Dark Beneath the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

their careers, with their wife’s guidance. The wife usually has savings by this time to support the family until the man gets settled, and she retains some financial independence.”
    “Arranged marriages went out of fashion a long time ago on Earth,” I mused. “How do they usually work out?”
    “Marriage is usually a fifteen-year contract, and the clock resets on the birth of each subsequent child. So if it’s not working out, you can go your own ways once your youngest child is fifteen. Or if you’re both happy, renew the registration.”
    “What if one—or both—of the intended partners turns out to have different sexual preferences?”
    She shrugged. “No problem. That’s a completely legitimate reason to dissolve an engagement. The mothers have to scramble then to find another suitable partner, and the logistics are a little different, but it’s not that big a deal.”
    “And nobody is humiliated,” I suggested.
    Rei sighed. “Right.”
    “It seems a little structured for the men and more lenient for the women,” I mused cautiously. I didn’t want to offend her, since she’d never told me any of this before. I figured there must be a reason.
    But Rei shook her head. “It’s only more structured for them when they’re young and foolish,” she said. “That’s when they need more guidance, anyway. They get their freedom later, when they’re better able to handle it.”
    “Well, if it works, it works,” I said. “But to get to the real point of this conversation, what are you going to do now?”
    She blew out a long sigh, leaning forward to wrap her arms around her knees. “Good question. I know all my options, but none of them are very appealing. At least I don’t feel so angry now.” She glanced up at me with a smile. “I needed something real to vent on, I think.”
    “Don’t mention it,” I said. “You can wait on me hand and foot when I can’t move tomorrow. So what about those options?”
    She tipped her head back and stared up at the cargo pod ceiling, vaulted high above us. The cargo pods were good thinking spaces, a break from the more confined spaces of the rest of the ship.
    Finally, she said, “ Okej. I could go to Eri and ask my mother to arrange a new match. But it would be extremely embarrassing, and she’d either have to find a boy from the current batch of pels— the young boys—which wouldn’t be easy since their mothers are considering girls almost ten years younger than I am, or find an ulan , a boy a little older who for some reason is still without a mate.” She pulled a disconsolate face. “And there are usually reasons for that, some of them not very pleasant.”
    “Although there could be someone left alone because their intended mate died or had a different preference,” I said.
    “True, but they’re not very plentiful,” she said. “It makes it much harder to find someone compatible. And being off-world, I’m not there and ‘available’ to be re-matched easily.”
    I waited a minute, then asked, “So, is that it for options?”
    Rei shrugged. “I could probably hook up with an older man who’s left a marriage, or lost his wife. But he’ll already have done the whole family thing and probably won’t be interested in that. If he were, he’d have stayed with his wife.”
    “Unless he simply didn’t love her,” I suggested.
    “Wrong,” she said with a snort. “These are marriages arranged strictly on the basis of genetic compatibility and congenial neural oscillation adhesions. There’s no question of love or lack of it. These people are destined to get along.”
    “But you said they can leave the marriage if they’re not happy.”
    Rei puffed her cheeks, slowly blowing out another sigh. “Sure, but it doesn’t happen very often. Sometimes one partner might suffer a brain disease or injury, but usually when it does happen, it’s because their careers or interests take them too far apart physically.”
    “You’re a tough