The Judas Rose (46 page)

Cassie is almost grateful when Brune grabs her wrist, mumbling an excuse, and flees for Burgundy's powder room, dragging Cassie with her; at least that way the exit is Brune's fault, not her own, and it will give her time to think. She knows that it is
important
for her to think, before she has to go back out there.

Alone in the little room with her, Brune stands pale and shaking, leaning against the lady-vanity. It is playing something romantic that Cassie does not recognize, and the mirror behind it clears for service, showing Cassie that she does not look one bit better than Brune does. “Revert!” Cassie spits at it, and the mirror clouds again obediently.

“Cassie,” Brune is asking, “how did she do this?”

“I don't
know
. How would I know?”

“Does this mean we're going to have to sit at the table with them? And
eat with them?
”

Aha! Cassie hears the bell ring—her first chance this evening, this terrible evening, to score even one point. She can't let it pass, sorry though she is for Brune; she has her obligations to O.J. She looks casually past Brune, as if to spare her the embarrassment of a direct glance, and she says sweetly, “Why,
Brune
, dear . . . I had no
idea
you were prejudiced!”

It will be something she can tell O.J. later, if she needs it. How Brune looked, caught flat out like that. Cassie feels a little strange at the idea of eating with Lingoes, too—that's normal. That's reasonable. That's forgivable. But Cassie knows better than to ever
admit
that she feels that way! Only a very ignorant woman could be unaware that although prejudice is a perfectly normal human failing, only someone from the lower classes would ever admit to it aloud.

She is still standing there, smiling, waiting for Brune to stop breathing fast and shivering and say something back, feeling the warm satisfaction of the earned point, when the door speaks to them. It says, “Ladies, your husbands require your presence.” Of course they do. Cassie can just imagine. The door waits thirty seconds, and when there is no response it says it again. It will keep that up until something happens to stop it. But it isn't a sophisticated model, it will be easy to fool; Cassie reaches over and opens it wide, then lets it close again. The door is convinced that she has gone out; it stops delivering its message. This won't gain them very much time—the men will only punch it up again—but even a minute or two will help. And Cassie, from the vantage point of victory, feels inclined to be protective toward Brune right now.

“Cassie,” Brune is saying, “I can't go back in there. I can't.”

“You can. You have to.”

“I can't do it, Cassie.”

“Brune, stop talking nonsense and help me think what to do. We have to do the right thing, and we have to figure out what that is,
fast!
Stop being an idiot, and help me
think
.”

“Why? So that you can tell O.J. and he can tell Doby? About what I said, about eating with them?”

“You say something useful, and I won't tell,” Cassie offers promptly. “I promise.”

“I've remembered something,” Brune says slowly. “I know how Burgundy did this. Is that useful enough?”

“Tell! Hurry!”

“Burgundy belongs to the Hospital Auxiliary, Cassie, right?
And what they did this year for their annual project was to redecorate the women's Chapel at the hospital.”

“So?”

“So, remember the Thursday night whatever-they-ares, those religious kind of club meetings, where the nurses go, and sometimes the linguist women? Remember, Cassie, it was on the popnews? Thursday Night Devotionals! Remember? They said women all over the country had been going to those.”

“Krol would
never
have let Burgundy go to something like that, Brune! You're crazy!”

“For a psychotherapist's wife, you use the term a bit loosely, dear,” Brune coos, and Cassie swears under her breath. O.J. will be livid if he hears about that, and he
will
hear about it if Brune tells Doby.

“All right, Brune, we're even,” she admits, furious with herself for being caught in such a baby mistake. “But I don't have time to let you gloat about it right now. Just tell me what you mean so we can decide what to do.”

“It's obvious,” Brune tells her. “Burgundy must have met one of the linguist women when she was over at the hospital doing something on that decorating project! They would get to talking, about how things looked—”

“You
saw
how that woman was dressed! She doesn't
care
how anything looks!”

“But Burgundy wouldn't have known that, Cassie. It would have been perfectly natural for her to start up a conversation, and then one thing would lead to another, and pretty soon. . . . You know how she is, when she wants something, Cassandra Joan—she always manages. And that would have been the perfect opportunity.”

It makes sense. It is the only likely explanation. Krol couldn't have been the one responsible, because the Lines never went near psychotherapists or any other kind of therapist. Brune is undoubtedly right. Burgundy must have wandered in on a Thursday night when she was at the hospital with Krol, with a plastispray sample or a holo for the chapel wall or some such thing, and met a lady Lingoe and struck up a conversation. Leading to this. Cassie doesn't like accepting it so fast, but it makes sense, and nothing else makes sense. There is no Rent-A-Linguist service; it has to be Burgundy's doing, and where else could she have met a woman of the Lines?

“All right!” she snaps. “It sounds right. So what do we do?”

The door is haranguing them again, at thirty second intervals. The men will be angry by this time.

“Brune, we've got to get out there,” she whispers urgently, feeling certain the men have turned the door's ear on now. “And we have just one decision to make.” She runs the plan by Brune . . . inventing an excuse to go home, sailing fastidiously away, demonstrating their good breeding, leaving Burgundy stuck with the collapse of her dinner party and the unspoken trashword “Lingoe-lover” hovering over her exquisite perfect dinner table. But Brune shakes her head, firmly, angrily, and hisses at Cassie, “No! Absolutely not! Things have been changing. I know several very high-placed families whose children have been in the Interfaces with the linguist babies! You can't talk against the linguists the way our mothers do any more . . . Cassie, I heard on the popnews that at Georgetown University the Department of Language Science is changing its name back to Department of Linguistics!”

Cassie feels dizzy. Thank god Brune knew! What if she hadn't known? God, what a near thing! And now she knows she is in Brune's debt, and she hopes Doby will take her out to the colonies
soon.

“Well, all right—what are we going to
do
, Brune?” Cassie demands. “Tell me what we're going to
do!
”

The two women stare at each other, both contemplating the same horrors, and Cassie thinks with sudden dismay that Brune is going to vomit, and then there will
really
be trouble, because with the room's ear turned on everyone will hear her. But Brune shudders once, all over, and she pulls herself together. A remarkable performance! Straightening; smoothing; gathering up. Blood does tell, and training, too. Brune comes of a good family, her mother belongs to the very best clubs, and Brune went to Midwest Oak. Not as classy as Mary Margaret Plymouth, but several cuts above the place Cassie had been fool enough to settle for.

“Silly Cassie,” Brune says, managing the cool smile from some reserve for which Cassie cannot help admiring her. “Of course I'm not prejudiced, any more than you are. Of course we won't leave, and make ourselves look ridiculous. But quick—what are we going to
talk
about?”

It's a good question, Cassie thinks. The right question. Obviously they can't talk about fashion. Or about managing the home or decorating it—the Lingoes live communally, like animals. It can't be clubs—the Lingoe women have to work all day every day, they wouldn't have time to be in social clubs even if you invited them. Only men talked either politics or business. . . .

“Oh!” Cassie has a sudden inspiration, and she is the one
now who grabs Brune and pulls her along. Under her breath, very fast, as Brune stumbles to keep up, she says, “We'll talk about the colonies! She'll know all about them, the Verdi woman I mean, because she's a linguist. And that's always a safe topic!”

Back in the recreation area, Cassie sees that the linguist woman is standing, just like a child would stand, in front of the antique color-fountain that Burgundy Coloridon picked up once at an auction. The woman claps her hands, and the fountain rewards her with a shower of rainbows, and then she laughs. She whistles, a long liquid trill, and gets a different rainbow pattern, and she laughs again. Just like a child! How can she dare do that? Cassie would have been so ashamed. . . .

What happens next brings all the other women to stunned attention. Even Burgundy. To their complete bewilderment, the four husbands begin to laugh, too, and go straight over to join the Lingoe bitch at the color fountain. While Cassie and Brune and Burgundy stare, they begin a syncopated pattering of clapping hands and snapping fingers and whistling, and the fountain's display becomes a glory of color, a tumult of rainbows, all around them.

Cassie and Brune have both come back with the same thought, that Burgundy cannot have this new plum all for herself, that they must find a way to invite the couple from the Lines to parties at
their
houses, that the only question is which one of them will accomplish that first. They have both been planning their campaigns, anxious to begin. Now they have forgotten all about it. Watching their husbands, their husbands and the woman, having a wonderful time—they have forgotten what it was they wanted to do. Cassie dares to sneak a look at Burgundy, and it delights her to see that even the holodress is not enough to make her hostess invulnerable. She feels left out, too, just like Cassie and Brune are feeling left out; like them, she is frozen in place and doesn't know what to do.

Elizabeth Verdi turns around then and sees the three of them standing there watching, and she does something with her hands—Cassie doesn't know what, some gesture—and although the men go on playing with the color fountain they do it more quietly.

“It's so beautiful,” Elizabeth Verdi says to them, smiling at them,
not
embarrassed, how can she not be embarrassed? “I've never seen one before—I didn't know such a thing existed! Imagine, playing with a rainbow, and bossing one around!”

Behind the woman, her husband's arm moves to touch her,
and Cassie winces a little; he will move her smoothly away from the group now, before she can disgrace him further, and when they come back she will have a properly chastened look; she will look white and strained, and she will have a hard time not crying.

But the Verdi man does nothing of the kind. He touches his wife's hand and leans toward her, whispering, and she listens, but she doesn't turn to him, she just listens and nods her head. And then she speaks to the silent women staring at her.

“My husband says to ask you to join us,” she tells Cassie and Burgundy and Brune. “And he is quite right—you're missing all the fun. My dears, won't you come play, too?”

CHAPTER 21

           
“The Seas of Space”

           
“Oh come and sail the seas of space,

           
that have no shores . . . and their waves are light!

           
Come sail with me; be my constant friend

           
on the journey out that has no end.

           
“I'll show you wonders on every hand

            
you'll never see on any land;

           
and Terra wrapped in endless light

           
and wound around in blue and white.

           
“And if you mourn what you've left behind,

           
I'll hold you close—I'll ease your mind—

           
and we both shall weep for those who roam

           
the seas of space, and can ne'er go home.

           
“For they are strange, the seas of space;

           
no dolphin leap there, no seaweeds sway;

           
and the solar wind, though it fills our sail,

           
is a foreign wind, in a foreign gale.”

(Twentieth-century folksong, set to the tune of the much earlier “The Water Is Wide”)

There had been no reason at all for the agent to worry about discovery. Terran perceptions were so limited that she could move about with complete freedom and never do anything more in the way of trying to conceal herself than being quite sure she didn't actually
touch
anyone; humans were sensitive enough to tactile sensations to notice (and be mystified) if she did that. But they couldn't see her, or hear her, or smell her; and she had no
reason to go into the few places where there were sufficiently sophisticated scientific instruments to betray her presence.