Ficathon Fic: A TASTE OF HONEY (Blakes7); Jenna, Avon, Blake PG-13
Written for prehistoric_sea, who wanted Jenna's Mormon faith (shared by many rebels) to preclude her from terminating an unwanted pregnancy.
A/N: The theology and practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latest-Day Saints are not exactly the same as those of 21st century Mormonism. (As an example, the Newvoo stake is not large enough to support chapels as well as the Temple, so ordinary Sacrament Meetings and community functions, not just Temple Ordinances, are held in the Temple, and a Temple Recommend is required to attend.) The Latest-Day Saints oppose polygamy.
The soul should not die ungodly in an armed madhouse Allen Ginsberg
1
Blake had taken advantage of the lull in the avidity of the massed and lawful forces trying to kill us by calling a briefing session during a shared morning meal. (For us, perpetually in space, "morning," like "rebellion," was a shared delusion.) The coffee was still steaming, and Vila still dishing out plates of fried eggs and rashers, when the color drained out of Jenna's face. She clamped a serviette to her mouth, and staggered away from the flight deck.
Although I have not gone so far as to give credence the existence of telepathy between members of H.sapiens var. terrestris, there were quite a few times when Vila and I, joint holders of the only bit of sense of the ship, reached the same conclusion. (He a little later than I, of course.). So first we both shuffled through memories of our most recent planetfalls to determine whether we were, once again, exposed to hazardous doses of radiation. But we felt perfectly fine. Vila opened his mouth to groan something along the lines of, "Oh, no! She isn't! She didn't! She couldn't!" but the words hung in the air, unspoken.
I was fairly sure that Vila was not the culprit, and (here we cast our minds back again) although some quite disagreeable things had happened recently, Jenna hadn't been out of our sight during any of them long enough to get raped. Hence, by the time Jenna returned certainly I, and probably Vila and Cally, had reached a conclusion.
Jenna returned, looking less distressed but still viridian. "I'm sorry," she and Blake said simultaneously. Cally's eyebrows rose and descended. She sighed. "I'm sorry to hear that, Jenna…" she began. I was reminded of a joke old enough for Vila to claim authorship: "I've got some good news for you, Mrs. Brown." "It's Miss Brown, actually." "Well, in that case, I've got some bad news for you." It's probably old enough to predate publication of the Theory of Relativity, although it's not a bad illustration of it.
Cally reached out to pat Jenna's hand, but the table was too wide. "It's a very simple procedure," she said. "Not even a procedure, really. We have injectables."
"And you've got injectable contraceptives as well," Jenna said. "Look how well that turned out! If you think I'm going to do away with my baby, you're mad."
"Jenna, please, let's stop and consider this, and not be hasty," Blake said.
"This simply isn't the time or the place," Cally said. "When it's more…suitable…you can travel to a neutral planet for ova extraction and preservation, and then you and Blake can choose the number and timing of your children in civilized fashion."
There's no real need to separate combatants who are merely glaring death at one another, so I didn't. "You don't even look pregnant," I said, to introduce a bit of rationality into the discussion. "We're just talking about an indiscriminate mass of tissue, certainly nothing that can reasonably be described as a baby…"
"Stick a sock in it, Avon," Jenna said. "It's nothing to do with you anyway." This statement did not really pan out in practice, but that's not unusual for our happy little ship.
2
The nearest suitable place to teleport was Hilderron-3. It was not the nearest place, but it was the least scrupulous about documentation. We didn't hang about long enough for them to send anyone to catch us any faster than we could run away, and Cally (whom we left at the helm) was quite capable of hustling us away from danger. The whole thing would have been over in minutes if, when we turned to Vila to sign the register as the second witness, he hadn't been in the off-licence buying materials for the bachelor party. (He also, with a surprising degree of sensitivity, bought some fruit juice for Jenna.)
Jenna helped herself to a large, rather vulgar diamond ring from the Treasure Room, and a big gold band, for which I can't blame her one bit. It's not unlikely that she will need a grubstake in the wake of this whole fiasco. I was rather touched, when she produced a platinum band for me at the register office. If we'd actually discussed the matter beforehand, I would have told her that I detest the whole idea of wedding rings-worse than a collar and leash, really. But then she would have said that that was the whole point, and we would have been off again.
Not only was "morning" something of an invention on the very memorable one when Jenna revealed her in-pod status, I learned that "morning sickness" can be merely the part used to describe the whole. If Jenna felt anywhere near as wretched every day as I did after our hideous imitation of festivity, then I'm sorry for her.
3
Liberator, and more particularly its Flight Deck, has been the situs of some notable quarrels. Many of the more…fervent…disagreements were limited to Blake and myself, although in this case, everyone got into the act.
"Jenna, I'm sorry to have to say this, but a warship is not a suitable place for a pregnant woman or an infant," Blake said.
"…And even absent combat risks, the hazards of space travel during pregnancy are well-documented…" Cally said.
"We've all had to make sacrifices, Jenna," Blake said. "And the life I, the life we, lead, rules out the possibility of a normal private life. Can you imagine the danger, if it became known that I had a child? The tug-of-war that would ensue, among all the factions who wanted the child to advance their own agenda? Not just our nominal enemies, but the various splinter groups that think they have a handle on what needs to be done."
"That's all very well in the abstract, but it's too late for that now," Jenna said. "There's a baby on the way, and that's that."
"Jenna, I understand this isn't an easy decision," Blake said. "We've seen so much death, and I can see why you would want to bring life into the world. But not this world, Jenna. We need to give up this child, now, so we can continue working toward a world where everyone's child will be safe. A world that's fit to bring a child into."
"Well, if everybody waited for that, there wouldn't be anybody who did have kiddies, so there wouldn't be any Federation to fight against or any rebels to fight it," Vila said. After a moment, he said, "Right. I'll just take my lead balloon and put the kettle on. Who wants a cuppa?"
"There's a perfectly simple answer," Jenna said. "It's not as if I were in the Army, or working on a long-term contract. I needn't stay here, you know. I'll simply up stakes and go home to Newvoo. What's the ancient proverb…home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you?"
"I'd like to think this is your home now, Jenna," Blake said quietly. "And that you'll be back as soon as you can."
"Really? I thought you were from Earth, I mean, I never ran into you there, but it's a big Dome, and I thought you just lived in a posh maisonette or something," Vila said, returning with the tea tray. Blake was Mum, although unfortunately not in the sense of shutting up.
Jenna shook her head. "No, you just assumed I was from Earth, I never said it."
"Newvoo," Blake said, puzzled. "That's a Mormon settlement, isn't it?"
"Of course," Jenna said. "Where would the rebellion be without Mormons? If you're going to put your life on the line, it's got to be for a good reason."
"It's true that we often rely on missionaries as couriers," Blake said. Of course he did, he'll use anybody that'll sit still for it, for anything. And I suppose the incremental risk to the missionaries wasn't great. They can only kill you once, although they can kill you slower.
"That's how I know Avalon," Jenna said. "We were in Young Men's and Women's together, and her brother went on a mission with my cousin."
"Oh, yeah, I've seen 'em," Vila said. "Blokes in white short-sleeved tunics and black trousers. They should try converting Space Command. A couple of eager, innocent young fellas…I'll bet Servalan would welcome them with open legs," he said innocently. "What? All those old proverbs always confuse me."
Jenna stood up, just a touch uncertainly. "I'll just send a communiqué to my mother over the secured channel, to let her know I'll be arriving, then lay in a course for Newvoo. I'll have the baby there. It'll feel good to get clean again, to square up my account with Heavenly Father."
"Not right away, please, Jenna," Blake said. "Don't be hasty. I know you can't wait forever, but a few hours or days can't hurt."
"My mind's made up," she said. "You're not going to talk me into having an abortion, and that's final."
"Well, Jenna," I had to point out in the interests of fairness, "You've killed more than one person who had actually managed to be born. That's a more serious matter, surely?"
"They were all trying to kill me!" Jenna said heatedly, then, a little cooler, "And trying to kill my shipmates…lately, you included, Avon. But if you get me a time machine, I promise the first thing I'll do is go back and let a trooper kill you so I can spare his life."
"I don't think much of your sense of priorities," Vila said. "That's the first thing you'd do?"
"My point being, Avon, that everyone-whether they live a perfect life or a very bad one--has got to draw the line somewhere, and mine is at taking innocent life."
"But aren't your people pacifists?" Cally asked.
"No more than your people, Cally," Jenna said. "No, we're not Quakers."
"And you're the lot that don't use any electrics and such, yeh?" Vila asked.
"That's the Amish!" Jenna said.
Jenna and I held our breaths, waiting for Vila to put in his oar in terms of being able to keep a harem, and whether it was worth it in terms of not being able to drink. Fortunately, the crew's interest in a Comparative Religion symposium seemed to have abated. Jenna glanced over at me with an odd smile, which I couldn't quite place at first.
No coffee? I'll swing for the bitch.
4
The hammer-and-tongs battle on the flight deck-the choral number, you might say-didn't preclude a confrontation with Blake on his own.
"Well!" I said.
"Contraceptives are human inventions, Avon. And, unlike the Popes of old, not infallible," Blake said. "Accidents do happen. I'm terribly sorry it happened, and the sensible option would be a termination, but knowing that Jenna won't hear of it…I must confess, I'm rather relieved."
I doubt that I would have been, in a similar situation. Of course Anna and I were scrupulous about contraception, but we were chronically terrified that she would fall pregnant. I never quite believed her when she said that marital relations had ceased completely enough to make Immaculate Conception the only explanation of a legitimate birth. Nonetheless, I knew that Chesku would insist on confirmation of paternity, and then the fat would be in the fire. And even if we could have deceived him, I wouldn't want that bastard Chesku raising my child. That's a peculiar term, come to think of it. All the condemnation descends on the one person who can't rationally be blamed.
"Possibly an accident," I said.
"Oh, I trust Jenna implicitly. If I thought it was deliberate, I'd be angry that…"
"She tried to manipulate you?"
He glared at me. "Avon, you've made no secret of your dissatisfaction with our situation here. Nor of your desire to slope off at the earliest opportunity. And now I'm asking you to slope off. In fact, I'd be very grateful."
It seemed tasteless to point out to Blake that it would have been a perfect assignment for Gan had he survived long enough to take it up. And, at any rate, it wouldn't. Odds were that no one with an interest would find out who Jenna was. But if anyone did, things would get dreadfully interesting very fast.
"You needn't worry," I said, with brisk reassurance. "Jenna will be fine. She's a healthy woman, and not really old enough for complications to be likely. And if there's a problem, Orac says that Newvoo has proper modern medical care, it's not a matter of ignorant native midwives messing about. Proper medical care, including local anaesthetics. Jenna won't be in uncontrollable pain, but she'll be fully conscious, so there's no need to worry about anything she might blurt out."
He looked at me, really upset. "I should hate to have to go through life with your worldview," he said. I felt rather like the wicked millionaire who, when told that the virtuous poor man wouldn't have his conscience, not for all his income, said that he wouldn't have the other fellow's income, not for all his conscience.
"Someone's got to be practical," I said. "Oh, very well, Blake. I'll get on with cleaning up the mess you've made. As usual."
"You can be as ungracious as you like," he said, with an infinitesimal increase in the pressure of his hand on my shoulder. I could feel the warmth of his hand through all the cloth between us. ""It's not a step I would have taken if I'd been given the chance to plan ahead, but it means a good deal…it means the world to me…to know that avenues I thought were foreclosed forever in fact are open to us. That even after I fall-oh, I've no illusions about the risks-that in some sense I will continue. Personally, not just ideologically. Not just my ideas, but…my cells. My legacy. And if you-well, I was going to say, if you protect Jenna, but she wouldn't thank us for assuming she needs protecting. But if you protect my child, I will never forget it."
I closed my eyes and waited for homeostasis to be re-established.
5
We contacted Avalon to see if she could spare us a pilot for a while. We expected a positive answer. Liberator, after all, is something of a prime posting if you're a rebel. She said that she couldn't afford to give us an experienced combat pilot (what she didn't say, was the obvious:that she went through them like paper handkerchiefs) but she had a newly qualified pilot, as well as a trainee who was particularly eager for the job.
The novice was a taciturn man in his mid-twenties, Hok Osata. As for the trainee, I didn't recognize her at first: not just because she stared persistently at her boots, but because the last time I'd hardly noticed the girl buried under all that hair. She had it cut to shoulder-length (and had quite a variety of clips for holding it back when she was working).
Blake cooked a moorperdrix casserole for supper as a treat for the new recruits. The girl pushed the food around on her plate, seemingly unable to look up (or perhaps she just didn't like mushrooms), until she burst into tears.
"I'm so sorry," she blurted.
"That's all right, Veron," Blake said soothingly. "Everybody understands that it's not your fault what you do under duress. You couldn't be expected to withstand those tactics. Of course we're not angry at you. We're just sorry for your loss. The loss to the Movement as a whole."
A couple of days later, I was tuning up the teleport, and working with Orac on transmission links in case my expertise was needed during my secondment. Jenna, just about managing to squeeze into her combat position, was going over the idiosyncratic features of the instrumentation with Veron. I opened the ventilation louvers-it can get awfully stuffy under that teleport console.
"Oh, Mum didn't get involved with rebels and things until I was quite big…perhaps eight or so," Veron said. Jenna must have asked her about her family and background. "She'd leave me with relatives or friends or comrades when she was off on a mission-not your kind of Mission, of course, Jenna. They didn't have the things, the, uh, the structures then. Avalon's base has a proper crèche now, lots of her troops have kiddies."
"Then you're not angry at your mother?" Jenna asked. "Not for dying-well, it doesn't make sense to be angry at someone for dying, but we do it all the time!-but for going away and leaving you?"
"You can't get outside yourself to look, can you?" Veron said. "So I don't know what anybody else's childhood was like. I wouldn't trade mine in for the world, though. Of course I wish Mum hadn't died, but I'm sure if there was a way to ask her, she'd say that she would still do the same, risks and all. And I did get to meet some very interesting people that way."
6
Time passed, Jenna burgeoned, and we packed. Vila attempted to send me off with a few last words of wisdom: "Y'know, Avon, you'll have to watch your step, not go seducing all those innocent young farm lads. Not that it's not flattering for you to fancy me that way, not when I don't have to do anything about it…"
"Vila, not only wouldn't I screw Jenna with yours, I wouldn't screw you with yours."
"It's when everything's attached to everyone that I've got to worry…"
"Well, you haven't to worry about me, not in that way. Just because I'm insufficiently conventional for most people, and insufficiently single-minded for the remnant doesn't make me completely indiscriminate."
7
Veron took Jenna and me down to Newvoo in the shuttle. We had a certain amount of gear to transport (God knows why, but the Wardrobe Room was stocked with maternity clothes) and we didn't want it to become known that we had transport capacity. Newvoo is a domeless city-or settlement, rather. On the way down, we could see that the built-up area was ringed by a greenbelt of farms growing vegetables and raising small livestock. Farther out, there were fields of corn.
Even the view from the shuttle showed that it was a planned community: all the very rectilinear streets converged on the Temple. You could see the gilded dome, and the trumpet-sounding angel on top, from a long way up. There was an Education Centre, a Sport Centre, a Mercantile Centre, and lots of buildings where the populace recklessly indulged its passion for filing documents and then digging them out when someone asked about their contents.
I have, in various quarters (official and unofficial) been accused of a sour pessimism. This is a misjudgment. I am merely realistic, and often farther-sighted than my prosaic companions. It's not as though I complain about everything. Sometimes, in fact, I am capable of appreciating that something conventionally defined as a bug in fact is a feature. Just as an example, the big multiple shop-the Zion Cooperative Merchandise Institution-had terrible computers. With my excellent references (and I swear, I brushed a manly tear from my eye when I drafted them) I was quickly hired as a systems analyst. It was easy and enjoyable to provide immediate and dramatic improvements in equipment and functionality.
For another thing, the flat Mr. and Mrs. Kyrill Chevron rented was fully furnished, with a nursery and chaste twin beds in the master bedroom. This was no hardship, and although the mattress itself was apparently hewn out of rock, I slept better than I had in ages.
Jenna was too pregnant to fly, but she quickly secured a job at the spaceport as a traffic controller and simulator-based flight instructor.
8
Thank God, Jenna's father was already dead. Well, no, I don't quite mean that, but I'm glad I didn't have to convince him as well as Jenna's mother of my bona fides. At my first encounter with my mother-in-law, she looked oddly familiar. Then I realized that, when we first stepped foot on Liberator, the defense system showed each of us an image to draw us in. Katherine was the woman in Jenna's hallucination-kneeling, surrounded by a ring of troopers, dressed in a coarse canvas smock. It seems that, to Federation psychiatry, religious faith can be deemed a delusion meriting forcible incarceration. They did let her go, eventually, and I surmise that the proceeds of Jenna's criminal career played a part. That can't have improved relations between mother and daughter.
"This is all your fault," Katherine said. "You took a decent girl and ruined her life…"
"I can't think what you mean," I said blandly. There's never any point in answering open-ended questions. They don't like gloatus interruptus if they actually know anything, and for God's sake don't volunteer information if they don't. Worse, I couldn't obey my impulse to tell her to get teleported with no bracelet and no coordinates. Jenna and I had to avoid antagonizing her, because the plan was to swan off and leave her holding the baby. This rural idyll was all very well, but I didn't expect it to hold our interest forever.
And we both missed him so dreadfully.
"You made her your whore! And you made her a criminal! I know all about you, Mokhtada al-Tarvin!" Katherine said. At that, I very nearly burst out laughing. I mean, even if I'd been the man she took me for, I hardly dropped a sack over Jenna's head and haled her off to my seraglio. "Do you think this is what I wanted for Jenna?" Katherine asked bitterly. "I wanted her to be married for time and eternity to a priesthood holder who would become a bishop. Jenna's father served three terms as bishop."
"Is that a lot?" I asked politely. I was not finding being married to Jenna in the very short run to be any sinecure.
"Unprecedented!" she huffed. "They simply couldn't do without him!"
Either they learned to do without him, or he's administrating via ouija board, but I let that pass. I had to.
"Now, look here," I said. "Jenna seldom talks about growing up, but think of her upbringing. Can you seriously imagine that she would commit any sin so heinous that sincere repentance couldn't wash it away?"
Actually I don't believe that there could be any such sin. What's the point of losing all your punters for good the moment they straggle a toe over the line?
9
I pushed down the plunger on the-well, I suppose you couldn't really call it a cafetiere-and let Jenna's ginger tea steep just the way she liked it, and arranged some water biscuits on a plate. To my surprise, Jenna was already nearly dressed (although she didn't look at all well).
"You haven't had your breakfast," I said. She looked even less well, shook her head, and said "It's the first Sunday of the month!" as if that were supposed to prove anything. "It's Fasting and Testimonial," she said patiently. I did not find these anthropological moments completely without interest, so I sat down on my bed, ate the biscuits, and waited. "Ought you to be fasting when you're pregnant?"
"I'll be fine. I'll be back in time to cook dinner…I'll be at the Temple for, I don't know, about three or four hours. I'll give you a wave if someone invites me to her house afterwards" (I did note the pronoun, but I wasn't sure if I was expected to warn her to refrain from consorting with strange men. She was, by now, extremely oviparous in appearance and if she could find a lothario, then strength to her arm. Strictly speaking, viviparous, but she seemed to be laden with a perfect clutch of eggs.)
Back on the Liberator, I had nobly made the offer of accompanying Jenna to church services, at least from time to time. After all, my ability to divert myself with my own thoughts stood me in good stead when I was imprisoned prior to my trial. Hell, it stood me in good stead during staff meetings at the Aquitar Project and then at the Central Bank, and during more than a year aboard Liberator, so a Sabbath hour here and there wasn't out of the question. My feelings had been mixed when I was told that not only needn't I go to church, I wouldn't be allowed to, because I'm not Temple Worthy. That kindled an immediate desire to find out just what sort of ecclesiastical theater I was being debarred from (although the desire was not strong enough to lead to religious instruction, far less to baptism).
Jenna came back and started cooking a rather good marinated beef dish that was her party piece for dinner shift on Liberator (I was also glad to find out that Mormons are not obligatory vegetarians, and that fresh and preserved meats were in good supply in Newvoo).
"What did you tell them about where you've been?" I asked, peeling potatoes.
"I said that I've done some things that I'm not proud of, but I've taken them to Heavenly Father in prayer, and I've done some things that I am proud of but I can't talk about them, so please don't ask."
Later on, Vila told me that he forged a Temple Recommend and sneaked in, and it was dead boring, just a load of people singing hymns and reading prayers out loud and talking about Jesus and God, and afterwards they plied him with home-baked muffins but expected him to knock them back with a glass of milk. I asked him what he expected…nude dancing girls? Human sacrifices? He said it was a sell, dragging people in by making them think it was worth keeping them out.
10
Fortunately it isn't the sort of place where husbands are expected to do anything except pace the floor of the waiting room. They told me, and Jenna never contradicted, that it was a perfectly normal delivery, and the baby was healthy. Jenna seemed quite entranced with the little thing. Visiting the hospital stirred up some memories of my younger brother's birth-I was six, so old enough to take some notice-as well as more recent memories. The Aquitar Project had a works outing one year to the Virtual Zoological Garden, so her tiny, cleverly jointed fingers and long upper lip reminded me irresistibly of a beige orangutan.
As previously arranged, we named her Vionne, after Blake's sister (the alternative would have been Brigham, for Jenna's father). Apparently they had quite a knees-up at the Temple.
11
Time passed, frighteningly painlessly, and we all got older. The signs were more pronounced in Vionne's case, but Jenna and I minded more.
My co-workers were all mad for lacrosse, so I was able to gain some popularity by doing the programming for a fantasy league. The ongoing missionary work required a lot of translations, and I joined a group translating the Bible into Tlonq'qtbu. We had many fascinating debates about how to convey concepts such as "lamp unto my feet" to a society of people, well, entities, well, units, that haven't got any feet, and "Father" to what seems to be a sort of coral reef that reproduces by…it's not quite cloning… I don't see why they didn't just baptize the whole boiling, but they didn't ask me.
Sometimes I'd stand in the middle of the floor, not going left, not going right.
12
When Vionne was a couple of months old, the Liberator crew paid a visit. This involved a good deal of deployment planning, since Blake wanted to spend as much time as possible in Newvoo, but Cally and Vila wanted to see the baby and particularly wanted some shore leave. And, revolutionary solidarity and all that, but nobody was fool enough to leave Osata and Veron alone on the ship. Though I suppose it might have counted as poetic justice if they had hijacked it and then Travis finally managed to catch up with the ship-and them.
At any rate, Blake had gone over to the flat, so I left him with Jenna and Vionne. He was going to teleport back to the ship for a few hours, and Vila and Cally would come down. I lingered in the shops a bit, and bought Vionne a tiny coverall in a sort of mint green towelling. Then I went to meet Cally and Vila at The Copper Kettle. It's a chain of milk bars, there's nearly one on every corner-this one nearest the spaceport
"Got something for you," Vila stage-whispered, and passed me a small object. I could tell by feel that it was a flattened cylinder of grooved metal, and quite warm to the touch. I pushed my chair back enough to sneak a glance. It was a silver flask.
"Come on," I said, leading him out into the hallway. "You can see the entire port from the picture window here." I unscrewed the top of the flask and, for a moment, just breathed in the aroma.
"Vila, I could kiss you," I said, after I disposed of the evidence and handed the flask back to him.
"We've been all through that!" he squawked. Then, just to make it look credible, I did point out some of the landmarks, and we returned to the table, where Cally was disassembling and reassembling a cheese and watercress sandwich. She liked the fruit punch, though.
"Smells like popcorn 'round here," Vila said. "Like the whole city is one big vizzie palais."
"Yes, that's the cornstarch gel in the nappies…nearly everyone's got babies…there's a built-in incinerator unit in every bathroom. It supplements the hot water heater, a clever bit of design, that. I have a patent application pending, actually. A modification to the fuel nozzle that improves fuel economy by at least ten per cent."
"Avon's gadget works!" he said.
"I'm glad you haven't been spending your time frivolously," Cally said. "I'm sure you'd like to hear about what we've been up to."
"Oh, I'm sure all the communiqués got through," I said. "Blake said that he got all eight lots of baby pictures, and it was the same couriers each time."
Nonetheless, Cally implacably recounted the various guerilla actions and space battles and cabals and negotiations. It was worse than the Books of Kings and Chronicles put together.
"Funny how life turns out, isn't it?" Vila said, beginning on his third slice of pie. (This one was mincemeat, the others were peach and butterscotch cream.) "I mean, Jenna's little problem lands you down here and gives you the mother in law from….Heavenly Father," he finished up unctuously. Although butter, in the form of piecrust, obviously would melt in his mouth. By which I deduced that Katherine had glided noiselessly into the caff. You'd think that Tuesday night was Ninja Training instead of Relief.
"Oh, hullo, Mother Stannis," I said (Vila snorted). "These are some old colleagues of mine, from way back. Doctor Stanislaus Kempinski, of Bellhangria University, and his fellow mathematician Doctor Evarista McTabe. For Go…for goodness' sake don't get them started on their work, it's very recondite and they can talk about it for hours without drawing a breath." (I wished desperately for a bit of paper to write down the names, I was sure that Katherine had memorized them and would twig on if I got them wrong in later reference.)
13
I can never settle in my mind whether committing fraud bears its own punishment, by destabilizing one's notions of identity, or whether it takes the veil away from one's eyes by exposing the desperately contingent nature of what passes for reality.
Jenna really did go to church, became a big noise in Relief, played backgammon with Katherine and me at Family Home Evening. Or sometimes chess, although Vila is better. As far as I can tell (and as a professional deceiver I had to learn to detect other people's deceptions), she was quite sincere in her repentance and her beliefs, and any fool can see that she loves Vionne.
Jenna and I shared a bedroom, I clipped her toenails when she couldn't reach over the bump, I went to Vionne in the middle of the night when I was awake anyway. Jenna and I never had sex, but really, I wonder how many long-married couples chase one another around the domestic hearth anyway. Or what they're thinking about-some of the men I elaborately pretended not to recognize at my occasional visits to the sparkling and well-lit local den of iniquity had babies about Vionne's age.
One Saturday afternoon, after Jenna had been medically cleared to fly again, she was away on maneuvers. I was occupied in watching Vionne throw her rattle out of her high chair. She seemed to be willing to keep throwing it until she was old enough for University, no matter how many times I picked it up and then ran the sterilizer over the floor. A truly Blakean persistence in pointless activity. I tensed, hearing the sound of fingers on the front-door keypad.
"Oh, hullo, Mother Stannis," I said, dropping the pistol back in the cutlery drawer and slamming it closed with my hip. "Jenna's away this weekend, it's her Maccabee Reserve Defense thing. She'll be back tomorrow after Sacrament Meeting, though." Jenna could leave in good conscience. Vionne had got a bit blasé about bottles and was now experimenting with applesauce, heedless that it was a gateway drug to chocolate and worse.
"I know it's her MRD weekend," Katherine said. Ah, yes. Anywhere in the galaxy, you can spot a Mormon by his devotion to fizzy drinks and acronyms. "I came to see you."
"How nice. Please, sit down, I'll put the kettle on. Peppermint? Or chamomile? Or would you rather have a Blue Sun cola?" I'd become quite fond of the stuff myself-it had more than enough caffeine to enliven late nights at the office-so we always had plenty in the food storage unit.
"Look here, Kyrill, or whatever your name is," Katherine said. "The last time I was here, I took some hair out of your hairbrush, and some out of Vionne's, and sent it out for DNA analysis. There's no possible way she could be your child."
Vionne began to howl like a fiend hid in a cloud, so I picked her up and jounced her and ruffled her hair, a sequence deriving from ample experimental data. "She is now," I said.
A/N: The theology and practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latest-Day Saints are not exactly the same as those of 21st century Mormonism. (As an example, the Newvoo stake is not large enough to support chapels as well as the Temple, so ordinary Sacrament Meetings and community functions, not just Temple Ordinances, are held in the Temple, and a Temple Recommend is required to attend.) The Latest-Day Saints oppose polygamy.
The soul should not die ungodly in an armed madhouse Allen Ginsberg
1
Blake had taken advantage of the lull in the avidity of the massed and lawful forces trying to kill us by calling a briefing session during a shared morning meal. (For us, perpetually in space, "morning," like "rebellion," was a shared delusion.) The coffee was still steaming, and Vila still dishing out plates of fried eggs and rashers, when the color drained out of Jenna's face. She clamped a serviette to her mouth, and staggered away from the flight deck.
Although I have not gone so far as to give credence the existence of telepathy between members of H.sapiens var. terrestris, there were quite a few times when Vila and I, joint holders of the only bit of sense of the ship, reached the same conclusion. (He a little later than I, of course.). So first we both shuffled through memories of our most recent planetfalls to determine whether we were, once again, exposed to hazardous doses of radiation. But we felt perfectly fine. Vila opened his mouth to groan something along the lines of, "Oh, no! She isn't! She didn't! She couldn't!" but the words hung in the air, unspoken.
I was fairly sure that Vila was not the culprit, and (here we cast our minds back again) although some quite disagreeable things had happened recently, Jenna hadn't been out of our sight during any of them long enough to get raped. Hence, by the time Jenna returned certainly I, and probably Vila and Cally, had reached a conclusion.
Jenna returned, looking less distressed but still viridian. "I'm sorry," she and Blake said simultaneously. Cally's eyebrows rose and descended. She sighed. "I'm sorry to hear that, Jenna…" she began. I was reminded of a joke old enough for Vila to claim authorship: "I've got some good news for you, Mrs. Brown." "It's Miss Brown, actually." "Well, in that case, I've got some bad news for you." It's probably old enough to predate publication of the Theory of Relativity, although it's not a bad illustration of it.
Cally reached out to pat Jenna's hand, but the table was too wide. "It's a very simple procedure," she said. "Not even a procedure, really. We have injectables."
"And you've got injectable contraceptives as well," Jenna said. "Look how well that turned out! If you think I'm going to do away with my baby, you're mad."
"Jenna, please, let's stop and consider this, and not be hasty," Blake said.
"This simply isn't the time or the place," Cally said. "When it's more…suitable…you can travel to a neutral planet for ova extraction and preservation, and then you and Blake can choose the number and timing of your children in civilized fashion."
There's no real need to separate combatants who are merely glaring death at one another, so I didn't. "You don't even look pregnant," I said, to introduce a bit of rationality into the discussion. "We're just talking about an indiscriminate mass of tissue, certainly nothing that can reasonably be described as a baby…"
"Stick a sock in it, Avon," Jenna said. "It's nothing to do with you anyway." This statement did not really pan out in practice, but that's not unusual for our happy little ship.
2
The nearest suitable place to teleport was Hilderron-3. It was not the nearest place, but it was the least scrupulous about documentation. We didn't hang about long enough for them to send anyone to catch us any faster than we could run away, and Cally (whom we left at the helm) was quite capable of hustling us away from danger. The whole thing would have been over in minutes if, when we turned to Vila to sign the register as the second witness, he hadn't been in the off-licence buying materials for the bachelor party. (He also, with a surprising degree of sensitivity, bought some fruit juice for Jenna.)
Jenna helped herself to a large, rather vulgar diamond ring from the Treasure Room, and a big gold band, for which I can't blame her one bit. It's not unlikely that she will need a grubstake in the wake of this whole fiasco. I was rather touched, when she produced a platinum band for me at the register office. If we'd actually discussed the matter beforehand, I would have told her that I detest the whole idea of wedding rings-worse than a collar and leash, really. But then she would have said that that was the whole point, and we would have been off again.
Not only was "morning" something of an invention on the very memorable one when Jenna revealed her in-pod status, I learned that "morning sickness" can be merely the part used to describe the whole. If Jenna felt anywhere near as wretched every day as I did after our hideous imitation of festivity, then I'm sorry for her.
3
Liberator, and more particularly its Flight Deck, has been the situs of some notable quarrels. Many of the more…fervent…disagreements were limited to Blake and myself, although in this case, everyone got into the act.
"Jenna, I'm sorry to have to say this, but a warship is not a suitable place for a pregnant woman or an infant," Blake said.
"…And even absent combat risks, the hazards of space travel during pregnancy are well-documented…" Cally said.
"We've all had to make sacrifices, Jenna," Blake said. "And the life I, the life we, lead, rules out the possibility of a normal private life. Can you imagine the danger, if it became known that I had a child? The tug-of-war that would ensue, among all the factions who wanted the child to advance their own agenda? Not just our nominal enemies, but the various splinter groups that think they have a handle on what needs to be done."
"That's all very well in the abstract, but it's too late for that now," Jenna said. "There's a baby on the way, and that's that."
"Jenna, I understand this isn't an easy decision," Blake said. "We've seen so much death, and I can see why you would want to bring life into the world. But not this world, Jenna. We need to give up this child, now, so we can continue working toward a world where everyone's child will be safe. A world that's fit to bring a child into."
"Well, if everybody waited for that, there wouldn't be anybody who did have kiddies, so there wouldn't be any Federation to fight against or any rebels to fight it," Vila said. After a moment, he said, "Right. I'll just take my lead balloon and put the kettle on. Who wants a cuppa?"
"There's a perfectly simple answer," Jenna said. "It's not as if I were in the Army, or working on a long-term contract. I needn't stay here, you know. I'll simply up stakes and go home to Newvoo. What's the ancient proverb…home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you?"
"I'd like to think this is your home now, Jenna," Blake said quietly. "And that you'll be back as soon as you can."
"Really? I thought you were from Earth, I mean, I never ran into you there, but it's a big Dome, and I thought you just lived in a posh maisonette or something," Vila said, returning with the tea tray. Blake was Mum, although unfortunately not in the sense of shutting up.
Jenna shook her head. "No, you just assumed I was from Earth, I never said it."
"Newvoo," Blake said, puzzled. "That's a Mormon settlement, isn't it?"
"Of course," Jenna said. "Where would the rebellion be without Mormons? If you're going to put your life on the line, it's got to be for a good reason."
"It's true that we often rely on missionaries as couriers," Blake said. Of course he did, he'll use anybody that'll sit still for it, for anything. And I suppose the incremental risk to the missionaries wasn't great. They can only kill you once, although they can kill you slower.
"That's how I know Avalon," Jenna said. "We were in Young Men's and Women's together, and her brother went on a mission with my cousin."
"Oh, yeah, I've seen 'em," Vila said. "Blokes in white short-sleeved tunics and black trousers. They should try converting Space Command. A couple of eager, innocent young fellas…I'll bet Servalan would welcome them with open legs," he said innocently. "What? All those old proverbs always confuse me."
Jenna stood up, just a touch uncertainly. "I'll just send a communiqué to my mother over the secured channel, to let her know I'll be arriving, then lay in a course for Newvoo. I'll have the baby there. It'll feel good to get clean again, to square up my account with Heavenly Father."
"Not right away, please, Jenna," Blake said. "Don't be hasty. I know you can't wait forever, but a few hours or days can't hurt."
"My mind's made up," she said. "You're not going to talk me into having an abortion, and that's final."
"Well, Jenna," I had to point out in the interests of fairness, "You've killed more than one person who had actually managed to be born. That's a more serious matter, surely?"
"They were all trying to kill me!" Jenna said heatedly, then, a little cooler, "And trying to kill my shipmates…lately, you included, Avon. But if you get me a time machine, I promise the first thing I'll do is go back and let a trooper kill you so I can spare his life."
"I don't think much of your sense of priorities," Vila said. "That's the first thing you'd do?"
"My point being, Avon, that everyone-whether they live a perfect life or a very bad one--has got to draw the line somewhere, and mine is at taking innocent life."
"But aren't your people pacifists?" Cally asked.
"No more than your people, Cally," Jenna said. "No, we're not Quakers."
"And you're the lot that don't use any electrics and such, yeh?" Vila asked.
"That's the Amish!" Jenna said.
Jenna and I held our breaths, waiting for Vila to put in his oar in terms of being able to keep a harem, and whether it was worth it in terms of not being able to drink. Fortunately, the crew's interest in a Comparative Religion symposium seemed to have abated. Jenna glanced over at me with an odd smile, which I couldn't quite place at first.
No coffee? I'll swing for the bitch.
4
The hammer-and-tongs battle on the flight deck-the choral number, you might say-didn't preclude a confrontation with Blake on his own.
"Well!" I said.
"Contraceptives are human inventions, Avon. And, unlike the Popes of old, not infallible," Blake said. "Accidents do happen. I'm terribly sorry it happened, and the sensible option would be a termination, but knowing that Jenna won't hear of it…I must confess, I'm rather relieved."
I doubt that I would have been, in a similar situation. Of course Anna and I were scrupulous about contraception, but we were chronically terrified that she would fall pregnant. I never quite believed her when she said that marital relations had ceased completely enough to make Immaculate Conception the only explanation of a legitimate birth. Nonetheless, I knew that Chesku would insist on confirmation of paternity, and then the fat would be in the fire. And even if we could have deceived him, I wouldn't want that bastard Chesku raising my child. That's a peculiar term, come to think of it. All the condemnation descends on the one person who can't rationally be blamed.
"Possibly an accident," I said.
"Oh, I trust Jenna implicitly. If I thought it was deliberate, I'd be angry that…"
"She tried to manipulate you?"
He glared at me. "Avon, you've made no secret of your dissatisfaction with our situation here. Nor of your desire to slope off at the earliest opportunity. And now I'm asking you to slope off. In fact, I'd be very grateful."
It seemed tasteless to point out to Blake that it would have been a perfect assignment for Gan had he survived long enough to take it up. And, at any rate, it wouldn't. Odds were that no one with an interest would find out who Jenna was. But if anyone did, things would get dreadfully interesting very fast.
"You needn't worry," I said, with brisk reassurance. "Jenna will be fine. She's a healthy woman, and not really old enough for complications to be likely. And if there's a problem, Orac says that Newvoo has proper modern medical care, it's not a matter of ignorant native midwives messing about. Proper medical care, including local anaesthetics. Jenna won't be in uncontrollable pain, but she'll be fully conscious, so there's no need to worry about anything she might blurt out."
He looked at me, really upset. "I should hate to have to go through life with your worldview," he said. I felt rather like the wicked millionaire who, when told that the virtuous poor man wouldn't have his conscience, not for all his income, said that he wouldn't have the other fellow's income, not for all his conscience.
"Someone's got to be practical," I said. "Oh, very well, Blake. I'll get on with cleaning up the mess you've made. As usual."
"You can be as ungracious as you like," he said, with an infinitesimal increase in the pressure of his hand on my shoulder. I could feel the warmth of his hand through all the cloth between us. ""It's not a step I would have taken if I'd been given the chance to plan ahead, but it means a good deal…it means the world to me…to know that avenues I thought were foreclosed forever in fact are open to us. That even after I fall-oh, I've no illusions about the risks-that in some sense I will continue. Personally, not just ideologically. Not just my ideas, but…my cells. My legacy. And if you-well, I was going to say, if you protect Jenna, but she wouldn't thank us for assuming she needs protecting. But if you protect my child, I will never forget it."
I closed my eyes and waited for homeostasis to be re-established.
5
We contacted Avalon to see if she could spare us a pilot for a while. We expected a positive answer. Liberator, after all, is something of a prime posting if you're a rebel. She said that she couldn't afford to give us an experienced combat pilot (what she didn't say, was the obvious:that she went through them like paper handkerchiefs) but she had a newly qualified pilot, as well as a trainee who was particularly eager for the job.
The novice was a taciturn man in his mid-twenties, Hok Osata. As for the trainee, I didn't recognize her at first: not just because she stared persistently at her boots, but because the last time I'd hardly noticed the girl buried under all that hair. She had it cut to shoulder-length (and had quite a variety of clips for holding it back when she was working).
Blake cooked a moorperdrix casserole for supper as a treat for the new recruits. The girl pushed the food around on her plate, seemingly unable to look up (or perhaps she just didn't like mushrooms), until she burst into tears.
"I'm so sorry," she blurted.
"That's all right, Veron," Blake said soothingly. "Everybody understands that it's not your fault what you do under duress. You couldn't be expected to withstand those tactics. Of course we're not angry at you. We're just sorry for your loss. The loss to the Movement as a whole."
A couple of days later, I was tuning up the teleport, and working with Orac on transmission links in case my expertise was needed during my secondment. Jenna, just about managing to squeeze into her combat position, was going over the idiosyncratic features of the instrumentation with Veron. I opened the ventilation louvers-it can get awfully stuffy under that teleport console.
"Oh, Mum didn't get involved with rebels and things until I was quite big…perhaps eight or so," Veron said. Jenna must have asked her about her family and background. "She'd leave me with relatives or friends or comrades when she was off on a mission-not your kind of Mission, of course, Jenna. They didn't have the things, the, uh, the structures then. Avalon's base has a proper crèche now, lots of her troops have kiddies."
"Then you're not angry at your mother?" Jenna asked. "Not for dying-well, it doesn't make sense to be angry at someone for dying, but we do it all the time!-but for going away and leaving you?"
"You can't get outside yourself to look, can you?" Veron said. "So I don't know what anybody else's childhood was like. I wouldn't trade mine in for the world, though. Of course I wish Mum hadn't died, but I'm sure if there was a way to ask her, she'd say that she would still do the same, risks and all. And I did get to meet some very interesting people that way."
6
Time passed, Jenna burgeoned, and we packed. Vila attempted to send me off with a few last words of wisdom: "Y'know, Avon, you'll have to watch your step, not go seducing all those innocent young farm lads. Not that it's not flattering for you to fancy me that way, not when I don't have to do anything about it…"
"Vila, not only wouldn't I screw Jenna with yours, I wouldn't screw you with yours."
"It's when everything's attached to everyone that I've got to worry…"
"Well, you haven't to worry about me, not in that way. Just because I'm insufficiently conventional for most people, and insufficiently single-minded for the remnant doesn't make me completely indiscriminate."
7
Veron took Jenna and me down to Newvoo in the shuttle. We had a certain amount of gear to transport (God knows why, but the Wardrobe Room was stocked with maternity clothes) and we didn't want it to become known that we had transport capacity. Newvoo is a domeless city-or settlement, rather. On the way down, we could see that the built-up area was ringed by a greenbelt of farms growing vegetables and raising small livestock. Farther out, there were fields of corn.
Even the view from the shuttle showed that it was a planned community: all the very rectilinear streets converged on the Temple. You could see the gilded dome, and the trumpet-sounding angel on top, from a long way up. There was an Education Centre, a Sport Centre, a Mercantile Centre, and lots of buildings where the populace recklessly indulged its passion for filing documents and then digging them out when someone asked about their contents.
I have, in various quarters (official and unofficial) been accused of a sour pessimism. This is a misjudgment. I am merely realistic, and often farther-sighted than my prosaic companions. It's not as though I complain about everything. Sometimes, in fact, I am capable of appreciating that something conventionally defined as a bug in fact is a feature. Just as an example, the big multiple shop-the Zion Cooperative Merchandise Institution-had terrible computers. With my excellent references (and I swear, I brushed a manly tear from my eye when I drafted them) I was quickly hired as a systems analyst. It was easy and enjoyable to provide immediate and dramatic improvements in equipment and functionality.
For another thing, the flat Mr. and Mrs. Kyrill Chevron rented was fully furnished, with a nursery and chaste twin beds in the master bedroom. This was no hardship, and although the mattress itself was apparently hewn out of rock, I slept better than I had in ages.
Jenna was too pregnant to fly, but she quickly secured a job at the spaceport as a traffic controller and simulator-based flight instructor.
8
Thank God, Jenna's father was already dead. Well, no, I don't quite mean that, but I'm glad I didn't have to convince him as well as Jenna's mother of my bona fides. At my first encounter with my mother-in-law, she looked oddly familiar. Then I realized that, when we first stepped foot on Liberator, the defense system showed each of us an image to draw us in. Katherine was the woman in Jenna's hallucination-kneeling, surrounded by a ring of troopers, dressed in a coarse canvas smock. It seems that, to Federation psychiatry, religious faith can be deemed a delusion meriting forcible incarceration. They did let her go, eventually, and I surmise that the proceeds of Jenna's criminal career played a part. That can't have improved relations between mother and daughter.
"This is all your fault," Katherine said. "You took a decent girl and ruined her life…"
"I can't think what you mean," I said blandly. There's never any point in answering open-ended questions. They don't like gloatus interruptus if they actually know anything, and for God's sake don't volunteer information if they don't. Worse, I couldn't obey my impulse to tell her to get teleported with no bracelet and no coordinates. Jenna and I had to avoid antagonizing her, because the plan was to swan off and leave her holding the baby. This rural idyll was all very well, but I didn't expect it to hold our interest forever.
And we both missed him so dreadfully.
"You made her your whore! And you made her a criminal! I know all about you, Mokhtada al-Tarvin!" Katherine said. At that, I very nearly burst out laughing. I mean, even if I'd been the man she took me for, I hardly dropped a sack over Jenna's head and haled her off to my seraglio. "Do you think this is what I wanted for Jenna?" Katherine asked bitterly. "I wanted her to be married for time and eternity to a priesthood holder who would become a bishop. Jenna's father served three terms as bishop."
"Is that a lot?" I asked politely. I was not finding being married to Jenna in the very short run to be any sinecure.
"Unprecedented!" she huffed. "They simply couldn't do without him!"
Either they learned to do without him, or he's administrating via ouija board, but I let that pass. I had to.
"Now, look here," I said. "Jenna seldom talks about growing up, but think of her upbringing. Can you seriously imagine that she would commit any sin so heinous that sincere repentance couldn't wash it away?"
Actually I don't believe that there could be any such sin. What's the point of losing all your punters for good the moment they straggle a toe over the line?
9
I pushed down the plunger on the-well, I suppose you couldn't really call it a cafetiere-and let Jenna's ginger tea steep just the way she liked it, and arranged some water biscuits on a plate. To my surprise, Jenna was already nearly dressed (although she didn't look at all well).
"You haven't had your breakfast," I said. She looked even less well, shook her head, and said "It's the first Sunday of the month!" as if that were supposed to prove anything. "It's Fasting and Testimonial," she said patiently. I did not find these anthropological moments completely without interest, so I sat down on my bed, ate the biscuits, and waited. "Ought you to be fasting when you're pregnant?"
"I'll be fine. I'll be back in time to cook dinner…I'll be at the Temple for, I don't know, about three or four hours. I'll give you a wave if someone invites me to her house afterwards" (I did note the pronoun, but I wasn't sure if I was expected to warn her to refrain from consorting with strange men. She was, by now, extremely oviparous in appearance and if she could find a lothario, then strength to her arm. Strictly speaking, viviparous, but she seemed to be laden with a perfect clutch of eggs.)
Back on the Liberator, I had nobly made the offer of accompanying Jenna to church services, at least from time to time. After all, my ability to divert myself with my own thoughts stood me in good stead when I was imprisoned prior to my trial. Hell, it stood me in good stead during staff meetings at the Aquitar Project and then at the Central Bank, and during more than a year aboard Liberator, so a Sabbath hour here and there wasn't out of the question. My feelings had been mixed when I was told that not only needn't I go to church, I wouldn't be allowed to, because I'm not Temple Worthy. That kindled an immediate desire to find out just what sort of ecclesiastical theater I was being debarred from (although the desire was not strong enough to lead to religious instruction, far less to baptism).
Jenna came back and started cooking a rather good marinated beef dish that was her party piece for dinner shift on Liberator (I was also glad to find out that Mormons are not obligatory vegetarians, and that fresh and preserved meats were in good supply in Newvoo).
"What did you tell them about where you've been?" I asked, peeling potatoes.
"I said that I've done some things that I'm not proud of, but I've taken them to Heavenly Father in prayer, and I've done some things that I am proud of but I can't talk about them, so please don't ask."
Later on, Vila told me that he forged a Temple Recommend and sneaked in, and it was dead boring, just a load of people singing hymns and reading prayers out loud and talking about Jesus and God, and afterwards they plied him with home-baked muffins but expected him to knock them back with a glass of milk. I asked him what he expected…nude dancing girls? Human sacrifices? He said it was a sell, dragging people in by making them think it was worth keeping them out.
10
Fortunately it isn't the sort of place where husbands are expected to do anything except pace the floor of the waiting room. They told me, and Jenna never contradicted, that it was a perfectly normal delivery, and the baby was healthy. Jenna seemed quite entranced with the little thing. Visiting the hospital stirred up some memories of my younger brother's birth-I was six, so old enough to take some notice-as well as more recent memories. The Aquitar Project had a works outing one year to the Virtual Zoological Garden, so her tiny, cleverly jointed fingers and long upper lip reminded me irresistibly of a beige orangutan.
As previously arranged, we named her Vionne, after Blake's sister (the alternative would have been Brigham, for Jenna's father). Apparently they had quite a knees-up at the Temple.
11
Time passed, frighteningly painlessly, and we all got older. The signs were more pronounced in Vionne's case, but Jenna and I minded more.
My co-workers were all mad for lacrosse, so I was able to gain some popularity by doing the programming for a fantasy league. The ongoing missionary work required a lot of translations, and I joined a group translating the Bible into Tlonq'qtbu. We had many fascinating debates about how to convey concepts such as "lamp unto my feet" to a society of people, well, entities, well, units, that haven't got any feet, and "Father" to what seems to be a sort of coral reef that reproduces by…it's not quite cloning… I don't see why they didn't just baptize the whole boiling, but they didn't ask me.
Sometimes I'd stand in the middle of the floor, not going left, not going right.
12
When Vionne was a couple of months old, the Liberator crew paid a visit. This involved a good deal of deployment planning, since Blake wanted to spend as much time as possible in Newvoo, but Cally and Vila wanted to see the baby and particularly wanted some shore leave. And, revolutionary solidarity and all that, but nobody was fool enough to leave Osata and Veron alone on the ship. Though I suppose it might have counted as poetic justice if they had hijacked it and then Travis finally managed to catch up with the ship-and them.
At any rate, Blake had gone over to the flat, so I left him with Jenna and Vionne. He was going to teleport back to the ship for a few hours, and Vila and Cally would come down. I lingered in the shops a bit, and bought Vionne a tiny coverall in a sort of mint green towelling. Then I went to meet Cally and Vila at The Copper Kettle. It's a chain of milk bars, there's nearly one on every corner-this one nearest the spaceport
"Got something for you," Vila stage-whispered, and passed me a small object. I could tell by feel that it was a flattened cylinder of grooved metal, and quite warm to the touch. I pushed my chair back enough to sneak a glance. It was a silver flask.
"Come on," I said, leading him out into the hallway. "You can see the entire port from the picture window here." I unscrewed the top of the flask and, for a moment, just breathed in the aroma.
"Vila, I could kiss you," I said, after I disposed of the evidence and handed the flask back to him.
"We've been all through that!" he squawked. Then, just to make it look credible, I did point out some of the landmarks, and we returned to the table, where Cally was disassembling and reassembling a cheese and watercress sandwich. She liked the fruit punch, though.
"Smells like popcorn 'round here," Vila said. "Like the whole city is one big vizzie palais."
"Yes, that's the cornstarch gel in the nappies…nearly everyone's got babies…there's a built-in incinerator unit in every bathroom. It supplements the hot water heater, a clever bit of design, that. I have a patent application pending, actually. A modification to the fuel nozzle that improves fuel economy by at least ten per cent."
"Avon's gadget works!" he said.
"I'm glad you haven't been spending your time frivolously," Cally said. "I'm sure you'd like to hear about what we've been up to."
"Oh, I'm sure all the communiqués got through," I said. "Blake said that he got all eight lots of baby pictures, and it was the same couriers each time."
Nonetheless, Cally implacably recounted the various guerilla actions and space battles and cabals and negotiations. It was worse than the Books of Kings and Chronicles put together.
"Funny how life turns out, isn't it?" Vila said, beginning on his third slice of pie. (This one was mincemeat, the others were peach and butterscotch cream.) "I mean, Jenna's little problem lands you down here and gives you the mother in law from….Heavenly Father," he finished up unctuously. Although butter, in the form of piecrust, obviously would melt in his mouth. By which I deduced that Katherine had glided noiselessly into the caff. You'd think that Tuesday night was Ninja Training instead of Relief.
"Oh, hullo, Mother Stannis," I said (Vila snorted). "These are some old colleagues of mine, from way back. Doctor Stanislaus Kempinski, of Bellhangria University, and his fellow mathematician Doctor Evarista McTabe. For Go…for goodness' sake don't get them started on their work, it's very recondite and they can talk about it for hours without drawing a breath." (I wished desperately for a bit of paper to write down the names, I was sure that Katherine had memorized them and would twig on if I got them wrong in later reference.)
13
I can never settle in my mind whether committing fraud bears its own punishment, by destabilizing one's notions of identity, or whether it takes the veil away from one's eyes by exposing the desperately contingent nature of what passes for reality.
Jenna really did go to church, became a big noise in Relief, played backgammon with Katherine and me at Family Home Evening. Or sometimes chess, although Vila is better. As far as I can tell (and as a professional deceiver I had to learn to detect other people's deceptions), she was quite sincere in her repentance and her beliefs, and any fool can see that she loves Vionne.
Jenna and I shared a bedroom, I clipped her toenails when she couldn't reach over the bump, I went to Vionne in the middle of the night when I was awake anyway. Jenna and I never had sex, but really, I wonder how many long-married couples chase one another around the domestic hearth anyway. Or what they're thinking about-some of the men I elaborately pretended not to recognize at my occasional visits to the sparkling and well-lit local den of iniquity had babies about Vionne's age.
One Saturday afternoon, after Jenna had been medically cleared to fly again, she was away on maneuvers. I was occupied in watching Vionne throw her rattle out of her high chair. She seemed to be willing to keep throwing it until she was old enough for University, no matter how many times I picked it up and then ran the sterilizer over the floor. A truly Blakean persistence in pointless activity. I tensed, hearing the sound of fingers on the front-door keypad.
"Oh, hullo, Mother Stannis," I said, dropping the pistol back in the cutlery drawer and slamming it closed with my hip. "Jenna's away this weekend, it's her Maccabee Reserve Defense thing. She'll be back tomorrow after Sacrament Meeting, though." Jenna could leave in good conscience. Vionne had got a bit blasé about bottles and was now experimenting with applesauce, heedless that it was a gateway drug to chocolate and worse.
"I know it's her MRD weekend," Katherine said. Ah, yes. Anywhere in the galaxy, you can spot a Mormon by his devotion to fizzy drinks and acronyms. "I came to see you."
"How nice. Please, sit down, I'll put the kettle on. Peppermint? Or chamomile? Or would you rather have a Blue Sun cola?" I'd become quite fond of the stuff myself-it had more than enough caffeine to enliven late nights at the office-so we always had plenty in the food storage unit.
"Look here, Kyrill, or whatever your name is," Katherine said. "The last time I was here, I took some hair out of your hairbrush, and some out of Vionne's, and sent it out for DNA analysis. There's no possible way she could be your child."
Vionne began to howl like a fiend hid in a cloud, so I picked her up and jounced her and ruffled her hair, a sequence deriving from ample experimental data. "She is now," I said.