“Is there some reason she might not?”
“There’s every reason, but I think she will. It’s hard to take a son back and maybe have to grieve over him again when you’ve already done it and gotten over it.”
“I don’t understand.”
Morgot got a faraway look on her face, her eyes sad. “You bear a son. When he’s still a baby, you think of losing him when he’s five. You grieve. You get over it. Then the day comes that your son is five and goes to his warrior father. You grieve. You heal. Then, every time he comes home for carnival, it’s like ripping the wound open again. Each time you heal. And then, when he’s fifteen, maybe he chooses to stay in the garrison, and you grieve again. You lie awake at night with your eyes burning and your pillow wet. You choke on tears and they burn. You worry about his going into battle, being wounded, dying. Every battle means… every battle means someone dies. Maybe your son, or your friend’s son. Some women can’t go on doing it over and over. Some women try to forget; they never speak of their sons again after the boys turn fifteen. Other women go on watching them, waving to them from the wall, sending them gifts.” Her voice broke and she turned away.
“Don’t you think Habby and Byram will come back?” Morgot’s distress was unexpected and frightening, and Stavia asked for reassurance, even though she already knew the answer.
“I don’t know, Stavvy. I hope so. But we just don’t know.” Morgot’s eyes were wet as she sought a way to change the subject. “Why don’t you go tell Myra to come peel these potatoes?”
“I’d just as soon not. She’s been pretty awful ever since that day,” Stavia said in a glow of self-righteousness.
“I think that’s mostly just drama.”
“Well, whatever it is.” She sneaked a look at her mother who looked more herself now.
“Go get her anyhow.”
Stavia went, taking her time about it, giving Morgot time to get herself together. Myra came to the kitchen and peeled potatoes with a look of remote distaste. Stavia and Morgot talked about nothing much, their conversation swirling around Myra’s silence like water around a half-submerged rock. Stavia thought their familiar babble might eat Myra away in a thousand years. Myra was blaming them for what Barten had done to Tally, blaming both Morgot and Stavia for being there when she found out about it. Not blaming Barten, though, which Stavia found aggravating.
“Did you get down to the medical center today?” Morgot asked the silent girl.
“No.” A curt monosyllable.
“Will you please go tomorrow?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“Myra, we’ve talked this over and over. If you don’t want to be in detention during carnival, you’ve got to get down to the med center for a checkup and get yourself stamped.”
“You’re not stamped!”
“No, because I have no intention of putting on skirts and taking part in carnival. Not this year. But you probably do.”
“I haven’t decided.”
“You can’t leave it until the day of carnival, Myra. You have to make the decision well in advance. That’s just the way it’s done.”
“And what if I don’t?”
“You know very well what if you don’t. If you don’t, you can stay in the house during carnival as you chose to do last year and the year before. That was fine then. You weren’t interested in anyone particularly, and I’m not about to suggest that you should have played catch-as-catch-can in the taverns at age fifteen or sixteen. However, you’re seventeen now, and you are interested in someone. I don’t want you being angry at me because you won’t obey the ordinances and then you want to have an assignation with Barten and can’t!”
“I’ll stay in the house. The rules are stupid, anyhow.”
Stavia, who agreed that some of the ordinances were stupid but who never would have said so, was aghast at Myra’s comment.
“Fine. If that’s your decision. If you go onto the street, you’ll be picked up and taken to detention, and they’ll probably assign you to a supervised labor team to clean the assignation houses.”
Myra slammed down the bowl of peeled potatoes and stalked down the hall to the sanitary closet.
“She’s hiding in there,” said Stavia.
“I know. Poor thing. She’s all mixed up between what her body wants to do and all the romantic, dramatic notions Barten had helped her work up for herself. Deathless love. Undying promises.”
“That’s just Myra,” she said uncertainly.
“Well, it’s any of us, Stavvy. I’ve heard a few of those same promises from young warriors. I’ve had a few romantic or sentimental notions myself, from time to time. We all like to invent worlds that are better than this one, better for lovers, better for mothers…. For all I know, Barten believes it himself. Many warriors do.”
“Like the poets.”
“What poets?”
“In Iphigenia at Ilium. Making what really happened to Iphigenia into something else. Really she was murdered, but that made the men feel guilty, so they pretended she had sacrificed her own life. Barten knows what would really happen to Myra if she went out to the Gypsy camp, but he makes it into something else in the stories he tells her.”
“Mmm. Yes. As a matter of fact, that’s a very good comparison. It’s one of the things we on the Council try to keep in mind, the need to keep sentimentality and romance out of our deliberations. Leave romance to the warriors: We can’t afford it in Women’s Country.”
“You could tell Myra she’d better get it while she can. There’s no fucking in Hades.”
“Stavia!”
Stavia flushed, then turned guilty white. The phrase was more literary than womanly. She heard a choking sound and turned to find her mother bent across the kitchen table, eyes flowing with tears, lost in silent laughter.
ON THE LAST DAY POSSIBLE, Myra went to the medical center and was given an implant
