Disappointment and Meditation

Contract Marriage #3

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Exodus 20:12  

Jellia came in quietly, took her cap off, undid her braid, and shook her hair out. It had been a tiring day at school with two of the scholars in their study group insisting on one particular topic that none of the others… what was that? Something from upstairs… Mother crying?

She walked quickly upstairs and to Mother’s room and saw that she was sitting on her bed, crying indeed. “Oh, Mother!” she said, snapping out a brief ‘Daughter greets Mother’ bow and running over for a hug. “What is wrong?”

“Oh, Darling, I just had a disappointment at work.”

“Whatever happened?”

“Well, there was this opportunity at work… a wonderful opportunity, or so I thought. I would be sole on a trade desk for all of Libertas, that’s the name of the planet, managing all of our ins and outs. Oh, it seemed so wonderful. And I checked my stats, and the Supervisor said my stats all worked, but there was this briefing and, oh, Darling.”

“What happened at the briefing?”

“The briefer talked to me for the longest time about all of the things that will be different on this other planet… so many things. It is apparently hard for them to get anyone to work there, and the last man they had there was almost executed.”

“Why, what did he do?”

“He asked a woman on a date.”

Jellia stared at her in shock and then giggled. “But… but what was he supposed to do? Are they all abstinates? Or… maybe she was, and she was offended because he was supposed to know?

“No, no… do you know what an ‘en-drek’ is, Darling?”

“No… I don’t think so.”

“So you haven’t heard about an en-drek contract? A relationship like a long-term, live-in, heavy-date?”

“No… oh, wait, yes, I have. We had a group read and discuss a couple of years ago, and one of the short stories was about that. This man and a woman that lived together and had a child. Rather bizarre, we thought it, although it made an interesting story.”

“Well, Darling, here on our planet, outside of some rurals, almost no one ever does that, but on Libertas, everyone is in an en-drek contract. It’s a law that everyone has to be. Even, even if you’re exo.”

“Oh!” Jellia thought about that. Her mother often had men over, but usually just overnight or for a weekend. Or when they went on vacation. Several of the men had been rather nice.

 “So a man would move in with you? With us? That might be interesting if you picked an interesting one. Make your dating easier, anyway, not always having to wait for a snip.”

“Well, yes, I mean, no, I don’t think it would be all that interesting except maybe at first. But, Darling, when you got older, the law would apply to you, too. And, Darling, the more the briefer talked about all of the various differences, the more worried I was that this would be hard on you. In lots of ways. And it didn’t seem fair for me to ask you to come and live with some man in our house all the time and…”

Jellia thought about that. “Well, Mother, I assume that they have daughters on that planet, so that must mean that all of them have men move in and all, so it can’t be all that bad.”

“Many daughters and sons, dear. They seem to have an extraordinary number of children. Well, that isn’t the only thing. I didn’t really think about it when I went for my hold, but moving exo involves a lot of changes. A lot of extremely difficult changes. Things to learn to do, new language to learn…”

“But you are a trader, Mother. We have known for years that you would have to go exo to really advance. Surely, we can learn this!”

Her mother sighed and picked up her wrist-comp, which had been lying on her bed, and min-opened it to the snip screen. “Darling,  I will do this. I will snip you the briefing document, and you will be given a mandatory twenty-four-hour meditation. Study it and think about it; you are excused from school and all. I have to… well, if I am going to take the job, it would be good for me to… to decide by, well, you are included, so… we need to make our decision by this time tomorrow afternoon.”

“Very well, Mother, I will make this my fullest concern,” Jellia said, and, giving a longer bow of ‘attention to duty’, walked off to the fresher room. She would freshen first to prepare her mind for this task, and she would give it her all. But if this posting would be good for her mother, then she would just prepare herself for whatever difficulties it meant for her, Jellia.

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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

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Links

Contract Marriage Chapters, Newest to Oldest

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I would like to give credit for the genesis of many of these ideas to the Liaden series by Mr. and Mrs. Steve Miller, which is available for free on the web. They do a great deal of cultural exploration, although they rather dramatically skip the moral exploration. (And their math doesn’t work.)

Other concepts were taken, in one form and another, from the book Freehold by Michael A Williamson.