The Judas Rose (40 page)

“
No?
Listen, Jo-Baby, I
always
understand the situation!
The situation is:
you work here, and you've got all kind of stuff you can hold over the Lingoes. Somebody's got a little touch of something nasty, you'd know about it. Somebody's a little warped, maybe shows up in your office with a foreign object in a place it shouldn't be, you know? You'd be the one that knows about it, in a case like that.” He snickered, and winked at her to signal the conspiracy of nice powerful
filth
they could wallow in together.

Jo-Bethany fought her own bad temper—she spoke as evenly as she could. If she let him provoke her, he'd start a fight right here in the middle of Chornyak House. She didn't want that—she wanted him to
leave
. And that meant not upsetting him.

“No, Ham, I wouldn't be the one. In a case like that, the person would go to an emergency room, not to me.”

“So, maybe that's not a perfect example; you know what I mean, all the same. There's bound to be plenty of dirt that gets into a clever little ugly head like yours, Sis, because that goes with nursing. People tell you stuff. And I expect you to show a decent loyalty to your family and put that dirt to good use. Like I said—don't give me a hard time. Just do your thing. Get your butt in gear and do your thing for the sake of your sister's kid, and her peace of mind. You understand me, Jo?”

“I understand,” she answered.

“Well? How long will it take?”

She was thinking. She would have to stall him as long as possible. And she could hope that before it came right down to the wire something else would happen and he'd lose interest in this. She would have to be convincing. She wondered . . . what
were
the special qualifications for the babies sharing the Interface? She had no information that would help her, and no recollection of having heard anything about it from the Chornyaks.
Fake it, Jo-Bethany
, she told herself, but
go slow.

“Ham, it's a great idea,” she said. “You're right—it
should
be in the family! And it's just an indication of how stupid I am that you had to come all the way over here, and miss work besides, to point out to me something that I would have thought of myself if I'd had one brain in my head!”

She was watching him as she spoke, watching for that subtle change in his expression that would mean she was going too far and he was about to realize that she was putting him on. But he seemed genuinely pleased—unless he was putting
her
on . . . did he have that much imagination? She saw no signs of suspicion. It was astonishing how easily a man could be made to believe you when you were saying exactly what he wanted you to say, no matter how improbable it was. And she realized suddenly that before she had come here and lived among the Chornyak women she had not suspected that for an instant. She had learned that here, without even realizing that she was learning. Strange—and very welcome; perhaps this was part of the curriculum at the marital academies.

“Well, that's more like it!” announced the head of the Klander family, swinging his legs around and sitting up, so that he could slap his thighs with his hands and gather himself together to leave this creepy place. “Maybe I was wrong, Jo,” he said. “Maybe having to live here with the Lingoes has given you some sense of what
normal
family feelings are like.” He looked around him, and grimaced. “I'd go crazy in this place! No
wonder they call them Lingoe dens—
hive
would be more like it, the way you're all crammed in here together.”

“I've gotten used to it.”

“Well. Nurses can get used to anything, right?” He reached over and patted her knee, willing to be pleasant now that he thought she was going to oblige him. “I appreciate your help, Jo-Bethany. And Melissa will be grateful, too. This is a great chance for Danny!”

A great chance for Danny. Jo-Bethany thought of how the children of the Lines lived, racing from one work site to another, always studying in every spare minute, trying to keep up, forced to fill adult roles when other children were still sucking their thumbs. Poor little Danny, if that happened to him.

“I'll do my very best, Ham,” she said, putting into her voice all the warmth she felt for Melissa and Danny and Flowerette. “I'm glad you took the time to come point this out to me.” She resisted the temptation to warble “Silly little me!” and wave her hands around and twitch . . . surely that would have been too much? Although she'd seen Melissa do
precisely
that, many a time, and Ham had not appeared to find it too much. It might help to have long red hair and a pretty face.

“I've got to go, Sis,” he mumbled, looming over her, much too close. She wished he were only a hologram. “I've got a lot of work piled up.”

A lot of work. One button to push, every thirty minutes.

“I know you do, Ham,” she said sympathetically. “You go ahead—I'll get right on this. And I'll keep you posted; I'll let you know exactly how it goes.” She lowered her lashes, trying to remember how Melissa did that, trying to
feel
like Melissa for just the necessary tiny bit of time. “It's the men here who decide things, of course,” she said, all modest reluctance and timid flutters. “And I'm
afraid
of them.” She smothered her distaste, drew a timid little gasp of a breath, and said, “Ham—you don't know what they're
like!
”

It was the right flourish, apparently; he gave a grunt of sympathy, and reached down to give her a hug that made her skin crawl.

“I understand, Sis,” he said roughly. “You bet I do. And listen—if they give you any trouble . . . you know, if they try to push you around? Try to take advantage, just because you don't have a husband to look after you? You just let me know, and I'll punch their effing faces through the back of their heads. You get that, Jo-Bethany? You don't have to take
anything
off the sons of bitches.”

“Thank you, Ham,” she said, extracting herself from his grip. “You're—you're very kind. It's good to know that I have someone I can count on.”

She watched him from the window, going out to the flyer with the swagger that she knew he practiced in front of a mirror. She was crying, she noticed; her cheeks were wet with her tears. Why was she crying? She had pulled it off; she had gained herself time. She'd be able to get weeks, months perhaps, out of her Scared Maiden skit. It had been absurdly easy to do. Why was she crying?

And then she knew, and she put her hands up to scrub away the tears that were betraying her. It was because she would far rather have taken her chances in a bed with one of the AIRYs . . . she had no idea which one was male, but she assumed one must be . . . than with Ham Klander. Who was supposed to be her species. Blood of her blood, flesh of her flesh, in some dim recess of pre-pre-history. A human man, as she was a human woman. Both of them, she and Ham, the descendants of Adam and of Eve.

Still. It was Ham Klander that Jo-Bethany found alien. Four arms, she could understand. They might even be useful. Ham Klander, on the other hand, was an absolute mystery. How could there
be
something like Ham Klander? And it survive, and flourish?

She hurried out the door and ran for Barren House, ran for her room, desperate to get out of her clothes and into a shower. To try to scrub from her skin the taint that came of just being
near
this man, of her own species. He would punch their faces through the back of their heads, he said. And he would, too. If somebody would hold them for him while he did it. He would name his daughter Flowerette, and he would punch their faces through the back of their heads with his meaty fists, and he was her own kind.

Barren House was not close enough; Jo-Bethany vomited, ignominiously, in the daylily beds beside the walkway.

II

Father Agar stood in front of the abbot's worktable, bouncing cheerfully on his heels, and asked, “Does it seem to you that our nuns are more than usually enterprising lately, Dorien?”

Father Dorien frowned at him; he certainly
hoped
not. The last thing Mother Church needed was “enterprising” nuns.

“Explain, please,” he said. “In that way, enterprising?”

“Well, you know, it's not just here.” Bounce, bounce.

“It's not just here? What is that supposed to mean? What's not? Not just here what? Lord, you're irritating, Agar! You look like a child that needs to pee, you know that? The behavior of the nuns is not your responsibility—you're perfectly safe reporting their outrages.”

“Oh, not outrages, I assure you.” The bouncing stopped. “In fact, I find it rather admirable, to be perfectly frank. I'm not sure I would have their courage.”

Dorien let his head drop into his hands, and closed his eyes. “Father,” he pleaded, “either tell me what you're referring to, or go on about your business and let me get this program cleaned up. One or the other.
Please
.”

“Sorry,” Father Agar said. “It may be only a coincidence, of course.” When that provoked nothing from Dorien but a groan, he went on hastily, “I just meant that they tell me nuns all over the country are requesting transfer to the colonies, and I think that shows real
pluck
. To go from a cloister, out into space, to primitive conditions, all that hustle and bustle—or all that desolation and wilderness, depending—that takes a little something extra, Father, to my mind. Just imagine it!”

Dorien stared at him. “How
many
nuns, all over the country?”

“Oh . . .” Father Agar waved a vague arm. “Half a dozen or more, I'm told.”

Dorien's eyebrows shot up, and he made an irreverent reference to several of the Apostles. “Good
lord
, Agar! I thought there were hundreds of them, all clamoring to desert us for the hinterlands, the way you were carrying on!
Half a dozen!
”

“I don't remember
any
such requests in previous years,” Father Agar objecting, looking injured. “That's a large jump, from zero to six!”

“Certainly! Six hundred percent. I can see the headlines now. Father Agar, six is only six. There are thousands of nuns in the United States alone—six of them hardly constitute a groundswell. What sort of nuns are these, according to the gossip that I assume is your source? Senior sisters? Major losses to their communities?”

“Oh, no,” Agar reassured him. “All quite young, and not in any way crucial to their houses. As I understand it, several of them happen to be illegitimates turned over to the Daughters Of Genesis and raised in the convents.”

“Well, that makes perfectly good sense. They're probably finding the normal pathways for moving upward in the convents blocked, Agar.”

“Sister Miriam Rose was one of the illegitimates,” Agar noted, looking carefully at the wall behind Dorien's right shoulder, “and it hasn't held
her
back.”

“She's hardly typical,” said Dorien, striving for patience. “She had exceptional qualifications, and I went out of my way to create an opportunity for her. That doesn't usually happen.” He picked up the printouts he'd been poring over when Agar interrupted him, and held them in an ostentatious manner that the other man could not possibly fail to see, and added, “Let's be frank, Agar—a sister who not only brings no dowry but is the product of fornication or adultery, a child of disgrace, is going to have a difficult time. There's no way to keep a thing like that secret within a community. No one's going to be openly unjust to the poor things, but they're scarcely on the ladder of progress.”

“Uhuh. Uhuh.” He was bouncing again. “Naturally, it would occur to them that they might do better if they went out to the colonies, where their origins wouldn't matter much. I hadn't thought of that.”

“Obviously,” sighed Father Dorien. And then he asked, struck by a sudden thought, “They aren't asking for places like Arya, or Baron, or—god forbid—Gehenna, are they? It's not some kind of mad idea of civilizing the barbarians with the gentle touch of the virgin?”

“No, no. Nothing like that, although that would be very interesting, wouldn't it? I think . . . let me see . . . oh, yes, I remember. They've been asking for Horsewhispering, I believe, and for Strawberry Fields. And Harmony—two of them wanted to go to Harmony. Places with enough population and settlement to make the services of a nun desirable and useful, but far enough from Earth—and new enough—to give them a pretty open territory. I mean, now that you've pointed out what's going on, I see the pattern.”

“Plenty of women at those locations,” Dorien commented, “and that's the main thing. Perhaps some of our good sisters can manage to set an example for those ridiculous people on Strawberry Fields; I'd certainly approve of
that
.”

Agar looked blank. “There are so many colonies now,” he said mournfully. “It must have been so much simpler when there were only a dozen. What's so ridiculous about the Strawberry Fielders, or Fieldites, or whatever they are?”

“They're hippies, Agar, that's what's ridiculous. They could
use
a nun. If anybody asks for my vote, I'll say by all means send them
several
nuns.”