At the seventh level v1.., p.1
At The Seventh Level (v1.0), page 1
23-03-2023
Abba! Was there ever another planet like that? With thirty thousand years of recorded history, the most exquisite etiquette, art and culture more refined and stylized than any other world— and its treatment of its women totally barbaric, monstrous, inhuman.
To Coyote Jones it was a complex puzzle in contradictions. On the one hand there was a murder plot against its most esteemed personage, Jacinth of the Seventh Level. On the other hand, because she was a woman she was virtually a prisoner of her station; her every achievement resulting in envious malice.
Coyote had to call upon the galactic Communipaths for information, on the planet’s rulers for guidance, and finally upon the Chief of the Licensed Criminals for direction. But ultimately he had to find his own way—if they didn’t kill him and Jacinth first.
At the
Seventh Level
SUZETTE HADEN ELGIN
DAW BOOKS, INC.
Donald A. Wollheim Publisher
1301 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N. Y. 10019
Copyright ©, 1972, by Suzette Hayden Elgin
For the Sake of Grace, copyright © 1969 by Mercury Press, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
COVER PAINTING AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE BARR.
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
AT THE SEVENTH LEVEL
Contents
Prologue FOR THE SAKE OF GRACE
Interlude THE ROLL OF IAMBS AND THE CLANG OF SPONDEES
ABBA
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue MODULATION IN ALL THINGS
TO THE COUNCIL OF ABBA:
Prologue
FOR THE SAKE OF GRACE
The Khadilh ban-harihn frowned at the disk he held in his hand, annoyed and apprehensive. There was always, of course, the chance of malfunction in the corn-system. He reached forward and punched the transmit button again with one thumb, and the machine clicked to itself fitfully and delivered another disk in the message tray. He picked it up, looked at it and swore a round assortment of colorful oaths, since no women were present.
There on the left was the matrix-mark that identified his family, the ban-harihn symbol quite clear; no possibility of error there. And from it curled the suitable number of small lines, yellow for the females, green for the males, one for each member of his household, all decorously in order. Except for one.
The yellow line that represented at all times the state of being of his wife, the Khadilha Althea, was definitely not as it should have been. It was interrupted at quarter-inch intervals by a small black dot, indicating that all was not well with the Khadilha. And the symbol at the end of the line was not the blue cross that would have classified the difficulty as purely physical; it was the indeterminate red star indicating only that the problem, whatever it was, could be looked upon as serious or about to become serious.
The Khadilha sighed. That would mean anything, from his wife’s misuse of their credit cards through a security leak by one of her servants to an unsuitable love affair— although his own knowledge of the Khadilha’s chilly nature made him consider the last highly unlikely. The only possible course for him was to ask for an immediate full report.
And just what, he wondered, would he do, if the report were to make it clear that he was needed at home at once? One did not simply pick up one’s gear and tootle off home from the outposts of the Federation. It would take him at the very least nine months to arrive in his home city-cluster, even if he were able to command a priority flight with suspended-animation berths and warp facilities. Damn the woman anyway, what could she be up to?
He punched the button for voice transmittal, and the corn-system began to hum at him, indicating readiness for dialing. He dialed, carefully selecting the planet code, since his last attempt to contact his home, on his wife’s birthday, had resulted in a most embarrassing conversation with a squirmy-tentacled creature that be had gotten out of its (presumed) bed in the middle of its (presumed) sleep. And he’d had to pay in full for the call, too, all intergalactic communication being on a buyer-risk basis.
“…three-three-two-three-two…” he finished, very cautiously, and waited. The tiny screen lit up, and the words “Stand by” appeared, to be replaced in a few seconds by “Scribe (female) of the household ban-harihn, which meant he had at least dialed correctly. The screen cleared and the words were replaced by the face of his household Scribe, so distorted by distance as to be only by courtesy a face, but with the ban-harihn matrix-mark superimposed in green, and yellow across the screen as security.
He spoke quickly, mindful of the com-rates at this distance.
“Scribe ban-harihn, this morning the state-of-being disk indicated some difficulty in the condition of the Khadilha Althea. Please advise if this condition could be described as an emergency.”
After the usual brief lag for conversion to symbols, the reply was superimposed over the matrix-mark, and the Khadilh thought as usual that these tiny intergalactic screens became so cluttered before a conversation was terminated that one could hardly make out the messages involved.
The message in this case was “Negative,” and the Khadilh smiled; the Scribe was even more mindful than he of the cost of this transmittal.
He pushed the erase button and finished with, “Thank you, Scribe ban-barihn. You will then prepare at once a written report, in detail, and forward it to me by the fastest available means. Should the problem intensify to emergency point, I now authorize a corn-system transmittal to that effect, to be initiated by any one of my sons. Terminate.”
The screen went blank and the Khadilh, just for curiosity, punched one more time the state-of-being control. The machine delivered another disk, and sure enough, there it was again, black dots, red star and all. He threw it into the disposal, shrugged his shoulders helplessly and ordered coffee. There was nothing whatever that he could do until he received the Scribe’s report.
However, if it should turn out that he had wasted the cost of an intergalactic transmittal on some petty household dispute, there was going to be hell to pay, he promised himself, and a suitable punishment administered to the Khadilha by the nearest official of the Women’s Discipline Unit. There certainly ought to be some way to make the state-of-being codes a bit more detailed so that everything from war to an argument with a servingwoman didn’t come across on the same symbol.
The report arrived by Tele-Bounce in four days. Very wise choice, he thought approvingly, since the Bounce machinery was totally automatic and impersonal. It was somewhat difficult to read, since the Scribe had specified that it was to be delivered to him without transcription other than into verbal symbols, and it was therefore necessary for him to scan a roll of yellow paper with a message eight symbols wide and seemingly miles long. He read only enough to convince him that no problem of discretion could possibly be involved, and then he ran the thing through the transcribe slot, receiving a standard letter on white paper in return.
’To the Khadilh ban-harihn,” it read, “as requested, the following report from the Scribe of his household:
Three days ago, as the Khadilh is no doubt aware, the festival of the Spring Rains was celebrated here. The entire household, with the exception of the Khadilh himself, was present at a very large and elaborate procession held to mark the opening of the Alaharibahn-lchalida Trance Hours. A suitable spot for watching the procession, entirely in accordance with decorum, had been chosen by the Khadilha Althea, and tire women of the household were stand* ing in the second row along the edge of the street set aside for the women.
There had been a number of dancers, bands, and so on, followed by thirteen of the Poets of this city-cluster. The Poets had almost passed, along with the usual complement of exotic animals and mobile flowers and the like, and no untoward incident of any kind had occurred, when quite suddenly the Khadilh’s daughter Jacinth was approached by (pardon my liberty of speech) the Poet Anna-Mary, who is, as the Khadilh knows, a female. The Poet leaned from her mount, indicating with her staff of bells that it was her wish to speak to the Khadilh’s daughter, and halting the procession to do so. It was at this point that the incident occurred which has no doubt given rise to the variant marking in the state-of-being disk line for the Khadilha Althea. Quite unaccountably, the Khadilha, rather than sending the child forward to speak with the Poet (as would have been proper), grabbed the child Jacinth by the shoulders, whirling her around and covering her completely with her heavy robes so that she could neither speak nor see.
The Poet Anna-Mary merely bowed from her horse and signaled for the procession to continue, but she was quite white and obviously offended. The family made a show of participating in the rest of the day’s observances, but the Khadilh’s sons took the entire household home by mid-afternoon, thereby preventing the Khadilba from participating in tire Trance Hours. This was no doubt a wise course.
What sequel there may have been to this, the Scribe does not know, as no announcement has been made to the household. The Scribe here indicates her respect and subservience to the Khadilh.
Terminate with thanks.
“Well!” said the Khadilh. He laid the letter down on the top of his desk, thinking hard, rubbing his beard with one hand.
What could reasonably be expected in t he way of repercussions from a public insult to an elderly—and touchy—Poet? It was hard to say.
As the only female Poet on the planet, the Poet Anna-Mary was much alone; as her duties were not arduous, she had much time to brood. And though she was a Poet, she remained only a female, with the female’s inferior reasoning powers. She was accustomed to reverent homage, to women holding up their children to touch the hem of her robe. She could hardly be expected to react with pleasure to an insult in public, and from a female.
It was at his sons that she would be most likely to strike, through the University, he decided, and he could not chance that He had worked too hard, and they had worked too hard, to allow a vindictive female, no matter how lofty her status, to destroy what they had built up. He had better go home and leave the orchards to take care of themselves; important as the lush peaches of Earth were to the economy of his home planet, his sons were of even greater importance.
It was not every family that could boast of five sons in the University, all five selected by competitive examinations for the Major in Poetry. Sometimes a family might have two sons chosen, but the rest would be refused, as the Khadilh himself had been refused, and would then have to be satisfied with the selection of Law or Medicine or Government or some other of the Majors. He smiled proudly, remembering the respectful glances of his friends when each of his sons in turn had placed high in the examinations and had been awarded the Poet Major, his oldest son entering at the Fourth Level. And when the youngest had been chosen, thus releasing the oldest from the customary vow of celibacy—since to impose it would have meant the end of the family line, an impossible situation—the Khadilh had had difficulty in maintaining even a pretense of modesty. The meaning, of course, was that he would have as grandson the direct offspring of a Poet, something that had not happened within his memory or his father’s memory. He had been given to understand, in fact, that it had been more than three hundred years since all sons of any one family had entered the Poetry courses. (A family having only one son was prohibited by law from entering the Poetry Examinations, they told him.)
Yes, he most go home, and to hell with the peaches of Earth. Let them rot, if the garden-robots could not manage them.
He went to the corn-system and punched through a curt transmittal of his intention, and then set to pulling the necessary strings to obtain a priority flight.
When the Khadilh arrived at his home, his sons were lined up in his study, waiting for him, each in the coarse brown student’s tunic that was compulsory, but with the scarlet Poet’s stripe around the hem to delight his eyes. He smiled at them, saying, “It is a pleasure to see you once more, my sons; you give rest to my eyes and joy to my heart”
Michael, the oldest answered in kind.
“It is our pleasure to see you, Father”
“Let us all sit down,” said the Khadilh, motioning them to their places about the study table that stood in the center of the room. When they were seated, he struck the table with his knuckles, in the old ritual, three times slowly.
“No doubt you know why I have chosen to abandon my orchards to the attention of the garden-robots and return home so suddenly,” he said. “Unfortunately, it has taken me almost ten months to reach you. There was no more rapid way to get home to you, much as I wished for one.”
“We understand, Father,” said his oldest son.
“Then, Michael,” went on Khadilh, “would you please bring me up to date on the developments here since the incident at the procession of the Spring Rains.”
His son seemed hesitant to speak, his black brows drawn together over his eyes, and the Khadilh smiled at him encouragingly.
“Come, Michael,” he said, “surely it is not courteous to make your father wait in this fashion!”
“You will realize, Father,” said the young man slowly, “that it has not been possible to communicate with you since the time of your last transmittal. You will also realize that this matter has not been one about which advice could easily be requested. I have had no choice but to make decisions as best I could.”
“I realize that. Of course.”
“Very well, then. I hope you will not be angry, Father.”
“I shall indeed be angry if I am not told at once exactly what has occurred this past ten months. You make me uneasy, my son.”
Michael took a deep breath and nodded. “All right, Father,” he said. “1 will be brief.”
“And quick.”
“Yes, Father. I took our household away from the festival as soon as I decently could without creating talk; and when we arrived at home, I sent the Khadilha at once to her quarters, with orders to stay there until you should advise me to the contrary.”
“Quite right,” said the Khadilh. “Then what?”
“The Khadilha disobeyed me, Father.”
“Disobeyed you? In what way?”
“The Khadilha Althea disregarded my orders entirely, and she took our sister into the Small Corridor, and there she allowed her to look into the cell where our aunt is kept, Father.”
“My God!” shouted the Khadilh. “And you made no move to stop her?”
“Father,” said Michael ban-baribn, “you must realize that no one could have anticipated the actions of the Khadilha Althea. We would certainly have stopped her had we known, but who would have thought that the Khadilha would disobey the order of an adult male? It was assumed that she would go to her quarters and remain there.”
“I see.”
“I did not contact the Women’s Discipline Unit,” Michael continued. “I preferred that such an order should come from you, Father. However, orders were given that the Khadilha should be restricted to her quarters, and no one has been allowed to see her except the servingwomen. The wires to her corn-system were disconnected, and provision was made for suitable medication to be added to her diet. You will find her very docile, Father.”
The Khadilh was trembling with indignation.
“Discipline will be provided at once, my son,” he said.
“I apologize for the disgusting behavior of the Khadilha. But please go on—what of my daughter?”
“That is perhaps the most distressing thing of all.”
“In what way?”
Michael looked thoroughly miserable.
“Answer me at once,” snapped the Khadilh, “and in full.”
“Our sister Jacinth,” said his second son, Nicolas, “was already twelve years of age at the time of the festival. When she returned from the Small Corridor, without notice to any one of us, she announced her intention by letter to the Poet Anna-Mary—her intention to compete in the examinations for the Major of Poetry.”
“And the Poet Anna-Mary—”
“Turned the announcement immediately over to the authorities at the Poetry Unit,” finished Michael. “Certainly she made no attempt to dissuade our sister.”
“She is amply revenged then for the insult of the Khadilha,” said the Khadilh bitterly. “Were there any other acts on the part of the Poet Anna-Mary?”
“None, Father. Our sister has been cloistered by government order since that time, of course, to prevent contamination of the other females.”
“Oh, dear God,” breathed the Khadilh, “how could such a thing have touched my household—for the second time?”
He thought a moment “When are the examinations, then? I’ve lost all track of time.”
“It has been ten months, Father.”
“In about a month, then?”
“In three weeks.”
“Will they let me see Jacinth?”
“No, Father,” said Michael. “And, Father—”
