Lovelock Read online

  “Where’s she going?” Emmy asked me. It was a good question. They certainly weren’t going to bury her.

  When no one answered her quickly enough, Emmy turned up the volume. “WHERE’S SHE GOING?” Heads turned, and I abandoned the screeching Emmy to sit with Carol Jeanne.

  “Daddy doesn’t know,” Red said, and the answer seemed to satisfy Emmy. It didn’t satisfy Mamie, though. As soon as we left the church, she pulled Penelope aside.

  “Where did she go?” Mamie asked.

  “I assume you want to know the final destination of her mortal remains,” Penelope said.

  “Of course. Where’s the cemetery?”

  Penelope raised one eyebrow. “There’s no cemetery on the Ark,” she said.

  Red tapped Mamie on the shoulder. “What she means,” he explained, “is that people who die on the Ark are jettisoned into space. It’s like a sea burial, only people are launched right into heaven.”

  Penelope lowered the first eyebrow and raised the second. I wondered if she was aware of the tricks her eyebrows were doing, or if the brows moved up and down as an unconscious stupidity gauge. Red was almost as dimwitted as Mamie.

  “That’s a romantic idea,” she said, “but it’s not at all sensible. Every object in space is a potential weapon. Sure, the odds are against a ship hitting Odie Lee, but if one did, the collision would be fatal. We don’t jettison anything from the Ark.”

  “Then you bury them,” Mamie said. It was a statement, not a question.

  Penelope rolled her eyes. “You’ve been underground. That’s where the tube runs. That’s where we have our offices. I’m not sharing my desk with a corpse. Not even with a saint like Odie Lee.”

  “What, then?” Good grief! The woman was dense.

  “It’s like they say in the Good Book. ‘Ashes to ashes…’ ”

  I accessed my computer files under Bible, and I didn’t find “ashes to ashes” anything. But I was hardly surprised. Christians will say any old thing and if they claim it’s in the Bible, everyone nods wisely and accepts every word of it. That’s because nobody reads the book. They believe it—but they leave it unstudied and unread. Of course, there are scientists like that, too—the ones who accept the orthodoxy of the past without ever looking at the evidence themselves. But people like that never change the world; they move through it invisibly. Carol Jeanne questioned everything, and as a result she had transformed her field. And soon enough she was going to transform a world. She was living a life that was unfathomable to people who assumed that every cliché in their heads came from the Bible and was therefore not to be questioned.

  Mamie didn’t care about the source of the quote—it was the idea of cremation that bothered her. “That’s barbaric!”

  “It’s a simple necessity, practiced in many places back on Earth,” said Penelope. “It was also fully explained in the prospectus.”

  “Nobody’s burning me.”

  “You won’t exactly be burned,” said Penelope cheerfully. “Rendered is more accurate. We’ll break you down to your component elements and recycle you. We’ll use you to fertilize plants and do all sorts of other things. It’s only the unusable parts that will be cremated.”

  “That will never happen to me.” Mamie was near tears, and I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

  Penelope smiled sweetly. “You signed the Compact.”

  “That was in there? That I could be—incinerated? Recycled? Rendered, like a bar of soap?”

  Penelope smiled and shrugged—a slow, eloquent, voluminous gesture. “We’ll almost certainly wait until you’re dead.”

  Mamie turned in fury at Stef. “Why didn’t you tell me that!”

  Because you wouldn’t have listened, you poor dimwitted woman—certainly not to Stef. Of course I could say nothing, but I knew this pattern very well. Red was the one who had studied the Compact and decided not to tell his mother about cremation, and even Mamie must have been well aware of that. But since she could never be angry with her dear boy, it was Stef she turned on. Poor Stef. She never gave him the slightest power or influence over her, but held him responsible for anything that went wrong.

  “I’m sorry, dear. I don’t know what I was thinking of,” Stef croaked.

  “My goodness, Stephan! Your throat sounds as dry as sandpaper,” Penelope said, immediately solicitous. “We must get you something to drink.”

  Never mind that it was Penelope’s fault that they hadn’t even been able to get a drink before the funeral. She was his rescuer now, in more ways than one. “If it’s not too much trouble,” he murmured.

  “No trouble at all,” said Penelope, beaming. “We were going to the kitchen anyway. Once people have seen Odie Lee’s display, the next thing they’ll want is food.”

  “Odie Lee’s display?” Red asked.

  Penelope only dismissed them with a shake of her head. “Oh, you’ll have plenty of time to see it,” she said. “Right now all of us Mayflowerites have to help with the meal.” Then she looked down at Pink, who was dozing in Red’s arms. “Of course you can’t take a pig into the kitchen.”

  “Pink is a witness,” said Red, wearily. “A heavy witness, in fact.”

  “Well then,” said Penelope, “I’ll bet we can get someone to take the pig home for you.”

  Red considered for a moment. I could imagine the internal debate. On the one hand, Pink, unlike the children, would be perfectly all right at home by herself, and she was tired. But on the other hand, it would be a confession that what Red was doing here wasn’t important enough to be witnessed. Of course nothing that he did was important enough to be witnessed, but that was one bit of reality that he wasn’t ready to face yet.

  “Pink is tired and I really can’t carry her around,” said Red. He looked at the lazy little swine in his arms and she winked at him. “Yes, Pink would like to go to the new house.”

  “Why don’t we all go home with Pink?” suggested Carol Jeanne.

  Penelope looked at her with an ingenuous expression. “Oh, what a good idea. I’m sure people will understand. Everyone else in Mayflower is helping with the funeral, but the chief gaiologist’s husband’s pig is sleepy so of course she had to go home—”

  Red intervened quickly. “Don’t be silly, Penelope, of course we’ll stay and help. But who are you going to have take her? Pink isn’t a pet or…or an ordinary animal.”

  No, Pink was a walking doorstop.

  “One of our young people—oh, Nancy!”

  Nancy was a horse-faced girl whose every movement betrayed the fact that she thought she was even uglier than in fact she was. Her shoulders slumped and she seemed to shrink as she walked, as if she hoped that if she became unobtrusive enough she would entirely disappear. Of course her very ungainliness served only to call more attention to her, but I have learned that human adolescents never understand that the best way to avoid notice is to behave normally. Though in Nancy’s case, there was no need for her to disappear. When she looked up and smiled she seemed to be a very nice person. Very trustworthy. No sign of the hostility that most human teenagers have when an adult calls their name.

  “Mr. Cocciolone’s witness needs to be dropped off at their new home,” said Penelope. “You know where their house has been set up, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Nancy. “It’s right up the street from us.”

  “Then you wouldn’t mind running the pig home for him, would you?”

  She wouldn’t mind. She bundled Pink into her arms and took off briskly.

  “But won’t the door be…” Red’s voice trailed off.

  “She’ll be just fine,” said Penelope. “And your poor pig looked so tired.” She spared a glance at me. “I’d suggest sending the monkey home, too, but I don’t know who would dare to handle an animal that bites.”

  Damn straight, Penelope, thought I.

  The social hall was connected to the sanctuary by a gravel path. The mourners were grouped in the large room, apparently viewing Odie Lee’s
display. We bypassed that as Penelope led us to a large, square kitchen where a cluster of volunteers were slopping food on reusable plates. Everyone was taking the food outdoors and sitting on the lawn or on benches to eat it.

  I stood on tiptoe on Carol Jeanne’s shoulder, clutching her hair for balance as I inspected the fare. It was such human food—overcooked and overspiced and hopelessly carnivorous. There wasn’t so much as a grape that was fresh. I wouldn’t be eating at this meal.

  “Who has the punch?” Penelope boomed. “I need some punch. We have a thirsty man here.” She found a cup of fruit drink and gave it to Stef, ignoring the rest of our group.

  “I’m thirsty,” Emmy wailed, eyeing Stef’s empty cup.

  “I’m hungry,” said Lydia. “I’m supposed to have food right now.” Lydia was always so charming when she imitated Mamie.

  Penelope looked at them like they were roaches. “What are children doing in the kitchen?” she asked rhetorically. Everyone knew she had led them there. “Joan, be a dear and take them off to the nursery.” Then Penelope bent down and blasted Lydia cheerfully with her foghorn voice. “There are little snacks for you in the nursery, darling.”

  A tiny blond woman, not much taller than Lydia, stepped down off a stool and wiped her hands on the towel she wore around her waist. Then, without speaking a word, she took Lydia and Emmy by the wrist and led them from the kitchen. Emmy’s wails sounded like a siren diminishing in the distance. “Daddy!” she howled.

  “You’ll be fine!” Red called after her.

  I felt Carol Jeanne’s muscles stiffen under me. It took me a moment to realize why she was angry: Emmy had called out for her father, not her mother.

  But why should that bother Carol Jeanne? She had made her choice. Red was the childcare man, the family therapist; she was the scientist, the worldshaper. Her children were the countless generations of every species, human and otherwise, that would grow up on our new world. These two genetic accidents that had come from her womb were Red’s children—they were all he’d ever create, so why shouldn’t he be closer to them than Carol Jeanne was? I didn’t understand her.

  “Now, everybody’s squared away!” Penelope said, obviously pleased with herself. “We have some new kitchen volunteers to do their fair share today,” she announced. “These are Carol Jeanne Cocciolone, and her husband Red, and his dear mama. The handsome one is Stephan, who is far too young to be Red’s father.” This last was said with a coy smile. “Carol Jeanne, why don’t you and Mamie go out and collect the empty plates? We want everyone to see our handsome new citizens. Red and Stef can stay here and help wash the dishes—these dear men won’t mind doing the obscure, difficult work that no one ever sees, will you?”

  Penelope was a genius at this, I could see. It was important for Mayflower colony’s prestige to have Carol Jeanne as visible as possible, while Penelope simply wanted Mamie out of the way. Mamie stupidly grabbed at the lure; she picked up the plastic tray and bustled importantly away, smiling attractively at everyone within eyeshot.

  But as far as Carol Jeanne was concerned, Penelope couldn’t have made a worse suggestion. Carol Jeanne shunned public appearances. She nuzzled me with her chin as I perched on her shoulder. It was one of the ways she bought time.

  Finally she said, “I appreciate the offer, Penelope, but I don’t smell good enough to be seen by the public. I’d love to wash dishes, though.”

  “Dishes? You’re Carol Jeanne Cocciolone. You don’t wash dishes.”

  Heads turned. Carol Jeanne’s name was already famous on Mayflower. She blushed.

  “Of course I wash dishes,” she said quietly. “I didn’t grow up in a house with servants, and the dishes never washed themselves.”

  I knew, and Stef knew, and certainly Red knew that he did most of the dishwashing in our house back on earth—but Penelope didn’t know that. The color deepened on her cheeks. “Of course,” she said, making a quick recovery. “ ‘Whoever would be the greatest among you, let him be the servant of all.’ Isn’t that just like you?” Penelope was hardly in a position to know what was “just like” Carol Jeanne, but because the comment saved face for her, no one contradicted her. “You wash dishes here with us for a while, and then I’ll take you around to introduce you—fair enough?”

  Freed of Penelope’s orchestration, Carol Jeanne found a place at a sink and washed dishes. Red and Stef ended up drying dishes and wiping up counters and whatever else Penelope commanded; somehow, the moment she entered the kitchen, she was the overseer and everyone there accepted her assignments.

  I stayed with Carol Jeanne, drying the silverware and glasses and platters as she finished with them. As always, we worked together with grace and precision. We settled into such a comfortable rhythm that I was soon oblivious to the activity around me. A grating human voice brought me back.

  “I said, is that monkey touching our plates?”

  I looked up to see a tall ugly treetrunk of a woman who had apparently suffered from crippling acne in her teens. I recognized her, though—yes, she had been sitting beside the children on the row in front of us at Odie Lee’s funeral. She had a squashed-in nose, so there was certainly a genetic connection between her and the children. She lacked the buck teeth, but no doubt orthodontia had played a role in that. It was impossible to think that the children’s father could have contributed to their ugliness. No one else’s genes would dare interfere with this woman’s reproductive process. The children no doubt looked at their mother’s complexion, realized what lay ahead of them in adolescence, and contemplated suicide.

  I bared my teeth at her, and she stepped back.

  “He’s not a real monkey, Dolores. He’s a witness.” Penelope jumped in before Carol Jeanne could defend my cleanliness. “You’d better watch yourself around him,” she added in an undertone. “He bites.”

  Dolores took another step back. Already, the only two people I had officially met on the Ark were wary of me. I didn’t want to make people think less of Carol Jeanne, so I set the platter I was drying aside and did a somersault on the counter. I was trying to overcome this woman’s aversion to monkeys by being unbearably cute and nonthreatening. It didn’t work, though.

  Carol Jeanne understood, and let me off the hook. “Lovelock,” she said, “doing dishes is such repetitive work. Go out where people are eating and observe for me, would you?”

  She gave me a banana chip—as if I needed a bribe to escape that little domestic scene. But I used the treat as an excuse to play my monkey role to the hilt, begging with outstretched hands and a hopeful expression for the tidbit that she so generously bestowed on me.

  I stood at attention on the counter, bowed deeply, then jumped up and kicked my heels together. Definitely a vaudeville move, but it had the desired effect—the other women in the kitchen laughed in delight, and even Penelope smiled. Of course, Dolores’s curled lip didn’t relax a bit. Her disgust was impenetrable. The name Dolores is Spanish for “pains,” originating no doubt as a reference to the pains of Christ, but I thought it was the perfect name for her.

  I leapt from the counter, clung for a moment to Carol Jeanne’s upper arm, and then, on impulse, took a flying leap at Dolores, landing on her shoulder. Penelope shrieked, but Dolores barely flinched. “Get this animal…” she began, but then I leaned up and kissed her—a dry kiss—on her scarred and pitted cheek. I was almost certain that no one in her life, not even her husband, had ever kissed that cheek.

  It was perhaps too much to hope that my kiss would make her realize that she, too, had been a victim of prejudice, and that her bigotry toward me was therefore unjust; it would be enough if the gesture touched her emotions a little bit and softened her loathing toward me. This was part of my job, after all. To make sure that Carol Jeanne always looked good to other people. That naturally included helping dispel negative feelings toward her witness.

  I jumped from Dolores’s shoulder. To my surprise, my trajectory didn’t work as I’d planned—instead of landing in the
kitchen doorway, I found myself heading straight for the doorjamb, and barely recovered in time to hit it with my hands and feet instead of my head. I rolled on the ground, trying to look less clumsy than I felt. What could possibly have thrown me off?

  Idiot, I thought. The Coriolis effect. The Ark was spinning, so of course when I jumped free of all objects connected to the ground, the Ark moved under me and I didn’t land where I’d expected. This was the first time since arriving here that I’d tried a serious leap. It was obvious that it would take some practice to learn how to get around. That reminded me of my terrible experience on the shuttle, when we were in freefall. I never wanted to lose control of myself like that again. I’d have to find a way to practice that, too.

  Of course, everyone thought that hitting the doorjamb was part of my vaudeville routine, so there was more laughter as I left. Fine, that was fine. Open, happy laughter meant that humans weren’t afraid.

  Outside, people were scattered all over the lawns, eating and talking cheerfully. It really was a social occasion; any mournfulness left over from the funeral was apparently confined to the hall where people were viewing Odie Lee’s display. I was curious—I wanted to see what that was about. But Carol Jeanne had told me to do my observing where people were eating, so that was where I went.

  People noticed me, of course, but they quickly dismissed me as a harmless animal and went on talking. Everyone knew about witnesses, and if they’d thought about it they would have realized that anything they said in front of me could and probably would be repeated. But it was in their nature to dismiss me as nothing more than an animal, which was fine with me—it made my job easier.