Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 by The Ruins of Isis (v2.1)

Miranda led them was spacious, hung about with thin draperies and
divided by the screen-like movable partitions, in pale colors. The floor was
matted cleanly with what looked like woven reeds or tatami matting. All around
the room were evidences of children's play, toys and cloth dolls, a child's
shoe lying abandoned at one edge of the room, but the children themselves had
been hastily cleared away; Cendri fancied that she could still hear childish
voices, raised in surprise and protest at the interruption of their games.
                 Yes,
what is an Ambassador from another world to them? A Scholar from the Unity,
and her mission, means less than nothing. When will I see these people
as they really are, and not as they choose to present
themselves to me? Will I have any chance at all, to do that? A sociologist
can fade into the background, have a chance to observe. But I am here to serve elaborate political aims—aims 0/ the Unity, aims of the
Matriarchate—and studying the ruins is only a
pretext. What I am is living proof that the Unity will not endanger
their way of life. That is my real mission, even though the Unity did
not tell me so. I wonder if Dal has guessed it yet?
                 The
Lady Miranda was looking around the untidy, child-littered room distressfully.
"Is it true that on the world of the Scholar Dame there are rooms reserved
for formal meetings and policy?"
                 She
seemed so disturbed that Cendri paused a moment to frame her reply carefully,
to soothe that disquiet. She said at last, "Every world has its own
customs, Lady Miranda, and there is no great authority somewhere in Limbo to
say with arbitrary words which customs best express the human spirit." She
felt sententious as she mouthed this banal cliche—it had been an epigraph in an
elementary text of Comparative Anthropology—but it lightened the careworn look
on the Lady Miranda's face. She said, "Excuse me for a moment, I must see
if my mother is able to receive you—" and hurried past the screens,
leaving them alone. Cendri looked quickly at Dal, but he raised his eyebrows
noncommittally and said nothing. In the distance—privacy must be difficult or
impossible in houses with this kind of open construction—she heard a low-voiced
colloquy, then Miranda came hurrying back.
                 "Will
the Scholar Dame forgive my mother? The earthquake has caused much damage in
the fisherwoman villages along the shoreline, and the Pro-Matriarch has been
urgently summoned to see what damage has been done and what help must be given
to the poor women there; many boats were smashed in the harbor. She has left word
that she will return at sunset, unless some very great urgency should delay
her, at which hour she will be pleased to welcome you and dine in your company.
Meanwhile, may I make the Scholar Dame comfortable in the chambers which have
been prepared? And if there is any other way in which I may serve the Scholar
Dame, she has only to ask."
                 Cendri
replied politely that she was content to await the total convenience of the
Pro-Matriarch. She was getting very tired of these elaborately formal speeches,
which seemed to rest uncomfortably upon Miranda's lips. She added that it
would be very good to rest after the journey.
                 "If
the Scholar Dame will follow me—"
                 The
rooms lay at the top of two flights of stairs, elaborately and carefully
balustraded, and one of them closed off with a device which was evidently a
kind of nursery gate to keep small children from tumbling down. On these upper
floors she saw the first solid interior wall construction she had seen anywhere
on Isis/Cinderella, although the walls were masked, in part, by the light
movable screens which seemed the normal interior wall-decor for this world.
Walls and screens were painted with murals that looked like children's work;
and, tired as she was, Cendri was