“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?”