Lovelock (4 page)

So the crying continued. But apparently Carol Jeanne was far enough away—or so engrossed in conversation—that she couldn’t hear it. Other passengers were looking around now, glaring at Red for doing nothing to quiet Emmy down. Red, of course, was reading and paid no attention.

Mamie noticed, however. As she had said so many times, she detested being made a public spectacle. Actually, of course, she
loved
being a public spectacle. It was
negative
attention that she hated. At the moment, it was her dear boy who was getting all the loathing glances; therefore she had to do something to turn away all that disfavor.

“What are you doing?” asked Stef.

“Unfastening my seat belt,” said Mamie.

“You aren’t experienced in low gee,” he said. “You shouldn’t be getting up.”

“I have to take care of my precious little unhappy girl.”

At that moment her seatbelt came loose and she tried to stand up. The force of her movement immediately launched her straight toward the ceiling at high speed. She screeched and managed to get her hands up fast enough that she didn’t knock herself unconscious on impact. Instead she rebounded into the aisle, clutching desperately at the handgrips on the aisle seats. She caught one, but had no idea of anchoring herself by hooking her feet under the seats. So the angular momentum spun her around the handgrip. If she had planned any of this it would have been a brilliant stunt, and even as an idiotic accident I had to admire the fact that despite her age, her reflexes were still pretty quick and she was strong enough not to lose her hold on the handgrip despite all the twisting and wrenching.

By the time the attendant got there to rescue her, she had managed to get herself into Carol Jeanne’s seat, and she dismissed the man rather coldly. “As you can see, I’m simply here to comfort my precious little granddaughter.” As far as Mamie was concerned, her athletic adventure of a moment before had never happened. No doubt her memory was already edited to show her moving with perfect grace at all times. Even when her muscles were sore tomorrow from the wrenching, I knew Mamie wouldn’t connect the stiffness with her acrobatics, because the acrobatics never happened.

As for comforting Emmy, however, that was not to be. Emmy wasn’t fully human yet, but she could certainly tell the difference between Mommy and not-Mommy, and Mamie was definitely in the not-Mommy category. The crying continued without slackening.

“You dear child, there must be
something
I can do with you,” she said. There was now an edge to her voice. Patience was wearing thin. After all this trouble to get across the aisle, it would hardly do if she were shown to be ineffectual as a grandmother. So she cast about for anything that might distract the child and put a stop to the crying. After giving up on the in-flight magazine, Emmy’s teething ring, and the vomit bag, Mamie cast her gaze in another direction.

“Emmy, dear, would you like to play with Mommy’s monkey? I’ll even let you feed him. Now, where did Carol Jeanne put that bag of treats?”

I’m a witness. I’m supposed to observe. And when Mamie—who had never willingly touched me before in her life—decided that I might be useful in solving her little dilemma, my first thought was to bite her hand if it came anywhere near me. Since interfering with a legally registered witness was a serious crime, no one ever sued or even struck back when I bit them for trying to touch me. Still, this wasn’t a stranger, this was Carol Jeanne’s mother-in-law, and if I bit her we’d probably never hear the end of it. So I hesitated.

As she fumbled around with the straps and buckles behind me—she wasn’t very good at figuring out how things fastened or came apart—I began to think of several reasons why Mamie’s idea was actually a very good one. Emmy always responded well to me, and I enjoyed playing with her. Even though her style of play was to try every possible way to kill me with her bare hands, she had about as much dexterity as an oyster and so I could always get away. I knew that within moments, Emmy would be laughing with delight. That would allow Carol Jeanne to continue her conversation without interference, and she would appreciate it. If it also happened to make Mamie feel just a little bit more tolerant toward me, so much the better.

That’s what I was thinking at the time. What never crossed my mind was the fact that I was no more experienced in freefall than Mamie. After all, I had been kept harnessed in my seat on every subbo flight I’d taken. But why should I have expected to have any problems? All my experience told me that if something required balance and dexterity, I could do it a hundred times more easily than any human. Freefall was just another physical challenge, and of course I would handle it easily and naturally, making humans seem clumsy by comparison.

And maybe it would have been that way, if it had all depended on dexterity. Certainly I have
that
, and my enhancements have, if anything, made me even quicker and sharper. What I hadn’t reckoned on was how freefall would make me
feel
. Primates have invested a lot of evolution in learning how to swing through trees. Only a handful of species—humans and baboons, mostly—got back down out of the trees and learned to hoof it like cattle. We tree-swingers are the ones who developed binocular vision—the front-pointing eyes that define the primate face. They gave us the ability to judge exactly how far to leap to reach the next branch, and when and how to grasp it with our agile fingers and nubby little opposable thumbs. It’s the perfect setup for amazing acrobatics.

The trouble is that all of it depends on a very keen sense of gravity: exactly how much we weigh, how far we’ll go on a leap, and how far downward we’ll drift in midair. Humans and baboons don’t need to be so aware of where
down
is. Their biggest challenge is standing up without falling over. We tree-swingers absolutely depend on our sense of down-ness or we’d die on the first jump.

In freefall, no direction is down, yet every movement feels like falling.

Harnessed to the seat, my understanding of this point was wholly intellectual. Now, when Mamie opened the seat straps, I understood freefall on an entirely different level. I wasn’t stupid the way Mamie had been. I kept my grip on the armrest, the strap, Mamie’s sleeve, whatever it took to keep from flying off into space. The trouble was that as soon as I started moving, my brain instinctively rebelled against the information it was getting.

Sure, I was holding on to solid objects—but that couldn’t override the horrifying sense that I couldn’t find
down
. For humans,
down
comes as much from visual cues as from the little water tubes in their inner ear—if something
looks
like down, it’s pretty much down, no matter how it feels. But for me, well, I’m used to hanging upside down and swinging any which way. Visual cues mean nothing. And with my inner-ear balancing mechanism giving me the clear information that I was plunging to my death, it didn’t matter
how
tightly I held on to things. I panicked.

At first, panic meant that I froze, gripping even more tightly—one hand on the armrest, one on Mamie’s sleeve, and one foot on a strap. My other foot and my tail were both flailing around like crazy, probing for something else that could be grasped. My foot found Mamie’s fingers.

Her eyes widened. My grip was not subtle. And I was involuntarily making my panic face—teeth bared, eyes wide—which humans invariably interpret as anger. She thought I was attacking her.

“What are you doing?” she whispered. “
Let go of me
.”

She yanked her hand away. Now, since my right foot and my left hand were gripping her finger and sleeve, and my left foot and right hand were holding on to much bigger, harder-to-grip objects, it was inevitable that instead of tearing herself free of me, she merely tore
me
free of the seat. She was waving her arm around, with six pounds of panicked jungle creature clinging to her finger and sleeve. “Let go, you filthy little devil!” she screamed.

Now I was holding on at only two points, and to make things worse she was flailing me around. What I had felt before was only the first stage of panic. Now I was in the second stage, and compared to this, the first stage was mere anxiety. All my sphincter muscles released at once, demonstrating the fact that the term
going apeshit
has a literal meaning. With every wave of her arm, monkey turds and monkey urine were being flung out in every direction, personal souvenirs of the trip for the hapless passengers who witnessed my degradation.

All I knew at the time was that I was no longer the only one screaming. Within moments, others were trying to grab hold of me, and I reflexively grabbed their fingers and clothing, their hair and ears and noses. I lost Mamie at once, and began scrambling insanely from person to person. Since many of them were also losing control in freefall, it became quite a dangerous situation; at one point the man I was clinging to smashed into a wall, and if I’d been hanging on in a slightly different position I might have been crushed.

It only ended when Carol Jeanne caught me. She was calm—always, in a crisis, that’s the one thing you can count on, that Carol Jeanne will be the cool one, methodically doing what’s necessary. She plucked me out of the air—none too gently—and immediately tucked me, leaking urine and all, under her blouse, where she gripped me tightly.

Immediately, as soon as I was completely restrained, I felt safe again. The panic subsided. All I could think about was relief; all I could do was pat her, stroke her, groom her in gratitude. What this felt like to
her
I have no idea. After a few minutes I was able to move a little, and—with her arms still pressing on me, confining me—I twisted to peer out of an opening between the buttons of her blouse.

The attendants were getting people settled down again. One of them was sweeping the air with a powerful vacuum cleaner tube, sucking up free-floating urine drops and spinning turds—little dry ones, nothing like the disgusting things that humans make, though you’d never guess it from the way they were all dodging them and shuddering. Others were passing out moist towelettes to passengers who were wiping at their faces, their hands, their clothing, trying to clean themselves.

Carol Jeanne was moving now, returning to our seats. I wanted to explain to her what had happened, but there wasn’t a notebook handy, and her computer was in the stowed luggage. So it wasn’t from me that she heard an accounting.

Mamie was still sitting in Carol Jeanne’s seat, wiping Emmy down. Emmy, of course, was having a wonderful time. She had found the whole episode very entertaining. “Monkey poop!” she cried. “Monkey wet! Lovey-law fly!” I, of course, was Lovey-law. Technically I had not actually flown, having never let go of one person till I had a good grip on the next, but since the people themselves were flying around the cabin, I thought Emmy’s words were a fair summation of what had happened.

Carol Jeanne, however, wanted a more specific accounting. “Who let Lovelock out of his harness?” she demanded.

With Mamie sitting in Carol Jeanne’s seat, there was really only one possible candidate. But Mamie looked up at Carol Jeanne, her face stern with righteous anger, and said, coldly, “I was trying to take care of
your
daughter, whom you had abandoned here. With Emmy sobbing her little heart out, I could hardly be expected to watch out for your monkey at the same time.”

So that was Mamie’s story
—she
had nothing to do with my being loosed from my restraints. I waited for someone to point out the obvious—that the harness and straps were arranged so that I could not possibly have gotten free on my own. I wasn’t surprised that Stef said nothing—he hadn’t lived this long without knowing better than to contradict Mamie in public. Red, on the other hand, had actually argued with his mother from time to time over the years, and she had even backed down now and then.

But when he opened his mouth, it was not to tell the truth. “Apparently they have good reasons for confining
most
witnesses to the cargo compartment,” he said.

The liar!
He
knew it was all his mother’s fault, but he let me take the blame anyway. He did it solely out of jealousy. I was Carol Jeanne’s companion—the one who shared every waking moment of her life with her. She told me her secrets and developed her scientific theories with me at her side. Red was only good for breeding, and if my little monkey appendage had been bigger I gladly would have donated myself to Carol Jeanne for
that
. He was as useless as yesterday’s oatmeal, and everyone couldn’t help but know it. Now he grabbed his chance to get even. I snarled at him, but he ignored me.

Only Lydia offered something like the truth. “Can
I
play with Lovelock? Grandma let
Emmy
play with him. She was going to give Lovelock a treat. Can
I
give him a treat? Can I?”

“Nonsense,” said Mamie. “Of course the child doesn’t understand what happened.”

“He can’t get loose by himself,” said Carol Jeanne.

“Well, then, we
do
live in an age of miracles,” said Mamie. “You can’t be suggesting that
I
would voluntarily come anywhere
near
the creature.” My heart sank. Since Mamie was well known to recoil from any contact with me, it was quite possible that her lie would be believed. In fact, Mamie sounded so truthful, so
injured
by the whole notion of being at fault for anything, that if I hadn’t known better I probably would have believed her myself.

I think the secret to Mamie’s skill at lying is that she never tells a lie that she doesn’t believe with all her heart, at least for the moment it takes to tell it.

I shouldn’t have been surprised at any of this. Not that she would lie, nor that her lie was believed. But I
was
surprised. I guess it had never occurred to me that she would lie so outrageously when the consequences were so dire to someone else. I was the only one who would pay the price for her lie. Once they believed that I knew how to get loose from my harness, there was no hope of my remaining in the cabin with the people. I would inevitably spend the rest of the voyage treated as cargo, like Pink. It was a miserable punishment and I didn’t deserve it.