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you mean to say it was your idea?’
‘Well … I heard about something of the sort.’
‘Who from? When?’
‘A man came through here once, and he mentioned them. All sorts of ideas like that.’
‘What man? From Zone Five?’
‘Zone Five! They didn’t so much as know about spears till they saw ours. Even so they like catapults best. No. A man came through. That was in my father’s time. I was a boy. I listened. He said he had come from — where was it? Not Zone Five. Was it Zone Six perhaps?’
‘I know a little about Zone Six. It can’t have been from there.’
‘A long way, I am sure of that. He talked of a place where they had weapons we hadn’t even imagined. They can use the air itself to make weapons of.’
‘But if they can use air to make weapons, they can use it to make things that are useful?’
‘He said nothing about that. It is a place somewhere. A planet. It is an evil race. They kill and torture each other all the time, for the sake of it … no, Al·Ith, I’m not taking that look from you! We are not like that in Zone Four — not anywhere near it. But I thought it all over, and that is when we spread the rumours about our invulnerable vests and our deadly rays.’
‘They don’t seem to impress Zone Five much.’
‘Anyway, that isn’t the point. I’ve told you it keeps a lot of men busy.’
‘Weil,’ she summed up, ‘this is how it seems to me. Nine-tenths of your country’s wealth goes into the the preparations for war. Apart from the actual growers of food, and the merchants for food and household goods, everyone is in the employ of the army, in some capacity. Yet you have not in living memory had a war. When you do have a war, I have only to make a list of the supposed reasons for it, and you admit to their inadequacy. Even these wars were in previous generations. Your skirmishes on the borders of Zone Five are because if you have two fighting forces in close connection both will, by their nature, attack, and will similarly accuse the other. The standard of living of your people is very low —’ here he groaned, admitting it — ‘but, Ben Ata, all this goes on under the Law. Under the Providers. All for each and each for all. So what has gone wrong?’ She noted that in this somewhat hectoring analysis, she felt not an inkling of the rush of nearness to understanding she had felt yesterday. You put one person with another person, call it love, she was thinking, and then make do with the lowest common denominator.
He yawned.
‘It’s much too early to go to bed, you know,’ she said. ‘It can’t be even late afternoon yet—if we were able to see where the day had reached in this downpour.’ For it was still pelting down.
‘Very well. Al·Ith, I want you to picture your affairs to me, just as you have ours to me.’
She was hesitating because it occurred to her to wonder why she had not actually made such an analysis — for while such a way of thinking did not conduce to intimations of a higher kind, they were certainly useful for clearing the mind.
‘Now come on. Al·Ith, you are ready enough to criticize me.’
‘Yes, I was just … very well. The economy of our country does not rely on any single commodity. We produce many varieties of grains, vegetables, and fruits …’
‘But so do we,’ he said.
‘Not to anything like the same extent.’
‘Go on.’
‘We have many different kinds of animals, and use their milk and meat and their hides and their wool …’ And, as he was going to interrupt her again, said, ‘It is a question of degree, Ben Ata. A half of our population produces these things. A quarter are artisans, using gold, silver, iron, copper, brass, and many precious stones. A quarter are merchants, suppliers, traders, and tellers of stories, keepers of Memory, makers of pictures and statues, and travelling singers. None of our wealth goes into war. There are no weapons in our country. You will not find anything beyond a knife or an axe for household use or the use of a herdsman, in any home in our country.’
‘And what if you are attacked by a wild animal? If an eagle takes a lamb?’
‘The animals are our friends,’ she said, and saw the incredulity on his face. Also, he found her account lacking in any drama.
‘And where has all this got you? Except where we are, in trouble … or so you say we are —’
‘Is your birth rate falling or is it not?’
‘It is. All right, things are unhealthy. I admit it. And now Al·Ith, in this paradise of yours, I want to know what are the men doing?’
‘They are not making war!’
‘What do they do with themselves all day?’
‘Exactly what every one of us does — whatever it is their work is.’
‘It seems to me that with women ruling there is nothing a man can do but—’
‘Make love, you were going to say.’
‘Something of the sort.’
‘And bake, and farm, and herd, grow, and trade and mine and smelt and make artefacts and everything there is to do with the different ways of feeding children, mentally and emotionally, and the keeping of archives and maintaining Memory and making songs and tales and … Ben Ata, you look as if I had insulted you.’
‘All that is women’s work.’
‘How is it possible that They expect us to understand each other? If you were set down in the middle of our land you would not understand anything that was going on. Do you know that as soon as I cross into your land I cease to be my real self? Everything I say comes out distorted and different. Or if I manage to be as I am, then it is so hard, that in itself makes everything different. Sometimes I sit here, with you and I think of how I am, at home, with Kunzor, say, and I can’t—’
‘Kunzor being your husband?’
She was silent, helpless at the utter impossibility of saying anything that could keep in it the substance of truth.
‘Well then, out with it! He is, isn’t he? Oh, you can’t fool me.’
‘But didn’t I tell you myself that Kunzor is the name of one of the men I am with?’
But he kept on his face the look of a man who has with penetration discerned the truth. His stance, arms folded, knees set apart, feet planted, announced that he was not in the least undermined or intimidated.
Yet she could see that he was in fact really trying to understand: she would be wrong to allow herself to be held off from him by his automatic defensiveness. Something she could respect, and from the most real part of her, was at work in him.
Again, automatically, he jeered: ‘And this Kunzor of yours, of course he is a finer fellow than me in every way possible …’
She did not respond to this, but said, ‘If we were not meant to understand each other, what are we doing here at all?’
From within deep thought, thought that was being protected, in fact, by his derisiveness, the stances of what he had always considered ‘strength’, he said, or breathed out, slowly, ‘But what is it … I must understand … what? We have to understand … what …’ He lapsed into silence, eyes fixed on a cup on the table. And she realized, with what delight and relief, that he was in fact operating from within that part of him which meant that he was open and ready for understandings to come into him — as she had been, in the Council Chamber. She sat absolutely still, subduing her breathing, and not allowing her eyes to rest too long on his face for fear of disturbing him.
His own breathing was slower, slower, he was stilled, his eyes fixed on the