.
"There will be a good dinner, a festival meal, served
here tonight for little children, girls and boys too young
for festival, for women-by-courtesy like Maret, and for
Companions. . . and for women like myself, too preg-
nant to spend the night on the shore! We will simply
join in the children's festival and make the night a 
merry one for them while the other women are away."
She smiled, hesitated and said, "Rhu has promised he
will stay near me, so I will not be lonely-Cendri, I
could not say that to anyone else, I am so glad there is
someone who does not think it a kind of madness. . . ."
  Cendri pressed her friend's hand without speaking.
Miranda's predicament seemed perfectly normal to
her; but in Miranda's own society, it was indeed
considered a kind of insanity; that she might prefer the
company of a man to the company of women. But
tonight, then, she would see what were the normal
relationships between the sexes, which began with the
curious ritual they called "visiting the sea." She had
heard this morning something like a sermon, which
reminded the women, flocked into the square before
the Residence, that all life came from the sea and that
they must return there to pay homage to the source.
  All of the women of the household, in readiness for 
the festival, had put on long robes, embroidered with 
patterns of fish and flowers. Miranda had lent Cendri
one of her festival dresses, and as she put it on, Cendri
speculated about what she would see. She wondered if
the men accompanied the women home at sunrise; this
might explain why Companions were not expected to
join in the festival, while all other men, and women,
visited the sea at this time. It would have seemed more
rational, if it was a form of visitational marriage-there
were any number of such societies-for all the men to
join in this form of blessing their mating rituals-but
then, the society of Isis was not rational.
  She said aloud to Dal, "I wish I could dare to take
along a graphics recorder. If Laurina didn't know what
it was, I just might, but she does."
  Dal came and hugged her. He said, "I know this
means a lot to you, Cendri, to be invited to go along
and watch their top-level festival. I don't know any-
thing much about anthropology and I don't really care
that much, but I hope you find out all you want to
know."
  She hugged him hard in return. It was so rare now
that they could communicate like this, without jangling
or quarreling. This world, she thought, is having a bad
effect on us. Is it just culture shock, or is it the strain on
him of living where he's a woman's property? She said,
"I'm sorry the festival kept you away from your work,
Dal!"
  He smiled and patted her. He said, "Dh, I have days
and days of work just correlating what I have done
already, don't worry about it. When things settle down
after the festival, we'll get back out in the ruins. Did
you notice how the men today came up to stare? Some
of them looked at me the way Laurina looks at
you-hero worship! I suppose it's because I'm that
legendary thing, a free male. I've been talking to Rhu a
lot. He feels inferior, poor kid, just because he's not
the athletic type. With his talents, damn it, he feels
guilty because he couldn't join in that damned athletic
contest and win Vaniya a prize and let her cheer for
him!"
  "He looks strong enough," Cendri commented.
"Obviously he wouldn't make a wrestler, or a boxer,
but I'd think he'd make a good runner or hurdler!"
  Dal shook his head. "He tells me he was ill as a child
ana has been a weakling ever since; that is why he was
allowed to cultivate his musical talents. Sounds like a
form of rheumatic fever to me, a weakened heart.
Shocking, not to repair that sort of thing, but I gather
it's not part of their social ethic. Pioneer used to be like
that, lots of emphasis on survival of the fittest; and my
own grandfather never could adapt to the fact that I
wanted to be a scholar; if I'd taken up music or painting
he never would have survived the shock! Our family
were all space engineers, that was his idea of a man's
job. I can understand it on Pioneer, but it's funny to
find it here."
  Cendri said, "The first High Matriarch was a woman
of Pioneer, hundreds of years ago."
  "Is that. a fact?" He smiled, his eyebrows raised.
"I've read about the position of women on Pioneer in
those days; I'm not surprised that the revolt of the
women started there, or that their society embodies the
feeling that if men once get the upper hand, women
wind up in trouble. But they don't realize that men's
societies have changed, too." He glanced at the win-
dow. "Love, there are a lot of women gathering on the
lawn, you'd better go and enjoy your festival."
  She hesitated a minute, holding him, reluctant to
interrupt this rare moment of togetherness and content.
"You really don't mind being alone?"
  He laughed. "Not at all, when you're in a group of
women like that! Laurina may have a lot of hero
worship for you, but she's probably too much in awe of
you to make any-any proposals, and I doubt if you
have any yen for little girls like that! Run along and
enjoy yourself, sweetheart. I gather the kids in the
house have a festival of their own, and maybe Rhu, or
Miranda, will sing for us. Or," he grinned, "maybe
they'll be holding their own festival somewhere!"
  Miranda's secret was not hers to share. She said,
"Maybe," and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. "Good
night, Dal. I may be very late."
  On the lawns before the Residence she found the
women gathering, all wearing the festival costumes
embroidered with fish, flowers, queer sea-creatures.
Laurina rushed up to her and caught her hand.
  "Your festival gown is lovely-oh,it is Miranda's?
Come, the sun is dropping close to the horizon, we
must be there before moonrise, and I want to watch the
spear-fishing. "
  The sun touched the horizon. As they went down to
the shoreline, below them they could see great fires
built all along the beach, and dark figures clustered at 
the edge of the sea, where a full high tide lapped high 
up along the tidewater-mark. As Cendri came closer 
she saw that they were all men, bare arms and bare legs 
glinting in the moonlight, wet with the surf; a few wore 
breechclouts or loincloths, but most were completely 
naked, except for heavy plastic sandals that protected 
their feet from the sharp rocks. As she watch,ed, one of 
the me~he was almost sure she had seen him a few 
days ago in the arena, strutting and preening himself 
after the wrestling-picked up a long spear. The light 
from the fires gleamed along the point of a barbed 
metal tip. He pulled a mask down over his face, ran out 
splashing into the waves, and when they were breast- 
high, plunged face-down into the water. Others ran 
after him, until the water was filled with the splashing 
inaked forms and their spears.
  Laurina guided her to the fire where the women sat 
in a group, silent, watching the men. Cendri recalled
Miranda in the pearl-divers' village, talking of the
spear-fishing-blood must not be shed in Her holy 
waters. . . but for this season evidently taboos were 
broken. Were required to be broken. 
  A long time the dark forms plunged and waded and
splashed in and out of the surf, flung silvery fish on the 
shore where their scales gleamed brilliantly silver-blue
and slowly dulled. A group of women were cleaning.
and scraping the fish, wrapping them in scented leave
burying them in the coals as the fire died down. After a
long time the smell of cooking fish and the strong
ftagrance of the fish-flavoring herbs began to mingle
with the scent of the smoke. The larger moon floated,
huge and golden, high above the water, making a bright
pathway across the waves. The tide went out and the
wet sands lay glistening; high at the zenith the smaller
moon floated, a gilt dish with soft shadows across its
face.
  The women watched the men coming up from the
water, moonlight striking sparks on the metal tips of
their spears. The women struck up a song; it sounded to
Cendri like a hymn, but it was full of archaic words in a
dialect she did not understand completely and she
could only make out the refrain.
  "Wounding is the nature of love. . . ."
  Someone put a plate of fish into Cendri's hands. She
ate, like the others, with her fingers. The men did not
join them at the fire. A moonlight picnic. . . strange,
for a ritual of mating, or fertiliry ritual. Or perhaps not
so strange; the fires, the lapping waves, the dark
solemn faces of the men gleaming and wet by the
moonlight. The fires died down, and the women drew
closer together around the coals. Cendri felt sleepy,
but even so she could sense the hush Qf expectancy
around the circle of women. What now? The moons
were high in the sky, drawing closer and closer.
  Then she saw them coming, a long solemn line, up
from the shore. Cendri heard some woman-a very
young one by the sound~ggling nervously, and
someone near her reproved her in a whisper. At her
side Cendri felt Laurina's fingers clutch at her arm, with
a deep, convulsive gasp. And suddenly Cendri under-
stood.
  So this is how men and women come together.
Solemnly, by moonlight, in ritual: "visiting the sea."
She should have known. Miranda's jokes about fish
dinners. And now she was here, a part of it. Something
in Cendri panicked, cried out to her wildly to get away,
she had no part in this, she could not. . . yet some
other part of her was excited and exhilarated, wanting
to see it through, knowing that anyway there was no
way she could remove herself now from the women of 
Isis, clustered here and awaiting their seasonal ritual of 
mating. An errant thought touched her mind, I am an 
anthropologist, I wanted to study their customs, and
then, with secret hilarity, it's called participant observa-
tion.
  Suddenly the male forms were looming over them.
Cendri braced herself, telling herself firmly not to
panic, she could endure the experience; an anthropolo- !
gist studying planetary cultures got into stranger things 
than this, her own Mentor had studied among the:
Koridorni and had found himself joining in their ritual
cannibalism. . . .
  A man was kneeling on the sand before her, his face
indistinct in the moonlight. His voice was husky and,
tentative, and Cendri somehow judged that he was very 
young.
  "In the name of the Goddess who has bidden us to
visit the sea. . . ."
  Cendri thought there was probably a ritual answer,
but she didn't know it. It didn't seem to matter. He put 
his arms around her, drawing her down on the cool 
sand.
  She had expected, feared, something cold and imper-
sonal, a ritual brutality like rape, had braced herself to 
endure that. Her preconceptions melted away before 
the gentleness of the man whose face she never saw. 
His hands on her were clumsy, yet tender; his body on 
hers warm and inviting. Her dread melted away; she 
welcomed him into herself, giving herseif over to the
night and to the soft sounds all around her. Laurina was
close, so close that she could have touched the other
woman, she could hear the sounds and almost feel the 
movements of the other's lovemaking. It didn't seem to 
matter. 
  In one small part of her mind she was amazed and 
shamed. She had had a lover or two, before Dal, but 
they both came from monogamous societies and since 
her marriage she had been faithful, neither desiring nor
seriously paying attention to any other man. She
thought almost regretfully of Dal, but on a deeper level
something in Cendri desired just this, accepted it.
  At last he moved a little apart from her, but still
holding her in the curve of his arm, lightly touching her
hair, her breasts. He murmured, "My name is Yan;
may I know yours, to treasure it in memory when I
have returned to the Men's House?"
  Cendri started to speak her name; remembered that
all the female names here were three-syllabeled,
amended it slightly: "Cendriya."
  He repeated it in a whisper. "Lovely, and strange. I
shall cherish the memory." He laid something in her
hand; it was a chain of carven leather. A belt, a
headband? "My gift to you," he whispered, and was
gone.
  A sea-gift. And this was how Miranda had passed off
Rbu's fine pearl. Cendri lay back on the sand, weighing
the strange experience. Then she was aware of another
dark form, kneeling, whispering:
  "In the name of the Goddess who has bidden us to
visit the sea. . . .
  After the fourth time, during that long night, she
stopped trying to count the men who came silently out
of the dark, whispering their ritual greeting. Afterward
there was always the whispered exchange of names,
and each of them left her a gift; a necklace of shells, a
s~all jewel-she could not see it in the dark-on a fine
chain; a polished carving of glinting nacre; one, who
seemed hardly out of childhood, left her a garland of
ribbon which, he told her, he had won in the arena in
the boy's foot-race. Some of them left her quickly after
the ritual exchange of names; others lingered for a few
moments, to lie close to her in tenderness, holding her
close and murmuring; one or two talked a little. One
man told her that he was working on the delta dam
project, south of Ariadne, and that he was the leader of
a group of a dozen men there; he talked, troubled and
almost compulsively, of a comrade of his who had had
his foot crushed in a rockslide and been unable to come
to the festival. "We promised each other we would go
together ," he told her, almost weeping, and Cendri did
not know what to say to comfort him. She found herself
wondering, briefly, and troubled, if the men paired off
as the women did, in long-term partnerships. -On the
whole she thought probably not; nest-building was a
female instinct. But they evidently formed deep and
lasting ties.
  Another, the very young man who would later give
her his athlete's prize, wept for a few moments against
her breast, saying that she reminded him of his mother,
that he had been in the Men's House only a few moons.
Cendri thought it was a strange compliment, until she
remembered Rhu's song:
 
     Twice have I been driven from paradise;
     Once when I left my Mother's womb,
     And again when I was driven
     From my Mother's house. . . . 
 
 
  Here, perhaps, the image of the mother was deep-
rooted, ineradicable; every contact with women restim-
ulated the memory of the lost paradise of living in a
world of women, every woman would become a search
for the Mother. And indeed, in a society where no one
could possibly know who had fathered any child-now
she understood Miranda's bewilderment ,at the
question-no tie existed save that of the Mother. And
there was, in fact, nothing to prevent a grown son from
meeting his mother in this way. . . no incest taboo.
She cradled the sobbing boy against her breast, and
strangely thought that some day she would like to have i
a child there. . . he calmed, at last, and began kissing I
her breasts in a most unfilial way.
  At last the first glimmer of dawn showed in the sky;
Cendri could clearly see the face of the last man who
came to her; he was the only one who did not delay to
ask her name, simply pressed a beautiful shell into her
hand, kissed her long and tenderly, and went quickly
away. The men gathered silently on the shore, took up
their masks and spears and melted into the rising sun.
  Cendri lay on the sand, listening to the tide slowly
lapping toward the full again. The women drew togeth-
er around the cold ashes of the fire, in a close group.
Cendri felt Laurina's arms tighten around her, her face
against Cendri's, and for some strange reason, wanted
to cry. Around her the women were clustered, hugging
one another, snuggling together in each other's arms,
and Cendri understood; this too was a part of ritual, a
ceremonial reaffirming that after the bonds of mating,
the deepest and truest ties of the women of Isis were
with one another.
  Laurina, her face against Cendri's whispered, "I
hope I have a baby this time. . . I came away empty
last season, I thought my heart would break. . . my
daughter is already in her tenth year, I long for a little
one. . . .
  Cendri held her tight, murmuring, "I hope you do, if
that is what you want." Oddly, and only for a moment,
she found herself wishing that she could be pregnant. It
could not happen, of course. When she and Dal had
agreed to delay childbearing, they had each taken
medical treatments to abolish their fertility for a time.
Since they were monogamous, Da1 had offered to have
himself temporarily sterilized and save her the physical
side-effects of the treatment. But she had chosen to
share the treatment, and though Dal had not been
happy about her choice-men of Pioneer took it for
granted that they would be the custodian of their wives'
fertility-he knew it was not the custom on Cendri's
world.
  And if he had not conceded her right to take
responsibility for her own fertility, she would have been
vulnerable now to pregnancy. So that by giving her the
choice, he had saved himself possible humiliation; their
marriage had included an agreement that she would not
bear any child not of his fathering. Would she ever be
able to tell Dal about any of this?
She did not protest when she felt herself drawn into a
close embrace, felt Laurina's kiss like a lover's on her
mouth. She had been too shaken, too surprised by the
strangeness of this ritual mating on the sand, to find the
sort of pleasure she normally took in sex; surprised,
shocked at herself, she discovered that the woman's
touch was bringing her to the release which tension and
uncertainty had denied her before. In a surge of
tenderness she found herself reciprocating, felt a
curious shaken delight as the other woman trembled
and cried out under her caresses.
  Dal, she thought with last-minute compunction,
would probably think this was worse than the fact that I
had sex with eleven, or was it thirteen, men tonight.
But she no longer cared. Her last waking thought was,
Why should I care what any man thinks? and even then
there was a faint flicker of surprise at it. Then she slept
a little, beside Laurina, cradled close in each other's
arms
 
 
ChapterTtwelve
 
 
  THE SUN WAS HIGH WHEN SHE WOKE. ALL AROUND HER 
women were slowly coming awake, gathering up the
small piles of gifts, and concealing them within the folds
of their robes as they made their way back to their
homes. Cendri woke and sat watching for a moment,
then shook her head in amazement, hardly able to
realize that she had been a part of it. At her side,
Laurina said softly, "I must go back to the city, and see 
how my daughter fares; she is still a year or two too
young for the festival. Will you need my aid at
We-were-guided today, Scholar Dame?"
  Cendri knew why Laurina had spoken formally, and
smiled, touching her hand in kindly reassurance. She
said, "Not today, I think, I want to sleep. Tomorrow,
Laurina."
  All around her the women of Vaniya's household
were making their way up from the shore. Cendri
joined them, realizing that her festival gown was soiled
and bedraggled, and- that she was covered with sand.
She wanted a bath and a long sleep. It was still very
early; no one was about in the downstairs hallway but a
few small children, and Miranda, cross-legged on the
floor, dabbing listlessly at a screen with watercolor
paints adorning it with small delicately-drawn fish and
flowers.
  Cendri said, "I had hoped your child would be born
last night, Miranda!"
  Miranda sighed and said, "For a time I thought so,
but it was only another false alarm, I did the same with
my first child, false labor every day for twenty or thirty
days." Cendri had not even known that Miranda had
another child, so much had been made of her present
child being Vaniya's heir; she said so, and Miranda
shrugged listlessly.
  "It was only a male; Lialla looks after it much of the
time, as she seems to be barren, and Zamila has no
daughters either_But Maret has predicted that this will
be a daughter." She sighed again. "So the midwife is
provoked at me because she missed the festival for
nothing, and did not even drink much lest she should
have to work later; and Rhu is sulking-there is a
proverb, as sullen as a Companion on festival-morn-
ing-go and sleep, Cendri, I am not fit company for
any woman on this morning!" She laughed a little at
herself, but she looked wretched and weary.
  "That is a pretty screen you are painting," Cendri
said, and Miranda frowned almost angrily. "Such
children's work serves to pass the time, and now I am
not supposed to do anything more strenuous than this!" 
A small child ran up to her, tangled in a wet breech- 
clout, and Miranda snapped at it as she dragged herself 
upnght and hauled It, In no pleasant mood, off to be
changed and dried. 
  Cendri went up to her room, feeling exhausted and 
let down, all the exhilaration of the night evaporating. -
Dal still slept in his comer; Cendri put away the little
pile of sea-gifts in her personal luggage-case without
examining them. Some day, she knew, she would want
to take them out again, look them over, study them,
examine as a scientist, examine their psychological
meaning to the men of Isis and to the women who
received them, but for the moment she was too
emotionally involved with the memory to be detached, 
and she was sure she would not want to look at them for 
a long, long time. 
  She was tempted simply to fling herself down beside 
Dal and sleep again, but her festival gown was so 
bedraggled that she wanted to take it off, and that once
done, she felt so gritty and soiled with sand and
seaweed that she wanted to bathe. Before she had
finished Dal came in and stood beside the running
shower. ,
  "How was the festival, Cendri? Interesting?" 
She pretended not to hear him over the noise of the 
shower as she carefully soaped the sand and grime from
her hair, enjoying the luxurious bathing facilities of the
suite. When she stepped out, wrapping herself in a
robe, he repeated the question and she discovered that
she was reluctant to say anything at all. She merely
shrugged.
  "It was interesting enough. I know you aren't
interested in the anthropological aspects, Dal, so I
won't bore you with them. There was a moonlight
dinner on the shore, and spearfishing, which is only
allowed at festivals. We cooked the fish and ate it."
  He scowled. "Something Rhu let drop--I understand
it's a kind of fertility ritual! You didn't take part, did -
you?" 
  She found herself remembering Miranda's phrase,
sullen as a Companion on festival morning. She
thought, suddenly, that she would like to tell Dal all
about it, share it-but he was a man of Pioneer; he
would never understand how she had felt about it, he
would never see anything except that she had been
unfaithful to him. She knew he could have tolerated a
deeply emotional episode, as he would have expected
her to tolerate a genuine love affair on his part; but he
could never have understood this kind of simple,
undiscriminating sexuality.
  He noticed that she had not answered and his frown
deepened.
  "Cendri, tell me about it!" he demanded, "Fertility
rituals on undeveloped planets are all indecent! If
you're not ashamed of it, why don't you want to tell me
about it?"
  Suddenly she was angry. "Because I know perfectly
well you wouldn't understand," she flared at him,
"You've made it very clear that you regard all these
things as senseless native customs and superstition; I'm
not going to hold it up for you to ridicule!"
  "Cendri, we agreed to share our work-"
  "Share be damned!" She was really angry now.
"What you mean by sharing is that you tell me what to
do and we do it! If you feel like it, that is! You won't
say a word about what you're doing with the men, and
every time I ask, you tell me to mind my own business,
keep out of it! You have refused to let me know
anything of what you are doing among the men; how
dare you question my work among the women?"
  "Cendri," he said quietly, very sober, "if I do not
confide in you about my work among the men, it is only
to protect you. I think you can guess that it would be
dangerous."
  "So much for your tal}(: of sharing," she flung at him,
surprised at herself for what was surfacing in her now.
"If I were truly your equal, Dal, and not just your-
your pawn, your figurehead-you would be willing to
share risks as well as triumphs! The real reason you will
not share it with me is because you know that what you
are doing is not lawful! Are you trying to start a civil
war on this world?"
  "That only shows me that you would never under-
stand."
  "Where is your integrity- as a Scholar of University?
One of the reasons why the Scholars of University are
SO highly regarded as scientists is because they are
above the petty politics within the Unity-"
  "We are outside the Unity, Cendri. And how can
you-you of all people-reprove me for taking part in
politics, when you have allied yourself so firmly with
Vaniya and her party? If the ruins at We-were-guided
are truly Builder ruins--I don't think you understand
even now what that means, Cendri! Do you realize that
they are the most important artifacts ever discovered in
the known universe, then? Isis must be made part of the
Unity, by any means possible! This is the scientific
discovery of the aeon-don't you even realize that?
What do the politics of the Matriarchy mean, stacked
up in the scale against that?"
  She cried, shaken, "And you'd destroy the whole
culture of Isis for your damned Ruins, just to be the
man who opened them to the Unity, just for your own
personal ambition?"
  "And you call yourself a scientist!" he stated at her
in scorn and the beginnings of contempt. "I don't
believe you even care about the Ruins, Cendri!"
  She didn't know what she was going to say until she
heard herself saying it.
  "Not in the way you do, no-I don't give a damn!
You don't know half as much as I do about the ruins at
We-were-guided, because you never believe in any-
thing you can't weigh and measure! They mean more to
me than they can ever mean to you! You just see them
as a dead culture, you would let in every Scholar and
scientist and gaping tourist in the Unity, to break into
them, trample allover them, just for your own personal
ambition. I don't give a damn about the ruins, Dal, I
am interested in something more important than that!
And I'm not going along with some stupid man's idea of
what ought to be done with them! Now get out of here!
I want to sleep!"
  "Cendri-" be begged, troubled.
  "No! Damn it, Dal, get out of here and let me
alone!" She wrapped herself in the toweling robe, and
threw herself down to sleep. Dal said her name again,
kneeling beside her, but she did not raise her head,
closing her eyes resolutely. It had felt good, for once to
speak her mind to him, to give voice to all the hostility
she had been suppressing ever since she came here, his
contempt for her own work, the way in which he made
her pay for every slight and humiliation the society of
Isis put in him. She felt purged and honest. A trace of
contrition stirred briefly in her-had she been too hard
on him? No, he had deserved every harsh word she had
spoken, and she would not undo it all and capitulate
again. As sullen as a Companion on festival morning. It
was just offended male pride. He'd get over it, and then
she would speak more moderately, too. Firmly ignoring
him, she drifted off to sleep.
  She slept for hours, until she was jolted awake by a
screen, falling over near her bed. Earthquake, again?
She heard small children crying out, and flung on a
garment to run downstairs; but evidently the fallen
screens were the only damage, and Cendri went back
up to dress. It was near evening. Dal was nowhere in
the suite. Feeling faintly guilty at the memory of her
harsh words, she resolved to hunt him up, tell him as
much as he wanted to know about the festival, com-
pound their differences somehow. But he was nowhere
in the house, either.
  It was too late, in any case, to do anything in the
Ruins that day; everyone in Vaniya's household was
engaged in clearing up after the festival. It had been
silly of her not to share everything with him. He was a
scientist, not a man of the Pioneer of five generations
ago! He might be distressed that she had gotten herself
into the situation without fully understanding it, but he 
would certainly understand why she could not have 
withdrawn, once committed.
  Anyway, if he was angry, he was angry; what was 
done could not be changed, and she didn't have to fear
his anger. Then she began to worry. Just before she had
silenced him, sent him away in anger, he had been
trying to communicate with her, to tell her something.
Her own nervous guilt, based on his questions about
the festival had not recognized until now that he had
left that topic and had been trying to tell her something
else. But what? Had she really begun thinking like
these women of Isis, that whatever a man had to say, it
could not be important to her? In any case, anger or no,
misunderstanding or no, they must talk seriously about'
what he was doing among the men. It might be --'
personally dangerous, and she had a duty to share 
whatever risks were involved. 
  If she had listened, encouraged Dal to tell her more, 
from the begtnmng . . . Cendn grew more and more 
troubled as Dal did not return. He was nowhere in the"
house; he was not on the shore with the men servants
who were clearing away the wood ashes from the dead
fires, he was not in the Ruins, for one of Vaniya's
women told her that no one had entered We-were-
guided that day. He was not at dinner either, and
Vaniya smiled when she inquired if anyone had seen
him.
  "No doubt it has run away to sulk, my dear; but did
you not give it permission to leave the grounds? Our
Punishment House is at your disposal if you wish to
discipline it," Vaniya remarked. But where Vaniya saw
only a question of discipline, Cendri was deeply
troubled for Dal's safety. Had he been detected in his
plotting? Was he somewhere encouraging revolt or riot
among the men, and what would they do to him if it was
discovered?
  Or-worse-had he run away to confer with Mahala,
to join her party? Were she and Dal actually to line up 
on opposing sides of the political situation on Isis? The
thought sent a shudder of horror through her. As a
scientist of University she-and Dal-were supposed to
be above local politics. Dal had already violated that
regulation. Must she do it too? Or-Cendri had been
trained into rigid intellectual honesty-had she already
violated it, or seemed to do so, out of her deep personal
affection for Vaniya and Miranda? Had Dal mistaken
this for a kind of political commitment? She must make
it clear that it was personal. . . .
  Miranda was not at dinner, either. Lialla told her
that Miranda was in bed, with the midwife nearby. . . .
"But I think it is only another false alarm." Lialla said,
resigned. "Her first child was many, many days past the,
proper time; almost all of those who became pregnant
from last winter-festival have already borne their
babes, but Miranda is always slow. Some women
simply do this."
  It was a silent and, generally, a glum meal, the women
mostly tired and suffering from lack of sleep. Vaniya,
irritable at the silences, asked Rhu to sing, and he said
sullenly that his throat was sore and his lyrik out of
tune. "However," he said, making an effort to be
pleasant, "I shall apply myself to composing a song as
birth-gift for the Lady Miranda, since she takes plea-
sure in my poor songs."
  Cendri, watching him, thought, why, he really cares
about Miranda, he's worried about her, as worried as if
he were the father of her child. Or is it just that
anything to do with Miranda involves him, emotionally,
and he knows he must conceal it? If romantic love is a
perversion for women in this world, how much more
for men! Pitying Rhu, she knew she pitied herself.
  Dal did not return all that night. Cendri slept poorly,
rousing again and again, thinking she heard his step in
the suite, every small sound anywhere in the house of
women, a restless child crying, anyone moving about
on the lower floors, disturbing her light sleep. Where
was Dal? What had become of him? Was he some-
where in a Punishment House, having broken all 
unknowing one of the many rules for men on this
world?
  Long before dawn, sleep deserted her entirely; she
sat by the window, looking down into the ruins of
We-were-guided, deeply troubled. Her growing insen-
sitivity to Dal's needs had driven him away from her,
and now where was he?
  Had she really, as Dal had accused, been corrupted
by the society of the women of Isis? No, she realized; 
not really. The Matriarchate had only given a form and 
expression to a hostility which had-she now knew-
begun long before they came here. A resentment, that
she had given up her own ambitions to be Scholar
Dame, fearing Dal's jealousy; that she had taken time 
off, after her marriage. But Dal had never asked it of 
her. It had been her own idea. If Dal had wanted a 
submissive woman, all the women of Pioneer, trained 
to it for centuries, and not yet taking full advantage of
their freedom, had been at his disposal. He had chosen
her instead.
  And when he forgot, when he fell into old habits from
Pioneer, it was for me to protest; not to submit, stifling
resentment, until the inevitable explosion. I was not
honest with him. Have we lost each other now, forever?
  When the sun rose, red and dripping with sea-fog,
peering through the cloudbank over the shore like a
weeping eye, Cendri was exhausted and frightened.
Laurina came early, ready to accompany Cendri to the
ruins; but by then Cendri knew what she must do.
  She told Laurina of Dal's disappearance. "I am
afraid that he, unused to the laws of Isis, has somehow
gotten into trouble," she told the younger woman,
"and that he is somewhere in a Punishment House.
You have been around Mahala's faction. . . . she has
some connection with your college, does she not?"
Laurina nodded, and Cendri said, "Can you find out
what has become of him?"
  "I would do more than that for you, Cendri, but why
is it so important to you?" Laurina actually seemed a
little jealous, "I am here to give you what help you
need."
  For a moment Cendri desperately wanted to pour out
the truth. She was so tired of this imposture, so weary
of the pretense that she was the Scholar Dame archae-
ologist who knew all, and Dal her unregarded
assistant-but tardy caution prevailed; the words, once
spoken, could not be recalled. Would these women of
Isis despise her if she was only some man's assistant?
She said slowly, "Dal's aid is indispensable to me; his
special training on University makes it impossible for
me to work efficiently without-it-at my side."
  Laurina grimaced slightly and said, "It must be hard
for the women of University, but after all it is one of the
maleworlds. Well, Cendri, I will go and inquire in
Mahala's faction. But what makes you think it might
have gone to them?"
  "One of Mahala's men-anyhow, marked with her
tattoo of ownership-came to speak with Dal, secret-
ly," Cendri confessed. "I warned Dal about conspiring
with men, but he may not have understood how serious
this was." Half-truths; she knew Laurina did not
understand, but the woman was content with the
explanation and set off for the city.
  Cendri was too distraught to work; she even ab-
sented herself from Vaniya's dinner-table that night,
sending the excuse that she was not feeling well. She
spent the evening looking through her notes from the
ruins, and writing, in the undecipherable-to-outsiders
script of her homeworld, all that she could remember of
the ceremony of visiting the sea, knowing she must do
so before the memory blurred in her mind. She found it
was an exercise in self-control and discipline, but she
did not spare herself, even writing down the shaming
memory of how she had reacted sexually to Laurina's
embraces when the ceremony was ended, firmly
forcing herself to make a note of the fact that she had
felt ashamed. She realized that her intellectual aware-
ness, that sexual moralities were purely a cultural
imprint, did nothing to minimize them for her personal-
ly. Afterward she noted, with wry amusement, that the
attempt to force herself into clinical detachment from
the reaction had given her a very real headache, and in 
the end she took a sleeping pill, for the first time since
she had come to Isis, willing to face the danger of
sleeping through an earthquake, or being hard to wake
if there was news of Dal, rather than lie awake for
hours juggling guilt and fear and the attempt at a
scientist's discipline.
  The next morning Miranda was still abed, and I
Laurina came to tell Cendri that as far as she could 
discover, none of Mahala's people had seen Dal there.
"It is not in their Punishment House, nor hidden in
their Men's House," she said, "A schoolmate of mine is 
in charge of their Men's House and I asked her to make 
an excuse to call a search of the Men's House for 
concealed contraband, things men are not allowed to 
keep. So it is not concealed there."
  But then where was Dal? Cendri was beginning to be
seriousl¥ frightened. Late that morning, knowing that it 
was a minor breach of Matriarchal etiquette but by now
too troubled to care, ~he went up to Rhu's.quarters. 
She found the Comparnon, barefoot and weanng an old 
and rumpled kilt, his face for once unpainted, bending
over his lyrik, searching for chords. Was he working on 
Miran.da's song? His face was sullen, but he bowed to
her with respect.
  "How may I serve the Scholar Dame?"
  She said straightforwardly, "My Companion has 
disappeared. I do not believe he has gone willingly; I 
am afraid he may have broken some law unwittingly.'
and is being held somewhere, in trouble. Can you help 
me?" 
  Rhu's face was closed and unrevealing. He said, 
"This much I will tell you; he went willingly. Beyond
that, you cannot expect me to betray a fellow male. I
know that our customs are strange to you, Scholar 
Dame, and I am not offended that you ask, but I cannot
answer further."
  She stared at him in shock and dismay. Somehow,
knowing his secret and Miranda's, she had not expected
he would draw this barrier down between them. She
said, in distress, "Rhu-can't I talk to you simply as a
fellow human being, as an equal? Can't you understand
that my concern is for Dal, and he is your friend?"
  Rhu's mouth tightened, bitterly. He said, "No
master can talk as an equal to a slave. I know you are
concerned to protect him, you want him back mostly
for your own concerns; to be the kind of man I am. If
he has escaped into freedom, even though I cannot, I
will rejoice for him and never betray him."
  Shocked, Cendri said, "He was free on University;
he is free here; he will be free again-"
  Rhu made a wry face, "Would you really have taken
him back there, Scholar Dame, knowing now the
pleasure of having him a thing and a toy for your sport?
At first I thought there was a different kind of
relationship between you. Now-" his narrow shoul-
ders lifted in a shrug. He said, "I am only a man; I
know nothing more. Will you have me tortured, to tell
what little I might know more than this? It would be
useless. Perhaps he has told you; my heart is weak, I
would die under the lash. Will you have my life,
Scholar Dame?" .
  Cendri, shocked, put out her hand in an appeasing
gesture, and Rhu recoiled, an instinctive movement
that shocked her more than anything Rhu had said, It
was exactly as if he feared I would strike him. . . .
  She said, swallowing hard, "No, Rhu. Forgive me. I
am afraid some such fate may have befallen Dal-if you
decide I might help save him from such fate, 1 beg you,
come to me--" but his face was closed, and she went
away, feeling tears rise and choke her.
  What could she do? What could she do?
  Later in the morning, Vaniya's older daughter,
Lialla, sought her out. She said, "Scholar Dame-" she
had never come to the informal terms Miranda and
Vaniya used with the stranger-"my sister is abed and
ill; she has asked you to pay her a visit."
  Cendri was still so distressed over Dal's continuing
absence that she felt she would be no fit company for
the sick; but she knew Lialla would never consider
worry over a mere male anything to interfere with the
"friendly duties between women, so she dismissed her
annoyance at the interruption-in any case, it isn't
helping Val any for me to sit and stew about it-and
went to Miranda's room.
  Miranda was lying down, her pregnant body looking
enormously humped between blankets. She greeted
Cendri warmly, gesturing with amusement to a pallet
on the floor.
  "Vaniya has insisted that I sleep with the midwife in
my room, so I have not even privacy any more, at
night. I have missed you, Cendri, but I really feel too
heavy and tired to get about. They keep telling me it
would be better for me to take lots of exercise and jolt
my lazy baby loose from her snug nest, but 1 am too
heavy of foot to think of it without at least a dozen
shudders. Listen, Cendri-we are alone, I sent the
woman to make me a hot drink-has your Companion
been found?"
  Cendri said, "No," and wondered. whether Rhu had
told Miranda what he refused to tell her.
  "You know I have not been at the family dinner table
for days, I have been taking my meals here in my
bed-last night Lialla came and kept me company
while I ate, taking her dinner at my bedside so I would
not fret-so she said, but I think it was for fear I should
go into labor if left alone for a few minutes. When
Zamila came up to her from the dinner table she began
to gossip with her about what was happening, and-you
were not at dinner either, Cendri?"
  "No I had a headache-"
  "I hope you have recovered," Miranda said, with
kind anxiety, "but they seemed to feel it concerned you
in some way; a man, a messenger, came to Vaniya. She
would have sent it away, saying this was not the hour
for receiving petitions, but it insisted amost with
rudeness, and spoke with her for a long time, insisting
that the women of the household go out of earshot. My
mother even sent Rhu away-but when the man was
done speaking, she called out in great anger for her
guards, and sent the man to the Punishment House.
And after, she told Lialla to say nothing of this to the
Scholar Dame, since she did not want you worried by
trifles. Cendri-I had a strange feeling it might have
been something to do with Dal's disappearance. My
mother does not know-" she laid her hand over
Cendri's, "that your Companion is your life-partner as
well, and such a thought would never enter her mind.
But I know a little, I think, of what your-your
Companion means to you, and I think you have a right
to know, if this man truly brought a message concern-
ing him."
  This seemed to confirm Cendri's worst fears. She
said, shakily, "I must speak with the messenger,
Miranda. Where is he?"
  "In the Punishment House, Cendri, and I fear it was
beaten. No," she added quickly, "you cannot go to the
Punishment House alone, no woman may except
Vaniya's appointed guards, and I do not think they
would give you, alone, access to the prisoner; but I will
go with you."
  Cendri was grateful, but still felt some compunction.
"Oh. Miranda, you are ill, suppose you go into
labor-"
  "Believe me," Miranda said, with heartfelt sincerity,
"nothing on this world could please me more! If it has
that effect, I shall bless the effort I make!" The midwife
returned with Miranda's drink;'she motioned her away.
  "I will walk a little with my friend, the Scholar Dame
from University-" she silenced the woman's protest,
saying gaily, "You have been telling me for three days
that I should bestir myself and take exercise, and now
when I am willing, you would prevent me! Cendri will
make certain I do not fall on the stairs, will you not, my
friend?"
  Cendri supported Miranda carefully on the long
flight of steps, feeling intensely protective. Isis has
changed me in one way, she realized; my relationships
with women will never again be quite the same. The
awareness that she could actually relate to another
woman as to a lover, she knew, was going to make
some permanent difference in her self-image, but she
was not yet sure what form it would take. At the
moment, she realized, she felt as close to Miranda as if
the woman were her own sister.
  It seemed for a moment that Miranda was reading
her thoughts when she said, "So now you have visited
the sea with us-tell me, Cendri, what do you think of
our festival?"
  Cendri said honestly, "I don't know yet what I think;
I was surprised and-and a little confused. And I
suppose, then, there will be an enormous number of
births two hundred and eighty days or so from now?"
  Miranda shook her head. "No, not really; that will be
an unpleasant time to bear a child, in the worst of the
summer heat. Most women who want children arrange
it, as I did, to try and become pregnant at winter-
festival, so that the children will be born at this season
of the Long Year, and some others, women who work
on farms, try to conceive at the harvest so that their
children will be born before sowing-time. Although
there are always some women so eager for children that
they do not care when they conceive-my sister Lialla,
who seems barren, though she has gone unprotected to
every festival for years now. Cendri!" She looked at her
in dismay. "Do your women in the maleworlds have no
way to avoid conception except to keep apart from
men? One of us should have warned you, told you-
did you expose yourself, unprotected, to the sea-com-
ing? It can still be remedied, but the process is-is
unpleasant-"
  Her concern was so sincere, so contrite, that Cendri
quickly hugged her as she reassured, "No, no, we have
such ways, I am in no danger of pregnancy, whatever I
should do, but I was not sure your people did-"
  Miranda laughed. "Believe me, it was the first thing
to which the Matriarchate gave priority in research!
Not many women wish for more than two or three
children, if so many, and there are some who wish for
none at all, although I must say that seems strange to
me-if I could not bear children, I think I would almost
as soon have been born male! But then there are also
some women who wish for children eagerly, and no
sooner wean one child from their breasts than they are
eager for another, and of course we are all grateful to
them. But did it seem to you that our festival had no
meaning but that, Cendri, for the giving of children?"
She looked up anxiously at Cendri, and Cendri said, "I
have not been among you long enough to know what
meaning it might have."
  Miranda said slowly, "One of our priestesses could
explain it to you better than I. These festivals-- Three
times in our Long Year we visit the sea; it is our way of
remembering, of commemorating that both men and
women are the children of the Goddess, whom once we
named Persephone and here we call Isis, that all of life
including our own comes from the sea; that men, too,
have their needs and goals and desires, and that we
must join to give them what they need, too, and keep
them happy and contented." And now Cendri was
more confused than ever, but Miranda did not explain
further.
  "Here is the Punishment House; I, as Vaniya's heir,
have authority to admit you here."
  She spoke briefly with the hefty, sun-tanned woman
at the doorway, and the woman went away, letting
Cendri and Miranda inside.
  In the course of her studies Cendri had visited many
places of confinement on many different worlds; the
Punishment House of the Residence of the Pro-
Matriarch contained four identical small barred rooms,
cells, weathertight and immaculately clean. The
inhabitants--there were two at present-looked clean
and well-fed, warmly clad against the chill and provided
with blankets; nevertheless Cendri shrank in distaste
from the display, on the wall where every inhabitant of
the Punishment House could see them, of a variety of
increasingly unpleasant instruments of restraint or
punishment, including a variety of long, brutal whips.
She also remembered what she had been told upon first
landing on Isis; the penalty for any male who attacked a
citizen was immediate death, meaning that males being
punished could not even resist without incurring imme-
diate destruction like any wild or dangerous animal.
She shuddered in horror, thinking of Dal in such a
place as this.
  Miranda pressed her hand. She whispered, "I know,
I feel that way too. It is horrible. And yet most males
cannot be controlled any other way; you cannot judge
them all by the kind of men whom we know; they are
exceptional, you know."
  Cendri thought of the boy who had wept in her arms
at the seaside, of the gentleness of every man there, of
the genuineness of the communication. Not for sex
alone, but for some kind of togetherness, some way of
re-uniting the sundered halves of the society--she
found herself wanting to cry, because even Miranda did
not understand.
  Miranda said, gesturing, "This is the messenger. He
was interrogated by the lash; but Lialla told me he said
nothing and at last they were convinced he knew
nothing worth telling, more than was in his message.
But you should ask him about it, since the message-
the message Vaniya did not give him leave to deliver-
was for you. Yal," she said, to the man who lay
huddled on the bare floor, shivering under his blankets,
"I have brought the Scholar Dame from University to
you. If your message concerns her, you are now free to
give it."
  The man Yal slowly, dragged himself upright. Cendri
saw with horror that the back of his thick coarse shirt
was flecked with blood, and that he moved as if every
motion cost him excruciating pain.
  He said, "You are indeed the Scholar Dame from
University? The Mother Vaniya said that you would
have no interest in the message I bear-she said, what
is a male to the Scholar Dame?"
  Cendri said quietly, "Vaniya was mistaken, Yal. If
you bear a message from my beloved Companion, let
me hear it."
  "Respect, Scholar Dame, the message is not from
your Companion, but concerning him," Yal said. "I
was to say that your Companion, the Master Scholar
Dallard Malocq, is being held in the work-settlement of
the men at the great dam, and that there he will remain
until men of the Unity are sent here, to learn of the
conditions under which men of Isis must live and suffer
all their lives without freedom. We demand that the
Unity shall require the women of Isis to grant us the
rights of free citizens, and until the Unity has answered
us we shall hold the worthy Scholar Male among us."
  Cendri gasped. So this was the end of Dal's work
among the men of Isis-to be held as their prisoner, to
force action from Vaniya!
  It might have worked, with Mahala. . . she wants
Isis a part of the Unity, but on their own terms. But
Vaniya! Cendri's blood ran cold. Dearly as she had
come to love the Pro-Matriarch, she knew that the
woman would never compromise with the men.
  Miranda said sharply, "That is not the way things are
done on Isis, Yal. I can assure you, as daughter of the
Pro-Matriarch, that if you return the Scholar Dame's
Companion to us, and return to your duties, my mother
Vaniya will be ready and more than ready to listen to
any reasonable request."
  Yal said, "We have done with reasonable requests,
Lady; all reason has done for us is to keep every male
on Isis in chains."
  Cendri begged, "Where is my-where is the Master
Scholar from the Unity being held?"
  Yal's bruised face moved in a smile. His lips were
swollen and darkened with dried blood. He said, "Ah,
Respected Dame, that would be telling, now, wouldn't
it? And you can see they asked me, and they knew how
to persuade me; if I'd known-" he shuddered, "I'd
surely have told, wouldn't I? I told them before they
sent me, don't tell me anything. What I don't know,
they can't make me tell, see, not even if they kill me."
  Cendri shuddered; he spoke so matter-of-factly of
torture and death. Was this what Dal would suffer for
the fate of their messenger? This brave, and stupid,
volunteer would die for his cause; but would it do him
any good?
  Miranda said sharply, "Is it worth it to you to be
beaten and tortured for this folly, man?"
  Yal smiled again. His smile, in his tortured face, was
very terrible. He said, "But there are not enough
women on Isis to beat us all to death one by one,
woman." He used, not the term of respect, but the
simple female noun. "I came here knowing I would be
questioned as all men are questioned, by the whip, and
then put in chains, as all men on Isis live chained by the
will of women. But-" he held out his right hand; made
the slow unloosing gesture Cendri had seen before, "we
were not born in chains! And we will not die in them!"
  He turned his back on the women, deliberately
wrapped himself in the coarse prison blanket, and
lowered himself painfully to the bare floor of the cell.
He did not speak again.
  When Cendri had escorted Miranda gently to her
room, and left her there in the care of the midwife, she
went to her own room, thinking in dread of Dal's fate in
the hands of the men.
  If they had sought some specific concession from
Vaniya, they might have fared better. Vaniya was a
reasonable woman, as she had proved when she gave a
previous messenger leave to organize a hunt, because
of their hunger. But the men had asked the one thing
which Vaniya, secure in the rightness of her position,
backed up by the will of the Builders-or Whoever and
Whatever had spoken to her at We-were-guided-
would never grant.
  In all the years while we have dwelt on Isis, the
Builders have spoken to no male. . . .
  Did that mean, then, that the society on Isis was one
specially chosen, right, the way all humanity should
live?
  Cendri shivered; then, remembering how the man
Yal in his cell had done the same, forced herself to be
quiet. No; if she accepted the word of-of whatever
had spoken at We-were-guided-that would be to
acknowledge it as a God, a supreme Being. And that,
despite the almost-automatic reverence she had felt
while she knelt there, Cendri could not do. Vaniya
believed that whatever spoke there was the voice of a
God-or more probably, Vaniya being who and what
she was, a Goddess. But Cendri had been raised in the
firm agnosticism of the Unity, and she did not believe in
Gods-or Goddesses either--except as psychological
forces in the minds of those who worshipped them. Far
less could she accept that such Supreme Beings, if they
existed-which, away from the seductive experience of
We-were-guided, she did not believe-would lower
themselves to interfere in the political institutions of
humanity or to set up women above men, or for that
matter, men above women. If Cendri believed in God
at all it was in a force of ultimate fairness, which
inspired but did not lead its worshippers, and left it to
them to work out the details of their societies.
  Something had spoken to her in the Ruins. That she
knew, as she knew her name was Cendri Owain. But
the nature of that Something she did not know, and
could not guess.
  But the fact of the matter was that Vaniya believed,
and it was ultimately in Vaniya's hands to put her faith.
into action. Cendri never doubted that she would do it.
So that Dal might remain in the hands of the men of Isis
until he died-or until the Unity sent to ask word of
what had happened to its Master Scholar, sent to
investigate the ruins of Isis.
  And that was what the men wanted. That the Unity
should come to investigate, to see the conditions of the
Matriarchate, should declare them unfit for a world
which traded with the Unity. Should enforce freedom
for the men of Isis as a condition, not of membership in
the Unity, but of trade with it. Cendri shuddered. The
Unity could, and would, do it. In the name of Humani-
ty, they would do it. Slavery was repugnant to the
Unity, and in the harsh laws of the Matriarchate, where
every man was legally some woman's property, they
would see slavery, and nothing more.
  And Mahala had said it, and Miranda. They were a
poor world. They needed, they desperately needed,
trade with the Unity, a market for their pearls and
other exports, they needed terms for the earthquake-
predictive equipment which would free them of the
quakes and tidal waves, they needed land-reclamation
machinery and equipment, they needed scientific train-
ing for their scientists and scholars on University. If the
Unity enforced sanctions on them, as it did on all
worlds which dealt in slaves, Isis could not survive, and
their experiment would die with them.
  So that the men, holding Dal, had the one instrument
which could kill the power of the Matriarchate. Vaniya
might trust in the love and concern of the Builders; but
they could not save her, or Isis, now.
  By the time Cendri had readied herself to dine at
Vaniya's table, she was exhausted with her attempts to
find some way out of this dilemma. Did Vaniya even
understand the plight she would be in, if the Unity
should come to investigate Dal's disappearance? If she
did not, then she, Cendri, must enlighten her, and she
shrank from the thought. Vaniya had not even told her
of the existence of the messenger Yal, or of his
demand; she had left Cendri to suffer in uncertainty.
Braced with the anger this thought raised in her, she
went down to dinner.
  Yet her deep affection for Vaniya bade her give
Vaniya a chance to tell the truth. After all, she
reminded herself, she had absented herself from Vani-
ya's dinner-table the night before, Vaniya might well
have hesitated to trouble Cendri in her supposed illness
with such news.
  But the meal was much as usual. Vaniya welcomed
Cendri back to them with tender concern, inquired
about her health, and did not speak a word of the
absent Dal. And throughout the meal, Cendri's anger
grew, until by the time the dishes were cleared away,
she could restrain it no longer.
  She said, "Vaniya, I would like to speak with you
alone, if I may," and waited until the Pro-Matriarch
had dismissed her household. Even then, seeing the
lines of fatigue and worry in the older woman's face,
Cendri almost relented.
  But my duty now is to Dal. I, too, am a citizen and a
Scholar of University.
  She said quietly, "Vaniya, I have heard that you had
news of Dal, and that you did not tell me. I had thought
you regarded me as a guest and a friend. In our world
this would not be thought the kindly action of a friend."
  "Friend? More than that, my child," said Vaniya,
gently taking her hand. Cendri drew it away and her
eyes blazed.
  "Miranda, perhaps, is my friend, Vaniya, but not
you; or why was I not told that a messenger had been
sent, telling me that Dal was a prisoner of the men's
rebellion?"
  "Oh, dear!" Vaniya said, and her face was troubled.
"My dear child, I did not want you troubled with such
trifles. If these foolish men think they can force our will
that way, that has nothing to do with you. I am sure you
are concerned for your Companion, but after all, it is
only a male, and you can all too easily find another.
You shall have the choice of my own Men's House, I
will not withhold even Rhu from you if you value him
so highly."
  Cendri heard her in amazement and dismay. Had
she, then, never even begun to understand Vaniya, or
her world? No, for she now knew she should have
expected this. The fault had been in Cendri, when she
first agreed to the terms made by the women of Isis.
Dal's fault, too; he was a Scholar and such an impos-
ture was not intellectually honest, either. They should
have demanded-University should have demanded-
to send their chosen Scholar on his own terms, pledging
his obedience to the laws of Isis, and under diplomatic
immunity if necessary; but the imposture, she now
knew, had been a great mistake, and now she, and Dal,
must pay for it. But she would not continue the lie.
  She said quietly, "Vaniya, that will not do, and I
think you know it. For all that we have tried never to
offend against your customs, Dal is not a Companion as
you of Isis use the term. He is my life-partner, a citizen
of the Unity, a Master Scholar of University, and the
Unity will not allow him to be disregarded and given up
to imprisonment. I think you know what the Unity can
do if they choose to exercise sanctions against Isis; it
has been done before."
  Vaniya's face was pale. She said, "I cannot believe
they would do this for an assistant, even the valued
assistant of a Scholar Dame."
  Cendri felt the blood drain from her own cheeks, but
now she was committed to the truth. "Dal is not my
assistant, Vaniya. It is he who is-who has always been
-the Extra-Scholar Malocq," she used the neutral
word in the language of Isis. "It is he, not I, who was
the trained assistant of the Scholar Dame di Velo."
  Vaniya's fists clenched. Her mouth was tight, but her
eyes glowed in anger; she looked more than ever like a
great golden lioness, but now the lioness was free and
stalking in fury. (She paced the floor, rounding on
Cendri to demand, "And who are you, then? Are you
not the Scholar Dame Malocq?"
  "I am a Scholar," Cendri said, "I am the life-partner
of the Extra-Scholar Malocq, and as the custom is on
his home world of Pioneer, I had taken his name for my
own. And so it was possible-" her voice failed her
there.
  Vaniya demanded, in a fury, "Why did you~come,
then? Only to be a-a sexual plaything, a she-Com-
panion, for your Extra-Scholar, then?" Cendri felt she
would wither into a small scorched coal under the
blazing contempt in V aniya's voice. She gathered her
self-respect, and said firmly, "No, Vaniya. I came for
the sake of my own work; I too am a Scholar, and some
day to be Extra-Scholar as well, the equal of Dal!" She
flung the phrase at Vaniya defiantly.
  Vaniya just stood and stared at her. "That 1 should
live to hear a woman and a Scholar say such words-
that some day she might rise to be the equal of a male!
Have you learned no shame among us, Cendri?"
  Cendri set her chin so that she would not cry. She
said, "Vaniya, in all save Scholar's credentials we are
equals; and I have not completed mine."
  "Credentials-" Vaniya said. "Let us have this clear,
then. Are you an assistant archaeologist, and your-
your Companion-the true Extra-Scholar in that
field?"
  With all her heart Cendri wished she could leave it at
that. Ringing in her mind were the words recorded for
a former High Matriarch of Isis-she wondered which
of the statues she had seen in the Hall of Matriarchs
had said these words:
  We will not be studied by your scientists as if we were
one of those glass-sided insect colonies we give our
little daughters for playthings. Yet she had committed
herself now to complete honesty with Vaniya.
  Standing before Vaniya, looking up into the woman's
face as if she were a Student before her Mentor in the
first class on University, she said steadily, "No, Vaniya.
I am a cross-cultural sociologist and an anthropologist;
I came here because so little is known about the
Matriarchate in the worlds of-the-Unity, and I wantedt
them to know the truth about you, not garbled lies. I
can tell the worlds of the Unity what you really are,"
she added, hopefully, but Vaniya's face was carved in
stone. 
  "An anthropologist. To study us," she repeated
slowly, her mouth twisting a little as if the words dirtied 
them. She physically drew away from Cendri,
  "But we loved you," she said, slowly, in amazement.
"We trusted you. We loved you. And you betrayed
us!"
 
 
 
Chapter Thirteen
 
 
 
  THE SILENCE LENGTHENED. CENDRI FELT HER EYES FILL
with tears, felt them spill over and run hot down her
cheeks, but she said nothing. There were a dozen things
she wanted to cry out.
  And I loved you, Vaniya. I trusted you, enough to risk
Dal's life at your hands.
  You ask if I have learned no shame among you. I have
learned to be ashamed that women can so abuse their
power. Tyranny is tyranny, be it the tyranny of the man
over the woman, or of the woman over the man.
  But she said none of these or the other thoughts
surging in her mind. She stood with her head held
firmly erect before Vaniya-she had done nothing
wrong, she was a Scholar of University, not a spanked
child-but she could not keep the tears from scalding
her cheeks.
  It wasn't a lie. It wasn't betrayal. I loved you, all of
you, I lived with you. I visited the sea with you. . . .
  She had finally opened her mouth to speak when
there was an outcry in the hallway. Vaniya thrust
Cendri aside, saying roughly, "What is this commotion
in my house?"
  There were the sounds of women crying out in
surprise and dismay; the doorway was flung open and
the Pro-Matriarch Mahala, accompanied by the women
of her household, stormed into the hall.
  Vaniya quickly mastered herself and said, "Tell me,
my sister, how is it that you honor my house? Is this an
official visit from Pro-Matriarch to Pro-Matriarch, or a
friendly evening call?"
  "It is official," Mahala said harshly, "I now demand,
my sister and colleague, that you immediately relin-
quish to me such secular authority as I need to deal with
rebellion-or do you, wallowing in your religious
observances, even know that we have a rebellion on
our hands?"
  Cendri, standing forgotten, watched in dismay.
Vaniyasaid, summoning her uttermost dignity, "I have
been occupied with the aftermath of the festival,
Mahala, and I am awaiting the birth of my daughter's
daughter. The peace of the city of Ariadne has been left
in your hands, as during all these months of our late
Mother's illness. Have you then been unable to main-
tain it, my sister?"
  "It is no time for birth-festivals and merrymaking,"
said Mahala angrily. "Do you not know that the men
have refused to return to the delta and the dam, refused
to return to the Inland Land Reclamation Project,
refused to return to their duties on farms and factories
and along the shore, refused even to go quietly to the
Men's Houses when offered a holiday to recover from
the fatigues of the festival?"
Vaniya blinked and said, "But, no, I had heard
nothing of this, my sister. Where, then, are the men of
Isis?"
  Mahala gestured, and suddenly, for all her forceful
and angry speech, she looked helpless and forlorn.
  "They are on the streets of Ariadne, doing nothing,"
she said. "They are standing about where the cars and
drivers cannot pass, they are sitting about on the curbs
so that women cannot walk in the streets, they are
doing nothing. They are doing nothing," she repeated.
  Vaniya shrugged. She said, "When they are hungry,
they will go back to work."
  Mahala said, "So I too thought at first, but they have
been there now all night and all day, and another night
is beginning, and they have not moved. Some of them
are on the shore, spearfishing; when we sent to warn
them away, saying it was out of season, one of their
leaders told my officer that the Goddess had given fish
to the hungry, and it was theirs for the taking, and
refused to desist."
  "Beat a few of the leaders," Vaniya suggested, "and
they will scatter. "
  "I have done so, "Mahala said, almost in a whisper,
"but we have not enough women in all Ariadne to beat
them all, and already the Punishment Houses are full
and overflowing!"
  Cendri swallowed, thinking of YaI's defiant words:
There are not enough women on Isis to beat us all to
death.
  "Finally," Mahala said, "a delegation came to me.
They said that since you had not listened to their
messenger the first time, but had simply beaten and
tortured him, without the courtesy of replying, they
would force you to take notice. They say that you care
nothing for the Companion of the Scholar Dame from
the Unity; so they have sent him with a message for
you." She motioned toward the door. "A message,
they say, which you dare not ignore."
  Between two of Mahala's strongest women guards,
Dal came into the room.
  He looked tired and sleepless, but he seemed
otherwise uninjured. Cendri rushed to him; he touched
her hands briefly, smiling a quick, reassuring smile;
then put her gently away from him. He said, "I bear a
letter for Vaniya from the leader of the United Men of
Isis."
  Vaniya frowned and said, "I do not recognize any
such group or affiliation. Men are not allowed to
organize into any societies but the crafts of their trades,
or the secret religious societies of the Men's Houses."
  Dal said, "They are aware of that refusal, Pro-
Matriarch. Nevertheless, they have sent me with a
message."
  "And you dare to bear it to me? Impudence!"
Vaniya snorted. Dal's voice was calm.
  "I am here as a representative of the Unity, Vaniya,
and I bear diplomatic credentials. You need not respect
them, but if you do not, the Unity will exercise
sanctions against Isis. May I present the message with
which the men of Isis have entrusted me?"
  Vaniya said grimly, "Give me the message."
  Mahala snorted. "This is what comes of your kind of
liberalism, Vaniya-allowing some men to learn to
read and write!"
  Vaniya ignored her, tearing open the letter. She read
aloud, slowly. .
  "'Respect, worthy Pro-Matriarch Vaniya, from the
men of-'" she frowned. "It is wretchedly ill-spelled.
They list some dozen athletic guilds, and as many more
Men's Houses. . . 'since you have seen fit to ignore
our messenger Yal and not to deliver the message to its
appointed destination, we have seized for ourselves a
hostage you cannot ignore. No harm must come to the
scholar from the Unity until he carries our message to
the worlds where men are free. You will recognize this
token of the hostage we hold.'" She tore at the
wrappings enclosing something inside the letter, her
face pale and taut; unwrapped a large pink pearl on a
fine chain.
  Her face drained to deathly white.
  "Miranda's," she whispered. "But-she was in her
room, with a midwife in attendance-" she whirled
quickly on the assembled women. ~
  "Lialla, Zamila-Maret-all of you-go quickly, see 
if all is well with Miranda-"
  The women rushed from the room. Cendri heard
their feet on the stairs. Mahala pointed to Cendri and
said with anger, "It was an evil day, an accurst day
when you came to Isis, Scholar Dame!"
  "No," said Vaniya, looking sadly at Cendri, "it was
an evil day when that one came to Isis." She pointed at
Dal. He leaned close to Cendri and whispered, "Since
we came on the same day, they're both right. As usual.
That's the hell of it, they're both right!"
  It was all Cendri could do to keep back an outburst of
idiot laughter, bubbling up from somewhere deep
inside her. But Dal was right. This was the real tragedy
of Isis; that these two women, locked in their deadly
rivalry, still wanted the same thing; they wanted what
was best for Isis, as they saw it.
  Suddenly, from the upper floors of the house, loud
cries of consternation broke out, and the sounds of
running feet on the stairs.
  The women burst back into the room in a clustered
group, huddling together like frightened small birds.
  "Miranda'," Zamila wailed. "Miranda is gone! She is 
nowhere in the house!"
  Lialla cried, "The midwife lies unconscious on the
stairs; she has been struck and we cannot revive her!"
  Vaniya stared at them, blanched, her mouth trem-
bling. Then, slowly, she turned to Cendri and Dal. She
said, slowly, holding Miranda's pearl on its chain,
clasped against her heavy bosom, "If any harm comes
to Miranda, you will pay for this, whatever the Unity
may do to me for it."
  Cendri began to cry softly. Miranda, her first friend
here, loved like a sister-what would become of her,
pregnant and ill, in the hands of the men, at the mercy
of men with the memory of generations of abuse,
slavery, torture! Would they ill-treat her for Vaniya's
sake, or to revenge themselves for the treatment of
their messenger?
  Then, and for a moment the memory seemed
incongruous, she remembered the night when she had
lain with the other women at the edge of the sea;
remembered the adolescent boy who had given her his
athlete's garland, weeping against her breast and saying
that she reminded him of his mother. Suddenly she was
sure they would not harm a pregnant woman, a mother.
A Mother. She wished she could share this sudden
certainty with Vaniya, but the older woman had not
looked at her since that first angry, contemptuous
rejection.
  "Vaniya-" Mahala said gently, and the older
woman turned dazed, suffering eyes on her. Vaniya
said, in a stifled whisper, "Miranda! Goddess guard and
protect her, my poor child-"
  Mahala's voice was gentler than Cendri had ever 
heard it. She said, "Truly, truly, I grieve for you, sister,
I have daughters and grand-daughters of my own. But
we have a rebellion on our hands, and although I
sympathize with your personal sorrow, the time leaves
us no leisure for grieving. We must somehow manage
to remove these men from the streets and send them
back to their work and their Men's Houses. Will you
delegate me the secular authority to deal with it then,
sister, if you do not feel qualified to deal with it 
yourself?"
  "I suppose you are right," Vaniya said wearily. 
"Miranda is my daughter, and she is brave; she must
endure whatever comes to her, as every woman on our
world must endure the days to come, and I cannot
compromise my duty for the safety of one woman, 
however dear to me." 
  "Spoken like a true Pro-Matriarch," said Mahala. 
"There are weapons in the armories; they were used
against predators when we cleared the land. 1 think we
must authorize their use, now. They may resist whips
and persuasion, but if we fire a few shells into their 
midst-"
  Vaniya stared at her in horror. She said, "My sister,
this would be war!"
  Mahala's voice was angry. "You who are lost in your
religious sentiment, my sister, do you not yet recognize
that the men have forced this war upon us?"
  Vaniya twisted her big hands together. She said
tensely, "My dear sister, of what worth is the Matriar-
chate if we violate its ethical principles the first time
they are put to a test? With these ears I heard you say,
when you protested the coming of the Scholar from
Unity: the maleworlds perish and are destroyed be-
cause every society made by men turns to violence, to
war, to entropy and decay. If we must fight and kill to
enforce our will on the men, my beloved sister, then we
might as well turn over the rule of this world to the men
at once, for already we are living as the maleworlds
do!"
  Mahala's mouth fell open. She stared at her fellow
Pro-Matriarch in dismay as the truth of Vaniya's words
penetrated to her. "You are right," she acknowledged
in a whisper. "It seems that the rule of the maleworlds
is already upon us, then, whatever we do or refrain
from doing! My sister, what shall we do? What shall we
do?" It was a cry of utter despair.
  Vaniya held out her arms, and the two Pro-
Matriarchs clung together. It seemed to Cendri that
Mahala's shoulders heaved as if with silent weeping;
over her head, even while she embraced and soothed
her colleague, Vaniya stared grimly into the distance.
  At last she said, in the gentlest of voices, "Mahala,
there is only one answer now. We must seek out aid
from those who are wiser than we. Will you come with
me to We-were-guided, Mahala, and put the question
to those who in the first days of our arrival here,
welcomed and counseled us?"
  Mahala raised her head. Her eyes were tearless and
red. She said, "It goes against reason, Vaniya, but I
admit that reason has helped me little in this crisis.
There seems no other source for help. Yet I have little
hope that we will find counsel there, in the dead city."
  Vaniya said quietly, "If you find no counsel there to
your liking, sister, then when we leave We-were-guided
I shall at once relinquish to you al! control of the
secular forces of Ariadne. I give you my word, which I
have never broken, that I ask only that you come with
me, as you have never been willing to do, and hear the
words of the wise ones there who helped me to find
Rezali's ring and robe. All things are known to them,
and they will know what to do in this crisis, too."
  Mahala bowed her head. She said, "In this crisis I am
willing to turn anywhere, even to a ghost."
  The preparations took only a few moments. When
the procession left the Pro-Matriarch's residence, it was
growing dark, and Cendri and Dal followed in the train
of the two Pro-Matriarchs as, each accompanied by her
household, they climbed the steep path toward the dark
loom of the dead city of We-were-guided. Cendri
walked head down, lost in misery, remembering how
she had come here before with Vaniya, how Something
had spoken to her from the site of the ancient starship.
She was hardly conscious of Dal at her side until he
stumbled and cursed in an undertone; then she said,
reaching for his hand, "Dal, I was so frightened-did
they hurt you?"
  "Hurt me? Cendri, I had to stop them from trying to
worship me," he said softly. "They did not believe that
there were really worlds where men were free. You
would not believe how they crave learning. . . I think
they want it even more than freedom; because with
learning, they say, they could prove they were equal
and prove worthy of their freedom! And when they
.found I was a Master Scholar-Cendri, I was treated
with reverence! Reverence!" he repeated. "They
wouldn't have hurt a shadow of my clothing, or a hair
of my head!" He laughed softly, but it was not a
mirthful sound. "Poor devils, poor devils! Some of
them feared the idea of learning as much as they
desired it! One of them, when he heard I had spent all
my life in study, asked if it had not made me impotent!
And I thought Rhu was badly off! Sharrioz!"
  "Dal, did you foment this rebellion?"
  He sighed and shook his head. "God help me, no, I
was selfish enough to protest. I never thought about
anything but my own work of exploring the ruins. I was
only the catalyst, coming at the precise time when the
men were ready for some such thing."
  The night was hot and dark; the moons, waning from
full, hovered at the edge of the sky, Cendri moved
along, wearily, following the glimmer of Vaniya's
torch, trailing in the train of the two Pro-Matriarchs.
  She said at last, "How is it that you are coming here,
Dal? I thought you were against the idea that the ruins
could be a center of religious worship."
  In the dark she could not see his face but his voice
sounded faintly amused. He said, "I suppose I want to
see anything that could make Mahala give way like
that. Or maybe, like her, I feel the situation's just
fouled up enough that we ought to try anything. Maybe
I just have to keep track of what the government of Isis,
such as it is"-he gestured at the dim forms of the two
women ahead of them-"are going to do now, and how
it affects the Unity." He shook his head. "I didn't think
anything would make Mahala draw in her horns. She
reminds me a lot-in a way, they're not at all alike-of
the Scholar Dame di Velo. Come to think, so does
Vaniya."
  Cendri knew what he meant. It was the aura of
personal power, the force of personality, the elusive
thing called charisma. She said, "I know what you
mean," and in the darknes.s, Dal reached out and
clasped her hand.
  He whispered, "You have it too, sometimes, Cendri.
When you're mad enough." And his arm went round
her waist, so that under cover of the darkness they
walked enlaced.
  By torchlight, picking their way carefully over the
stones, the women found their way inside the gates of
the dead city known as We-were-guided, wound slowly
through the canyons between the giant unknown
structures, where nothing stirred except the dim night-
wind, and night birds rustled along the shore. Far
below the waves broke and sighed.
  Dal whispered, "What happens here?"
  "I can't tell you, Dal. You'll just have to-to see."
She was remembering, painfully, what Vaniya had said.
  In all of the years we have come here, those at
We-were-guided have spoken to no male.
  But maybe the males never listened. . . .
  They came slowly across the great open space, at the
far end of which loomed the spaceship. Cendri began to
feel the first overlapping waves of the welcoming
warmth.
  I am here, you are loved. . . I welcome you. . . .
But for the first time she resisted, fighting against the
irresistible tide of rapture creeping upward into her
brain. -
  No. No. NQt this time! It is to~ important for that! Do
you know who we are? Do you know why we have come
here? Who are you?
  The licking warmth seemed to hesitate, to flood
back, to withdraw and advance and retreat in waves,
and then Cendri sensed something else. It was the same
as the warmth. It had the same mental feel. It was not
precisely in words; she knew it was her own brain
translating the contact into words because it was the
only way to make the experience of contact compre-
hensible.
  Yes. We-know. A curious positiveness about it, and
then a quick crawling sensation as if-Cendri described
it later-as if some enormous force had picked me up,
turned me inside-out, looked at every idea or thought I'd
ever had since the day I was born, ruffled through my
mind turning over all the ideas it found there, patted
me on the head like a puppy and put me down again.
And all through that trememdous, tender, loving
warmth. . . .
  She heard Dal say-and knew h~ was not speaking
aloud, "Did you build this City, then?"
  And the voice, answering, still radiating these same
waves of loving warmth. . . she glanced at Dal, saw his
face glowing with the same joyousness. . . .No. We did
not build the City. We came here from space, when these
women came. We had need of them, as they had need of
us.
  Now she heard. . . or sensed; how did you translate 
into words an experience that was not in words at all, a
touch that said clearly in her mind, Vaniya, and a
wordless, You see, Mahala?" 
  I see. But they speak to the man! 
  And Vaniya's thoughts, flowing with surprise and 
indignation. Never before, never, have you spoken to
men . . . why now?
And the alien thoughts, wrapped in warmth; and yet
with a touch of chill that made Cendri tremble with
sudden terror. Your mind lied to us. We saw your men
only through your thoughts. Now we know that you 
have lied to us. 
  We spoke truth, Vaniya's mind flamed with indigna=
tion, men are not fit. . . 
  As fit as ydur first Foremother Alicia, when she
rebelled against men's dominance on Pioneer. . . .
  And Mahala, angry and terrified at once: What do 
you know of our first Foremother? 
  Whatever your mind knows is known to me, beloved
. . . and the surging, compelling ripples of tenderness. 
  Dal was almost gasping with excitement. 
  He whispered half aloud to Cendri, "An alien race. 
Not the Builders, but a disembodied race. . . cosmic
clouds? Atoms? Gaseous entities? Needing to live in
symbiosis with another race because of their endless
loneliness, desiring love. Pretending to be Gods to get
it!"
  Yes, you are right, my alien son, we have allowed our
need for the love of our daughters to blind us to the
needs of others who cry out for our comfort. . . and
these have lied to us . . . Cendri could feel in her own
breast the surge of alien anger. Vaniya! You have lied to 
us, we will speak to you no more. . . 
  And sudden, shocking, dead, cold emptiness.
  Cendri came awake as if icy surf had splashed over
her. The faint light still glowed from the ruins of the
ancient spaceship and all around them the faint lumi-
nosity of the city shone with its own interior gleam. But
there was no warmth, no voice, no lapping ripples of
tenderness. The voice was silent. The moonlight had
risen high over the city now, and Cendri could see the
faces of the women, shocked and quiet, weeping.
Vaniya covered her face with her hands, shaking,
bereft. Cendri felt shock and pity at the naked anguish
of deprivation on the woman's face.
  They have been with her so long, so long. Since first
she came here as a young woman, coming with her
from space to this world, settling here, supporting her,
helping her, till she grew dependent on their love and
concern. And she led other women to them, so that
they fed on this devotion and in turn gave pleasure to
those who came to communicate with them.
  And by coming here, by asking a simple question,
Dal has destroyed these long years of blind, mindless
devotion. But what will Vaniya do now? What will she
do? Vaniya was looking at Dal with naked hate.
  I don't blame her. He has robbed her of her Goddess
. . . and yet he did nothing wrong. Why do the innocent
have to suffer?
  Slowly, with drooping steps, Vaniya turned away
from the ancient ship. Her head was bent and she
stumbled as she walked. Cendri, impulsively, stepped
forward and laid her arm around the old woman,
supporting her steps. For a moment she feared Vaniya
would rebuff her with a rebirth of anger, but Vaniya
was too sunk in her own anguish to care. She leaned on
Cendri as they came out of the dead city and started
down the hill; then Lialla, behind them, cried out in
dismay and fear.
  "Look! Look!"
  From the gates of Ariadne, a great multitude were
surging out of the city, running, plunging upward along
the shore, up the hill in a great human wave. Cendri
thought of the tidal wave which had engulfed the
pearl-divers' village on the shore; only this was a
human tide, flowing along the shore, rising slow and
inexorable on the slopes toward the gates of We-were-
guided. And in the moonlight Cendri could see that all
the forms were those of men, moving like a great
groundswell. And one and all,' their faces bore the same
dazed rapture that Cendri had seen on the faces of the
women, that day. . . . ~
  Vaniya moaned, moving aside from the surge of
men, stumbling. Cendri held her so that she would not
fall, and heard her weeping aloud. "Profanation," she
moaned, "profanation!"
  The men surged into the city, stood before the old
ship. The lights began to glow. Cendri felt the faint
echo of the lapping warmth, but it did not speak to her;
she felt cold and alone, and she could feel Vaniya
shaking, and held the woman tight in her arms, with an
almost anguished desire to comfort her, as the woman,
desolate, deprived of the contact and the love which
was life to her, stood and watched others drinking in
the communion from which she had been exiled.
Others, despised. Men. Not even people.
  How long it lasted, Cendri never knew. She held
Vaniya in her arms, trying to quiet her sobbing, until
she was stiff and cramped and aching. And then,
suddenly, it was over.
  One of the men, a tall man with long hair flecked
with grey, wearing a coarse pajama suit, came hesitant-
ly toward Vaniya. ,
  "Respect, Mother Vaniya . .. ." he said hesitatingly,
and Vaniya wearily tried to pull herself together. She
stood erect, moving out of the support of Cendri's
arms.
  "Can it be that you come to me with respect, here?"
she asked, and her voice was a whiplash of scorn.
"When you have trampled your mothers in your
profanation?"
  "Mother-" the man entreated, "those who speak to
us have given a message which you must know! Men
cannot handle this alone!"
  Vaniya drew a long breath. She said, "Speak, my
son."
  The man gestured toward the ocean. "They have told
us," he said, "that far out in the ocean, many, many,
many leagues in the place of fish too deep for diving,
the bed of sea shakes, and will shake again and again.
And as these quakes move ever closer, the great waves
will build up and up, until at last, before nightfall
tomorrow, a wall of water higher than this will smash
the shore down near the great dam, and if it should
strike full on the dam, not a single stone will be left
piled upon another. Therefore, Mother-" the r:nan
entreated, "you Mothers, and your daughters, who
control the cars and the messages and the transporta-
tion, we beseech you to help us bring all of our people
out of the encampments there, and all of our stores and.
possessions, lest they be lost forever. The storehouses
of grain and building materials could all be swept away,
and all our foods and reserves."
  Vaniya swallowed hard, "How do you know this, my
son?"
  "They told us," the man said, gesturing formlessly,
toward the old ship.
  "And how do you know it is true?" Vaniya demand.
ed, "that they were not deceiving you as they deceived
me? Why should they now begin to give warnings about
quakes and tidal waves, when all these years they have
not done so?"
  The man made a low bow. He said, "Respect,
Mother, one of us asked that. This was their answer;
that you had never asked them for such help and they
did not know they could give it until one of us asked to
make our- needs known, and they found they could
answer."
  Vaniya still looked shaken. But she said, "They do
not li~. They found the ring and robe of Mother Rezali.
Nothing is hidden from them that they wish to know...
Come, Mahala," she said quickly to her fellow Pro-
Matriarch. "You are a quicker organizer than I, and we
have no time to waste now with protocol or rivalry! We
have just time enough-if we hurry-to get every man,
woman and child, and all their stores and possessions,
out of the area of the great dam, if we lose no time.
There will be no time to reinforce the dam; if it is swept
away it must be swept away, but if we are fortunate,
there will be no loss of life. Come, Mahala! let us hu~
to the city, and make all ready!"
  She leaned heavily on Cendri as she hurried down
the hill, already moving people of her household
around her to give quick, cryptic orders.
  "Lialla, go to the spaceport, find flycraft of any kind
available and muster them for airlifting. Zamila, go
with this man and help him line up all able-bodied men
between fifteen and fifty, and arrange for transport at
once! Thanks to the Goddess, Mahala, most of the men
had not returned to the site of the dam; no one must go
back there unless they are needed to help in the
evacuation! "
  Dal and Cendri stood watching as together the
Pro-Matriarchs began organizing their plan. Dal mur-
mured, "I had thought the men would try to stand on
their own feet. But the first thing they did was to yell
for help from the women. . . ."
  Cendri felt something very like anger at Dal's failure
to understand. "Dal, don't you see? Something where
men and women have to work together, because
women control all the transport, all the organizational
facilities, all the technical know-how! Do you really
think a society is going to turn itself right around all
night?" She seized his arm, saying earnestly, "Dal, it
wouldn't make a bit of sense to overturn the tyranny of
the women and set up a new tyranny of the men! The
only thing that will save this society is co-operation-
lots of it! Being able to do things together that neither
men or women could do on their own. . . ."
  He nodded, but she could see that his thoughts were
elsewhere. After a moment he said, as he watched
Vaniya's household quietly organizing transport,
"Cendri, do you realize that we have not one but two
alien civilizations to deal with here? We still don't know
who built the ruins--the city. It was probably the
Builders, but it will take centuries to know, and we'll
have to break the Time stasis first. And then-there's
the aliens who spoke to-to us, and then to the Men.
Cendri, Isis is going to be the new scientific focus of the
entire Galaxy! Maybe Mahala's going to get what she
wanted after all!"
  Cendri could see that, but what was troubling her
now was more immediate, more personal.
  Where was Miranda? Was she being held at the site
of the dam, with the tidal wave racing inexorably
toward the shore?
 
 
 
Chapter Fourteen 
 
 
 
  THE SUN WAS RISING OVER ISIS; CENDRI LOOKED DOWN
on the river below, the spreading delta mouth where
the river alternately roared and meandered through
flats covered with reed and salt-marsh, where the land
had been torn away repeatedly by flood. All night she
had watched trucks and cars coming and going, emp-
tying storehouses, taking away the heavy machinery,
men and women working side by side. And all night,
while the Pro-Matriarchs worked side by side, ~
ordinating the efforts of the work parties, Vaniya had
repeatedly raised her head to every man who came
before her, asking him-steadily enough, but in a voice
that trembled- "Do you know where my daughter is
being held? If you know who holds her hostage, will you
send him to me that I may bargain for her freedom?"-
  But every man had professed ignorance-Cendri,
watching from a distance, had begun to believe that
they were truly ignorant, that only a few of the
ringleaders had been allowed to know the inside of the
plot. The words of Yal rang in her mind, What I don't
know, they can't make me teU. And oh, but Vatiiya was
reaping the harvest of her harsh rule! "
  Yet she would not leave her post. Mahala, moved by
her anguish, had said at midnight, "Vaniya, my sister,
go back to the city, seek your daughter there. I will
continue here."
  But Vaniya, pale and agonized, shook her head.
  "My duty lies here, sister. Miranda is my daughter,
and she understands the meaning of responsibility. If
we all live through this night, I will seek her out, even if
I must kneel before every male on Isis and beg for its
help; and I will make such terms as I may honorably
make for her release, and if I cannot make honorable
terms, I pray the Goddess will give us both strength to
endure her fate. But for now my duty lies here; I cannot
leave men and women to die while I think only of my
daughter and her child."
  And Mahala, lowering her head, answered, "I know.
old friend. Forgive me for thinking otherwise." .
  Cendri had been put to run small errands needing no
other skill; after a time she was put to work in a
hurriedly organized field-kitchen to feed the workers
on the site. She watched them slowly, under the
supervision of the two Pro-Matriarchs, slowly cross-
sectioning the site, performing, she realized, a form of
methodical decision akin to triage; what must be
removed at any cost (mostly food supplies and heavy
machinery), what must be left to take its chances in the
path of the wave (mostly structures), and what must be
knowingly abandoned. Every decision, Cendri knew,
had to be made by the Pro-Matriarchs.
  She worked with other women and a few young boys,
brewing tea and drinks for the workers, cooking grains
and fish for them. She worked here through the night,
and as the sun was rising, she came face to face with
Rhu, carrying plates of food to a work-party resting for
a few minutes on the grass.
  "What are you doing here, Rhu?"
  "The same as you," he said, with a weary smile. "I
have no skills to work among the women, and no
strength to work among the men, so I do what I can."
His face was pale in the rising light, and Cendri
remembered what Dal had told her; that he had a heart
weakened by childhood illness.
  He said, "I saw Dal on the slope by the site; every
man on Isis wants to see him, to look up to him as
inspiration. Whatever comes this night, Scholar Dame,
life on Isis may be more endurable for men hereafter."
  Slowly, Cendri nodded. The basic misconception of
the society here-that the inferiority of men was
backed by divine command because the Builders would
not speak to them-had been toppled at one blow. Men
must still compensate for their disabilities of education,
struggle for equality as the women had done on
Pioneer, and it would not come quickly. Indeed, men
on Isis would probably continue to live separate from
women, since both women and men were content to
have it that way; but since the lower status of men was
no longer buttressed by a kind of divine ordinance, it
could not survive. Nothing would change overnight.
Some things would never change at all. But now there
was a kind of hope that had never been here before.
  One of the women called to Rhu.
  "Take some food to the Mother Vaniya, Rhu; she
must eat and keep up her strength, and she may take it
at your hands more easily."
  Cendri went with Rhu. The field-kitchen was actually
over-supplied with workers-every woman who had no
duties elsewhere was there-and she was not needed.
Vaniya, weary and worn, looked up at them.
  "Vaniya," Rhu pleaded, "you must eat something.
Here, I have brought you food and wine."
  "I am not hungry," Vaniya said, but she sighed, laid
down a map of the site, and glanced at a man waiting
for her orders. She said, pointing to a segment of the
map, "Leave those three warehouses along the edge of
the site. They contain only lumber and building ce-
ment, and they are not worth the time and machinery it
would take to clear them. The water may not ever
reach so high, but if it does, then the contents can be
replaced with less than the loss of diverting heavy
machinery there now."
  The man nodded, saying, "Where shall we move the
machinery, then?"
  "Here." Vaniya pointed again. "Take three of tht,
engineers from the college, and go to strengthen the
dikes there; the water might be diverted where it comes
in, to flow harmlessly across the lower delta. We will
have flooding, but, the engineer from the college tells
me, the strength of the wave will not smash there." She
raised her hands to her forehead, wearily, as the man
and the engineer bent over the map. She said, "We had
a copying machine set up in the outer office there, have
copies made for each of you, and bring it back to
me. . . ." And as they hurried away with it, she raised
her head to take the tray of food.
  "Rhu, Cendri-" she smiled tiredly as she put a fork
to her mouth. "Well, Cendri, you came here to study
the Matriarchate in crisis, and now you can see
rebellion, anarchy, all those things which try a
society-what report will you take back to the Unity,
little Cendri?"
  Cendri said gently, "I do not know, Vaniya. This--"
she gestured, indicating the field office that had been
set up around them, "looks not to me like anarchy." 
  Vaniya yawned, putting her hand to her mouth. She
said, "No, perhaps not. In this crisis we do what we
must, all our sons and ~aughters work together for
salvation. I wonder, now, that I never thought to ask
those at We-were-guided for help in such things. . . ."
she yawned again, closing her eyes for a moment.
Then, she raised her eyes to Rhu. "Have you any news
of Miranda? Of where she is being held among the
men?"
  Rhu's pale face looked drawn and miserable. He
burst out, "No, Vaniya! On my life, no! They betrayed
us both!" .
  Vaniya's broad face looked stunned, disbelieving. 
"What is this talk of betrayal, Rhu? What could you 
have had to do with it?" And even in this crisis Rhu 
flushed at the contempt in her voice. 
  He said steadily, "I came to confess to you; Miranda 
left the house at my request, she came willingly with me 
as hostage. She and I-" his voice faltered and Cendri
recalled that what he was confessing was something
unthinkable in their society. "She and I-we have been
much together;. she said that she--she loveded me-" 
  "You!" Vamya stared at him In disbelief. "She has
I', always been kind to you. But to love a man-and not
even a man, but a Companion-" ,
  "Whatever I am, whatever you think of me, I love
Miranda," Rhu said steadily, "and she shared my 
concern for the plight of men who were nothing in your 
sight. I was your Companion, but only a-a toy for ti
your leisure hours, while to Miranda I was--I was my- 
self, a human being like herself. We hoped-we hoped
together-for a world where man and woman could 
sometimes meet, if they chose, not only at the edge 
of the sea, in darkness, as animals rut in season-" 
  "Silence," Vaniya burst out. "How dare you speak
of such things now to me-" 
  "We hoped for a world where man and woman could 
sometimes meet in the light, wanting one another's 
welfare and well-being and knowing one another as
fellow beings, loving one another," Rhu went on
steadily, ignoring her. "And so Miranda, when you
would not hear the messenger, resolved to give herself
up as hostage, thinking you would do nothing to
endanger her. You cared nothing for the man from
Unity, but you would hear a messenger if Miranda's
safety was at stake. She left the house with me, and
came to where the men were gathered, believing as I
believed, that we were not born in chains--"
  Vaniya's face contorted in wrath. "You, my
Companion-have you approached my daughter as no
man may do? I will have you killed, as the penalty is for
any male who attacks a citizen-"
  Rhu shook his head. He said quietly, "I have
touched her hand, I have kissed her lips and embraced
her as a child his mother, and no more; that is not what
we sought from one another. It was love, Vaniya, not
the sea-coming; and if it had been more, even so, she
was heavy with child. You misunderstand, as you have
always misunderstood." .
  "So where did you take her, you wretch?" Vaniya
interrupted, and Rhu shook his head. "They would not
tell me, lest I should reveal all to you. They betrayed us
both! And they did not trust me, any more than you
trust me. As always, Vaniya, I am exiled from the
world of men and from the world of women-"
  He covered his face with his hands, and after a
moment Cendri realized that he was weeping.
  "I would have died before bringing her to harm,
Vaniya, she was more than life to me. . . ."
Vaniya looked at him, her face drawn with emotion.
"Rhu, Rhu, how could you have done this to me? Have
I been unkind to you, or cruel?"
  Rhu said, very low, "No, Vaniya. You have been
kind, but to you I was nothing. You did not love me.
Not as I love Miranda. Not as the Scholar Dame and
her Companion love one another. No, Vaniya, you did
not love me."
  "But who could have expected it?" Vaniya burst out.
"How can any woman love a man? The relations
between man and woman are ordained by the seasons
and the tides, they meet as is ordained, but-but love?"
  Rhu shook his head, silent, and said no more. Cendri
thought, aching for both of them, that they were both
victims of their world. Every society had its misfits.
She, Cendri, was luckier than most, for she lived in a
society where, if she did not find its ordinances to her
liking, she could move outside it, into the open worlds
like University, where a dozen cultures met. And as she
watched Rhu standing helplessly before Vaniya, she
understood something about herself and Dal.
  I married a man from Pioneer, knowing he would
make demands for a kind of submissiveness I was not
trained to. I have a greater need for dependency than the
women of my world. And yet I have blamed Dal for
being what he is. I now know that when we finish our
work here, I must either accept Dal as he is . . . what he
truly is, not what my insufficiencies need him to
be . . . or leave him. But I cannot try to change him. Isis
did not change us. It only showed us, unsparingly, what
we already were.
  Rhu dashed the tears from his eyes, stood before
Vaniya with his head resolutely erect. He said, "When!
this is over, go to the Builders at We-were-guided.
They know all things. They will know where Miranda
has been taken." 
  Vaniya grimaced and after a moment Cendri realized I
it was meant for a smile. She said, heartbrokenly, "Did!
you not know, Rhu? The Builders have forsaken me.
They now speak only to men."
  Rhu said steadily, "Then I shall go to We-were..
guided and ask them in your name for guidance to
rescue Miranda."
  Vaniya's face lighted with a momentary hope. She
said, "But if she is here-"
  "Then it is all in the hands of whatever power lies
behind man and Builders alike," Rhu said quietly, "but
if she is in this encampment, the work parties who are
exploring the site will surely find her somewhere. Have
I your leave to go, then?"
  "Yes. Take my car," Vankya said, "but I cannot
spare a driver-"
  "I can drive your car, Vaniya."
  "I never knew that," Vaniya said, in surprise. And
Rhu said, his lips moving faintly in a smile, "You never
asked me, my dear."
  Cendri followed him out, caught at his hand. "Wait,
Rhu," she said quickly, "I must go with you, and
Dal-there is no time now to explain it-"
  She ran to the hillside where Dal was standing above
the site, looking down at the busy scene below. Every
few minutes some man, coming up from below with
something to be taken to high ground-the more
important stores were being moved by machinery, but
there was more manpower than machinery-would
stop before Dal, bow to the ground before him, say a
few words.
  Cendri hesitated to interrupt them, but he saw her
and came toward her. She caught his hand, forgetful of
the watching eyes and the customs of the Matriarchate.
  "Dal, come with me to We-were-guided-"
  "At this hour?"
  "Yes--I have something to say to the Builders--"
  He said, "They did not build the city, Cendri-"
  Impatiently she shook her head. "That doesn't
matter now! I said Builders because that;s what the
people here call them, you know perfectly well what-
who-I mean!"
  "Something to say to them?"
  "Yes! Dal, come with me, in case they don't speak to
women now-"
  He said, "I don't mind telling you I'll be glad to get
away for a while! I'm not really any help here. . ." he
moved, uncomfortably, as another man with a heavy
load of lumber. on his head came past and made a
clumsy bow, "I know they mean well, and I know I
encourage them being here, and God knows the poor
devils need all the encouragement they can get. But still
I'll be glad to get away, it's--it's spooky!"
  Rhu drove Vaniya's car fast and skillfully along the
deserted road to Ariadne. It was a drive of more than
half an hour, and none of them talked much. Cendri
was remembering how she had been driven here to the
Residence the first day, Miranda at her side, Dal
shoved unregarded into the luggage compartment by
the driver.
  The Residence looked deserted; it was not yet dawn,
and Rhu stopped the car and got out, turning along the
shore toward the ruins. A couple of small children, nine
or ten years old, a girl and a boy, came down the steps
and called to Rhu.
  He turned back to speak to them, asking, "Is there
any news here of the Lady Miranda?"
  The little boy shook his head solemnly. The girl
asked "Rhu, is it true that the-the Builders now speak
only to men?"
  Rhu said, "They spoke to men last night, little one.
What they will do in future I know no more than you."
  The boy said, "Rhu, does this mean I need not be
driven away from my mother's house some day?"
  Rhu put his arm for a moment around the boy's
shoulder. He said, "I don't know, Kal. But it does
mean that your life there may be very different than
those of older men. It is too soon to tell."
  The small boy looked up at Dal from the shelter of
Rhu's arm. He said, "Are you truly a Scholar?"
  Dal nodded, and the boy said, "Can you win at
archery or wrestling?"
  Dal shook his head. "I have never tried any of those
things. I have had other things to learn which seemed
more important to me on my world."
  The child said scornfully to Dal, "You do not really
look strong enough to be a man! Maybe I would rather
live in a Men's House after all," and pulled at the little
girl at his side. The children ran away. Dallooked after
them, shaking his head. As the three walked along the
shore toward We-were-guided, Cendri thought, there is
really no way to tell what this society will be. There is
only one thing certain,. it will be different. . . .
  Inside the gates they walked slowly through the
still-shadowed canyons of the dead city. Around them
the enormous structures lay, eternally silent, frozen,
and Cendri could see where she and Dal had been
working, their supplies and recording equipment piled
under weatherproof shielding, the tiniest scratch on the
hugeness of the ruins. Had they really been built here
by a race which seeded all life throughout the Galaxy
millions of years ago? Or simply by some society long
predating mankind? And the mysterious voices at
We-were-Guided-had they any relationship to the
ruins at all? Or had they merely come here, separately,
to live in the alien city, tied to the old starship with their
emotional tie to the women here?
  A disembodied race of aliens, existing in a sphere of
pure mind. Cendri knew that there were supposed to be
such races; she had never studied one. There were so
many races; so many that even University with its
enormous explosion of knowledge had only begun to
guess at how many there were! If Cendri had speculat-
ed about a race disembodied, she would have thought
that they would be detached, emotionless, that they
would have no emotions. I always thought emotions
were something generated by hormone reactions and
physical conditioning. . . .
  No, came the answer from all round her, and she
realized that they were standing near the spaceship site
and that the warmth and presence of the aliens was all
around them. We exist in our thoughts, our feelings.
This is why we became so close to your people. We 
hungered for their feelings, their emotions. ,.
  Cendri knew that all of their thoughts lay open, now,
in the Ruins. Telepathy, of course. How else would a
disembodied race communicate? How could thought
exist with no brain to house it? How could emotions
exist with no bodily response to generate them?
  I can understand that, came an answer, and she knew.
that this time it was Rhu's thought, Rhu's emotion'
which stood naked before them all, and Cendri found
herself remembering-as, she knew, Rhu remem-
bered-the day she had found them in one another's
arms here. My love for Miranda has nothing to do with
the body. I had been taught as a boy that what comes
between man and woman is generated of the hormones
of mating and has no other existence, yet I came to know
otherwise.
  Then, came the bodiless voices whose feel Cendri
could not identify as the aliens, you understand us
indeed. We can only exist when we are loved, cared for,
welcomed. . . worshipped. . . .
  And Cendri felt Dal's thoughts, directed straight at
the alien presences, with anger and something like
scorn: Aren't you ashamed of yourselves for pretending
to be Gods to these poor gullible women?
  Stranger, we pretended nothing. We are what we are,
and receiving love, we gave it in our turn. If their
thoughts saw us as Gods, whatever Gods may be, if the
nature of a God is to give and receive love, then perhaps
that is what we are, but I can see that in your mind the
concept of a God is one who.wields power. . . it is not
so with these women. Is that, stranger, because you are
from what these women call the maleworlds?
  Cendri wondered if this was the most fundamental
difference between men's societies and women's, after
all; that in societies founded by men, the concept of a
supreme being was one of Power, and that in women's
societies, it was one of Love. . . .
  Dal said, and Cendri felt his focused thoughts angry
in the sunrise, You have made them dependent on you!
  We need their love to survive, or we become empty air
and die, as we slept in long terrible loneliness before they
came. Why, then, since they meet all our needs, should
we deny them help in the meeting of theirs?
  That, Cendri thought, was an uncommonly good
question.
  Stranger, only last night did we discover how much
they needed help which is simple for us to give,.
knowledge befor~time of where the ground will tremble,
or a great wave strike the shore. If we give them this help
they need not impoverish their world to buy machinery
which can do this.
  Dal's answer was quick and wrathful: Thus you will
encourage them to cut themselves off further from the
civilized worlds of the Unity, and persist in their tyranny
against men. . . .
  No! Now that we know their men are not what they
believed them, dangerously weak creatures... we
knew their males only through the women's minds, the
aliens explained, but now we know that the women and
the men are very much alike, we shall speak to both
. . . and as for cutting themselves off from the civilized
worlds, we do not want that! We are lonely-and
curious! We want people to come here from everywhere
. . . and learn to know us. . . .
  Standing close together before the silent, glowing
ship, Dal put his arm around Cendri's waist. She felt his
thoughts, open to her as never before. He was envi-
sioning a team of scientists here; maybe a hundred to
start; here to explore the Ruins in depth, men and
women working together as equals, to demonstrate to
the women, and to the men, of Isis, that there was no
tyranny in the maleworlds . . . Cendri was surprised to
hear him using the contemptuous term of the women of
Isis. . . no tyranny from Unity or University, but that
the Unity, and the scientists of University, truly
regarded women and men as equals, partners, the
inseparable half of a single completed whole, the
human race, mankind. This would do more, Dal
thought, to demonstrate to Isis that they need not fear
male equality, than a thousand years of lectures and
teaching and propaganda.
  When they come to know us, they will understand.
  And then she felt his thoughts turn to her, embrace
her with a tenderness and warmth she had never
guessed. Knowing that here, in the presence of the
Builders, her thoughts lay open to him as his to her,
Cendri was for a moment ashamed, then, willingly,
turned to Dal and embraced him. This it was, then, that
Dal felt for her; an acceptance, a respect, a tenderness,
which had nothing, or very little, to do with sex; it came
from caring, from shared work, from their long time of
learning about one another. And as she held him,
feeling her own love, so long forgotten in the irritations
of daily life, flood back through her, she thought; we
have found each other again. Dal, Dal, let's never lose
each other again. . . and she knew she was crying in his
arms.
  Rhu's thoughts blended into theirs, hesitant. Iknow
now what it is that I have been seeking all my life. Our
society does not recognize this, derides it, says it does not
exist, yet when I came to love Miranda, I knew it must
exist somewhere, and now I know that the dream
Miranda and I dreamed was real, even if we cannot
share it in this world. Cendri felt him lay his soft hand
on her arm, on Dal's. Then he let them go, and went to
the very foot of the ship. He said, and as he spoke the
words Cendri felt them resonating in her mind, with the
strength of the thoughts opened here:
  You know what Iam. You know what I feel. Iwant
nothing for myself. But in my blindness, mistaken, I
betrayed Miranda into the hands of those less idealistic
than I. Help me to restore her to the arms of her mother
and the women of her household, and then Vaniya may-
do with me as she will.
  A long silence, and Cendri was aware of the warmth,
the tenderness surrounding them, aware of the strength
of Rhu's love. And at last, when the glow died, she
heard Rhu whisper, "Thank you, oh, thank you!"
  The cold dawn wind was around them, and the ruins
filled with sunlight, glaring on the towers. The three of
them were alone in the ruins; the presences had
withdrawn. Rhu said, "Miranda-Miranda-" and
suddenly staggered. Dal reached out and caught him,
holding him upright. He said, concerned, "Are you all
right, Rhu?"
  He wasn't, Cendri thought. He was a ghastly color,
his face greyed, his breath coming in gasps; but he
leaned on Dal only a moment and pulled himself 
upright. He said, "Miranda--she is in the center!
warehouse where lumber and building cement are
stored! We must get there at once-" he glanced at Dal
and Cendri, gasping, his long slender hands clutching
his chest. "You heard-you heard Mother Vaniya
say-those warehouses, not even to search them, that
they were used only for storing lumber and cement,
they will be left to break the force of the waves before
they strike on the strengthened dikes elsewhere-
Goddess!" he gasped, "if she is alone there-"
  Dal and Cendri tried to reassure him as they hurried
out of the ruins and toward the car. Surely Miranda
would hear the search, the heavy machinery moving
elsewhere in the construction site, would know that
something was afoot. Surely even her captors would
not abandon her in the direct path of a tidal wave!
  But Rhu was white with terror. He said, "I do not
know-I am afraid--so many of the men here-it is
ignorance, not evil intent, but they may panic and
never think to save her, or they may be so full of anger
and resentment, she may suffer for their hatred of
Vaniya-"
  "Look," Dal said, "from what we heard that wave
isn't due till sometime late in the day, and it's not more
than an hour or two after sunrise now. We've got plenty
of time to get back to the construction site and start
hunting for her. She'll be out of there hours before the
wave hits. Come on-" he supported Rhu's staggering
steps, helped him into the car. "You'd better let me or
Cendri drive, you're in no shape to do anything! Rhu,
you've done enough! Cendri, can you drive this thing?"
  "Oh, certainly, I've watch Miranda, it's simple
enough," Cendri said, then, looking at Rhu's collapsed
face, thought: he's used to seeing women take over all
the time, and in a gesture of pure love, said, "You
drive, Dal, You're a better driver than I am." He
wasn't; but it would do Rhu a lot of good to think so.
And, she thought, here on Isis it won't do Dal any harm
either!
  Dal climbed behind the wheel, swung the car around,
headed down the gravelled road toward the dam site,
the surface car eating up Standard Kilometers at a
considerable clip. The car rocked and jounced; it had
not been designed for rough country roads, but for the
streets of Ariadne. It was intended for the sedate
rounds of the Pro-Matriarch on her official duties.
What they needed was some kind of heavy-duty
all-terrain vehicle, but these had all been comman-
deered for use at the site.
  Cendri sat wedged in beside Rhu, all three of them
crowded in the driver's compartment. Suddenly the car
shot over an enormous bump-a bump? A section of
the road had somehow heaved itself up in front of
them; Oal jammed on the brake and they rocked and
swayed to the edge of the road.
  "That," said Oal, with tight control, "was absolutely
all we needed. Another earthquake!"
  Rhu said, "I cannot see how we needed. . ." and
broke off at the sight of Oal's stormy face. Dal climbed
out, examining the road ahead and the wheel of the car.
  "No harm done to the car," he said, "at least none
that I can see. The road is something else." He stood
looking at the crevasse, not much more than a foot
wide, which had shoved up a hump of earth before the
wheel. "Just have to push the thing around it, I guess.
Lucky the people of Isis go for small surface transit, the
enormous people-movers we use on Pioneer couldn't
be budged by fewer than ten or twelve men!"
  Between them, they shoved and hoisted the car
around the obstacle. Cendri put her shoulder to the
wheel with the men; seeing Rhu's drawn face, remem-
bering his bad heart, she tried to discourage him, but he
said angrily, "I am a Companion, Scholar Dame, but I
can do my part when I must," and Cendri gave in,
muttering under her breath, damning the male fetish of
strength and pride in their muscles on Pioneer and Isis
and every other damned planet under the sun! Any sun!
  The sun was high and they were all dripping with
sweat by the time the car was steady on its wheels in the
road, and Dal had to lash up a door-handle which twice
burst open, with Rhu's belt-thongs before it was safe to
drive. But finally they were on their way again,
although the car wobbled ominously and Dal said that
some arrangement of springs or shock-absorbers meant
to-steady it underneath had come loose, so that they
had to go at a slow pace or it threatened to vibrate itself
to pieces. The sun was blinding hot, and Cendri
worried at the passing hours; she had not been told
precisely at what hour the tidal wave would strike, she
had no chronometer in any case, but she knew the
margin of safety could not be all that great.
  When they finally came within sight of the construc-
tion area the car was stopped in the road by a'series of
wooden barriers. A woman wearing a badge of office
advised them that the site was closed, that it had been
evacuated, and that no one was allowed inside, except
those working with the final removal of heavy machin-
ery from the endangered area.
  "Where is the Pro-Matriarch Vaniya?" Rhu de-
manded.
  "She's still inside the site," the woman said, laughing
scornfully, "but I'm sure she can get along without her
Companion for the afternoon, little fellow. Just go back
where you won't get hurt, why don't you? She'll come
looking for you when the danger's over."
  For a moment Cendri thought Rhu would strike the
woman. Frightened, she grabbed as his arm-any male
who attacks a citizen can be summarily destroyed. . .
But Rhu's conditioning held. He drew back and said,
"Respect, but I insist, I have an important message-"
  "Do get out of our way and stop annoying us," said
the woman impatiently, and Cendri realized what she
must do. She got out of the car and came around to the
official. . . although it was hard, she thought, with a
fraction of her awareness still focusing on Unity
standards, to think of this woman as an official when
she was wearing a pink flowered pajama suit! But by
the badge pinned to the suit she knew the woman was
in charge. Cendri said severely, "I am the Scholar
Dame Cendri Malocq, and Vaniya sent us on an
important mission concerning her daughter and heir;
let us through at once!"
  The woman pursed her lips. "Right; I did hear her
daughter was missing," she said. "Go right ahead,
Scholar Dame, but you'd better leave the men here.
There are a few rough laborers working on the site still,
but Companions and children are supposed to be kept
out."
  Cendri said coldy, "I will be responsible for their
safety," and the woman, though she still looked
hesitant, said, "Well, you know best, Scholar Dame,
though I'd advise against it." As Cendri passed the
barrier, the woman reached out and touched her on the
arm. "The Pro-Matriarch Vaniya is near the edge of the
dam's inner wall, supervising the last of the machinery
being removed. The quake a little while ago cracked
the outer sea-wall, and they gave up trying to strength-
en it to survive the waves. The whole line of machinery
-they pulled it back to try and strengthen the inner
dike, so there will not be so much to rebuild. But it's
a risk. Within the hour-" she consulted a timepiece
pinned on her belt, "we have to have every last human 
being, man or woman, out of there, and every piece
of machinery we have to be sure we're saving!"
  Suddenly Cendri recognized the woman. Two days
ago, as the sun rose over the shore, this woman had lain
next to her and Laurina on the shore, they had
embraced as sisters. She saw that the recognition was
mutual; the woman quickly put an arm around her
shoulders. She said, "I'll go with you, they'll let you
through without any more trouble if I'm there. Come
on, hurry-do we really need the men with us?"
  Cendri nodded, not explaining, and they hurried
down the barricaded road, moving to the edges as
heavy machinery lumbered through. With one piece
she saw the Pro-Matriarch Mahala, who called,
"Everything from the North level is out, Larida!"
  Cendri's companion nodded, hurrying her along. She
said, "There's not much to go now. Is it true they've 
found a new way to predict quakes and tidal waves, 
then, to give us advance wariring?" Cendri nodded and
she said, "Wonderful, we can start to fight that way.
Come along, this way-" she looked back at Rhu with:
concern. "I don't think it ought to come. Nobody's 
going to have time or energy to carry it if it faints.
  "Rhu," Cendri said, concerned by the pallor of
Rhu's face, "Why not stay here? We can take the'
message to Vaniya!"
  Stubbornly the man shook his head. 
  They saw the inner sea-wall now, dikes piled high 
with sandbags and heavy reinforcements, and with
drawing from them with the last of the machinery, the 
tall heavy form of Vaniya. Cendri ran toward her. 
  "Vaniya! Vaniya," she called. "We know where 
Miranda is held! She is here-have you found her?" 
  Vaniya stopped, looking at Cendri in disbelief and 
dismay. 
  Here? Cendri, she cannot be, every building has been 
searched!" 
  "The three warehouses of lumber and cement, the 
ones you said not to go near-" Cendri gasped, "she is 
being held in the center one-quickly, quickly-" 
  Vaniya turned without another word and hurried 
toward the outer sea-wall. Cendri, looking down the 
slope, saw that everything possible to remove had been.
removed, and only the skeleton of buildings remained.
Vaniya flung over her shoulder "How did you find this;
out?" 
   "It was Rhu-" she turned and sought with her eyes 
for him. "Where is he? Has he fainted?" she cried out, 
quite forgectting that the male pronoun was not proper. 
But t.here was a commotion on the slope, women 
shoutmg. 
  "You can't go down there-hi! Come back! It's too 
late, everything's out of there-" and as Vaniya hurried 
toward them, Cendri at her heels, the women guarding
the slope said angrily, "Some damned man ran down ,
there, some curled-hair pet forgot its ribbons, I 
suppose-" 
  Vaniya said tightly, '~My daughter-5he is down
there, in the warehouse--"
  "Oh, no, Mother Pro-Matriarch," said one of the
women soothingly, "there's nobody at all down there,
trust me. Everybody's out, you know, we searched
every building except those old empty warehouses, and
there's nothing there but cement and lumber, who
would bother going in there? Anyhow, she'd have
come out a long time ago."
  Vaniya said shakily, "She might be in labor and
unable to walk-"
  "She'd have had enough warning, surely-" the
woman broke off, shading her eyes against the sun. She
said, "Goddess! There is someone coming out of that
warehouse-two people!" She checked her timepiece,
and said, "We may have just time--" and hastily,
signalling toward the figures below, began to run down
the slope.
  Vaniya began to run after them; Cendri caught her,
held her back by force. "No, no," she urged. "They
will get her out if it is humanly possible--please,
Vaniya-come back behind the inner wall-Dal, help
me--" she begged, supporting the old woman's weight,
"Look, Vaniya, they have them both-Rhu was carry-
ing Miranda, carrying her in his arms, now they have
taken Miranda from him, they are carrying her-"
  "They're carrying Rhu, too," Dal broke in, "I knew
he shouldn't have gone in-oh, my God!" He stiffened,
staring out at the horizon, and Cendri knew, in horror,
what he had seen. A siren went off somewhere, and the
few people left between the sea and the inner dike
dropped everything and began to run. Cendri thrust
Vaniya along, twisting her head to see the four strong
women, carrying Rhu and Miranda, hurrying toward
the inner dike. Cendri and Dal between them boosted
the Pro-Matriarch's heavy body over the wall, but she
struggled away from them, hurrying to where the
women were laying Miranda on the grass. One of them,
looking at Miranda sharply, said, "I will see if there is a
midwife in the crowd up there," and ran up toward the 
barriers. 
  Miranda was deathly white. She said, "I am all right, 
I tell you, I need the midwife more than I need anyone 
else's help. Cendri, is it you? What is this all about?
Rhu would explain nothing, he simply grabbed me up 
in his arms and ran, what is happening?" 
  But before anyone could answer-Cendri realized in 
a flash that Miranda, confined in an empty warehouse, 
knew nothing of the tidal wave or the warning from
We-were-guided-there was a great, crashing roar like
the end of the world, and Cendri saw a great wall of
water which looked miles high racing toward the shore
with the speed of a gigantic jet. Miranda heard the roar
and cried out in terror, and Rhu, lying collapsed on the;
grass, his face drawn in pain, whispered in agony, 
"MIranda-" 
  "She is safe, Rhu," Dal said, leaning over him. 
"You're both going to be all right; just lie back and 
relax. 
  "Miranda-" he whispered again, and she turned 
over, slowly, painfully, reaching for his hand. She 
whispered, "Rhu-Rhu-"
  The agony contorted his face again; he struggled for
breath. Miranda held his hand tightly; leaned over and
kissed him on the lips, but when she drew away his face
was slack and still. Alarmed, Dal felt for a pulse; shook 
his head. 
"He's gone," he said. "Poor, poor heroic little 
devil!"
  Miranda began to sob helplessly. Vaniya bent over 
Rhu, gently closed his eyes. And then, with a great 
roar, the tsunami struck below them. Cendri saw the
warehouses go, with one great explosion of flying
lumber, heard the roar as the outer sea-wall burst and
sagged inward like a child's sand-castle, and the water
came racing, flying inward with such a sound of thunder
that Cendri was deafened, and, watching the great wall
of water, felt certain it would roar inward, sweep them
away where they stood, with the wreckage of the
dikes. . . .
  But although the flying spray drenched them with
salt, stinging their eyes and splashing high against the
dike above them, it held, and, miraculously, began to
recede. Cendri sank down, gasping, Vaniya looked at
Rhu's body with deep regret.
  "How heroic-for a man," she said, in wonder.
"What could he have cared for Miranda! But even a
dog can be heroic-"
  And suddenly Cendri was angry, with a blazing fury.
She stood up, towering over Vaniya in uncontrollable
rage.
  "Do you know what he did?" she demanded. "Do
you know that it was Rhu who saved her, who killed
himself for her? If he had waited until your officials
here got through arguing, she would be down there in
that smashed matchwood that used to be a warehouse I
She and her unborn child both I If he hadn't acted on his
own initiative, without waiting for some woman's
permission, your daughter and your heir would be lying
dead down there, and you would never even have
known itl Even a dog heroic? He loved her, Vaniyal He
loved her" she repeated, collapsed into Dal's arms and
began to cry.
  Vaniya looked shaken. She said slowly, "How do
you know this?" and, wiping her eyes, Cendri ex-
plained how she and Dal and Rhu had gone together to
We-were-guided. .
  "Then you had a part in it too, Cendri, and you-
Scholar," Vaniya said awkwardly, and after a moment
Cendri realized she had spoken to Dal. He said, still
kneeling by Rhu's lifeless body, "I only wish I could
have done more, Pro-Matriarch; not only to save
Rhu-he was iny friend-but to show you, perbaps,
that men can show all the good qualities which you of
Isis reserve for women."
  Vaniya bowed her head. She said, "Some day,
perhaps, I shall know how best to thank you."
  Miranda was sobbing, holding Rhu's cold hand in
hers. She whispered to Cendri, "For this to happen-
for this to happen now--when we might have seen our
dream-"
  Cendri held Miranda close, but she said nothing. Let
Miranda keep the dream that some day, if Rhu had
lived, they might have had one another in the way Dal
and Cendri had each other. It could never have been.
They were both children of the Matriarchate, and that
bold a change would not come in Miranda's lifetime,
or, perhaps, that of her unborn daughter. Cendri and
Dal had begun as equals, had found one another
through shared work and shared interests and mutual
respect. Rhu and Miranda might have tasted the outer
fringes of this kind of love. But it could only have
turned, for them, to bitterness and disappointment. Now
Miranda would keep, forever, a romantic memory of
what might have been, and the knowledge that the man
she loved had given his life for her. And Rhu-with
her heart tom, Cendri remembered his plaintive song;
 
 
       When I am dead
       Will the Goddess take me, perhaps
       To her loving breasts?
 
 
  Miranda cried out suddenly, holding herself with
both hands.
  "Oh! Oh! quick! Somebody! Help! Get the midwife-:
please, somebody-any midwife, but hurry-"
  There was a flurry, and Vaniya said, looking up the
slope, "She will be here in a minute, my precious, she
will come to you here. . . ."
  Miranda sighed with relief. She said, shakily, "It
took a tidal wave to make my lazy daughter decide to
be born-and wouldn't you know? I am the first woman
to have her baby while visiting the sea!"
  "Miranda!" said Vaniya in shock, "How can you
make such a joke at a time like this" for all the
women around had burst into scandalized giggles.
  Dal said plaintively to Cendri, "Will you please tell
c me what the hell is so funny about that?"
  But Cendri knew that she could not explain it, in the
presence of the women of Isis, to any man. Not for
generations.
 
 
  A portion of the Report submitted to the Mentor
Lokshmann, of the College of Xeno-anthropology
and Comparative Culture on University, by the
Scholar Dame Cendri Owain, resident on Isis/
Cinderella:
 
 
. . . this season the great dam on the river Anahit
has been completed, with earthquake-proof safe-
guards. The Inland Land Reclamation Project has
absorbed most of the workmen from the dam
construction site. Most of the men continue to live in
the inland villages which they have colonized, and
to hire out for wages. Few of them bother to exercise 
the legal franchise, saying that too much concern 
with politics serves to destroy a man's natural
lnstincts.
  Shortly after the great tsunami which destroyed
the first construction site, the Council of Ariadne,
under the advice of the Intelligences who have been
designated pro tem as Ruins A Culture, appointed 
the High Matriarch Vaniya to assume all the 
religious duties of High Priestess, while the High 
Matriarch Mahala was chosen to administer all 
secular matters within the City of Ariadne. A 
representative from the Men's Houses is chosen 
every Long Year, with the provision that he must be 
of what the Council calls a "sedate old age" and 
therefore, as they say, no longer at the mercy of his 
sexual drives, and capable of abstract thought. Thus
the Council is headed by a tripartite authority, with 
an absolute provision that no matter shall be settled 
unless to the satisfaction of all three parties. This, as 
they say, assured that no majority can force the will
and conscience of a minority, and that no material
considerations may override the spiritual needs of
the people. The formal designation of the male
appointed to the tripartite authority is Elder Broth-
er, and the new custom states that a former Elder
Brother shall retain for life his Council seat, without
a vote, but shall advise and instruct his comrades
and younger brothers in the Men's Houses of the
city and countryside.
  The archaeological expedition to We-were-guided
has now had a full Long Year in the ruins at
We-were-guided. This preliminary team of a hun-
dred and nineteen men and a hundred and twenty-
four women have worked together admirably well
with volunteer workers from the College of Ariad-
ne, which is now known as the Women's College.
After observing the work of the men and women
from University, ninety-two men from the city of
Ariadne have volunteered to enroll in the new Men's
College built in the colony village of Anahit. The
first class will graduate with the status of Scholar,
two Long Years from now.
  There is little social mingling between men and
women, except among the relatively enlightened
women of the college of Ariadne, and a few of the
men working with the Unity team in We-were-
guided. However, it has been noticed that over thirty
women, a full half of them still of reproductive age,
have applied for a license to take a Companion.
Most women, however, still prefer a life-partnership
with another woman, and the status of a Compan-
ion is very low. A new insult is in use among
children in Ariadne; "Companion's-child." This
word is considered too gross for use among grown
women.
  Twenty-nine women of the University team have
formed a Household in Ariadne, and although I
have entered the household only on formal terms as
a guest, I have noticed that a few of the women have
chose life-partners, although as yet there are no
cross-partnerships between women of Isis/
Cinderella and the Unity.
  Enclosed in this report are several applications,
passed on through the Embassy and approved by
the Council, of five women and two men who have
applied for matriculation and residence permits on
University, with provisional Student status. Two of
the women are personally known to me; Laurina, of
the household of the High Matriarch Mahala, and a
full professor of History at the Women's College,
assisted me competently during the preliminary
mapping of the site at We-were-guided; she comes
with the personal recommendation of the Master
Scholar Dallard Malocq as well as my own. She has
written a monograph on archaeology for the use of
the two colleges here, and has requested that when
she achieves Scholar's status she be reassigned to
Isis/Cinderella to do her advanced work in the field
of communication with nonhuman intelligences,
among the people designated as RuIns A Culture.
  The second applicant to bear my personal recom-
mendation is Miranda, daughter of the High Matri-
arch Vaniya. She holds a degree in vocal and
instrumental music from the Women's College, and
is my close personal friend; she has appointed me
guardian of her daughter Cendriya during the
period of her absence.
  The other applicants are not personally known to
me, although one of the women bears the personal
recommendation of the Scholar Dame Lurianna di
Velo and holds a degree in Temporal Mathematics;
both of the men bear the recommendation of the
Master Scholar Dallard Malocq, and are advanced
students and instructors at the Men's College.
  At a later date I shall submit information as to
the continuing cultural investigation of social or-
ganization among the Ruins A Culture, a project
which is barely beginning.
  I know that you and your colleagues are also
interested in the progress of the study of the ruins at
We-were-guided. May I direct your attention to the
study forwarded under separate cover by the Master
Scholar Dallard Malocq and the Scholar Dame di
Velo. This is, of course, a preliminary study,' it has
not yet even determined whether or not the ruins
were erected by the race designated as the Builders.
The Scholar lJame Lurianna di Velo will forward
an advanced report by the next ship from Isis. I
enclose also her request, to be forwarded to the
Mentors of the College of Archaeology, for an
advance team of four hundred,. I wish in my
capacity of resident expert on matriarchal customs
to remind the assigning committee of University that
by the laws of the Matriarchate, the committee must
number fewer men than women. The Scholar Dame
has also requested that among the committee, at
least half a dozen women be included who hold
degrees in Temporal Mathematics. She is aware of
the current Scholar's attitude toward the theory of
Time stasis, which is why she asked me to forward
this request informally instead of going through
channels.
  I thank you for your kind wishes, and the offer to
grant me a maternity leave for the next season, and
to delay the forwarding of my advanced reports and
qualification data, but it is not the custom of women
on Isis/Cinderella to take such leaves, and it would
reflect poorly upon the women of University if I
were to do so. Nevertheless, I am deeply grateful for
your attempted consideration.
  I shall be awaiting your reply, and your promised
visit to the site of the Ruins A Culture.
 
 
 
          With respectful greetings,
          Cendri Owain Malocq
          Scholar Dame (qualified; Isis/Cinderella)