PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF SHERI S. TEPPER
RAISING THE STONES
“Tepper effectively combines satire … inventive social engineering, strong main characters, and a plot that works on both internal and external levels in what may be her best novel to date.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Secure in technique, incandescent in conception, and profound in insight.”
—Stephen R. Donaldson
GRASS
“A splendid achievement, one of the most satisfying science fiction novels I have read in years.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Tepper is a wise and subtle artist.”
—The Washington Post Book World
BEAUTY
“A beautiful book from one of the genre’s best.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Tepper is a wise and compassionate narrator…. There are few better [yarn] spinners than she is.”
—The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
“Rich, multitudinous, witty, metaphysical, continually surprising, Beauty is a feast.”
—Locus
THE GATE TO WOMEN’S COUNTRY
“It’s grand … one of the most involving, serious, and deeply felt studies of the relations between the sexes that I have ever read—and then some.”
—Marion Zimmer Bradley
“Manages to explore seriously the relationship of the sexes in the context of a well-rounded story, without the use of stereotypes, falling into one of the traps that swallow most such books, forsaking bitter feminism for a successful humanistic approach.”
—Dean R. Koontz
“Lively, thought-provoking … [Tepper] takes the mental risks that are the lifeblood of science fiction and all imaginative narrative.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, Los Angeles Times
Other Bantam Books by Sheri S. Tepper
THE GATE TO WOMEN’S COUNTRY BEAUTY
GRASS
A PLAGUE OF ANGELS
SHADOW’S END
GIBBON’S DECLINE AND FALL
Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part Two
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part Three
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part Four
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part Five
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
About the Author
Copyright
To all those
who ride the great dragon
Wonder
heaven longing ape
angel who stumbles
blind light bearer
who falls and fumbles
worshiper of error
seeker after truth
hurting and aging
lover of lovely youth
wild beast raging
craven and brave
freak of fashion
and custom’s slave
puppet of passion
lowest and loftiest
a sideshow gape
god’s fool, nature’s jest
heaven longing ape
“MAN”
Koi Bashi
ONE
1
Humanity was saved from certain destruction when, on their wedding night, Lek Korsyzczy informed his wife that their first child was to be a son. Certain intelligences (the Celerians, actually) established later that this was the event setting causation in motion. It happened at around one o’clock on an October Sunday morning during the 1990s, common era. Lek made the remark as Maria was about to get into bed with him, his voice slightly slurred from the wedding champagne, but with nothing tentative or doubtful in it to indicate that Marla had any choice in the matter.
Marla thought he sounded like a builder, like one of the customers at the lumberyard where she worked, matter-of-factly ordering framing timbers. She gave her new husband a thoughtful, rather troubled look. “Leksy, I think that just sort of happens how it happens, you know? Like my sister Judith, the one married to the plumber, she had four girls before she had Buddy.”
Leksy shrugged. His heavy shoulders were covered with large orange freckles and a pelt of fine, red-blond hair. Marla had already decided he would have to wear something with sleeves when they made love, because his fur tickled. She was sure, ticklish as she was, they would start doing it and she’d start laughing, and laughter, so her sister Judith had informed her, was never a good idea then.
“They don’t tell you how ridiculous it is,” Judith had confided in the rest room, after five glasses of champagne at the wedding supper. “The nuns sure don’t tell you. The priests don’t tell you. They go on and on about sin, but nobody says how ridiculous it is. And then there you are, doing this silly thing—oh, don’t get me wrong, it can be fun—and you start thinking what it must look like and you want to laugh, and let me tell you, don’t! That’s one time you do not want to laugh. You wouldn’t believe how bent out of shape some men can get!”
So, now, looking at the tickly pelt of hairs on Leksy’s shoulders and arms, almost to the wrists, Marla knew she’d have to take steps to avoid laughter. “I mean,” she told him, “I wouldn’t want you to get your heart set on a boy right away, or anything.”
“You don’ unnerstan’,” he told her, hiccuping slightly as he slid completely under the influence of the multiple toasts he had drunk. “I got it all work’ out with the Blessed Virgin.”
“You what?”
“I got it all work’ out.” And with these words Leksy’s eyes fell shut as his mouth opened to emit a tiny snore. It was only a raspy breath, a mere puppy gargle so far as snores went, but it was definitely a snore, not something else. Not lust, for example. Not passion.
Marla sat looking at him, not sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. It was kind of like a dirty joke, him falling asleep that way. “There was this guy, see, and he drank too much at his wedding and that night his new wife stayed in the bathroom a long time, so he fell asleep before anything happened, see….” Not that she’d been in the bathroom that long! On the other hand, his being asleep gave her a little time to think about what he’d said, that he’d worked it out with the Blessed Virgin. It didn’t exactly surprise her. Well, it did, but then it didn’t. Lots of things Leksy did seemed kind of surprising at first, but not after you thought about them. The whole Korsyzczy family was religious. No, pious. That was the word. Maybe a little more pious than was good for them. Who else did she know besides Leksy who had five sisters who were nuns and three older brothers in holy orders. Holiday dinner at their house was like a convocation! And they were all the time dragging religion into everything,
