‘There were horses at the lab for making medicines with their blood. Some of the lab men had also kept good horses of their own in the lab stables. But the horses’ chances were poor. They bred slowly, and they were delicate from living so many generations with humans to take care of them. The daughters made them tougher and faster-breeding without worrying about their looks, and the horses came out and flourished too – a happy surprise.’
‘And what did they do for themselves, these great witches,’ Alldera said, ‘so that they could breed without men?’
‘Not witches, but dedicated and intelligent women,’ Nenisi continued carefully, almost formally. ‘They perfected the changes the labs had bred into them so that no men were needed. Our seed, when ripe, will start growing without merging with male seed because it already has its full load of traits from the mother. The lab men used a certain fluid to start this growth. So do we.’
Simple and clean, compared to rape in the Holdfast. No wonder jealousy drove the free fems to slander. ‘Nenisi, why do you keep me with you? I’m no more like you than those other fems are.’
‘You brought us a live child. Only one other fem did that, and that child we couldn’t save. Your child is alive; that makes you kin to us.’
Her slim fingers brushed Alldera’s very lightly. ‘We change little, do you understand? Some, of course: the Wasting left slow, strong poisons in the earth and water of the world. They sometimes alter a child from its mother’s traits. We don’t try to judge whether a change is good or not. The child survives the childpack or not, that’s all. Sometimes a cousinline, even a whole Motherline, is lost. No new ones are gained, only variations of the old.’
‘Then my cub – ’
‘New seed, new traits, the beginning of the first new Motherline since our ancestors came out of the lab. That’s how important your child is to us. My ancestor, a woman almost exactly like me, stepped out of the lab and lived, and now though she’s generations dead there are many of us Conors. So it will be for your child’s blood descendants.’
She sounded moved by what she said, and still she was blind to how every word she spoke folded in Alldera’s child but shut out Alldera herself. Alldera turned on her in the darkness: ‘But it’s a Holdfastish cub, with dam and father! How can it be like you? You’re raising a free fem among you, that’s all.’
‘No, we don’t think so. When you came to us, that child was still forming inside you. We made you sleep to rest and strengthen you both. We fed you the milk of our breasts and the food chewed in our mouths, the food of Motherlines that we feed our babies. We fed your child, through your blood while she was still in your womb. We think she’s become like our own children. We still feed her – that’s why we do all her nursing. You see how healthily she grows, how fast, just like other babies here. We don’t have our forebears’ wisdom or the wonders of the lab to change her to be like us, but we’ve tried to do it with what we have.’
‘So you hid her from the free fems.’ Why did that make Alldera uncomfortable? The women had saved the cub’s life, they had fed it their food, they had made it theirs.
Nenisi said, ‘What sort of life would she have among a dying race?’
‘Well, what life will she have with you if she turns out to be barren without men, like the free fems?’
Nenisi answered quickly, ‘It would still be better. There are those among us who have no children, out of necessity or by choice. They still have relatives, sharedaughters, kindred. Do you see? Does that satisfy you?’
Alldera could not explain without sounding selfish and ungrateful; if she had known about the free fems sooner, she would have had a chance to consider the cub’s future as if there were choices to be made about it. The women had not kept the free ferns’ existence secret from her, exactly; their plans as Nenisi outlined them were clearly good ones, probably the best choice that could have been made anyway. Alldera saw no way to voice her unease, nor even exactly what there was to object to.
Nenisi got up. ‘Come to the tent soon, there are sharu wandering tonight.’ She left.
The stars threw a dim light by which Alldera could dimly see the wide tents. The ferns’ wagon was invisible. Their fire had gone out. It was true, she thought, their road came from destruction and led to destruction, and if she found herself fortunate enough to be on another path, why turn back? She reminded herself of the prime lesson of a slave’s life: protect youself, be selfish.
Next morning she put on her belt with the knife sheathed in back and she said, ‘Nenisi, will you teach me to ride?’
Nenisi grinned. ‘I was afraid you’d never ask.’
Alldera, responsible today for raking out horse dung to dry into usable fuel, was late to the chief tent and had to sit outside with the overflow. They were debating not the usual personal complaints beyond the abilities of the families and Motherlines to settle, but a diplomatic matter: whether or not to accept the offer of some grazing rights from neighboring Red Sand Camp. Women feared that Red Sand would come around later – as they had done to another camp in the past – and say the grass had been a loan, and demand repayment. In such a discussion Nenisi Conor would surely speak.
The tea bowl was handed round; Alldera sipped and passed it on. Listening was thirsty work. Sometimes she thought the Shawdens were chiefs because they could afford to serve endless rounds of tea to half the camp day after day. It was certainly not because they took the lead in anything.
The slow, oblique movement of debate was mesmerizing. She remembered the way the men – and fems, imitating men – had decided things, quickly, by command. Here, anyone with something to say could speak, which made for long hours of exhaustion or entertainment, depending on the interest of a given case. Their ease at speaking their minds still awed her. She sometimes spoke herself now, of grass and horses, over the evening tea fire; she sought to share their free flow of conversation.
She nibbled at a callus that had formed on her hand from the pressure of the rein. Many months’ work had made her a decent rider, but she was not yet familiar enough with horses to make one lie down and doze, like that Faller woman over there, so that she could curl up against its flank and stay warm. Never mind, by midday the sun would strengthen and they would all be shedding headcloths, shirts, breast wraps.
At last Nenisi arose. No one interrupted as her calm, reasonable voice recounted the history of feeling between both camps. She said, ‘Sharu have ravaged our northern pasture. What will you do when you hear your horses wandering and calling in hunger at night in the Dusty Season? Our friends and sisters and cousins, our daughters and mothers in Red Sand Camp say, take this gift of grass.
‘Now, is Red Sand Camp the same this season as the Red Sand that broke down the walls of new wells sunk by Steep Cloud Camp because those wells were too close to Red Sand grass? Or is it the same as the Red Sand that gave forty horses to Salt Wind Camp the year that poison grass wiped out half of Salt Wind’s herds?
‘There are new families in Red Sand since both those times. How many here have sisters and other close kin now in Red Sand Camp that did not have them there five years ago; two years ago; last year? A woman is constant in her actions through her life according to her traits until at last she dies. But a camp changes all the time as its women come and go, and it lives forever.’
When she drew her headcloth about her and sat down again, no one applauded. But speaker after speaker got up and gave another version of what she had said, until those opposed to accepting the gift gave in and made the same sort of speech themselves. One woman next to Alldera shook her head and murmured, ‘Those Conors are always right.’
Alldera sat straight and smiling, warm with admiration, rejoicing in her own unbelievable good luck in having Nenisi for her friend.
Walking with the black woman later – Nenisi was cutting reeds for arrows – Alldera said, ‘I’m proud to hear you speak at the chief tent. I wish you did it more often.’
‘Oh, women are perfectly able to do without the Conors’ nagging most of the time, and we don’t believe in wasting our influence or growing self-indulgent by too much talking. We take care to be selective. I could have mentioned today a time when Stone Dancing Camp women themselves behaved very badly toward a neighbor camp. Of course there was the excuse that we hadn’t yet recovered from one of the earth tremors that give this camp its name, but it was long before my time and no one really knows for certain what was in women’s minds … Anyway, bringing that up just would have caught everyone up in an old argument, and nothing would have been decided about Red Sand for days yet.
‘I see you sitting at the chief tent often these days, as I pass by on other business.’
‘I like to hear women talk about family situations,’ Alldera admitted. ‘In case. Well, in case Sheel’s nastiness gets unbearable. I want to be able to go and speak there for myself.’
Nenisi straightened from examining a strand of reeds. ‘Tch’, she said, ‘you’ve been managing her meanness very well lately, it’ll never come to that.’
As she cut the reeds she began singing her self-song, addressing the reeds as if identifying herself with them.
In the Gather of the blind foal year I put eight arrows into the air, one behind the other, before the first fell to the ground.
My mother Tesh Periken taught me to bite out a colt’s balls with my good front teeth. The horse scarcely swells, the wound never festers, but I’m one of those whose teeth hurt her a lot. Is it the geldings’ revenge? I say, do your own gelding, but use your knife.
If you offer me sausage of fine fat and berries, I’ll eat it all up and leave you nothing but my belches.
I helped Tomassin Hont to cure the finest sharu hide she ever took, I put my scraper right through it, I was so much help.
There was a lot more; Alldera found herself laughing. ‘How can you say such things about yourself?’
‘The Conors may always be right, but I don’t mind reminding everybody that Nenisi Conor can be as wrong as anybody else.’ Nenisi handed her more reeds. ‘Every woman needs her own personal history.’
Alldera looked over to where the grazing horses were visible, drifting against the skyline that ran forever, flat and broad.
‘In all this space,’ she said, ‘I suppose everything that helps tell one person from another or one place from another is very important.’
The black woman straightened again and smiled. ‘It’s good, the way you see in fresh ways the things that are old to me. But things which unite us in all this space are also very important.’ She wiped her knife and sheathed it. Then she took off her belt and dropped it to the ground. ‘Come sit here.’ She pulled Alldera down on the sand beside her, pushed away the bundle of reeds, and, laughing, slipped her arm around Alldera’s neck.
Alldera yielded uncertainly, was pressed to Nenisi’s sharp-boned side.
‘Don’t be nervous,’ Nenisi murmured. ‘We’re together, that’s all; friends. No one is master of the other. We do what we like, and we stop when we like. No need to be shy about your scars – give me your hand. A sharu sliced my ribs once when I was being foolish, and feel this great ridge I’m left with! We Conors can’t hide our mistakes, we scar badly; no wonder we try not to make any.’ Now when she laughed the sound was richer, roughened with excitement. ‘You and I will learn to cherish each other’s faults.’
They made love together. Alldera asked no questions. She had felt shut out from the women’s constant patting and clasping and stroking of one another; at the same time their closeness had offended her.
Now she wanted nothing to intrude on the joy of touching and being touched, freely and sensually. It was a triumph to feel Nenisi’s cabled body loosen and flow as she held it. Her own limbs slackened and trembled when Nenisi stroked her, seeking out the sensitive places that turned the light tickle of fingers in a deep, sinking sweetness almost too intense to be borne.
That night she lay awake in Nenisi’s bedding, warm and drowsing, for a long time. As she snugged herself close against the smooth curve of Nenisi’s back, she thought of the Holdfast ferns. There had been some moments of passionate contact, usually in a corner of the crowded room that served as night quarters for the members of her master’s femhold. She remembered tension, haste, the need for silence. The others would thump you in the head to keep you quiet so that they could get the sleep they needed for their next day’s work
… bad dreams out of a hideous life, but rich with excitement and danger.
She remembered a pretty fem, only recently demoted from pet status for some trifling error or other, the only really pretty partner Alldera had ever had. In the dark tangle of their embrace, this one had thrust an object into Alldera’s hand, begging her in a smothered voice to use it, to root in her body with it like a man. Alldera had tried to break the wooden phallus against the bars of the window. Others had pulled her down; don’t let the little pervert upset you, they’d said.