The Judas Rose (32 page)

“What if you are right, Father?” she asked. “Then what?”

“Then you will stamp out the heresy,” he declared, repeating the words with deliberate vehemence. “With our help. With all of the resources of the Church that you may find needful to do so. And we will gently turn that heresy around, and change it ever so carefully—we will cause it to become devotion to the Virgin Mary. That is always the best way to deal with these female flareups, whenever they occur. We will shelter these imperiled souls beneath the skirts of the Blessed Mother, where they will be safe from harm. Do you understand, Sister?” It occurred to him, too late, that his metaphor had been badly chosen; it had occurred to Claude and Agar, too. They looked shocked. “You may speak,” he said hurriedly. And then, to their surprise, he added, “I apologize for my clumsy figure of speech, Sister Miriam—it's a traditional figure, but grossly out of place in this situation. As I said, you may speak.”

She was nodding, the smallest hint of a nod; and because he knew her innermost thoughts as only a confessor can know them, he was reasonably sure he knew what she was thinking. She was thinking that they were hoping she
would
find the suspected heresy. And she was right, in a very limited way; a perverted leaning toward goddess worship was always a fertile source of souls, first through the innocent devotion to Mary and then on past that into true and wholesome worship of the Lord and of His Son. It was one of the most reliable of all conversion mechanisms, reaching back into the most ancient times. It presented a challenge, and the Fathers were too human not to welcome a challenge. But Miriam said nothing of her thoughts, and the expression on her face would not have betrayed her to anyone except him.

“I understand, Father,” she said calmly. “It is my privilege to obey.”

He looked straight at her, and she dropped her eyes immediately; in that privacy, he looked inquiringly at the other two priests. As he had expected, they signaled their full approval. She was exactly what was needed. And that was very good; he could save a great deal of time now, not having the nuisance of interviewing other nuns for the post, and he could work quickly with Miriam; she was intelligent and cooperative, and he understood her completely.

“Sister Miriam,” he said, pulling a small case from the pocket of his robe, “unless you have questions you wish to discuss with us, we don't need to keep you any longer. You will find full instructions on the microfiche in this case, as well as all
the relevant background information. Instructions have been given to your Abbess; she is to cooperate with you in every way. She will be informed that as of this date you are released from all other duties except those of worship. You'll find all the details on the fiche.
Do
you have questions, Miriam? You may speak.”

“No, Father. Not at this time. It's all quite clear.”

“You do understand the importance of your mission? You may speak.”

She did not look up, and she said only, “I do understand, Father. And it is my privilege, as ever, to obey.”

She remained where she was, her eyes still down, until she was directed to stand. And then she stood motionless while the priests filed from the room, without a word.

CHAPTER 14

       
“Had a dog and her name was Quark,

       
had a dog and her name was Quark!

       
Had a dog and her name was Quark—

       
she ran faster than light, had a four-part bark!

       
Hey, Quark . . . lemme hear you bark!”

       
“Spacewarp travel on an average day (three times),

       
meet ol' Quark goin' back the other way!

       
Hey, Quark . . . lemme hear you bark!”

       
“Quark knew
e
equals
mc
squared (three times),

       
mighta made a difference if Quark had cared!

       
Hey, Quark . . . lemme hear you bark!”

       
“Quark chased every relativity spike (three times),

       
never met a constant she didn't like!

       
Hey, Quark . . . lemme hear you bark!”

       
“When Quark died it was somethin' to see (three times),

       
she went nova in four-part harmony . . .

       
Hey, Quark . . . lemme hear you bark!”

(folksong, set to traditional tune, “Had a Dog and His Name Was Blue”)

He was a career man. His navy-blue denim jumpsuit, with the full legs correctly cinched tight at the ankles, demonstrated that. So did the eyeglasses with their black horn-rims, which he needed not at all, nearsightedness being one of that small set of things that the med-Sammys could actually cure, but which he wore as dutifully as he wore his discreetly stylish AT&T wrist computer; he would have felt naked without either, and in fact
removed them only when making love. His wig was of the best quality, and had a fine pepper-and-salt coloring that he knew gave him a look of distinction he might otherwise have had trouble achieving; the wig had cost more than all the rest of his outfit put together, but had been worth every last credit. It had been hard enough getting to his present post when his wife's uncle was an eggdome, without being condemned in advance by his own prematurely bald scalp . . . it seemed to him sometimes, although he would not have admitted it because he knew he could not defend it logically, that it was his wife's fault that he'd lost every last hair on his head before his thirtieth birthday. As if she'd brought a taint with her that had destroyed the very roots of his hair; to balance the obvious
benefits
she'd brought with her. He was looking forward to the money that Uncle George was leaving to Brenda, and when he lost his hair he'd been able to stop feeling guilty about having married her only for that reason. His hair had been surrendered in exchange for that money, that was how he felt; and it had been worth more than that to him.

He didn't like the assignment he was carrying out today. It made him nervous just to look out through the transparent walls of the building that housed the Cetacean Project, and he appreciated the docking tube that had allowed him to step straight from his flyer into its air-conditioned comfort. That people had once actually lived out there in that wasteland inferno was a matter of historical record; there had been a town there, called El Centro, with houses and schools and churches . . . there had even, so said the history books, been a college. But Paul couldn't imagine it. He couldn't even begin to imagine that human beings no different from himself could have voluntarily condemned themselves to live in such conditions and survived it. There was nothing
out
there . . . nothing but some kind of pale brown bushes that looked completely fried, and the shimmering heatwaves, and a collection of cacti and boulders that had been carefully arranged by the landscapers—who had had to
work
out there, he realized with a shudder—to lead the eye past the desolation toward the line of mountains on the horizon. Paul didn't find
them
a comfort either; they were just piles of bare desolate rock. No doubt they provided a spectacular effect at sunset, but he didn't plan to still be here at sunset.

He hurried past the tourists (all three of them) who were gawking at the whales swimming round and round in their tank of sparkling blue water and the solemn baby watching them swim; he took the elevator down one level, transferred to the
service elevator marked “No Admittance—Employees Only,” and went down one level more. Hating it all the way.

Nothing could have brought home to him more forcefully how different eggdomes were from normal people than his knowledge that the Cetacean Project scientists not only worked down here in the bowels of nowhere but actually
lived
down here as well, because of the highly classified nature of their work; he'd been told that some of them had not been topside even for earned leave in as long as three years.

“How can they
do
that?” he'd demanded, horrified. “There's not enough money in the effing universe to pay a man to do that!” And the guy who'd told him had shrugged and said something about eggdomes being almost as weird as Lingoes. Which was probably true. But there was a difference. He hated the eggdomes, but they didn't make him queasy the way the Lingoes did. He could have put up with his sister marrying an eggdome— hell, didn't he have an eggdome for an uncle by marriage, and a pretty nice guy he was, too?—but if he'd thought she was going to marry a Lingoe he'd have had her institutionalized without a second thought. If he'd had a sister. According to Brenda, the day was coming when his prejudice was going to cause him trouble; she claimed that since they'd begun putting normal human babies into the Interfaces along with the Lingoe cubs, the Lingoes were beginning to be looked at differently.

“You're going to have to give up being so bigoted about them,” she'd said, licking trankdust off her fingers and grinning at him the way she always did when she thought she was hitting a nerve. “You're going to find them right beside you everywhere you go, and you're going to have to just forget that they turn your stomach, and socialize with them. You'll see. I may not get out of this house much, but I keep up with what's happening. And that's what's happening.”

Paul had given her his coldest stare, and told her to please remember that he'd
always
had Lingoes all around him. Any federal employee had to get used to that. The Lingoes were part of the working environment, and you had to be polite to them. But everybody knew it was an act, including the Lingoes. And that wasn't going to change any, even if some people's kids had to spend a little time with Lingoe cubs as a way of gradually taking over the linguistics business.

“I admire those people,” he'd told Brenda. “I admire their guts. I couldn't do it.”

“What people? Do what?” Brenda, and her tiny brain.

“Well, it's one thing to do something like that your own self—that's different. But to send one of your kids? That takes a kind of moral fiber I haven't got, I can tell you. You know what it makes me think of? You remember the history tapes where the little black kids walked into the schools between rows of policemen with dogs, and white people spitting and screaming and throwing stuff at them . . . rotten eggs, rocks . . . you remember that?”

“No, I don't. And I don't believe it ever happened.”

“It happened, Brenda. More than once, it happened.”

“I don't believe it, Paul.” Stubborn. “Not in
this
country.”

Paul had given up immediately, because any other decision was a waste of time. His wife's ignorance was impenetrable, and that suited him just fine. She was a hell of a lot easier to keep in line than the wives of some of his friends, who'd had more education than was good for them. He hadn't pressed the point; but it was a very real point to him. He'd always thought that maybe he could have walked up those school steps through all that hatred himself, but that he never could have found the guts to send a child of his own. He would have said: send somebody else's kid, not mine. Somebody's kids had to be the ones, in a time so barbaric that people based their estimate and treatment of others on skin color. . . . Jesus! It was like hearing that your ancestors were cannibals; no wonder Brenda had blanked it out. But he felt that way about the babies going into the Lingoe Interfaces—somebody else's kid, not mine, that was how he felt about it.

He'd heard a rumor around D.A.T. that Carl Crewvel's wife Nedralyn had actually been going to private religious club meetings that were connected in some way with bitch Lingoes; he hoped it wasn't true, because Carl was a good man, and he liked him. That kind of thing could ruin a man. Sure, you had to let them into the public churches, this was a free country, but that was a long way from what sounded like joining a Lingoe
cult
. Jesus.

He'd been watching the numbers on the doors he passed, absently; they were coded, but he'd dealt with coded numbers so long that he wasn't conscious of them any longer. This one said “Radiated Legume Storage—Caution” and under that “Do Not Enter Without Permission From the Officer of the Day.” That'd be it. Room 09-A, where the meeting was scheduled. He was supposed to go right in, and that made him jittery . . . you walk right through a door inside a top secret project like this, you could get your brain fried like those bushes outside in the desert. But he'd been assured that all alarms were turned off and that all
servomechanisms except the ordinary cleanup ones had been deactivated for this occasion.

“Yeah,” he thought aloud. “And my Aunt Tildy flies a Greyhound Rocket. Sure.”

Still, Paul was accustomed to following orders, and he followed them now. He put his hand on the door, palm flat on the lock, and pressed gingerly, and when it slid smoothly aside for him he walked straight on into the room with the hair on his neck prickling and his heart pounding out “The Stars and Stripes Forever” in his chest. The guard that stopped him two feet inside the door was a human being, and that helped a little; he laid his fingertips on the portable ID-platter the soldier held and saw the blue light flash just like it was supposed to, and that was even better. “Take your seat at the table, please, sir,” said the guard, respectfully.