Lovelock Read online

  I don’t know how long the holo loop would have lasted. I had a morbid fascination that made me want to see every minute of Odie Lee’s shame, but I was overruled. The small silent woman who had led the children off to the nursery so long before came into the hall, carrying Emmy in front of her as gingerly as if she had just taken her from the oven and was trying not to get burned. A pungent smell filled the room; Emmy had outlasted her diaper.

  “Oh, dear,” said Carol Jeanne. “Where’s Red?”

  The woman said nothing, just held Emmy out in front of her.

  “Poo-poo,” said Emmy, pleased as punch.

  “You can set her down,” said Carol Jeanne. “She can walk.”

  “Better not,” said the woman—the first sound I had heard her make. “She’s oozing.”

  It was true. Carol Jeanne reluctantly took her younger daughter, handling her even more carefully than the nursery teacher had done.

  “Oh, let me do that,” said Liz. “It’s only a little mess, that’s all—but I know how it is when you just got out of the box from Ironsides, it’s too much to handle all at once.” And in no time there was Liz, holding Emmy perfectly easily, even affectionately, never mind what was oozing onto her bare arm. “Let me lead you home. Where’s the other one? Didn’t I see you with two daughters?”

  “I don’t know where Lydia is,” said Carol Jeanne. “Or Red either, for that matter.”

  I noticed that she didn’t mention Mamie. Stef didn’t remind her, which either meant he was tactful or he was hoping to lose her forever in the crowd. “I’ll go retrieve Lydia,” Stef said. “You go on ahead—I’ll round up the others, too.”

  “The house is easy to find,” said Liz. “Head down the lane straight across the square from the church—that way.” She indicated the direction with a nod of her head.

  “Got it,” said Stef, and he was gone.

  As we left the social hall, Odie Lee’s voice followed us, saying, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

  Once we were outside on the square, Carol Jeanne must have realized that she was actually letting a stranger carry her child for her. “I really can’t let you carry Emmy all that way,” she said.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Liz. “We walk everywhere here, for the exercise. And walking in low-gee is hard at first—you don’t want to fall while carrying her, do you?”

  I remembered all the tripping and stumbling on the way over here, and had to agree with Liz. It made sense for her to carry Emmy. It was practical. But it was also decent and friendly and it was the first kindness extended to us here that didn’t seem to carry a price tag.

  “Liz Fisher?” Carol Jeanne said. “Did I get your name right?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I’m nobody, though, so don’t worry about remembering—I’ll remind you whenever you ask.”

  “Oh, you can’t be nobody,” Carol Jeanne began.

  “There I go again,” said Liz. “I don’t mean to sound self-deprecating. I’m really not—I have a perfectly healthy self-image. I just happen to know that my skills are more along the lines of typing very fast and raising children well. It’s my husband who’s the one that was needed on the Ark. He’s an orthopedist. A very good one—he was the specialist that NFL team doctors called in for the tricky problems. He’ll be really vital to the colony when we get onto the planet.”

  “We’ll all be vital.”

  “Well, I know that. I daresay my mothering skills will be at least as important as his doctoring ones. But I understand the world well enough to know that I’ll never be particularly noticed for what I do. It’s really all right with me. When I say I’m nobody, I’m actually rather proud of it. But Warren hates it when I talk like that. He says it makes me sound mousy.” Liz laughed, lightly and easily. “Warren and I don’t get along too well. He used to like it when I made smart remarks, for instance, but now he’s always hushing me. Ever since we got on the Ark, everything I do is wrong. Isn’t that silly? I’m the same person, doing the same things. Except I don’t shop at the mall anymore.”

  I thought that Carol Jeanne might be getting bored with all this. It was really empty prattle, wasn’t it? Just a woman gossiping about her own life. But the woman was carrying Carol Jeanne’s leaky papoose, so she couldn’t very well seem uninterested.

  “I imagine just being on the Ark changes people’s attitudes and relationships,” said Carol Jeanne. “I remember my husband saying that it was a likely problem—a lot of people wouldn’t respond well to how small this world would be. Social claustrophobia, he called it.”

  “Is your husband a scientist, too?” asked Liz.

  “Not at all,” said Carol Jeanne, revealing her opinion of Red’s profession in three short words. “He’s a family therapist.”

  “Oh,” said Liz.

  “I wish I could tell you that he’s good at it, because it sounds to me like you and your husband might need one. But I honestly have no idea whether Red is a good therapist or not.”

  Liz laughed nervously. “Don’t his patients tell you whether he’s good?”

  “I’ve never met any of his clients,” said Carol Jeanne. “Or if I have, I don’t know it. He never tells me who they are or anything about them. I have never once heard a single fact about any of them, or a single story.” She flashed a smile at Liz. “I thought you might want to know that.”

  So Carol Jeanne had heard Liz’s remarks during the funeral—especially her comments about how Odie Lee’s husband told her things that he had learned in confidence. Carol Jeanne was assuring Liz that she could trust Red.

  In fact, I realized now, Carol Jeanne was drumming up business for her husband. That would be good for her own marriage, if Red got a client right away, so that he could feel needed and important on the Ark. Sometimes I didn’t give Carol Jeanne enough credit—she had noticed a way she could help this woman and her own husband at the same time, and I hadn’t even had to suggest it to her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE APPLE AND THE COCONUT

  We crossed the town square at a fast clip. Liz walked with the speed and precision of a drill sergeant. Carol Jeanne trotted to keep up with her, occasionally turning to see if the others were yet in sight. When she finally glimpsed Red, she waved for him to follow. I turned around to watch their progress: Mamie leading, Red just behind, Lydia trailing after him, and Stef bringing up the rear. All were weary. A sorry-looking parade.

  Just as Emmy’s diaper reached critical mass, Liz stopped in front of a puffy white house on a street lined with little potted trees.

  “This is it—and not a moment too soon.” She led Carol Jeanne up the plastic sheet of sidewalk to the house. She opened the door without a key, and when I looked more closely I saw that there was no way to lock the door. Apparently privacy wasn’t regarded highly here. Everyone in Mayflower would have full access to our lives and our possessions. Carol Jeanne apparently didn’t notice that; I predicted that when she did, locks would magically appear on our doorknobs.

  Inside, the house looked more like a tent than a permanent structure. The floor was covered with carpet that could be rolled up and taken away when the house collapsed during changeover. No plumbing tied the structure to the ground, either; I soon discovered that toilets and sinks and showers were placed around the periphery of the house and supplied by water tanks whose portable pipes snaked house to house above ground, ready for disassembly.

  The walls were made somewhat rigid by tightly inflated ribs, but the real structural strength came from a continuous jet of air that caused the house to have more air pressure inside than out. The slight but constant whooshing of air filled the house with whispers and sighs.

  Somebody had already unloaded our furniture inside, dumping it unceremoniously in whatever room seemed to be appropriate. The dark mahogany pieces jarred with the airy puffed walls of the house. Liz picked her way through the maze of chairs and sofas to reach the nearest bathroom, ignoring our stre
wn possessions in her haste to get Emmy’s diaper under control. No sooner had she entered the bathroom than she shrieked. Then we heard the patter of little feet as Pink scurried like a roach out of the bathroom and down the hall. Apparently Nancy had gotten Pink safely home, and she had immediately taken possession of the toilet seat, just as she had back in the house in New Hampshire.

  Carol Jeanne and I entered the bathroom to find that Liz had already recovered from the shock of meeting Pink. The bathroom was too small for Carol Jeanne to get close enough to help with anything. But Emmy was her child. So she hovered behind Liz, looking attentive as Liz dealt efficiently with the dirty business.

  When Emmy was clean, Liz handed the child over to Carol Jeanne. Only then did Liz wash the ooze from her own arms. Miraculously, she had gotten none of the mess on her clothing.

  “Well that’s done,” said Liz. “The air smells sweeter already. I’m not any bed of roses, I’m afraid, but that’s what children are for.”

  “You’re good at this,” said Carol Jeanne. “I assume you have children?”

  “It’s like I told you at the funeral—motherhood is the only talent I have. Not that it’s a particular virtue, of course. It’s the irresistible hunger of every living creature, to reproduce.”

  I suppose Carol Jeanne must have had that hunger herself, once, but seeing what Lydia and Emmy turned out to be was no doubt a lasting cure for any reproductive hunger that might pop up in her these days.

  “And of every species,” added Carol Jeanne. “Sometimes I think the reproductive drive in individual creatures is merely an expression of the species’ overall hunger to fill every available space. In which case individuality is merely an accident. Nature doesn’t care about individuals.”

  “Ah, but nature cares whether we care,” said Liz, “since our children would never survive to adulthood if we didn’t. That’s what the rules of nature are like, I guess. Even if it doesn’t taste good, you bite down hard.”

  “Bite down?”

  “On the apple, Eve. On the apple.” Suddenly Liz laughed in embarrassment. “But this is so silly of me, standing here prattling about nature with the one person in all the world who understands nature best!”

  “Maybe you understand more, because you think you know less,” said Carol Jeanne. I knew that Carol Jeanne did not believe this for a moment, but apparently she liked Liz, or was at least grateful for her help, and so she took a bit of thought to making Liz feel more at ease with her. No doubt Carol Jeanne was grateful just to have someone in Mayflower that she could stand to talk to at all. The other women we had any kind of acquaintance with—Penelope, Dolores, and the dead Odie Lee—were monstrous, and life in Mayflower was beginning to resemble the fifth ring of the Inferno. So if Carol Jeanne flattered Liz a little, who could blame her?

  “I understand children, and that’s all,” said Liz. “Warren’s a good orthopedist, but he isn’t good enough to have gotten us here if we didn’t have bright and therefore desirable children. You remember the Compact. Only people who have had at least one child and are still capable of having more can come here, and preference is given to people whose older children test high. Warren and I make good babies, and his skill was certainly useful, so here we are.”

  I caught a glimpse out the window of Mamie bustling up the street. I chattered and pointed, and Carol Jeanne looked out in time to see Mamie stop, give the house a once-over, and frown. Liz followed Carol Jeanne’s line of sight and smiled inscrutably.

  “There are exceptions to the rules about child-bearing age, of course, like your parents.”

  “My in-laws,” said Carol Jeanne.

  “Some people were important enough to the success of this project that the rules were bent just a little for them.” Liz smiled. “Nobody minds. We would have been glad to have you even if your witness was an elephant and you had had a hysterectomy and you brought four old people along with you. Your being here means that our children will have a better chance of survival in the new world.”

  Yes, well, Liz might feel different after she really got to know Mamie.

  Red passed Mamie on the street and a moment later appeared in the doorway, with Lydia in tow. “Is Pink all right?” he asked Carol Jeanne.

  “She owns the bathroom already,” she said.

  Mamie burst through the door and paused, panting like a Saint Bernard as she struggled to catch her breath. She appraised the living quarters in one glance, and as soon as she could breathe well enough to close her mouth she pursed her lips.

  “Where are the movers? They can’t just leave things here. When are they going to finish the job?”

  “There aren’t any movers on the Ark,” Liz said cheerfully. “The folks in Materials Management must have unloaded your things to be nice to our chief gaiologist. Most people just find a big carton in front of their house.”

  Mamie sniffed. “If they had been nice, they would have put things where they belonged instead of dumping them here. Where’s my room?”

  “I don’t think that’s been decided yet, Mother,” said Red. Lydia whimpered and clung to her father’s hips. “But I’m glad if Materials Management set up the children’s beds. Wherever they are will be good enough for a nap.”

  To Mamie, though, this clearly meant that if she acted fast, she would get her pick of rooms. Stepping around boxes and over chairs, she made a beeline for the hallway connecting the bedrooms.

  “The houses aren’t much,” said Liz to Red and Carol Jeanne. “But since everybody has the same basic amenities—”

  Mamie was already back, scowling. “Clearly the people who arranged this furniture had no understanding of the way we need the house set up,” said Mamie. “Can you believe they actually brought your office furniture here to the house, Carol Jeanne? As if we could afford to spare one of the four bedrooms for an office, when you’ll no doubt have a perfectly good one in the…Inside? Is that what they call it?”

  Liz smiled cheerfully. “This is the largest house available on the Ark. It’s supposed to be reserved for families with more than six children. You have two couples and two daughters. Normally that would mean three bedrooms, so I expect that Carol Jeanne here is like the chief administrator and has the extra bedroom specifically so she can work at home, too.”

  “You don’t understand.” Mamie fixed a withering gaze on Liz. “I don’t share a bedroom. I never have. Do they expect Stef to sleep in the kitchen?”

  “I think they expect him to share a room with you,” said Liz, clearly amused. I liked the way she stood up to Mamie. If only someone in the family would ever do it as well.

  “Stef makes noises in his sleep,” said Mamie icily.

  “Well, your domestic arrangements are your affair,” said Liz. “But my understanding of the rules here is that if you aren’t using the fourth bedroom as an office for the chief gaiologist, then you’ll be reassigned to a three-bedroom house. Two couples, two children, three bedrooms.” Liz smiled benignly at Mamie. “I understand your problem, though, Mamie, and I think you can resolve easily enough. They have excellent sleeping aids in the pharmacy. Including earplugs, gentle soporifics, and white-noise generators. Though I think you’ll find that the air pump puts out plenty of white noise all by itself.”

  “No doubt the monkey will get to sleep in the office,” said Mamie, glaring at me. “It will have a bedroom all to itself.”

  “If Lovelock sleeps in the office,” said Carol Jeanne, “so will Pink. Pink makes noises in her sleep, too.”

  I was quite sure I was the only one who heard Stef murmur, “So does Mamie.”

  I loved it when I heard stirrings of rebellion in the poor hammered man. I didn’t understand yet why I had so much sympathy for him, but I delighted in his occasional snide remarks, even if they were never loud enough to hear.

  “I think it’s time for me to head on home,” Liz said. “You’re tired and you need time to get settled in. I can’t believe you were so conscientious that you actually came to th
e funeral. Nobody expected you to come, but everyone I talked to was impressed that you did.”

  So…nobody expected us to come. I could feel Carol Jeanne seethe. It was a good thing that Mayor Penelope Frizzle was not present. Carol Jeanne had a tendency to blurt out very angry remarks when she found she had been lied to.

  “We wanted to be part of the community from the start,” said Red. But I could see that he was angry, too.

  “Well, you don’t need company now, when it’s naptime,” said Liz. “My house is two doors to the right of the church, if you want anything. Look for me in the directory under Fisher. Warren and Liz Fisher.” With a cheerful wave she disappeared.

  “Let’s hold a public hanging,” said Carol Jeanne. “If there’s a rope strong enough to hold our beloved mayor.”

  “No, Penelope was right, even if she was a bit manipulative,” said Red. “It was a good thing for us to show up, even if it was hard on the kids.”

  “It was hard on me, too,” said Carol Jeanne.

  “Well, I think it was a lovely thing,” said Mamie, following her pattern of trying to look virtuous whenever she could do so at Carol Jeanne’s expense. “I wish I could have known that lovely woman. The whole funeral service was so lovely. I hope I can have such a lovely funeral.”

  If only I could have spoken.

  “I want a lovely nap,” said Stef. “I’m afraid it will be noisy, though.”

  “Yes, it’s all fine for you,” said Mamie. “You can joke about it because you never hear the racket you make. Besides—you all know I abhor clutter. If we don’t put the furniture in place, I can’t possibly sleep.”

  “Do what you like, Mamie,” said Carol Jeanne. “The rest of us are going to bed.” She carried Emmy into the room where the children’s beds had been set up. Red hefted Lydia into his arms and carried her in afterward. I saw Stef bringing up the rear, leaving Mamie alone in the front room.