Lovelock Read online

  Even though the children hardly understood what the Ark would mean, they had caught on that something exciting was happening, which made them jumpy and quick to whine—not my favorite trait in human children—but the adults were no less jumpy in their own way. They were grieving in silent, unconscious ways—grieving for the place, for the house in New Hampshire, for all the possessions they were leaving behind. Fortunately I lack the genes for that sense of bonding with inanimate objects. I’m as territorial as the next primate, but when I change territories I don’t get sentimental about the one I abandoned. I can pick up tools and use them, I can make almost any place into a nest, but I never think of it as being part of myself. Therefore I am freer than they are.

  Certainly I didn’t have to stand around looking at things the way Red did, as if he were trying to preserve their images in his pathetically limited memory. What did he think his witness was for? And when Red’s father, old Stef, came out of his bedroom, still zipping his fly (was this an old man’s way of reminding us of his manliness?), he was already babbling on about memories of the house. Fortunately, he didn’t expect me to answer him and therefore I didn’t have to listen.

  The most obnoxious mourner was, of course, Mamie, the she-human who gave birth to Red. At least Stef’s chatter showed that he had mastered the rudiments of speech. Mamie went around touching everything, caressing it, as if she thought that by stroking the pewter tea set on the dining room buffet she could wake it up and entice it to tag along with us. Touching, grooming—that’s a primate behavior that I indulge in. But I’d never groom a metal pitcher.

  What annoyed me most about Mamie’s touching things—besides the fact that everything she did annoyed me—was that the things she was touching so possessively weren’t hers. Somehow she had managed to extend her sense of territoriality to include things that belonged to Carol Jeanne, or to Red and Carol Jeanne together. It betrayed the way she really felt about this house: In her own mind, she was no guest, but rather the secret owner of it all.

  Including the people. She thought she owned them, too. I had once tried to explain this to Carol Jeanne, but she refused to listen. I think she knew that I was right, but she simply didn’t want to be disloyal to Red by listening to somebody saying bad things about Red’s dear mother. Thus, out of love, do humans force themselves to love even the barnacles and parasites that attach themselves to their beloved. We lower primates have a more sensible approach: We pick the parasites off and eat them. Our loved ones are relieved of the annoying little bloodsuckers, and we get a little boost in our dietary animal protein.

  “I wish I could have taken this,” sighed Mamie. She was caressing the sofa in the living room. Only six months ago she had complained about how uncomfortable it was—the opening move in the game of getting Red to buy another one just to please her. Another test of her little boy’s love. Now, of course, the sofa was precious. “The thousand-pound limit seems so meager,” she said. “Poundage should be allotted by a person’s age. Young people just haven’t put down so many roots.”

  Tentacles, I think she meant.

  I waited for someone to point out that Mamie was already taking much more than her thousand pounds. She had appropriated most of Stef’s and Lydia’s and Emmy’s poundage—and a little bit of my pathetic fifty-pound allotment, too. She was taking all the weight allotted to Red’s witness, Pink the pig. I imagined that most people who went off-Earth didn’t leave with as many possessions as Mamie was taking. Actually, most people on Earth didn’t have as many possessions as she was taking.

  But no one corrected Mamie; no one put her in her place. Red apparently thought his mother was perfect, Stef had been hammered into submissiveness many decades ago—probably within the first month of their marriage—and Carol Jeanne just didn’t like confrontation. So everyone treated Mamie respectfully as she drifted from room to room, leaving oily fingerprints and sickly-sweet perfume on everything. Carol Jeanne wouldn’t have appreciated it if I compared Mamie to a dog marking its territory, so I kept that observation to myself. Besides, the comparison wasn’t really fair. Among dogs it’s not the bitches that do the marking.

  With all her mourning over things she hadn’t owned anyway, Mamie wasn’t leaving behind anything that couldn’t be replaced. Carol Jeanne, on the other hand, was leaving her sister Irene, who was an irreplaceable resource. Even I could understand her feelings of desolation; in those days, I would have preferred a death sentence to separation from Carol Jeanne.

  Of course no one but me even guessed at her feelings. What did Red know about siblings? He had never had one. As for Stef, well, I had a secret suspicion that he regarded all relatives as something to be endured when they were present, not missed when they were gone. Mamie was taking with her all the people that she owned, or at least controlled. Only Carol Jeanne had a real reason for deep grief and regret—and only Carol Jeanne had enough self-control not to display her feelings the way the others did.

  At last breakfast was over. The small carry-on bags were packed, mostly with spare clothes and toys for Emmy and Lydia, or the banana chips Carol Jeanne always carried to feed me when fresh fruit or monkey chow wasn’t available. The real luggage had already been shipped ahead to be weighed and examined. So when the time came, the departure was surprisingly quick. A last look at the house, and then everyone clambered into the boxy-but-comfortable Nintendo Hoverboy, the driver revved the engine, and we bounced into the air and were gone. I thought of the months of winter remaining in New England and was glad to get away, but of course Carol Jeanne and Red held hands and both of them got misty-eyed. Seeing that, Mamie began to sniffle and quickly pulled Red’s attention away from his wife. I imagined poking my finger into Mamie’s eye; then she’d have something to cry about. I glanced at Stef and saw a faint smile on his lips. I wondered if he had the same fantasy. His was probably more elaborate. He had lived with her longer.

  The trip to Boston was nothing special, scooting over the same roads that Carol Jeanne and I used to get to the university. The road surface was clear of snow—the constant hover traffic blew the snow off as fast as it ever fell. Instead, the snow was piled so high on either side that only the tops of the trees were visible. It was like driving through a tunnel.

  Inside the craft, the scenery was much more interesting. Lydia kept asking if we were almost there. Emmy, ever the one to find a physical metaphor for her feelings, soon got carsick and vomited on the floor, raising an interesting smell and soiling Mamie’s shoes. I wondered if Emmy’s aim had been deliberate. If so, she might grow up to be worth keeping. Mamie pouted for the rest of the trip.

  When we got to the airport, I considered it my duty to find Irene. So I stood on Carol Jeanne’s shoulder and scanned for Irene’s powder-blue habit; she was never hard to find. When I spotted her, sitting in a patch of warm sunlight near the windows, I hooted softly a couple of times and pointed.

  “There she is,” said Carol Jeanne. “Lovelock found her.” As if any one of the others understood how much it meant to her to see Irene this last time.

  With me sitting on her shoulder, of course, Carol Jeanne was as easy to spot from a distance as Irene was in her habit. We hadn’t gone two steps toward her when Irene stood and raised her arm in salute. At that, Carol Jeanne lost all restraint and ran toward her. I knew enough to climb down from her shoulder and cling to her back, out of the way. Out of sight. Carol Jeanne and Irene would be more free with each other if I was invisible. But I could see and hear them, for this was one of those moments I was there to preserve.

  A big, showy embrace—and then the two of them were suddenly shy. Neither knew how to say farewell. Neither was willing to be the first to cry.

  “Come with me,” Carol Jeanne said. “We can find you a place.” I knew that she did not expect Irene to change her mind. It was her oblique way of begging Irene to forgive her for leaving.

  Irene only shook her head.

  “I know your covenant is for a lifetime,” said Carol Jeann
e, “but don’t you think you can serve God out there, too? Don’t you think people will need you there?” And then, her voice breaking a little, she added the words that were hardest to say. “Don’t you think I’ll need you?”

  Irene smiled wanly. “I’m going to live the years that God gives me, in the place where he put me.”

  I could see that Carol Jeanne took that hard, as if it were a criticism of the colonization voyage itself. I knew Irene well enough to understand that she didn’t mean it that way, but that was how Carol Jeanne heard it because of her own sense of guilt about leaving her sister. “If God created a universe where relativity works,” said Carol Jeanne, “you can hardly blame us for traveling to the places God put within our reach.”

  Irene shook her head. “I know you’re doing what you were born to do, Jeannie. Just because I can’t bring myself to leave doesn’t mean that when I’m old, I won’t be glad to think of you out there somewhere, still young and happy and looking forward to your life’s work. Maybe God meant you to stretch time and travel to the stars and live for centuries after I’m dead. Maybe I just don’t want to put off my climb up Jacob’s ladder.” She made a try at laughing, but it was a feeble chuckle that fooled no one. And because Irene had actually mentioned death, Carol Jeanne finally lost her composure—not completely, but enough that tears started to flow.

  Irene raised her arm and put her left hand on Carol Jeanne’s shoulder. The flowing sleeve of her habit looked like an angel’s wing. This was the last time the two sisters would touch each other, or see each other, or hear one another speak.

  “After all, Jesus himself chose not to cheat death,” Irene added.

  Irene had meant this innocently—hadn’t she tied her life to Jesus?—but again, Carol Jeanne interpreted her words as criticism. “We aren’t cheating death, Irene.” Her voice sounded hesitant and unconvincing. “My life will be no longer than yours. It will only seem longer to me because you could have gone with me and you didn’t.”

  Irene looked away for a long moment. When she faced Carol Jeanne, there were tears on her face, too.

  “Don’t you think I want to stay with you?” she asked. “You’re the only people I love—you and Lydia and Emmy. Even Lovelock—in a way, he’s family, too.”

  That was nice.

  “But my work is here. And as crazy as it sounds, I feel as if God is here. Even though I know that he’ll be with you too, I wouldn’t know how to find him out there. I can’t leave God, not even for you.”

  Carol Jeanne answered quietly. “It was unfair of me to ask.”

  “But I’m glad you did,” said Irene. “It will comfort me when I’m lonely for you, knowing how much you wanted me with you.”

  They embraced, so suddenly that I couldn’t get my tail out of the way. In a way, then, Irene’s arm included me in the hug. I looked at her face—only inches away from mine, now—to see if she noticed me. She did: She opened her eyes, and despite her tears managed to wink at me and smile a little.

  I put my hands on her cheeks and gave her a wide-mouthed kiss on the lips. She kissed me back, squeezing her own lips together as though she were kissing a small child. Then she lifted her arm enough that I could pull my tail out of the embrace.

  Carol Jeanne must have taken that release of pressure as a sign that the embrace was over; she started to pull away. But I could not let that happen, not so soon. I scrambled to their shoulders and held them together, my hands firm on their shoulders. They laughed at me as they renewed the embrace, but I knew how soon their trembling turned from laughter to silent weeping.

  I held them together there until I could see Mamie bustling over, no doubt to “cheer them up.” I knew Carol Jeanne would not want to be caught so emotionally exposed, so I chattered softly. She took the cue—probably without even realizing I had given it—and pulled back, drying her eyes on her sleeve. Irene, of course, had a handkerchief. She was prepared for emotion; Carol Jeanne was always taken by surprise.

  Then I turned around on Carol Jeanne’s shoulder and glared at Mamie. She looked at my bared teeth and for a moment seemed to catch on to the idea that her intrusion might not be welcome. At least she paused in her headlong rush.

  Oblivious to Mamie, Carol Jeanne spoke again to Irene. “I guess I can’t expect you to write.”

  “I can, the whole time you’re in solar orbit. And I’ll pray for you, too, all my life. Of course, a few weeks into your real journey, I’ll be dead of old age. Then you’ll be on your own.”

  “On the contrary. Then you’ll watch over me. Then I’ll know you’re taking care of me, protecting me.”

  “It’s the saints who get to do that,” Irene said. “But wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could? I’d watch over you, and Lydia, and Emmy, and even Lovelock, until you joined me in heaven.”

  I chattered at that—the particular sound that I knew they interpreted as laughter.

  “God knows you,” Irene said to me. “Don’t you doubt it.”

  I had my own ideas about what God, if he existed, must think of me. If he had wanted creatures like me to exist, he would have arranged for it himself. There was no one like me when Adam was naming the beasts. If there was anyone like me in the mythical Garden, it was a certain talkative snake.

  “Light a candle for me,” Carol Jeanne said.

  “I’ll light enough candles for you to keep the church warm in winter.”

  Mamie, of course, was suffering greatly, being in the presence of a connection between human beings that she didn’t control. “Oh, you two mustn’t be so sad,” she said. “You can talk to each other for months by phone, until the voyage actually starts.”

  They gave no sign that they heard her.

  “Good-bye,” said Irene. “God bless you.”

  “I love you.” Carol Jeanne barely whispered the words, but I knew that Irene felt them, even if she didn’t hear them.

  By now, Stef and Red had brought the girls along, and Mamie seized the opportunity. “Your pretty little nieces want to say bye-bye to Auntie Irene,” she said. “You mustn’t make them sad, now, with all these silly tears.”

  Only then did Carol Jeanne and Irene pay attention to the rest of the family. Irene hugged Lydia and Emmy as Mamie thrust each of them toward her; despite Mamie’s orchestration of the scene, Irene’s love for the girls was real, and they had always adored this strange creature who had no children to love but them. Irene’s embrace of Red was more clumsy, but only because he felt so awkward hugging a nun; she genuinely liked Red, and he liked her, too. Then she shook hands with Mamie and Stef.

  “You’re such a dear thing,” said Mamie. “We’ll all miss your little visits so much.”

  Stef said nothing, but nodded to Irene as he shook her hand, as if to say that he understood her grief and approved of the strength of her commitment, even if he didn’t share her faith.

  Irene turned again to Carol Jeanne. But, having said their goodbyes, neither said another word to the other. They only embraced once more and silently broke apart. Irene raised her fingers in farewell as the rest of us moved away from her and headed for the tram that would take us out to the spacehopper on its extra-long runway.

  Carol Jeanne stoically refused to look back, but that’s what I was for. I sat on her shoulder, my hand in her hair, and watched Irene every moment until she was out of sight. I knew that in a few weeks or months, Carol Jeanne would ask for the memory. I would have long since stored the scene on the Ark’s master computer, exactly as I saw it; she would play it out on the holographic display of her terminal, zooming in for a close-up of her sister’s face. Then she would see what I had seen: Irene smiling, waving, then bringing her hand to cover her eyes as she wept.

  CHAPTER TWO

  OFF EARTH

  The shuttle was just like the suborbital space cruisers that ran the one hour intercontinental express routes. The same fetishistic cleanliness. The same simple opulence that made you think you were flying to meet God instead of just going to another conf
erence. Except that this time, instead of rising up out of the thick part of the atmosphere only to descend later over New Delhi or Zanzibar or Porto Alegre, we would go all the way up to Grissom Station.

  People took the shuttle to Grissom Station for only three reasons. Half were tourists with so much money that they thought it was worth the expense of this flight just so they could look down at Earth from a window in space instead of the much larger and clearer view through a two-meter hi-def on the wall at home. They got bored in a few minutes and spent the week till the next shuttle getting drunk or laid or underfoot.

  Most of the others were serious people bound for the moon or Mars or the asteroids—scientists, engineers, or half-crazy high-tech manual laborers who would work in low gravity for five years and come home with enough money to pay cash for a Tokyo apartment or a Pacific island and they’d never have to work again as long as they lived, which might not be all that long after the damage that the time they spent in low gee did to their bodies.

  And then there were the people like us, the craziest of all, collecting ourselves at Grissom so we could take the long voyage out to the Ark, in its perpendicular orbit, now only a few months away from its launch point at its farthest point from the planetary orbits. We arkoids, as they called us on Grissom, were the ones who were going to leave the solar system. If we found a habitable planet and established a colony, we’d never come back. And if we gave up and headed home, relativity would have made centuries pass on Earth—we’d come “home” to a planet that had passed through so many changes we’d probably recognize nothing at all.