The Judas Rose (52 page)

“Jared, my darling,” said Belle-Sharon with complete honesty, “that is such a foolish question.”

“I don't want any semantic wiggling,” he insisted. “Speak up, woman—cast your vote.”

“You want a declaration? A proclamation? A manifesto?”

“Any one of those will do,” he told her, grinning happily, sure of her answer.

“Jared Joel Chornyak, my dear husband,” she said solemnly, leaning forward to softly kiss his handsome bare chest, “of
course
I would not rather ‘just cuddle' than have you make love to me!”

It was what he wanted. Satisfied, he grinned at her again and
began to discuss the negotiation he had scheduled for the following day, while she listened, and spoke if she had anything to say that might be useful to him.

It seemed to her at times that he was in some ways improving; she had told Nazareth so, and Nazareth had agreed that it was certainly possible and had kindly refrained from reminding her that people had told her so. “Continue to set him a good example,” Nazareth had advised her, “and perhaps he will improve even more rapidly. It is often that way, dearlove.”

“Perhaps he will turn out to be one of those miracles, the man for whom it is not totally stupid to feel a little hope?”

“Perhaps.”

It was a matter of common knowledge that Nazareth's husband had
not
been such a man, and Belle-Sharon felt suddenly ashamed—she had taken Nazareth's hands in hers and laid her cheek against them to show that she had not meant to cause pain with her thoughtless talk.

Nazareth had looked at her fondly, and let Belle-Sharon sit there with her without speaking for a little while. And then she had said, “
Bíi dóhúuya ul beyeth hath nedebe wa
.”

In my experience, and according to my perceptions, I say to you: hope rarely does anyone harm.

II

“Sister Miriam, I don't understand your request. I'm sorry—it makes no sense.”

He knew he sounded cross; he
was
cross. Just looking at her irritated Father Dorien. He knew what the years had done to
him
. The elegance he had always relied on, the fair slender manly beauty that had made it acceptable for him to sit haloed in light from the window at his back, had failed him. Instead of becoming more and more impressive with the passing years, instead of taking on the distinction of an ascetic, he had softened and blurred and spread. His clerical collar was too tight, even in the larger size, and his cassock did not disguise the ample belly that afflicted him in spite of many a good resolution. He was a priest, an abbot, soon to be a bishop; he was obliged to spend much of his time wheeling and dealing over banquet tables, or in intimate opulent lunches. And he had not been blessed with the sort of genes or bone structure that allowed that to go on year after year without a penalty of the flesh.

But Sister Miriam, now! She, who had once been merely an
attractive young woman with an imposing voice and manner, useful for his purposes, now had
exactly
the look he longed for and could not achieve—in its female version, of course. She seemed even taller; certainly she was thinner. The thinness might have been upleasant under ordinary clothing, because it was unfashionable for women to be thin, but the black folds of the nun's habit concealed any distressing angles. The headdress hid the raddled neck (if it
was
raddled . . . he had no way of knowing), and the only visible effect of the gauntness was a wonderful bony face exquisitely sculptured. Sister Miriam Rose looked like an El Greco saint. Father Dorien knew that he himself looked like one of those dumpy little country priests who got painted with mug or glass in hand, drowsing over a table where the debris of a generous meal testified to his recent excesses.

Dorien felt himself disliking Sister Miriam, and he despised himself for it. Here was a devout good nun who had devoted herself without stint or reservation for years to a project of his own choosing. And the best he could manage as a man of God was a shameful envy because the years were treating her less badly than they were treating him. Disgusting! He could imagine how tiresome his confessor must find him, always having to admit that he was still just as vain as he'd been the time before.

But it was
not
fair! She had no right to still look like that, to command the room she entered and the attention of everyone in it that way. That sort of effect was the natural right of men; it had no place in the life of a woman. He, Father Dorien, needed that effortless dignity, that power—he might just as well admit it, because that was what it was—she had
power
. She didn't need it at all; it was no use to a woman. The Lord's finger had slipped somewhere along the way, and Dorien resented it. And now here she was, asking to be relieved of the pleasant assignment she'd had for so long and sent into the public wards of the city hospitals. Bad enough that she should
appear
saintly; Dorien felt that he as not going to be able to bear it if she really
was
saintly.

“Sit down, Sister, for heaven's sake,” he said, to put an end to her looming over him; and then when she had murmured the usual nunly tripe about the pleasure of obedience and done as he ordered, he regretted it. He'd forgotten to have the low wooden stool set at the end of the table for her, and she'd had no choice, in her obedience, but to take one of the elaborate high-backed chairs. In which she did not look like a humble nun being obedient, but rather like a medieval queen affecting a simple throne, meeting perhaps with one of her slightly dissipated advisors.
I am getting old
, Dorien thought,
and I am going to get older; I make foolish little mistakes. I hope I do not start making foolish big ones.

She sat waiting patiently, her eyes cast down and her hands folded decently inside her sleeves; as always, the perfect nun. She could not initiate a conversation without his permission and he hadn't given it; he let her wait, while he glared at her and thought about what he might want to do about her request.

It had come through proper channels, a discreet note hard-copied from his secretary's comset, saying only that she considered her usefulness in her present post at an end and humbly requested transfer to a nursing position in one of the large public hospitals in Washington. Signed, “In obedience, Sister Miriam Rose.”

Why? Why would she want to do that? Now she had nothing to do but supervise a dozen well-trained nuns at their terminals, correct their work when it wasn't precisely right, push papers around now and then, report to him once in a while. Why would she want to trade that sweet sinecure for a hospital nursing post? It made no sense. No sense at all. He regretted that he had allowed another priest to become her confessor, just because he had been so busy; if he had seen her regularly he would have been prepared for this instead of being taken by surprise.
Why
would she want to go into—of all things—nursing?

True, nursing today was not what it had been in former times. There were healthies beside every bed in the public wards, even in the poorest areas. (Not that Earth had anything that could accurately be called poverty any more, but such judgments are always relative; citizens who had nothing but ample food and clothing and housing and education and medical care
considered
themselves poor.) And with healthies there, a nurse no longer had to do the grubby things. If the patient was in a medpod, she didn't have to do anything except be available if something in the pod malfunctioned or the patient developed a sudden craving for the flesh-and-blood presence of a human being. The healthies kept the patients clean and dry and at a proper temperature and properly oxygenated; they kept them fed and hydrated and medicated; they turned them and exercised them and entertained them; they dressed and tended wounds. And every smallest item of relevant information about the patient's condition and care was monitored by the healthies and transferred constantly—all nicely summarized and charted—to the central terminals at the nursing stations.

Nevertheless, a nursing post meant spending all your time
with sick people, and if you were not doing grubby work yourself you were still responsible for making sure that it had
been
done, and there was nothing attractive about it. Why would Sister Miriam trade her quiet small office in the convent, opening on the soft hum of the computer room, her windows overlooking the gardens and the brook, the peace and quiet and order of the religious life, for the pandemonium of a big city hospital's public wards?

Be careful, Dorien!
he told himself.
Be extremely careful. This is only a woman, but this is not an ordinary woman
. And when an extraordinary woman makes a request that is itself extraordinary, she is probably up to something.

“Sister!” he said, not kindly. She looked up without expression, as if she had not had to spend a full ten minutes waiting to be addressed. She was still beautiful, he thought, if you weren't enthralled by dimples and curls and curves. “Sister, your request is absurd. I am inclined to refuse it for that reason alone, without further discussion. Except that your dedication over the years has been exemplary, and I have no reason to believe that your mind is weakening. I will therefore permit you to tell me why I should allow you to do something so stupid. You may explain yourself, Sister—
briefly
. You have my permission to speak.”

“I dislike being useless, Father,” she said, her voice quite flat and unexpressive. “I am quite useless at this time.”

“
How
are you useless?” he asked her sharply. “You may speak.”

“I have supervised the revision of all the materials that the women of the Lines are likely to use as devotional items, Father; you will realize that although they insist on translating every last begat into Ládan they will never
use
most of it. There are parts of the Bible that are suitable for reading aloud as devotions, and then there is all the rest of it—suitable only for including in sermons or for reading to oneself. Since women do not preach, Father, none of that is likely to be widely circulated.”

“But it will be
read
, Sister. You may speak.”

“Within the Lines—not beyond. I beg your pardon, Father; I do not mean to sound disrespectful.”

Still that flat dull voice . . . what had happened to her magnificent voice? Without the voice he realized that she wasn't half so imposing, and he felt a bit more charitable toward her; perhaps she looked better than he did, but she certainly didn't sound any better. He spoke to her more gently, from this new perspective. “Sister Miriam,” he said, “I'm either missing a point or I don't
have the information necessary to follow you. Please—speak freely. What, precisely, is the situation?”

“All those materials,” she answered, “the Psalms, the Beatitudes, the Nativity Story from Luke, the Easter sections and the Creation Story—all that sort of thing, suitable for reading aloud—has been carefully revised. You have my word, Father, to the extent that I am competent to give it: there is now no hint of feminist taint in any of those materials. Where references to the Blessed Virgin could be made more prominent . . . foregrounded . . . that has been done. You have seen all these items yourself and have approved them. The computer program for automatic revision has been refined to such an extent that the nuns rarely need to change anything—and Father, when they do, always remembering that they are presently working with the less essential materials, they have had years of experience. They don't make errors as they did in the early stages. They do not
need
my supervision any more. As more materials are completed, they will simply be forwarded to you for reading; if there is any problem, you will send them back. I have prepared a detailed manual for use when the computer does not seem adequate, or when the wording provided by the program is for some reason not entirely suitable. If a new nun were added to the revising staff tomorrow, Father, she would not need me; she would have the program in the computer to do most of the work, the manual available in case of difficulty, the other nuns with their years of experience to advise her if the manual is not enough, and
you
as final arbiter. What possible need could there be for me, in these circumstances?”

“In sum,” he observed slowly, “you have successfully completed your task. You may speak, Sister.”

“I am very sorry, Father,” she said, surprising him, “but that is too complimentary; I could not accept it in good conscience.”

“My dear Sister, your description certainly
sounded
like an account of a successfully completed project! Please explain—you may speak.”

“Father,” she said, “there were two tasks assigned to us. One—the revision for the Láadan materials—is well in hand, yes. Everything has either already been finished or its completion is assured without further assistance from me. But the other task—that of transferring the women's fervor to the Blessed Virgin and thus leading them to Mother Church—in that, we have not done so well. We regret that, Father—we are indeed sorry.”

Father Dorien shrugged his shoulders and made a careless gesture with one hand. “Sister Miriam,” he said indulgently,
“it's true that you and the other sisters failed to bring about a
mass
conversion . . . you did not gather in tens of thousands. But you did well enough, and you need not reproach yourself. Have I ever complained? You may speak.”