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‘Wounded and dead.’
Her breath was a long, dismayed, and even frightened sigh. He tinned on her the bleakest of faces. ‘Yes, I know. But I swear it—it grew up like that. I never thought … none of us did … it was not until you … ’ And he crashed his great fist down on a low parapet that bordered a pool.
‘Who starts it? The fighting? Is it possible for people from this Zone to cross into that one — and back — without damage, or danger?’
‘At one time I know that it was as impossible to cross from one Zone to another, as it is now for us to move back and forth between your Zone and ours, without shields. But something seems to have changed. I’m not saying that it is easy. There isn’t large-scale movement across the frontier. Nor does it happen often. But the fighting takes place along the borders, sometimes on this side, and sometimes on that — never far inside their Zone.’
‘You’ve been there?’
‘Yes. More than once.’
‘What is it like, Zone Five?’
He shuddered, and rubbed his hands up and down his forearms, to warm them. He was quite pale with dislike of Zone Five.
‘It is as bad as that,’ she said, not without irony, for she knew that he was feeling for that place what she and all of us in Zone Three felt for this one. He caught the irony, acknowledged it, nodded, and put his arm around her, in affection. ‘Yes, it is as bad as that.’
And, drawing her close, he put his face down into the coils of her hair and she heard him muttering, ‘But what are we to do. Al·Ith? What? Bad enough that I have only just begun to think of it.’
‘As I have of the deficiencies in our Zone. Do you know, Ben Ata, I have not had time to tell you, but I have ridden all around the outer regions of our Zone since I saw you last …’
‘Alone?’ said he, incredulous and sharp, despite himself, and was not able to laugh when she said, indulgent, ‘Of course alone, since I wanted to … but that isn’t the point, Ben Ata. When I was on a certain high point of country, below the central massif, but where I could look straight out northwest, I could see … but the point is, that none of us have done that for so long I don’t think anyone could say when we last did. You need punishment helmets to prevent your people looking there — ’ and she pulled him around so that his dazzled eyes rose to the great heights of Zone Three, now all the colours of a fire opal. ‘Your people won’t look up there, no, keep your eyes on it, Ben Ata, but our people never look beyond our borders, and this is without any punishments or forbiddings. It never occurs to us. We are too prosperous, too happy, everything is so comfortable and pleasant with us, Ben Ata … I don’t know what to say or to think …’ and she was astounded, utterly appalled, to find that again tears ran down her cheeks, while he bent over her, forgetting the beguiling colours of the great peaks, making small concerned noises at these so foreign tears. And he even brushed a tear from her lid with one large forefinger and looked at it, as if this tear could not be like any other he had seen.
In song, in picture, and in story, this scene is known as ‘Al·Ith’s Tear.’ It is popularly believed to have to do with the tender emotions of this pair when she told him she was pregnant, but the truth of the matter is as I tell it here.
There lay Al·Ith, rocked on the man’s strong breast, all cradled and comforted, sobbing away, just as she had wanted to do on so many occasions recently. That she didn’t believe in the efficacy of it, did not prevent her enjoying it, while it lasted.
As for him, he was both delighted that this dreadfully self-sufficient girl could have a good cry, just like any other, and at the same time he didn’t believe in it either. It simply wasn’t like her, and he was relieved when she stood up, sniffed, wiped the wet off her cheeks with two small hands, and again stood upright by him at the parapet.
‘And what is Zone Two like?’ he enquired.
‘You know more about our Zone than I can tell you about there. All I can say is that you stand and gaze and look, and never have enough of it. It is as if you looked at blue mists — or waters or — but it is blue, blue, you’ve never seen such a blue …’
‘Well, I don’t see the point in that,’ said he shortly, ‘it doesn’t get anything done.’
Which was so exactly what she expected of him that she went into a fit of laughter, in which he joined: and this led back to the couch. This exchange was by no means on the level of the last days, but was more of a confirmation that the thing was still possible — for their differences were so great that they were both always being overtaken by feelings of astonishment that they could be there together at all. And so they were to feel until the very end.
They were now at midday again: a steamy day, and she shocked him by jumping nude into one of the fountains. He had not seen fountains as containing any such possibility and he joined her, but not with abandon. He complained that the goldfish were tickling him, that they themselves were disturbing the fish, and that in any case, ‘if anyone were to see them …’
But who could?
‘There’s that drummer,’ he complained. ‘There must be someone there, it stands to reason,’ for the drum went on, on, on, no matter what they did or said.
‘What we have to do,’ she said, when they were dressed and again seated on either side of their little table, ‘is this. You know that there was a time when it was not possible for Zone Four and Zone Five to mingle. Now you do—and even fight. So what has happened? We must find out. And having done that, we must find out what your armies were for, originally. Why do you have armies? All the wealth of your land drains into the armies. No wonder you are so poor.’
‘We are poor? What do you mean!’
‘Ben Ata, you are poor! You don’t know it, but you are pathetic! The poorest of our herdsmen lives better than you do, the king. As for the clothes in those cupboards! Oh, I’m not saying that they aren’t solid and well-sewn — or not adequate. For their purpose. But if those are the clothes thought fit for a queen, according to your ideas — for with you of course a queen would have to wear one richness of garment and the wife of a soldier another —’
‘But of course. There have to be ranks.’
‘Of course — according to you. But I tell you it is not necessary. Why do you have to have ranks, and a hierarchy? It is because you are so poor. Why do you have to wear that great brooch holding your cloak that says you are Ben Ata? With us, everyone knows I am Al·Ith. And they would if I wore sacking. Don’t you see? You are poor, poor people, Ben Ata. Everything I see as I ride here — oh, I’m not talking of this pavilion here, which has been created for just this time and this place and will probably vanish when we part —’
‘Are we going to part again?’
‘But of course! What do you imagine? That we are together for ever, Ben Ata? We are here for a purpose — to heal our two countries and to discover where it is we have gone wrong, and what it is that we should be doing, really doing …’
She was leaning forward, her eyes all persuasion and passion.
He was leaning back, watching her satirically. He was offended. He had never, not ever, imagined his country could be described as poor and strike foreigners as backward and lacking. He did not mind that this woman found him — as she clearly did — rough and unsubtle. He was a soldier! Soldiers were — soldiers. But he had believed his realm a model of what it should be. He was cold against her. Cold and furious. He was looking at her shining eyes and illumined face, from a distance — one of total repudiation.
He suddenly got up, and strode furiously around the chamber.
‘You think luxury is what matters, you said so yourself. Comfort. Ease. All that — you said it, you said it … ’
‘Yes, I did.’ And of course he pounced on it, an admission being weakness, and he was standing rocking with derisive laughter and pointing.
‘You are like a half-grown boy, Ben Ata,’ said she, and got to her feet. ‘If we are rich and have everything it is bad only insofar as it has made us forget our proper purposes. But if you are poor and barbaric, it is because all your wealth goes into war — a needless, stupid, senseless war …’ She stood there, confronting him.
His loathing for her culminated in lifting his hand to hit her. The great fist that looked the size of her small head was poised to crash down — she stood her ground and looked at him.
‘Ben Ata, I am very much less strong than you, and you can do what you like in the way of violence. I can’t stop you. And nor, in this awful country of yours, can I use any of the real strengths to stop you …’
He of course now had to carry her to the bed and to treat her as he had treated the most weakly girls of his looting nights.
She did not resist for she could not, but turned her head away and closed her eyes and was quite absent from him, as if she were dead.
He was raping a dead woman, or so he felt it. And he was loathing himself. And her — for forcing him into this act. And then he remembered that she was pregnant and that he might be damaging the foetus. All this prevented him from doing it twice, which he would otherwise have done. He rolled off her and, shaking with his dislike of her, he said, ‘and that’s that. That’s that.’
In the silence, both heard that the drum was silent.
She painfully pulled herself up, went into her rooms, and came out almost at once in her own dark red dress. She did not look at him.
‘You can’t go unless they tell you,’ he said, stupid and threatening.
‘The drum has stopped, can’t you hear?’ she said in a voice that was drained of any life.
She went out and stood calling for her horse. At once he could hear the beast coming, clip-clop among the fountains.
‘Then don’t come back,’ he said, broken. He could not believe what had happened. He could not make the early part of their being together match what he had just done.
It seemed to him that he had been standing on the verge of some landscape that he had never even imagined and that it had vanished.
‘You can go back to your damned whores,’ she said, swinging herself up onto Yori. And added, almost at once, hearing these words that certainly were not hers but were Zone Four words, ‘Oh, I must get out of this dreadful place,’ cutting him absolutely to the heart because of the sincerity of them.
She cantered away. He ran down to get his horse, and rode like fury after her, not catching her up till she was a good way along the west road. The two horses, white and black, fled along side by side, and it being early evening, and still daylight, there were people on the roads and on the boats in the canals. They saw the queen of Zone Three riding ‘like a she-demon’ out of their country, with their king in pursuit, ‘as pale as death, the poor man.’
That was only on the first part of the road, for she had forgotten to take the shield, and near the frontier she leaned forward, senseless, clinging to Yori’s mane, knowing what was happening and that if she did not hold fast she would be killed as she fainted. Yori, feeling her slacken there on his back, slowed, and walked carefully on, while Ben Ata, seeing his wife lolling senseless, picked her up off Yori’s back, and carried her. The people on the second part of the road told how the queen was ill, because of her grief at leaving the Zone, and the king cradled her ‘like a baby’ and was weeping as they rode.
Yori came along behind the king. At the frontier, he set her on the ground, just on the other side — but not too far, for he could no more travel unguarded in her realm than she could in his, and as soon as she showed signs of coming to herself, stood back, with just one hand on her shoulder to steady her. What she found, when she opened her eyes, was a wild dark night, and the sharp wind that always swept up from the east into her country already strong enough to push her along. She saw Ben Ata, white and grim, and believed him angry, not seeing his concern for her.
Her horse was beside her, she climbed onto it and fled into the dark, she and Yori both vanishing like straw in a storm. And Ben Ata rode back to his camps wondering when she would be ordered to come again.
She had not gone far along the road when she understood, by thinking hard, and with sympathy, what had happened. Now she felt sorrow because she knew that Ben Ata did, and she wished she could reassure him by even a word that she knew he had carried her to her frontier and put her across it and that he could no more believe now he had crushed her down and punished her than she could like in herself the hard accusations and criticisms of his country.
How could she! She, Al·Ith, who was not capable of a cruel or even careless word to anyone at all in her own realm, yet, with this man who was neither more nor less culpable than she, who was — for no fault of his own — king of that sad and sodden and poverty-struck land, she had let venom rule her tongue.
He back with his army, she riding to her capital, thought of each other, and with compassion.
When she reached the top of the pass that led from the plain to the plateau, she reined in Yori, and looked up at the heaped mountains all around. Her life had been lived among these mountains; and watching how they changed and deployed inside their moulding atmospheres had been her recreation and her mind’s nourishment. Now, as she gently turned her horse about and about she saw them as she always had — but saw them, too, as she had from far down in the lowlands, looking up with Ben Ata. She knew that at this moment, now, he would be gazing at those peaks, forbidden or not: he would not be able to help himself. And seeing him stand there, momentarily lost to himself among the tents and picket lines of the camps, his officers, first glancing at each other, with raised eyebrows, would one after another themselves look upwards — and then, following them, the soldiers. Al·Ith was wondering about the women, whom she suspected of being custodians of all kinds of private beliefs. Probably they, or many of them, had never ceased, when no one could see them, to watch the skies westwards, where the mountain snows jay so high in the heavens it was hard to tell them from clouds.
Now she remembered a song — yes, hearing it as she lay in Ben Ata’s arms, not taking it in then, but retaining enough to hear it again now. The song had been part of the mounting delights of their two astonished bodies:
How shall we reach where the light is, Come where delight is?
High on the peaks light changes, Hope ranges.
Clouds? — no, Snow …
Rain here, Snow there:
Freeze-fire white. Flake light.
How may we go there Climb in the air there
Up, up, up from this flat land, Into the high land
That is our way That is our way …
A woman’s high sweet voice had rung through their lovemaking, and these words would now always be melded with their memories of each other.
And yet she knew that the words actually heard by any casual person listening, soldier or uninitiated soldier’s wife, would not have been these — the initiated women would hear them, and she with Ben Ata had heard them — but had he? Well, she would ask when they met next!
She rode forward again and now all along the roads groups of people called out to her, welcoming her back. And she stopped to talk, to listen to their messages, and to tell them, too, that she was pregnant by Ben Ata. The news flew across the plateau as they called to each other, and when she rode into the streets of our capital, the crowds were lining the way and singing and calling out a welcome to the new child, and by the time she had reached her home, she was back in the high easy friendliness which is the common mood of Zone Three.
On the wide steps were waiting her sister Murti· and all the children who called her Mother. She was enclosed by them in love and welcome, and was with them all for a day and night, to hear their tales of what had happened while she was gone. Meanwhile, the bells were ringing out from our information tower, so that no one in all of our Zone could fail to know that she was home and safe and that there would be a new child.
Then, retiring with her sister, leaving the children to their Mind-Fathers and their lessons and games, she went right to the very top of the palace, where the roofs stretched everywhere, level on level, and where it was possible to climb up even farther to a spire higher than any other in the capital. Right at the top of this tower she stood with Murti and she said to Murti, who was wondering at this exertion to visit a place she could not remember ever having tried to reach before, ‘Look, look there …’ and she pointed northwest between a deep gap in the mountains there. The blue of Zone Two gleamed like sapphires. Murti· could see nothing at first but a gap in the mountains with a haze in it.
Al·Ith gazed, letting her eyes fill with the blue, and thought fondly of how Ben Ata had said it was a waste of time, so that she was smiling, and Murti·, glancing at her, knew that she was thinking of her husband, for that smile could mean nothing else. She laughed, and was about to turn to her sister and tease her, begging for facts and bits of news of this famous Ben Ata, the great soldier, but Al·Ith said, ‘No, no, just stand and look …’ For all of her life, she. Al·Ith, had had the possibility of climbing up to this high place and finding Zone Two with her eyes. No one had said she should not! But no one had ever mentioned Zone Two! And yet — yes, as a child she had come here. Now she remembered. She had been a very young girl, before menarche. She had been impelled to climb up and up, first to the immensities of the roofs spreading all over the tops of the many palaces so that she could, if she had wanted to, have jumped from one to another, and around and about for weeks of days. But instead she saw the tall spire, and the little door at its foot and she had crept up and up. And up. And at last had reached the end of the interminably swirling stairs and stood breathless and giddy on the little platform they stood on now, enclosed by the lights of the evening sky. Birds sped past, and called to them. High over the mountains the eagles swung and swerved. She had clung here and looked up and out and it had been as if her whole self had filled with a need to leave here and let herself be absorbed by that endless blue — the blue, the blue, the blue! And it was hours before she had crept down again, her head filled with blue air, and — then, what? She could not remember! She had told someone and been warned? She had not told, but had simply forgotten?
Did it matter? The fact was, all her life the possibility had been here for no more effort than the climb up flights of difficult stairs. And yet it had been as if her own mind had closed itself off to what it could do. Should do. Wanted to do …
Her sister was clinging to the rail with both hands, her fine clear profile lifted, her eyes shining. She seemed to shine everywhere; the strong evening light polished her soft gold hair, and the embroideries on her yellow dress glowed. She had seen!
When she turned to Al·Ith all she said was, ‘Why did we forget it?’
And Al·Ith had no reply.
Next, Al·Ith ordered the bells to peal out an invitation for all the regions to send in messengers, and as quickly as was comfortably possible. Then she took supper with her sister, who wanted to know about this new husband, and while normally she would have told Murti· everything, without any feeling of disloyalty, or betrayal, she found her tongue weighted. Why? Only partly because news about Zone Four must be so foreign to Murti· that it would be necessary to say everything again and again from a dozen different angles before she could begin to understand it, but also because she could feel Ben Ata thinking of her. She did not like this connection with him. She could not remember ever before, with any man, whether for parenthood or for play, feeling this yearning, heavy, disquiet. She judged it unhealthy — a projection of that Zone where all the emotions were so heavy and so strong. But this is what she did feel, and it was no use behaving as if she did not. Murti· felt the resistance in her, did not blame her, but was excluded, and she went away early to her rooms where her own children awaited her.
Surely a relation with one person that narrowed others must be wrong? How could it not be wrong?
But Al·Ith knew the real questions that faced her now were more urgent than these disquiets about that husband of hers, to whom she would certainly be ordered to return in due time — and she could not say whether she abhorred the thought or longed for him.
And she put herself to sleep so as to be fresh for the day ahead, which she hoped would bring her the insights she so badly needed.
The main Council Chamber of our Zone is not very large, for there is no necessity for it to contain more than twenty or thirty of us at a time, since this number adequately represents us: of course the representatives are different, according to their function. It is a square room, its ceiling not very high, situated where windows show sky, clouds, mountains, on three sides.
The floor has on it very large flat cushions, where we sit according to no order except of preference, and Al·Ith may sit anywhere: there is no need for her to be elevated or on a prominence with such a small number of people.
On this day she was in the Chamber before anyone else, and moved from window to window, looking down at our streets, and up at the mountains, and then for a long time at a certain spot towards the northwest. I was there that day, and found her when I entered — the second to arrive. I was struck at once by her restlessness, her anxiety. This was not the contained woman I had known since she was a baby: I am one of Al·Ith’s Mind-Fathers.
I stood by her at the window, and she gave me the wildest saddest look, and then sank her head on my shoulder, snuggling like a small child. But as a small girl she had been too independent and striving for such an action and I was disturbed more than I can say.
She soon pulled herself away. ‘Lusik, I don’t know myself.’
‘Yes, I can see that.’
Down below in the main square was a commotion, and we both leaned forward to watch, thankful to be taken out of our anxieties.
Delegates were arriving from all our regions, on horses and donkeys, and there were children on goats. These animals were being taken into the care of some young people whose task this was, and led under trees that shaded the square’s southern side. I had come in by camel, since I live in the extreme south of our lovely southern region. This beast, who did not often have the chance to make the acquaintance of animals other than her own kind, since camels thrive so well with us they are our main transport, was standing nose to nose with a fine black mare from the eastern herds.
It was such a pleasant and familiar scene that we were both cheered, but she said, ‘All the same, we are in bad trouble and I don’t know at all what it is.’
The room filled with our people, men, women, and two small girls who had already shown a proclivity for the arts of management and were being given opportunities to learn them.
There were twenty-five of us that day. Al·Ith sat down at once, under the west window, spread her yellow skirts around her, for she knew we liked to see her beautiful and well presented, and began.
‘We all know the situation. I take full responsibility.’ She waited, then, and looked around at us. Everyone had nodded, not in animosity, but saluting a fact. She smiled, slightly, and it was a bleak little smile.
‘What we have to know is this. In the last thirty-nine days, has there been any change in our situation?’
She paused again, looked carefully from face to face, and making sure to smile at the two little girls, who of course smiled back in adoration and total submission to their desire to be like her, and better.
‘In every region it has been the same. Animals have ailed, and lost their fertility. And we, too, have not been as we were. This I know. This we all know. And I might have known it before I did had I taken as much notice as I should of your reports.’
We all nodded again: it was the truth.
‘It is clear that everyone believes that my marriage with Ben Ata is in some way connected with this decline. We do not know why or how, but we may expect to see an improvement among us. As has already been announced to everyone, I am pregnant. This presumably is part of the prescription for our recovery.’
After every statement she paused and looked around, for signs of disagreement, or that anyone wanted to add to what she had said.
‘Well, then, it is thirty-nine days since I was taken to Ben Ata.’ The was taken came out of her with a bitter emphasis, and she at once regretted it, offering us a quick apologetic smile. By now there was no one present who had not seen her inner distress. There was an atmosphere in the Council room I had not experienced before. More than anything could have done, Al·Ith’s state told us how things were in our realm.
She waited quietly. ‘There has been no change at all in that time? No? Now, I have been pregnant for five days. Has there been any change in that time?’
At this one of the little girls said, ‘My sheep had twins yesterday.’
