Platform

As I put up the installments, they’ll appear here in their proper order.

Well-stars, that city of ancient establishment, lay (as every eight-year old geography student was required to know) to the east of a great desert and to the west of a sea. The city was as massive as its reputation - both were solid and did not look as if they would vanish in the near future.

The city was divided into three sections. The first division was quite sharp: a Green Waste filled with fruit trees and old stone structures now uninhabited, separated the palace complex (which included the temple to the city’s Goddess) from the City of the Nobles. This Green Waste had become a preserve for the homeless, where they might sleep at night and from which they might present petitions at the temple windows even if they did not have the clothes or offerings which would permit them to enter.

The next division was more rough. About the place where the great stone wells began to appear at every street corner, servants of the city’s rich and noble met every day - or stared across a well at - the impoverished nobles; the poor, and the destitute. The wells, at least, were free to all.

The Goddess (though she kept many prostitutes in her own establishment) was very particular about the necessity of certifiable chastity before marriage, among both rich and poor. The question of how exactly this was to be accomplished she left to the parents, tutors, and governors of said youths, who managed it according to custom and financial ability.

The poor, who lived south of the Wells, did it inexpensively. According to their need at the moment, they either castrated their offspring quite young and sold them as slaves in the palace complex, or they married them off before puberty - as young as 15 years old, it was rumored in the City of the Nobles - and hoped devoutly that the young couple paired thus apart from their own volition would grow into one another. The gossip of the entire city, from palace to temple, from the City of the Nobles to beggars on the street, was always full of some young wife who had become a prostitute because she had matured two years younger than her unfortunate, baby-faced husband - or a father who was suing his son-in-law on charge of seeking solace for his burning inwards from someone else than his still in-the-bud daughter.

This method, whatever its faults, was less expensive than the complex method rigorously followed in the City of the Nobles. There, once their offspring turned seventeen, parents hired or bought guards and chaperones who could swear an oath as to the young person’s whereabouts and activities during every minute of the day or night. At that time also, when parents knew that their children could be expected to bloom in as little as a year, they introduced them to The Salon, where they could spend their days interacting with one another when not shut up in their parents’ houses or escorted about the city by guards.

In the lower part of the Salon quiet, temperate, well-bred youths of seventeen years old and upward gathered every day to form friendships and discuss the astronomy, religion, history, geography, and philosophy which they had spent all the previous years of their lives working so hard to acquire. Their tall statures, mature expressions, and quiet pursuit of life’s more serious subjects belied their babyish voices and innocent stares. Around the edges of the room eunuch soldiers from the Goddess’ own army stared silently at them all day long for any sign of maturation.

In the upper part, guarded well by yet more eunuch soldiers, a rowdier bunch with boiling faces, hot breath, and desperation in their eyes, bid for one another’s will to marry in a race against time. From the day that each young man or woman declared himself as “out of the bud” (or was so declared by the stern-faced watchers down below) he had exactly six months to find a willing life-partner, declare his betrothal, and depart the Salon forever. Occasionally, very wealthy noblemen watched from behind a screen for a few hours and returned the next day with some desperate girl’s even more desperate father to fetch her home and expand his collection of concubines - which was respectable, if not ideal.

Across the city, from palace to streets alike, the penalty for not being married six months after coming out of the bud was castration for both male and female. Likewise anyone who reached maturation without being either married or entered in the lists of the Salon was subject to castration if the Goddess’ guards came across him. Many useful places in society were filled by such unhappy people - or happy people, in the case of over-philosophic youngsters who, appalled by the rowdy crowd in the Upper Salon, volunteered for The Quiet Life and took a station as a nurse, orator, musician, or the like without ever having felt the heat of manhood or womanhood within.

Maerion had been coming to the Lower Salon for three years when he entered one sunny day soon after his twentieth birthday. He was not likely to become a voluntary eunuch, nor was his friend Hugo. Both were known for their cheery enjoyment of all that life sent their way, and it was not unusual for the Goddess to receive petitions at nightfall from hopeful but as-yet flat-chested girls that one or the other of the boys might remain in the bud until such fortunate moment as they themselves would burst out of their long childhood into the full glories of womanliness.

Lately, Maerion and Hugo had been engaged in a delightful series of public debates (about the old myth that the city’s Wells had been planted by a Star in the shape of some famous constellation) with two willowy girls just their age. These girls, Perspice and Cyrulla by name, had only recently revealed their developing powers of wit and delivery, and while the boys may have been winning the debates in terms of pure reason, the girls were by far the favorites of all audiences. Even the Upper Crowd leaned down from their balconies to hear the entertaining repartee between the two teams. (Bets were being made as to which girl would marry which boy.)

As yet unconcerned about that question, the four sat this day about a table, engaging in friendly talk after the most recent debate. Maerion raised a toast to the Goddess, and Hugo to her worthy followers (the Goddess was known for her debating abilities) and both girls returned the compliments with fresh, uninhibited gazes.

Then in an odd moment, Maerion turned his head toward the doorway and became silent, gazing at a shaft of sunlight illuminating the mosaic floor. His three friends, in sympathy to his change of mood, fell silent as well.

Cyrulla murmured “What is it, Maerion?”

Maerion answered as quietly: “I felt that I saw into the future, and knew that none of us would ever be this happy again.”

The boy raised his thoughtful eyes to the horizon outside the open door, but the gazes of Cyrulla and Perspice flew to the Balcony in the Upper Salon where mixed and remixed daily all the possibilities of the their futures.

“We’re getting old, I suppose” Perspice said. “That makes it more delightful to be down here but brings the day of going up there ever closer.”

“I hadn’t connected the two thoughts so closely” Maerion shrugged, looking aloft at last.

Hugo laughed. “I don’t understand - though my father’s explained it a thousand times - I honestly don’t understand how mature thoughtful people like us can turn into such animals as that crowd above. Do you suppose we’ll act like that?”

“My mother says it’s The Heat.” Cyrulla offered. “When it comes, she says, everyone loses their minds and acts on some feverish instinct. Like a cat or a rat.”

Perspice shuddered, and Cyrulla caught the motion and looked at her asking, “Are you afraid? I’m not. I want to feel passion and fever.”

“They say it’s like hunger” Hugo said. “Yet I am still bewildered. When I am hungry for food, I don’t come to the table like a street-dog. I recline in some genteel attitude and pick at my food like a gentleman should, even after I’ve been riding the Desert Road all morning.”

“May the Goddess grant your wife that you approach her as delicately” said Perspice a little primly. Her three friends stared at her a moment, and then all four erupted into hilarious laughter which drew stares from the Lower Salon Guards.

After they had quietened, Maerion sighed and returned to his gazing out the doorway. “I suppose that’s what The Cage is for. It’s like training a young man or woman how to be restrained in his newly awakened appetite, and by the time one marries, it is hoped that one will be able to … approach the table like a gentleman.

Cyrulla shuddered. “Can you think of anyone for whom you would spend months inside The Cage?”

Hugo looked at her, then around the Lower Salon, and frowned. “I don’t think I’d do it for any girl” he said. “I think I’d do it because I have to in order to escape mutilation.”

Maerion turned back to the table and leaned toward Hugo. “What about Virtue?” he said. “Wouldn’t you do it for Virtue’s sake?”

“I hope I would” Hugo said. “But I just don’t understand.” He glanced again at the Upper Salon, where a very loud race was on between some of the older girls who were glad of the chance to lay aside their outer garments before such a large crowd of eligible young men.

“I’m just not convinced I’ll turn into one of those - cats or rats. I’m not sure I need a cage to preserve my virtue.”

Cyrulla stared at him, perplexed. “But no one can do it that way” she said, “unless granted a miracle by the Goddess. Isn’t that - “

But she stopped and gazed at the howling crowd above.

“Unless there’s some other reason why people act like that up there” she continued a moment later. “But that would mean everyone was wrong. Is it possible?”

“It’s happened before” Hugo said. He turned and touched Maerion on the shoulder. “I offer you a challenge” he said. “I believe we can go up there and act as rationally as we do down here.”

Then he turned to Cyrulla. “I’ll wait for you” he said. “If you don’t come up within the first five months, I’ll calmly weigh my choices and pick the next best candidate.”

Cyrulla’s eyes widened. Few proposals of marriage happened in the Lower Salon, because fortunate families such as hers viewed such activity as the province of less-learned and less refined people from the southern half of the City of Wells and Stars.

But “Don’t tell anyone” was all she said, and Hugo responded with a light reassurance.

“I’ll try it, as well” Maerion said at last. “It can hardly hurt to attempt how much rational function it is possible to preserve in the Heat. I wonder if anyone has ever looked into it before.”

He brightened. “We can write dissertations on it once we are married.”

“In that case, Cyrulla and I will make the attempt as well” Perspice announced, “and put out dissertations of our own.”

The boys laughed.

“Women writing dissertations!” Hugo said. “Who would read them?”

“We’ll submit them at the temple” Perspice said. “I believe they are rather more approving of femininity than not up there.”

Hugo laughed again, and Cyrulla, watching him with a new morbid interest, thought she noticed a crack in his voice. She shuddered. Six months a piece they had to cross one another’s path in the Balcony above.

Hugo left soon after with his father, and Cyrulla’s personal slave arrived to escort her back to the feminine wing of her father’s home. As they hugged goodbye Perspice whispered “Don’t worry, but accept whatever comes with happiness”.

As day ended, the Lower Salon became empty and lamps were extinguished there, even as others were being lit in the Upper Salon, which grew more crowded and louder. Perspice, alone now with Maerion, turned back and saw him leaning against his chair and gazing toward the balcony with a frown.

A young man shouted rudely down at him from above: “Don’t worry, baby-face, you’ll come up soon enough!”

Maerion continued to stare at the half-drunk fellow with scientific interest. Perspice walked over and stood by his side.

“Are you trying to imagine whether that young man could help what he just said?”

He nodded.

“Yes. Also, which is the real point, whether we can possibly take what we have down here, and holding it safely, pass through that” (he gestured above) “into our next lives.”

“It’s like looking at life whole for a moment” she whispered. “What does it all mean?”

“It means we’re standing on an edge or a border between two closed places and for a moment we get to see everything.”

“I hope we come out of the two closed places into the open.”

People noticed as the four friends became regular in one another’s company, and the Lower Salon Gaurds took every opportunity to stare suspiciously at their tightly-wrapped clothing for any tell-tale swellings of flesh.

Cyrulla was becoming almost ungovernably irritable at home, but took care to hide the fact from Hugo, who was giddy. Maerion felt that he was girding himself for a race or a battle. Perspice steadied herself as if for a storm at sea, and grew quiet. Within three weeks their debates had ceased as everyone found himself too nervous, distracted, or irritable to perform publicly.

“If this is it” Cyrulla muttered one afternoon, “It stinks to heaven!” Perspice sighed.

“Steady, my friends, companions, and partly-betrothed” Hugo whispered distinctly. Cyrulla smirked; Maerion looked above fiercely.

“It seems to go on and on now” Perspice said. “I wish something would happen to which we might devote our energies or attention, or that would bring about some change!”

“I wish the whole city would burn down” Cyrulla muttered.

“Come, come” said Maerion. “It’s as if we’d put ourselves into the Cage before our time! Let’s have a game.”

It was nearly half an hour later, as the four friends distracted themselves in a marbles game, that someone entered the Salon who who would induce change to an extent and of a kind none of them had dreamed of.

The doors closed to prepare for the formal presentation that meant a newcomer was to be introduced to the Lower Salon. Everyone below stood, the four friends with too little attention, perhaps. The doors were opened again, ceremonially, by two guards, and then four family servants entered, stood aside, and presented their master’s daughter.

She was a lovely girl who stood modestly, gaze downward, between her two parents, who seemed tense.

Maerion felt his mouth grow dry and something scrabbled at his innards. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and tried to look somewhere else, but then realized it would be rude. He looked back at the girl and found himself craving a ripe juicy peach. A sudden quietness above, and then a violent stirring and scuffling, signaled that the crowd in the Upper Salon was just as interested in this new arrival as those below.

“She’s out” Hugo whispered. “How unusual. What will they do?”

“The guards will certainly maim her” Cyrulla answered with awe. “She has been out unsupervised in her Heat and certainly cannot be a virgin.”

“I say she can” said Hugo. “I say there are ways to preserve one’s Virtue other than the Salon and the Cage.”

Perspice shuddered. “But the guards will see it differently. How did her parents not have the sense…?”

But that question was answered when the girl’s father presented her.

“My daughter” he said, “Sworn and protected, a virgin; Janet. Seventeen years of age.” He handed papers to the chief soldier.

“Send her up here! She’s ours” came shouts from the Upper Salon.

The guard looked at the papers dubiously. No doubt they contained a record of oaths as to Janet’s virginity. Then he was questioning the father quietly and the mother’s face grew taut in terror. Janet appeared unaware of any impending doom. Her father answered the guard, and the guard answered again; and then the father answered more loudly.

“I tell you, she is only seventeen! Do you allow maids of sixteen to enter the Salon?”

“No, certainly not” the guard answered gruffly. “Nor do we allow women out of the bud to enter this Court of Virgins. How could this city give her in marriage to one of our devoted men when she might be polluted? I do not care to tempt the Goddess.

“I swear to you, this girl has been as well protected as anyone here!” the distraught man shouted. “She grew early in everything. The Goddess so willed. That is not her fault.”

Janet had begun to seem frightened and her gaze lifted at last to the staring group of younglings in the Lower Salon. She tried to shrink back into her tight child-clothes, but the swellings of bosom, thigh and inwards could not be hidden.

“This is very sad” Perspice said, looking down at the table.

“Much sadder in light of our new questions” Maerion said in a shaky voice that cracked for the first time. “Suppose virtue is not dependent upon the Salon and the Cage; suppose the father did protect her as well as we have been or as those hoodlums above have been from their raging folly. Should she be punished whose virtue has been preserved at such cost?”

“If they do it they raise their hands against the Goddess herself” Hugo said in a violent whisper. Cyrulla stared at the unfortunate young woman.

“If” Maerion began ponderously, “If that is true - then these guards are but blasphemers and someone should, in turn, raise their hand against them. Is that not what all our education has taught us?”

Hugo looked despairingly at his slim muscles. “I would make the attempt” he said, “and believe it heroic - history would sing our names - but I doubt of our success.”

“Still, the Goddess would approve the venture” Maerion replied.

Perspice murmured agreement. “But quietly” she warned, “or you will have no hope at all.”

About that time, Janet was dragged away, followed by her stern-faced father and weeping mother, toward the Upper City.

The whole place broke out in loud discussions and exclamations. Perspice half stood, saying “If you discover where they are taking her you may find a way to help her to escape to sanctuary in the temple.”

“But there she will become a prostitute” the boys objected.

“No!” Cyrulla insisted. “Some rich man will come and pay for her hand. You can find someone!”

Hugo stood. “Then let us bid you ladies farewell” he said (here Maerion stood as well) “for we have some inquiries to make.” Cyrulla and Perspice watched them stride out of the Salon and beckon to their excited slaves who crouched near the doorway.

Cyrulla grew nearly hysterical in a suppressed, silent sort of way. “I want to burn this city to the ground, I really do!” she protested when Perspice tried to hush her. Perspice beckoned to her own slave and Cyrulla’s.

“Go home, dear Cyrulla” she pleaded. “You will endanger the boys!” But when Cyrulla stood up, Perspice and their slaves made her sit down again quickly, for there was menstrual blood on her marble seat.

Perspice’s slave happned to be wearing a red cloak which she lent Cyrulla for the walk home, and they all wiped the seat unobtrusively with handkercheifs. Then they helped her to go to the guards and declare herself.

Cyrulla’s mother received her daughter’s friend hospitably when she had helped Cyrulla into the long-anticipated clothing of an adult woman; and Perspice spent the night at their house. Neither of them slept very much, wondering and worrying about the boys and poor Janet.