pay. I am a trader.
Go on, Hawks responded uneasily.
One thing I am never short of are pretty girls who are not of my people. Give
me your wife and you will be safe and dry in Mud Runner’s lodge within five
days.
Even if I did not love her, which I do, I owe her my life many times. She is
not for trade. We will swim there naked if we must before I will do that.
Roaring Bull chuckled. Come now, my son. You have made the break with your
people and with Council. You know, if only deep down in your heart, that death
awaits you, and death awaits her as well. This way you get at least a chance at
whatever you are trying to do, and she will live. It seems more than fair.
She will live as a slave of the Illinois.
The chief shrugged. Each of us has a different life given to us by the Great
Spirit. You cast your own fate when you made your choice, and it has brought you
to this. It is my only offer.
And if I refuse?
The leaves begin to turn. There is a chill from the north now and then that
will grow stronger. I am not without some compassion. The two of you may sleep
in the stables if you wish, and I will order that something be found for the
sake of modesty, although it will not, I fear, help the coming chill. Some of
the animal feed is all right for people if you look with care at it. Go—think
over my offer. Be warned, though, that if you take one thing that is Illinois,
my protection will be lifted, and you will both become slaves of the village.
He grinned. It is the least I can do.
How true that was.
The something for the sake of modesty turned out to be two whiplike lengths of
leather cord and the pick of old and discarded cloth that could be tied to hang
down front and rear. The tribe was forbidden contact with them, so there was no
way they could find an ally without getting both the tribal member and
themselves in trouble.
They ate parts of rotten, worm-ridden apples and talked it over. He told her
everything of Roaring Bull’s offer.
She listened, a grave expression on her face, but she did not seem surprised at
the situation. Finally she said, Then we must look at all our choices. We
cannot remain here, not for long, like this. Can we not try and find mercy among
another trader going our way?
He shook his head. No, we are being watched even now. No trader landing here
would risk taking us, since the traders are few and the warriors here many. The
first duty of a trader is to his own trade. Nor can we get away and find one
elsewhere. Even if we were permitted to leave or could lose our watcher, we
would have to go up the Ohio, and this would mean coming right back past here.
To swim either river is far too dangerous; it almost boils where the two come
together, and the distance is too great—for me, at least.
We could simply launch our canoe and trust to the river spirits.
Without paddles we would be caught in the rough waters to the south very
quickly, and you know who would rescue us, and then there would be no bargains.
She thought a moment more. Perhaps this chief will settle for less.
He looked at her. What do you mean?
I have looked at the moon, and it is already past my bleeding time. I think the
excitement and the shocks have dislodged it, but it will not be dislodged for
long. It should be a safe time. Perhaps—a night in his bed for two paddles.
No! I will not permit it! And it would only whet his appetite for you. We are
at their mercy. The only reason he did not just take you was some twisted code
they follow, but their honor is weak. He would accept the bargain, but he would
be held to no bargain with a woman. It would be for nothing.
She sighed. Then the only other way is to fight, she said flatly.
5. THE GAME OF CATS AND MOUSE
SONG CHING WAS STILL NURSING HER MENTAL WOUNDS from her visit with her mother.
Her mother had always been one of her idealized people, the superwoman who could
and did do it all and who had always loved and protected her, even many times
against the cold whims of her father.
You cannot let him do this! she had wailed at her mother. Please! To marry,
yes. That is part of my station and my duties. But to have him wipe it all
out—it is a waste!
Sit down over there, my less than honorable daughter, and listen, her mother
had replied. We must now have the talk that I have known we must have since you
were little. Your tears do not tear at me this time, for I know now that you
have tears only for yourself, never for others. Now you will sit, and you will
listen.
Most honorable and loving mother, I—
Do not speak thus now, for you do not mean those words. This is not a good
world or an honorable one. I doubt if the world has ever truly been any
different, no matter how we romanticize it. Your life has been so sheltered, so
privileged, that you do not even truly know what the lives of most of your race
are like. Oh, you have played at being a peasant in the small peasant play place
that we have here, but that is not truly what that life is like. It is clean,
and you always know that you are playing, that servants are but a gesture away,
that nothing truly bad will happen to you, and that you will return to the silks
and flowers and fine food at day’s end. I am not even talking about the Center;
I am talking about here, on our island, in our native province.
The inevitable lecture always had to come first, although this was a new
variation on the theme. Song Ching just sat and waited it out.
Most children are born to women without benefit of doctors or medicine in their
own miserable one-room huts near the fields and paddies where they work from
dawn to dusk with never a break, never a holiday, never even a day off. They
must make their quotas or starve, since if they do not make their quotas, many
others will also go hungry. They leave their excrement in pit toilets; the flies
and other insects are always there, and so is the smell. They eat two meals of
rice mixed with some vegetables or, rarely, a communally shared small portion of
unprocessed meat. They face heat and cold, flood and drought, pestilence and
eternal poverty. They are ignorant, superstitious, have never imagined
electricity, indoor plumbing, or any sort of mass communications and
transportation. Their view of luxury and longing is silk clothing and Peking
duck, neither of which they are likely to enjoy in their lives. You know nothing
of this.
Neither do you, Song Ching responded petulantly. Not really.
You think not. I was born of peasant stock on a landhold barely a hundred
kilometers from here, on this island. I was born at four in the morning; my
mother was ordered out to continue the rice harvest by noon—and she did. The mud
and flies and filth were my home and my early memories.
Song Ching stared up at her mother. If this is so, why am I just now hearing of
it?
Because you were born and raised in the leadership, the upper classes, where
such peasant blood would have worried you, and it is not something one bandies
about in our society without causing prejudices to form.
If it is true, her daughter responded, not really believing it, then how did
you come to your position?
Your father is a most—unusual man. He was born and raised to be a soldier, but
he had a bent for science and a head for figures, and so he was chosen at the
age of twelve to go to Center for education and training, to become one of the
Elect. He excelled because he allowed nothing at all to stand in the way of his
advancement. We like to believe that his coldness and his callous indifference
to others is a mask, but it is not. He wears no mask. I doubt if your father
feels emotion, at least in the same way that other men do. I do not think he
can. In a sense, he is more like the machines which rule us than a true man. He
made himself that way, because to think like them and be like them is to know
them and be favored by them. When he conceived his idea of dynastic genetic
manipulation, he of course needed to found a dynasty. He required a wife.
And he selected a peasant over all those of his class here and at the Center?
I do not know the process, except that it was calculated as finely as one of
his equations. He knew the truth, although it is heresy to say it, that there is
no difference between peasant stock and aristocratic stock except who your
family is and how much wealth it has. They came to the village one day and took
samples of the blood of every girl under fourteen. He wished a peasant girl
because while he needed someone intelligent, he did not wish a highly educated
and polished woman. He wanted someone with no family of consequence that he
would have to accept or deal with, as he would with aristocratic or Center
women. My family could not afford many girls; they were delighted to be rid of
me. Just what, genetically, he saw that made me the one is something I have
never known. The answer to ‘Why me?’ is an absurdity. It had to be someone. It
was me.
But you are a botanist! An educated woman of accomplishment beyond the home!
I took it up after I was at Center and it was necessary to give me the
teachings and background needed to live there. He permitted it so long as it was
always secondary to my role of wife and hostess and politician for him. And, of
course, I was the subject of his experimentations, out of which came you. During
all that time I have never complained, never regretted, never had second
thoughts. Although I am dead to my village and my own family, I have never
forgotten them or their lot, and I have always thanked the gods for giving me
this life, and I have tried hard to do my duty and carry out my responsibilities
as his wife.
Song Ching was silent for a moment. Why do you tell me this now? she asked
finally.