The Gate to Women's Country

in her upper arm—vitamins, Morgot said, because she hadn’t been eating properly. At the same visit she was sealed for carnival. The red ink of the stamp was hidden by a fall of auburn hair at one side of her forehead and was thus scarcely a visible matter. However, once she had it, she seemed to come to terms with herself and almost stopped flouncing about. She did stop twitting Joshua, though she didn’t treat him with her old, affectionate respect. Still, it made life pleasanter for both Morgot and Stavia, as well, no doubt, as for Joshua himself. Carnival was never a comfortable time for the servitors. They stayed mostly in the residential or private areas in order to avoid any confrontations between servitors and the warriors they might once have known rather well. Not that any of Marthatown’s garrison except Habby and Byram would know Joshua. Joshua had come from Susantown when he was only eighteen. Men who returned through the Women’s Gate often chose to go to different cities from the ones they were born in, just to avoid seeing old acquaintances. If Habby returned through the Women’s Gate, he could choose to be sent to Susantown or Mollyburg or to one of a dozen other cities. Morgot or Stavia could always visit him there.

Beneda had delivered a message to Chernon, telling him he would be welcomed at home. Stavia passed her examinations in women’s studies and physiology, and was commended for her gardening project. Her sketch for a setting of Iphigenia at Ilium was acceptable, as was her rendition of her assigned part. She managed to write from memory the assigned section of the ordinances, making only a few mistakes in punctuation. Then all studies and projects were terminated for one month to allow the instructors time to make their own carnival arrangements. Except for these semiannual holidays, school went on year after year, all year around. No matter how old they were, almost all the women in the city were studying something.

“After the convulsions,” Morgot said, “a lot of knowledge was lost because people didn’t know anything outside their own narrow areas, and the books were gone. Even if you’re seventy, you should be learning something more in case it’s needed.”

The thought of still having to study when she was seventy made Stavia’s head ache.

Chernon’s arrival at his mother’s house coincided with Stavia’s having more time than usual to visit Beneda—and visit Chernon, too, of course, since he was there. Since he had made a point of asking Beneda to invite her.

“Why did you speak to me the day we brought Jerby to his warrior father?” she asked him. They were on the upper porch of Sylvia’s house, hanging the washing out above the courtyard. Beneda had taken the wash-wagon to fetch the full baskets from the sector wash-house, and Stavia had offered to hang the load if Chernon would carry the basket up the stairs for her.

He thought carefully for a moment, deciding what to say. He certainly didn’t want to tell Stavia that he had spoken to her because Michael had suggested it. “I didn’t dare go up to Mother, or Beneda,” he temporized. “I didn’t know if I’d be welcome, and besides, they were standing too far back. I was going to give you a message for them, but there just wasn’t time.” He shook out a wet sheet and handed her one corner of it.

She pegged the sheet to the line and hauled the line on its pulley out over the courtyard. “You’re allowed to send written messages, aren’t you?”

“Oh yeah, if you have to. If you’re willing to explain everything all the time and argue with the officers. If I’d been eight or nine, no one would have thought anything of it. I do sleeper-in duty for kids that age, and they’re always homesick. But when you’re thirteen or fourteen, you’re expected to go home just because it’s a duty. You’re not supposed to want to.”

“I suppose they say it’s womanish.” She finished hanging the last of the wash—Beneda’s undershift—and wiped her wet hands on her trousers.

“That, yes. And worse things. It’s all right to miss your mother’s cooking, though.”

“Beneda says you eat a lot of it!” What Beneda had said, actually, was that he gulped and didn’t even bother to taste what he was eating.

He flushed, and she changed the subject. “Why did that warrior make you insult your mother?”

There was an odd expression on Chernon’s face, half hungry, half furious.

Stavia blurted, “Oh, I’m sorry. Morgot tells me my mouth will be the death of me. I didn’t mean to be personal.”

“It’s all right. I don’t think he ever knew her. Mother said she might have met him once. And she said she was never—you know—with him. He claimed he got her pregnant but she didn’t name him as the father out of spite….”

“That’s silly, Chernon.”

He gave her a quick glance from the corner of his eye, intercepted an unexpectedly sceptical glance, then laughed unconvincingly. “Oh, it was all crazy. Sometimes he claimed I was really his son, but I’m not. I asked Mother and she says no, I’m not. He probably never even had a son. Probably no woman ever sent a boy to him.”

“Then why make such a fuss over it?”

He seemed angry at the question. “You women don’t understand! Mother wanted me just to lie to him, but I told her that was dishonorable. She said telling the truth to a madman was fruitless, and your mother said the same thing, but he was my superior, my senior, anyhow, and I had to do what was honorable. Warriors don’t lie to each other. I tried to tell you women that.”

“‘You women’?”

He flushed. “My mother. Your mother. I tried to explain I had to do what Vinsas wanted, even if it was crazy, because that’s what we do in the garrison. We obey orders, and we don’t ask whether the officer is crazy or not!”

“You knew he