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was a Terran and had lived on Hain; that was something to be proud
of. I knew that she had come to O as a Mobile of the Ekumen (more pride, vague
and grandiose)
and that  your father and I fell in love at the Festival of Plays in Sudiran.
I knew also that arranging the marriage had been a tricky business. Getting
permission to resign her duties had not been difficult the Ekumen is used to
Mobiles going native.
But as a foreigner, Isako did not belong to a ki O moiety, and that was only
the first problem. I heard all about it from my othermother, Tubdu, an endless
source of family history, anecdote, and scandal.  You know, Tubdu told me
when I was eleven or twelve, her eyes shining and her irrepressible, slightly
wheezing, almost silent laugh beginning to shake her from the inside out  you
know, she didn t even know women got married? Where she came from, she said,
women don t marry.
I could and did correct Tubdu:  Only in her part of it. She told me
there s lots of parts of it where they do. I felt obscurely
defensive of my mother, though Tubdu spoke without a shadow of malice or
contempt; she adored Isako. She had fallen in love with her  the moment I saw
her that black hair! that mouth!  and simply found it endearingly funny that
such a woman could have expected to marry only a man.
 I understand, Tubdu hastened to assure me.  I know on Terra it s different,
their fertility was damaged, they have to think about marrying for children.
And they marry in twos, too. Oh, poor Isako! How strange it must have seemed
to her! I
remember how she looked at me  And off she went again into what we
children called The Great Giggle, her joyous, silent, seismic laughter.
To those unfamiliar with our customs I should explain that on O, a world with
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a low, stable human population and an ancient climax technology, certain
social arrangements are almost universal. The dispersed village, an
association of farms, rather than the city or state, is the basic social
unit. The population consists of two halves or moieties. A child is born into
its mother s moiety, so that all ki O (except the mountain folk of Ennik)
belong either to the Morning People, whose time is from midnight to noon, or
the Evening People, whose time is from noon to midnight. The sacred origins
and functions of the moieties are recalled in the Discussions and the Plays
and in the services at every farm shrine. The original social function of the
moiety was probably to structure exogamy into marriage and so discourage
inbreeding in isolated farmholds, since one can have sex with or marry only a
person of the other moiety. The rule is severely reinforced. Transgressions,
which of course occur, are met with shame, contempt, and ostracism. One s
identity as a Morning or an Evening Person is as deeply and
intimately part of oneself as one s gender, and has quite as much to do with
one s sexual life.
A ki O marriage, called a sedoretu, consists of a Morning woman and
man and an Evening woman and man; the heterosexual pairs are called
Morning and Evening according to the woman s moiety; the homosexual
pairs are called
Day the two women and Night the two men.
So rigidly structured a marriage, where each of four people must be sexually
compatible with two of the others while never having sex with the
fourth clearly this takes some arranging. Making sedoretu is a major
occupation of my people.
Experimenting is encouraged; foursomes form and dissolve, couples  try on
other couples, mixing and matching. Brokers, traditionally elderly widowers,
go about among the farmholds of the dispersed villages, arranging meetings,
setting up field dances, serving as universal confidants. Many marriages
begin as a love match of one couple, either homosexual or
heterosexual, to which another pair or two separate people become attached.
Many marriages are brokered or arranged by the village elders from
beginning to end. To listen to the old people under the village
great tree making a sedoretu is like watching a master game of
chess or tidhe.  If that Evening boy at Erdup were to meet young
Tobo during the flour-processing at Gad d...  Isn t Hodin n of the Oto
Morning a programmer? They could use a programmer at Erdup....
The dowry a prospective bride or groom can offer is their skill, or their
home farm. Otherwise undesired people may be chosen and honored for
the knowledge or the property they bring to a marriage. The
farmhold, in turn, wants its new members to be agreeable and useful.
There is no end to the making of marriages on O. I should say that all in all
they give as much satisfaction as any other arrangement to the participants,
and a good deal more to the marriage-makers.
Of course many people never marry. Scholars, wandering Discussers, itinerant
artists and experts, and specialists in the
Centers seldom want to fit themselves into the massive permanence of a
farmhold sedoretu. Many people attach themselves to a brother s or sister s
marriage as aunt or uncle, a position with limited, clearly defined
responsibilities; they can have sex with either or both spouses of the
other moiety, thus sometimes increasing the sedoretu from four to
seven or eight.
Children of that relationship are called cousins. The children of
one mother are brothers or sisters to one another; the children of
the Morning and the children of the Evening are germanes. Brothers, sisters,
and first cousins may not marry, but germanes may. In some less conservative
parts of O germane marriages are looked at askance, but they are
common and respected in my region.
My father was a Morning man of Udan Farmhold of Derdan nad Village in the hill
region of the Northwest Watershed of the Saduun River, on Oket, the smallest
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of the six continents of O. The village comprises seventy-seven farmholds, in
a deeply rolling, stream-cut region of fields and forests on the watershed of
the Oro, a tributary of the wide Saduun. It is fertile, pleasant country, with
views west to the Coast Range and south to the great floodplains of the Saduun
and the gleam of the sea beyond. The Oro is a wide, lively, noisy river full
of fish and children. I spent my childhood in or on or by the Oro, which runs [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]