Lovelock Read online

  Most of the conversations were dull enough—gossip, silly things. I didn’t stay long with any of them. Carol Jeanne would glance at them as I uploaded them into the computer. Then I’d search the Ark’s database, identify all the people, and index them so that later, if she needed to, Carol Jeanne could look them up and see them in conversation. It was a kind of spying, I supposed, but indexed recordings were about the only way a famous person like Carol Jeanne could possibly keep track of all the people who would expect her to remember them. Carol Jeanne told me once that it was for this that she finally decided to get a witness in the first place. She had no idea at the time that we would become such good friends.

  I felt as though I had listened in on a thousand conversations, when finally I came upon the two children who had sat in front of us at the funeral. They were playing. Or rather, he was playing, by turning his dirty plate upside down and flipping it out so it flew like a Frisbee.

  “You’ll break the plate!” the girl insisted.

  “Haven’t yet,” he said.

  “But you will.”

  The plate landed face down on the lawn, and he sauntered over to pick it up. “I’m just wiping it off in the grass, see?”

  She ran ahead of him. “I won’t let you do it!”

  He ran, too, but she had too much of a head start. She got the plate. He lunged for it, but she ran and held it out of reach. “It’s mine!” he shouted.

  “It belongs to the village,” she said. “We can’t make more, not for another whole year.”

  “It’s not going to break, but you might,” he said. “Give it back.”

  “If this dish breaks Mother will never let you come to anything grown-up like this again.”

  “Good,” he said. But the mention of his mother stopped him cold. The running was over. “You can’t just take stuff that belongs to me and keep it away.”

  “It doesn’t belong to you,” she said. “And I’m saving you from getting your stupid self punished.”

  “I don’t want to be saved.”

  “Then you’re as stupid as you are ugly.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  Since they were both quite ugly, it was almost painful to hear them talk like this. I liked them—probably because they had liked me when they first saw me in church. So I intruded myself into their little scene, scampering in between them. I did a little imitation of their quarrel, taking each part in turn, chattering in fury and waving my arms in a crescendo of argument. Then I put my hands behind my back and strutted away, nose in the air. They laughed. I turned, took a bow, then allowed the bow to topple me over into the grass.

  “Look at that,” the girl said. “How do they train him to do that?”

  “They don’t train him, stupid,” said the boy. “He does it because he wants to. He’s a witness. He’s probably smarter than we are.”

  A very perceptive boy.

  “Besides which,” said the boy, “he probably recorded everything and he’ll tell on us later.”

  I jumped to my feet, stood at attention, and very solemnly shook my head.

  “See?” she said. “He’s not going to tell on you.”

  “Then you will.”

  “Will not.”

  “Will so.”

  Again I bounded between them, and pantomimed taking a punch at an imaginary opponent. Then I became the opponent and pretended to take the punch, flinging myself backward into the grass. Again they laughed.

  “I think he doesn’t want us to fight,” said the boy.

  “Why should he care?” asked the girl.

  I shrugged eloquently.

  “I wish he could talk,” said the boy.

  “They can read and write,” said the girl. “If we had a computer, he could type.”

  “How come you know so much about witnesses?”

  “Because I’m going to be famous someday and have one,” she said.

  He shook his head in disgust. “Listen, pinbrain, that was something that happened on Earth, where we will never in our lives go to again. Where are they going to get a witness for you here?”

  She looked dismayed. “Don’t they just make them?”

  “Sure, with really complicated crossbreeding and genetic splicing and who knows what else.”

  “So what?” said the girl. “We have embryo banks here. Millions of animal embryos. I bet they have some that could become witnesses.”

  “Fine, maybe,” said the boy. Clearly he didn’t believe it.

  She turned her back on him. “What’s your name, monkey?”

  “He can’t talk,” said the boy.

  “Maybe he can act it out,” she said. “I bet he can act out your name.”

  The boy blushed with anger. “If you make any jokes about my name I’ll kill you.”

  “It could be worse,” she said. “Your name could be Dick.”

  “That’s it,” he said. “You’re dead!”

  He lunged for her, and because they were both sitting in the grass, she couldn’t get away. I was afraid he was really going to hurt her, because he was angry. But instead he tickled her. She laughed and screamed for him to stop, and I understood that this was humiliating for her, that she hated being tickled, so it was a punishment after all—but at the same time, he could have hit her, and instead he chose this far less violent way of acting out his rage.

  In fact, the way they rolled and tussled on the ground stirred something in me. Feelings that I had never had with Carol Jeanne’s and Red’s children. Maybe they were too young. Maybe Mamie’s influence had made them so prissy that they could never really play like this. But watching the way these two ugly children played, seeing how they loved and bossed and tormented each other, I felt a gnawing hunger. Not for food or water. I didn’t realize it at the time, but soon enough I understood: I was hungry for childhood. It was one thing to strut and perform for people. It was something else to play with them. I was supposedly an adult, and yet I still had that child-hunger.

  For a moment, I let it get the better of me. Seeing how he tickled her, I couldn’t—or at least didn’t—stop myself from leaping onto his back and tickling him. He was distracted enough that in only a moment she was on top, tickling him, so that he couldn’t concentrate enough even to get me off his face.

  “Not fair!” he howled. “Two against one!”

  “That’s right,” she cackled. “We’re cheaters! But that’s better than being Peters!”

  That was too much for him. He roared, flung me off his face, and went after her again. But this time when he caught her, she had had enough. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, I take it back, I didn’t mean it.”

  “I don’t make fun of your name,” Peter said.

  “There’s nothing to make fun of,” she said. “Diana is a perfectly ordinary name.”

  “Oh yeah?” he said. “She was the virgin huntress.” He looked as triumphant as if he had just called her something obscene.

  “Of course I’m a virgin,” Diana answered contemptuously. “I don’t even get a period yet.”

  “Don’t talk about that,” he said, excruciatingly embarrassed.

  “Period period period,” she said. “Blood and cramps and little eggs rolling down tubes. Fertilization.”

  He covered his ears. “You are sick!” he said. “You are deeply disturbed.”

  “On the contrary,” she said, triumphant at last. “I’m simply a woman, and not ashamed of it.”

  “I’m going to take my plate in and see if Mother’s finished so we can go home,” he said. He got up and started looking for the onetime frisbee.

  When he found it, it was broken into two halves.

  “I told you,” she said.

  “It didn’t happen from playing Frisbee,” he said. “You must have stepped on it.”

  “Because you were chasing me. And besides, I didn’t step on it. I would have noticed.”

  “Then you rolled over on it.”

  “If I did then that’s what
you get for tickling me,” she said.

  “You’re going to get killed.”

  “Oh really? I’m not the one who has to hand Mother a broken plate.”

  They were heading for the kitchen. I was completely forgotten. But no sooner did I think that than Diana turned around and looked at me. “Are you coming or not?” she asked. “My mother was looking for your owner. Mother’s a botanist and she’s going to be working with Dr. Cocciolone.”

  Oh, great. The bark-faced woman was going to be around a lot. Just what I hoped for.

  “He doesn’t have to come with us,” said Peter. “He can do whatever he wants.”

  That was the second time Peter had said I could do whatever I wanted, but I was so naive then that I didn’t give it a second thought. Of course I was a free agent, bound to Carol Jeanne only by my love for her and hers for me. But that was why I went with them—not because I had to, but because it was time to see if I could make myself useful to the creature whose life meant more to me than my own pitiful existence.

  There was still a mountain of dishes when we got to the kitchen. It looked like there were hours of work left to do. And Carol Jeanne looked so tired. Not to mention poor Stef, who was drying dishes now. Red was nowhere to be seen. Penelope and Dolores were putting dishes away—working very slowly, because they were so busy talking. All of it was gossip, talking about people, not a single intelligent idea to be heard.

  Carol Jeanne had been imposed on long enough. It was time for somebody to put his foot down. And since it wasn’t likely to be Carol Jeanne or Stef, it had to be me.

  I bounded up onto the counter. I was already getting better at allowing for the Coriolis effect, so I landed pretty much where I wanted to. And then I splashed across the wet counter and stood directly in front of Penelope’s bosom and Dolores’s skin and screeched at them at the top of my lungs. They looked at me in horror. I bent over, flashing my little pink butt at them, and wrote in the water, “DONE.” The letters stayed long enough to be read—I know they read the word, because Penelope’s lips moved—and then I stalked over to Carol Jeanne, splashing angrily with every step, and began to pull her away from the sink by the sleeve. Of course I wasn’t strong enough actually to move her—I only skidded on the water on the counter—but the symbolism finally penetrated the thick skulls of the gossiping grotesques who had trapped her there.

  “Oh, you poor dear,” said Penelope. “We’ve been so thoughtless, keeping you here so long when you haven’t even been to your house yet.”

  I was afraid that Carol Jeanne’s martyr syndrome would kick in and she’d insist on staying until the job was done, but at that moment she looked at Stef and saw the hope on his face and so she smiled at Penelope and said, “I’ve enjoyed helping, but you’re right, I do need to get home.”

  I hated hearing her talk like that—she was already picking up the oversincere intonation that Penelope always used.

  “You just wait half a minute and I’ll take you,” said Penelope.

  “Please don’t bother,” said Carol Jeanne. “You’ve got too many responsibilities here for us to take you away. It can’t be a secret where our house is, can it?”

  “No,” said Dolores, “just ask anybody and they’ll tell you. We’re all very excited that you’re here.” She didn’t sound excited. She sounded how you’d expect a talking tree to sound—bored out of her mind.

  “It was so nice meeting you—and all the others who were working here in the kitchen today—”

  “Let’s go,” said Stef. I’m sure he saw a ray of hope that he might actually get away from Penelope today, and he didn’t want small talk to delay the happy moment.

  I climbed up to Carol Jeanne’s shoulder.

  “That monkey really looks out for you,” said Dolores.

  I could have been wrong, but her tone suggested grudging respect. Maybe having her around wouldn’t be as unbearable as I had feared.

  At that moment, though, Dolores saw the two half-plates in Peter’s hands. She went rigid but said nothing. Instead she fixed him with a terrible glare. He carefully, shamefacedly laid the fragments on the counter. “I was playing with it and I broke it,” he said. “Diana warned me not to and I did it anyway.”

  I was astonished at this—the way he took full responsibility, the sheer courage of it. But there was still something terrible and frightening in the way his mother said nothing at all. Just continued to glare at Peter, unmoving, until he left the room, Diana tagging along after him. I had never seen anything like it. The woman really did become treelike in moments of stress.

  Or perhaps she merely saved her fury for later, when they were home. Yet nothing in Peter’s and Diana’s behavior had suggested an inordinate fear of their mother. Her glare of death might well be the entire punishment Peter would receive. I suspected that it was probably more than enough.

  Once outside the kitchen, Carol Jeanne straightened up, as if a huge weight had been taken from her shoulders.

  “I think I love your monkey like another son,” said Stef. “He just saved my life.”

  Carol Jeanne chuckled. “He does look out for me.”

  We were in the social hall now, and the crowd around Odie Lee’s display had thinned considerably. Carol Jeanne was looking toward it, but I knew that she probably didn’t share my curiosity about it. Nor was Stef likely to speak in favor of examining Odie Lee’s detritus. I was disappointed—I wanted to see what a dead human would choose to have put on display at her own funeral.

  My wish was granted by an unexpected fairy godmother. As we stood there, looking toward the display, a familiar voice spoke up. “It’s like a little prayer chapel. The shrine of the Blessed Odie Lee, patron saint of hypocrites.”

  It was Liz, the woman who had sat behind us during the funeral. She was without her bull-necked husband, and apparently she had sized up Carol Jeanne and Stef as people who would share her caustic attitude toward Odie Lee.

  She was right. Carol Jeanne gave her a warm smile (the first unforced one she had given anyone but me today) and said, “I must be a terrible cynic, but I was sitting there in the funeral thinking how grateful I was that I wouldn’t have to meet this Odie Lee.”

  “The post-Odie Lee era begins today in Mayflower,” said Liz. “The year one, P.O.L. New calendars for everyone.” She held out her hand. “My name is Liz Fisher. My husband is—off somewhere. Would you like me to give you the guided tour through Odieland?”

  “I’d love it,” said Carol Jeanne. “My name is—”

  “Carol Jeanne Cocciolone. Peloponnesia has been shouting your name all day—how could I miss it?”

  “Peloponnesia,” echoed Stef, with a chuckle.

  “Sorry, my pet name for Penelope,” said Liz. “But when you look at her, I just can’t help but think of peninsulas. Can you?”

  Carol Jeanne laughed out loud. Several people looked at us. “Oh, no, I mustn’t laugh,” said Carol Jeanne. “People will think I’m—”

  “Disrespectful,” said Liz. “Don’t worry—I won’t say anything to embarrass you at the display. Besides, I don’t have to. No one but Odie Lee would ever think of arranging her own audio-visual This-Is-Your-Life. It speaks for itself.”

  It did indeed. Odie Lee had carefully planned every detail of her own funeral display. She must have known she was going to die. No, she must have hoped she was going to die. She must have craved death and this final burst of martyrdom, the way Carol Jeanne craved chocolate and Red craved salt. Funeral displays weren’t customary on Mayflower; this was Odie Lee’s own idea and her own passion, although from the worshipful way others were looking at it, I had no doubt it would become a funeral tradition from now on. The display was magnificent in its tackiness. If I had the ability to blush, I would have done it, out of humiliation for Odie Lee. I was grateful that we weren’t of the same species.

  There was an arrangement of insipid sayings that she had handsewn in X-shaped stitches on fabric. These framed sayings surrounded a bigger tapes
try, which was a crude reproduction of Odie Lee’s own face. It, too, was sewn into fabric with the curious X-shaped stitches. Even dead, Odie Lee didn’t look as lifeless as her needlework image. The idea of someone sewing her own likeness into fabric was faintly nauseating. A portrait of the artist in threads.

  Other crafts dotted the exhibit. There were pottery bowls in shapes that roughly approximated half-spheres. There were watercolors of landscapes that looked like animals, and animals that looked like scenery. Odie Lee apparently fancied herself an artist.

  Then we got to the photographs: Odie Lee knocking on a front door with a hamper of food; Odie Lee holding hands with a group of other women, their heads bowed in prayer; Odie Lee kneeling at a bedside, praying again, as she gazed upward with a supplicating expression on her face. All the things that people had praised her for at the funeral were on display here, and Odie Lee had posed for the pictures. I imagined her looking through the photographer’s proofs, picking out the pictures in which she looked most beatific as she humbly loved her neighbor as herself.

  Even more nauseating were the refreshments. Odie Lee had cooked fudge and nut breads and cookies and candy in anticipation of her coming death. They’d been frozen or vacu-packed or set aside on a shelf, waiting for Odie Lee to die so they could be served at her funeral. Now they sat on a table next to the funeral display, not six feet from Odie Lee’s coffin, labeled with a note (in Odie Lee’s own calligraphy) admonishing visitors to “Just Take 1, Please!” How long had she been dying, anyway? Why couldn’t it have happened sooner, before she cooked the fudge?

  I assumed that what killed Odie Lee must not have been contagious, since most of the food had been eaten. No doubt it was lipsmacking good, and just as pretty as the picture in the recipe book.

  The most interesting part of the display—even more interesting than Odie Lee’s own body—was a holo image of Odie Lee, giving her final words-to-live-by sermonette to those who had come to see her dead. Her assumption must have been that others would be eager to learn how to live as selfless a life as she had. Here was a woman who was brazen in her humility.

  With organ music in the background to accent her words, Odie Lee’s holo told us she hoped we would be as holy as the photographs had already shown her to have been. “Visit the sick,” she said. The holograph dissolved to a scene of Odie Lee bent over a child’s sickbed. “The Savior taught us, ‘Feed my lambs.’” And now we saw Odie Lee whipping up a batch of fudge—perhaps even the same fudge that sat on the table beside us.