Lovelock (9 page)

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

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

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

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

Damn straight, Penelope, thought I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.