The Judas Rose (53 page)

“You haven't complained, Father—no. You have been most generous. I am afraid the task was just beyond us. Perhaps, if we could have had priests at the devotionals, to truly fire the women, things would have gone differently. But Father, the fad is almost over now. Except within the houses of the Lines, where things are as they always were, women no longer hold Thursday Night Devotionals. Not even in the largest cities. And so you do see, Father; I am not needed. Not any longer.”

Dorien thought of the last set of revisions she had sent to him. It wasn't surprising that they kindled no religious fire in women; women were theologically illiterate, and they had to be attracted to the Lord by the rhythm and power of words and music well assembled. He had tried reading some of those recent bits aloud, and it had been like reading a comphone directory.
Less
effective than that, in fact, because alphabetized names in lists have a certain hypnotic quality. He didn't understand why the revisions necessary to clean up the heretical tendencies should have resulted in such dull and plodding and unmelodious stuff, but he did understand why the results could not hold the frail attention of women.

“All right, Sister,” he said suddenly, making up his mind to be done with it. “I understand. I agree that the other sisters can go on without you, and no doubt they, too, will be free of this before long; the King James is large, but it isn't
in
finite! I even agree that you should be released from what must have become no more to you than a running in place. However—” Here he stopped, and raised his right index finger beside his face. “—that does not explain why you have requested transfer to, of all places, the public wards of a huge urban hospital! You've done your duty, Sister, and done it well and faithfully. If you want something new, why not something a bit more tasteful? You may speak.”

“I enjoy nursing,” she answered. “I have always enjoyed it.”

“Then why not private nursing, Sister? Or nursing in a small hospital in some pleasant place? In the mountains? At the seashore? In a lovely little New England town? Why, in the name of all the saints,
Washington General?
That terrible place! Why there? Or anywhere else of that kind?” He shook the finger at her. “It smacks of excessive religiosity, Sister! One thinks of the
ancient nuns and their barbarous habits—kissing the sores of lepers and so on—and much, much worse. Is that what's going on with you, Sister? If it is, I won't allow it. You may answer.”

She raised her eyes and looked directly at him, for the first time since the interview began. But there was nothing compelling in her glance. They were bland, dutiful eyes; a pretty color, nothing more.

“Father,” she answered, “I tell you from my heart; I am
bored
with peace and quiet. A fault of character, I know. But I have had peace and quiet and tranquility until I am sick of them all. I would like some excitement . . . some bustle. A
change
, Father.”

“Oh. Yes, I see.” It was reasonable enough. He should have seen it for himself. “Do you want even more excitement, perhaps?” he asked her, teasing. “Shall I send you out to a frontier colony? You may speak, Sister.”

“If you wish, Father.” Her eyelids dropped. “It would be my privilege to obey.”

Dorien drummed his fingers on the table edge, considering the idea. Should he do that? No . . . no, he didn't think so. “No,” he told her, “I don't want you where—if those bizarre females took it into their heads to translate . . . oh, Confucius, for example . . . it would be hard for me to get you back. If I send you out to the colonies you'll be indispensable in a month, and they'll insist on keeping you. No—I won't do that. But I'll make you an offer, Sister Miriam Rose the Bored. I'll transfer you to Washington General, as you wished.
On the condition
that if I need you back again you will come without protest or delay—and that if you find Washington General more than you bargained for and would like to be bored again, you'll send me a message and I'll find you something more pleasant. Will that do, Sister? You may speak.”

“I would be grateful, Father,” she said. He could see that she was pleased. “You are very kind.”

He was, thought Dorien. He was
damned
kind. But he could afford to be. She might have stayed elegant, but she'd gotten dull. Insipid. All that boredom she'd been talking about—it had leaked through her pores and made
her
boring, too. She didn't even seem beautiful, now that he thought about it, especially sitting there slumped the way she was. He resisted the urge to order her to sit up straight and throw her shoulders back; you couldn't say that to a woman. Why, she was only passable to look at. All bones. Poor old thing, of course she was bored. And she needed other women to gossip with, and so on.

It gave Father Dorien great satisfaction to let her have exactly what she had asked him for; he was embarrassed now, to think that he'd been suspicious of her. Granting her request would be a kind of recompense for the insults she'd suffered from his over-active imagination. She thought him very kind, and so did he; but he would deny it.

“Not at all, Sister Miriam,” he said cordially. “Not at all.”

CHAPTER 24

“This year's Pulitzer Prize for Colonial Literature is sure to be a matter of intense controversy everywhere except on Terra's Eastern Seaboard. We can now look forward to renewed—and wholly justified—demands, especially from Luna and New Evergreen, for the Colonial Pulitzers to be chosen and awarded by colonial juries. The ossified pedants who made this year's award (only one of them under seventy-five years of age!) have again ignored reality and remained with their distinguished bald heads firmly encased in the literary sand.

“The obvious winner, not only this year but for the preceding three years, is the brilliant young symphonovelist Kalaberra Courtney. It is a disgrace to the planet Earth that the award went instead to the tiresome semi-autobiographical warblings of Hassan P. E. Pritchard, the only frog in the tiny pond of Settlement Thirteen. Never mind that Pritchard's life is boring, his style unreadable, and his personality insufferable! He is the product of a Terran Multiversity, and his tedious works can be recognized
as
novels even by small children—that is apparently all that the Pulitzer Committee demands.

“‘Meanwhile, the work of the true literary giants of the colonies continues to be almost impossible to obtain here on Earth even in cheap chiplet versions. Under the circumstances, the simple fact that Pritchard
accepted
the tainted award is proof enough that he is nothing but a hack.”

           
(
from “Bookbits,” by literary critic Lincoln-Jefferson Stratargee
, SPACETIME HOLOMAGAZINE)

“This room has a genuinely awe-inspiring ugliness,” Heykus said solemnly. “It must have cost . . . oh, as much as the
setup-pack for a new colony of one hundred settlers. On an Earth-type planet, of course. A man wouldn't want to overstate the situation.”

The other men, already seated and waiting for him, looked at one another and then at their surroundings, while Heykus stalked to the head of the table—if something shaped like your average amoeba on the move could be said to have a “head.” The tallest and most cadaverous of the group was an old-line bureaucrat named John Charles Sundbystyner, who'd known Heykus for fifty years; he closed his eyes, sighed as if he were in mild distress, and answered with his usual dynamic intonation . . . absolutely flat. It's not easy to achieve a controlled monotone in Panglish, but Sundbystyner was famous for his. “Heykus,” he droned, “you say that every damn year. It's tiresome, and I've told you so before. In fact, last year you gave me your word that you'd get somebody on your enormous staff—for which there is
no
conceivable excuse—to write you a new opening line.”

“Get off him, Sundy,” snapped the man at his right; to his left, the last member present added, “Second the effing motion, John Charles. We're not here for a seminar in stylistics.”

Sundbystyner's eyes opened, his eyebrows climbed his forehead, and he snorted. Heykus noted appreciatively that even the snort did not deviate from the monotone, and considered congratulating the old fart for his consistency and his prosodic skill, but he discarded the idea as inappropriate. Aldrovandus Barton was absolutely right; stylistics was
not
the point. And if Sundy were given the least encouragement he'd go on for half an hour. Heykus settled for a comment as predictable as his opening complaint had been.

“The reason I say that every year,” he noted, sitting down, “is that this cursed room is
redone
every year. Aren't they ever going to quit?”

“No,” Aldrovandus answered. “Not as long as this room is used for greeting Soviet cultural exchange delegations. You know that.”

“Can't have Moscow thinking we aren't up to the very latest thing in ugly, eh?”

“It's not that ugly, Heykus.”

“It
is
that ugly, Lo Chen. The Capitol Architect has surpassed himself this year. Pale lavender? With a narrow silver stripe? Live fish swimming in the windows? And a
transparent floor?
”

The other three glanced down and looked at the crowds of tourists aimlessly wandering in small groups on the museum floor far below them. Phong Lo Chen snickered, and remarked
that if they only had transparent chairs as well as transparent floors the tourists would be able to add a quartet of famous bureaucratic crotches to their travel recollections. “Perhaps it would become fashionable,” he mused. “Snapping holos of famous crotches, above your head.”

“What's sad, Lo Chen,” Heykus observed, “is that you meant that to be funny, but it's very probably a statement of solemn fact. Gentlemen—let's pretend we are not on public view; let's pretend that we are not bathed in an ethereal glow of lavender and silver; and let's begin. The sooner we get through this, the sooner we can go back to the ordinary ugliness of Washington's classic disrepair.” He frowned for a moment, and glanced at reliable Sundbystyner. “I have completely forgotten why it is that we always have to meet here,” he said slowly.

“Regulations,” Sundbystyner told him.

“You're joking.”

“I am not joking. The Feder—”

Heykus raised one hand beside his head, signaling silence. “
Do not explain!
” he ordered. “I have recalled the idiot regulation in question. We are now in session, and I apologize for the delay incurred as the direct result of my superfluous speeches about the decor. Somebody send me a memo of reproof.
Now
. This meeting is a routine meeting, in the sense that we have to do it whether anything has happened or not. But it appears that something
has
happened, this time, and I'm not pleased about it.”

“You got our memo chiplet.”

“I did.”

“It's an accurate statement of the situation,” Sundbystyner stated; there was a murmur of agreement.

“You all agree?” Heykus asked, making certain. “No dissenters? No reservations? No qualifications?”

“None. No dissenters present, and no dissenters elsewhere,” Aldrovandus told him. “You talk about a consensus—we have one of those.”

“I see.” Heykus remembered the memo, verbatim; it had been terse and unequivocal. It had used the word “failure” twice. He had a strong dislike for that word. Temporary setback, perhaps. Unanticipated delay. But failure? Heykus didn't believe in failure. Not at
his
level of government.

“All right,” he said. “Let's just run through it, one at a time. John Charles, you start us off.”

Sundbystyner pulled a fiche from his case, inserted it in his viewer for a ten-second perusal, and put it away again. The expression on his face was not pleasant.

“There has been absolutely no progress,” he said, “and I wish to emphasize the word ‘absolutely,' in getting an agreement from the Consortium to increase the quotas for AIRYs. On the contrary. They will not even discuss an increase, much less agree to one. They are inflexible, gentlemen—the quotas, we are informed, will remain just as they are, and that is not open to negotiation.”

“Do they understand the situation, Sundy?” demanded Heykus.

“I'm sure they do. We have repeatedly sent in crack teams from the Lines, with completely native fluency in the major languages, to guarantee that there could be no problems due to a barrier of language. They understand that things have changed; now that we can Interface children from outside the linguist households we
need
more AIRYs. They understand that we are willing to build new Interfaces, with much more space and more creature comforts. They've heard all our arguments about the resulting improvement in interplanetary commerce and diplomacy. They know all this. They've been told. We've tried every conceivable angle of persuasion. They will not budge.”

“
Damn
, but that's frustrating!” Heykus declared.

“Yes, it is. But they've always been inflexible on the quotas. I don't know why anyone should have expected them to make changes just because we ourselves had made some, however drastic.”

“I keep thinking we might wear them down,” Heykus sighed.