Chapter VIII: Rebelling Virgins

It was from Sonya that we first learned any tangible details of this new realm. She and I, with Dolores and Alice, were seated by Dr. Weatherby’s bedside. Two days had passed. His condition was unchanged. We were sure now that he would never regain consciousness.

The old king too, was more gravely ill than before. He had sent for us so that at his bedside we might take the oath of service. Jim had gone with Ren. The rest of us remained beside the dying doctor. The end would come soon, at any time now, doubtless.

Sonya was talking softly. I turned from the bedside to regard her earnest face.

“This city,” she was saying, “we call Kalima. There was an ancient tribe dwelt here; the chief, they thought he was a god, the god Kali.” She was addressing Alice, but now she turned to me. “Our land lies in a great depression of this globe’s surface. Once, perhaps, it was the bottom of some great sea. It rises into mountains everywhere. It is not large; we are less than a quarter of a million people. The caves are at the foothills.

“You will hear more of them later.” She had waved aside a question of Dolores’. “On the Great Island, not far from here, is what we call the Village of the Virgins, where now about three hundred of our girls are living in rebellion.”

“Rebellion against the government?” I asked.

“Yes. Against the man-made laws.” She smiled her quiet, grave smile. “You have come, you strangers, at a time to find our nation in what we girls think is a condition very grave. You, my friends, will understand very well what we girls are protesting against. And now, with our prince and princess vanished, and our king about to die, the time has come to—”

She checked herself suddenly.

Alice was regarding her with a blue-eyed gaze of quite obvious admiration. Dolores moved over on the low couch; her hand plucked at the hem of Sonya’s smock as it lay just above her knees and touched the smooth white metal band that encircled her leg.

“Sonya, what is that? Just for ornament? It’s very pretty.”

“No,” she said. “Not altogether for ornament. Every woman wears one.” She brushed her fingers across it; her smile was quizzical. “It is, in fact, well . . . it had become almost a symbol of what we girls are striving for. The virgins’ band. You see, it is quite unmarked. No man’s name is engraved there. I’ll explain in a moment.”

“Our king, with twenty of his counsellors—my cousin Ren is one of them—rule the nation. They make no new laws. The old laws are good enough for them. The guards, you would call them police, are all the army we have.

“They are all men, young, sturdy fellows who have no thought but to do what they are told. Which is right, of course. It is the laws which are wrong, inhuman. They are very old laws. They have now become customs, traditions, handed down from father to son.”

Her tone was suddenly bitter. She gestured with a slim, expressive hand. “I must talk more calmly. These things against which we have now come to open rebellion, were doubtless necessary at the beginning. The laws were made by men who knew no better.

“The difficulty is in the sex of our children. Out of three births, two on the average are females and only one a male. We have, therefore, twice as many females as males—twice as many women as men. Or at least, there would be twice as many if—” She checked herself again.

“Thus we have . . . I think Ren said that on earth it was termed polygamy. A man may marry more than one woman.”

Dolores said impulsively, “Oh, I would not like that! It used to be a custom in many parts of the earth, but there is almost none of it now.”

“We girls of this generation do not like it either,” said Sonya.

Her voice turned very grave. “What we are rebelling against is far worse. Often our girl children, if they seem not destined to be beautiful, are killed. The father does not wish the expense of too many girls.

“Girls or women are never allowed to work. They must only strive to be beautiful. And when they have at last reached the proper age, to get rid of them by marriage, the father must pay a large tax to the state.

“At the age of twenty a girl must choose one of the men who has recorded his name as desiring her. Any man is legally eligible to do that. He may have no wife as yet. Or he may have one wife, or several. If he has the necessary money for the tax, and deposits it with the government, his name is recorded.

“You see,” she was cynical now, “the government needs the money. And it likes our girls to be beautiful. Fifty men may record their names as desiring a girl who is very beautiful.

“She can choose but one man. But the government only refunds half the money the others have deposited. It makes a lot of money on a very beautiful girl.”

“A sort of lottery!” I exclaimed. “With women as the prizes.”

“I do not understand,” said Sonya. “But that is the way it is with us. Beautiful girls are profitable to the government. No girl-child who showed promise of beauty has ever been found murdered.

“But woman’s beauty fades, and there are many female mouths to feed, and female bodies to clothe and house. It makes more work for the men and the men do not like to work. And so—”

The cynicism had left her voice. A hush fell upon her tragic words. “And so, when a woman can no longer bear children, when her beauty is going, then she is considered a burden.

“She has never been trained to work. She is useless; an expense.

“Each year our old women are chosen—a certain number of them, depending on the birth-rate—are chosen to die. They are given a blanket, a little food, and are taken to a place we call Death Island. Left there alone, they live a while. Then die.

“I’ve seen them draw the death number! I’ve seen, on the island, their wasted bodies lying huddled!” Her voice choked. “But they go away, start for the island so patient, so resigned.

“It is that for which we are in rebellion more than anything else! We of this generation now cannot stand it. We will not stand it!”

To my mind had come memories of the savages of our earth, not so many centuries ago. They too, had thought it expedient to leave aged members of their tribes to die. The vision Sonya was invoking to my imagination was horrible. I found my voice.

“Your men here, Sonya, surely they are not all against you girls? Your cause?”

“No,” she said. “But how many are with us at heart, we do not know. And men are very strange. You cannot talk with them; they pretend you are not intelligent enough to be worthy of talking. My cousin Ren—”

Ren! It seemed incongruous.

She went on, “He is like all the rest. It is not, from his viewpoint, inhuman. It is the way things always have been. His mother died that way. He says, ‘Her life was ended.’ He says that men, brave men, meet death that way. Their life is over, the creator calls them and they go bravely.”

“But,” said Dolores, “the man who hands out the death number is not the creator.”

“Ah,” said Sonya, “but if you told that to a man he would say you do not understand.”

Her hand went to her leg. “You asked me about this band. It is placed upon us when we are just maturing. On it is engraved the name of the man we are to marry.

“If he divorces us, that is written here, and the name of the man who next takes us. Our marriage record: written plain that all may see!” Her fingers touched the band’s smooth surface. “There is nothing on mine, as yet. And there never will be, unless we win our case.”

Alice said, “Are you one of the rebels?”

“I am at heart, and I’m working with them. Technically, legally I am not. It is nearly a year yet, as you on your earth measure time, before I am of the age when I can be forced to marry.”

“What have the girls done?” I asked. “Refused to marry?”

“Yes. About eighteen hundred of them. Most are just about at the legal age. They left the cities, went to the Great Island, and there they have built themselves a village. They grow food there; they work; they are self-supporting. To many old women and a few girl-children, they have given sanctuary.”

“And the government does nothing about it?” I exclaimed.

“They did, at first. Men were sent to the Virgins’ Island to get some of the old women; but the girls forcibly resisted them. Some of the girls were killed. Nothing much has been done about it since. The government, I think, does not know what to do.”

She was scornful. “Our girls are very beautiful. It would not be profitable to kill them.”

Alice said, “You reach the marriage age in a year, Sonya? Have any men recorded their names for you?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “There were eight, I think, when I last went to the records.”

“But you wouldn’t marry any of them? Or perhaps I should not ask.”

“Why not? There is no secret in such things. One man whose name is recorded for me I love very dearly. Our prince.”

A sound from Dolores interrupted her. Dolores was sitting with hands to her forehead and eyes closed. She murmured, “I caught someone’s thoughts! Now they come again.”

We waited through a breathless silence. Then Dolores murmured, “The prince. You called him Altho? It is he!”

Sonya gripped her. “What is he thinking? Tell me! Tell me quickly!”

Then she too, received the thoughts. She sat tense. “Oh, the princess is dead! Killed!”

“Killed!” echoed Dolores. Then her face went vague: she was getting nothing more.

But evidently Sonya was still in communication. She cried aloud involuntarily, “Altho! Dearest, dearest Altho! Where are you? Tell Sonya. Oh, he does not know! Or he cannot tell me! He says—” it was a stark whisper of horror—“he says soon he will be killed too.”

She sprang to her feet, then abruptly sat down again. “Altho! Altho, where are you?”

The communication broke. Her face went vague, puzzled, empty. And then despairing.

Beyond the window, in the street below the balcony, a sudden murmur of voices floated up to us. We went to the balcony. It was night now, a night of pale stars in a cloudless sky. Shouting people were coming up the street. They appeared in a moment at the bottom of the hill, a crowd of men, a hundred or more. They came forward, swept around the corner, and vanished. Above the babble was a single sentence. A man called it. Others took it up.

Sonya murmured, “They say, ‘Our king is dying.’ And the princess dead! And your grandfather. . . . Death everywhere!”

The man in the street shouted again. And Sonya sprang from the couch.

“He says, ‘Our king is dead.’” She laughed hysterically. “Death everywhere! I must go to the Island of the Virgins. Will you come? I can take you. The virgins are ready! We must act at once!”