At The Edge Of Space (Hanan Rebellion) Read Online Free PDF

the rest of Elas there was no sound of people stirring and they must lower their voices. The light was exceedingly dim, the air heavy with the scent of oil from the lamps. The telise made it close and warm. The late hour clothed things in unreality.
    Kurt learned things, almost all simply family gossip, for Djan and Elas were all in Nephane that they both knew, and Kta, momentarily so free with the truth, seemed to have remembered that there was danger in it. They spoke instead of Elas.
    Nym had the authority in the household as the lord of Elas; Kta had almost none, although he was over thirty (he hardly looked it) and commanded a warship. Kta would be under Nym’s authority as long as Nym lived; the eldest male was lord in the house. If Kta married, he must bring his bride to live under his father’s roof. The girl would become part of Elas, obedient to Kta’s father and mother as if she were born to the house. So Aimu was soon to depart, betrothed to Kta’s lieutenant Bel t’Osanef. They had been friends since childhood, Kta and Bel and Aimu.
    Kta owned nothing. Nym controlled the family wealth, and would decide how and whom and when his two children must marry, since marriage determined inheritances. Property passed from father to eldest son undivided, and the eldest then assumed a father’s responsibility for all lesser brothers and cousins and unmarried women in the house. A patriarch like Nym always had his rooms to the right of the entry, a custom, Kta explained, derived from more warlike times, when a man slept at the threshold to defend his home from attack. Grown sons occupied the ground floor for the same reason. This room that Kurt now held as a guest had been Kta’s when he was a boy.
    And the matriarch, in this case Kta’s mother Ptas, although it had been the paternal grandmother until quite recently, had her rooms behind the base wall of the rhmei. She was the guardian of most religious matters of the house. She tended the holy fire of the phusmeha, supervised the household and was second in authority to the patriarch.
    Of obeisance and respect, Kta explained, there were complex degrees. It was gross disrespect for a grown son to come before his mother without going to his knees, but when he was a boy this difference was not paid. The reverse was true with a son and his father: a boy knelt to his father until his coming-of-age, then met him with the slight bow of almost-equals if he were eldest, necessary obeisances deepening as one went down the ranks of second son, third son, and so on. A daughter, however, was treated as a beloved guest, a visitor the house would one day lose to a husband; she gave her parents only the obeisance of second-son’s rank, and showed her brothers the same modest formality she must use with strangers.
    But of Hef and Mim, who served Elas, was required only the obeisance of equals, although it was their habit to show more than that on formal occasions.
    “And what of me?” Kurt asked, dreading to ask. “What must I do?”
    Kta frowned. “You are guest, mine; you must be equal with me. But,” he added nervously, “it is proper in a man to show greater respect than necessary sometimes. It does not hurt your dignity; sometimes it makes it greater. Be most polite to all. Don’t—make Elas ashamed. People will watch you—thinking they will see a Tamuru in nemet dress. You must prove this is not so.”
    “Kta,” Kurt asked, “—am I a man—to the nemet?”
    Kta pressed his lips together and looked as if he earnestly wished that question had gone unasked.
    “I am not, then,” Kurt concluded, and was robbed even of anger by the distress on Kta’s face.
    “I have not decided,” Kta said. “Some—would say no. It is a religious question. I must think.—But I have a liking for you, Kurt, even if you are human.”
    “You have been very good to me.”
    There was silence between them. In the sleeping house there was no sound at all. Kta looked at him with a