Vince wrote:cthia wrote:Same here. Since the only University mentioned on Grayson is Mayhew University, I just assumed. Certainly Grayson women never left planet side. Just one University for an entire planetary population which also included Masadans seems a stretch. And how good could the quality of Grayson education be being pure of foreign professors since first landing? That they fared so well is a testament to Grayson.
At least some Grayson and even Masadan women left planetside, even before the time of The Honor of the Queen:Italics are the author's.The Service of the Sword, Promised Land wrote:Judith had been very young when the raiders took the ship, young, but not too young to remember. There had been explosions, the shrill scream of tearing metal, the insidious tugging of air leaking from a ruptured compartment before someone slapped on a patch.
The battle had been muffled, somehow less than real, made distant by the swaddling vac suit two sizes too big, but the best they'd had intact. It had been muffled, less than real, but that didn't save the child.
Reality came through later, came through with a vengeance.
***Snip***
The ship that had captured theirs had been from Masada. Judith had been too young to understand the difference between pirates and privateers. When she was old enough to know, she was also old enough to know that when it came to Masadans preying on Graysons the distinctions were so much fertilizer.
Her father had been killed helping to defend the ship. Her mother had died trying to defend her child. Judith only wished she could have died with them.
***Snip***
She had a secret, a secret she held onto even as she bit her lip to keep from crying out when her husband used her again and yet again. She held onto it even when she saw the grudging pity in the eyes of her co-wives. She held onto it as she had from the moment she watched her mother bleed her life out onto the deck plates, remembering that brave woman's final warning.
"Never let them know that you can read."
***Snip***
To his fellows, who hated the Graysons with singleminded fanaticism, Judith was presented as a soul redeemed from sin, a vessel who would carry within her womb those who would prove the undoing of their own forbearers. For this reason, Ephraim often took Judith with him when his duties took him away from home. She was a trophy: living, breathing proof that the Masadan struggle to conquer Grayson would not be in vain.
Initially, Judith, then only twelve, had hated these voyages. They forced her into increased intimacy with her husband, for Ephraim didn't bring any other of his wives. However, once Judith realized that during her voyages on Aaron's Rod she was free from observation—for jealous Ephraim kept her locked in the captain's quarters lest she incite unholy lust among his crew—she took advantage of her isolation.
***Snip***
There were exceptions. In the early years of their marriage, Ephraim had taken Dinah on his voyages, and she, like Judith, had striven to learn something about the various departments. Dinah's actual skills were woefully outdated, but at least she understood the concept of three-dimensional astrogation and tactics. Many of the Sisters persisted, no matter how carefully Judith explained, in visualizing their ship as sailing over a flat surface.
Nice dig Vince. That passage always chokes me up. I think I'm going to transplant a particular line to the one-liners thread. It... belongs.
But can we assume from that that it was a common practice? I also wonder why Judith and Co. was doing off-planet to be captured. Does textev say?
At any rate, the kind of off-planet I'm talking about isn't the kind of daily runabouts accompanied by your husband. But lengthy semesters away off-planet alone. Jealous Masadan men wouldn't dare allow that even if they didn't mind the women being educated. And I have reservations regarding Grayson allowing its women to venture off-planet away from the protective umbrella of Grayson for semesters at a time. Or certainly Manticore, or the Haven system at large, would have been exposed to armsmen long ago. No?
Certainly Old Earth was exposed to armsmen with Benjamin at Harvard.