The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

by Connie Willis

  “For who?”

  “What?” she looked blank.

  “What boy are you copying your notes for?”

  “Boy?” Now there was an edge to her voice. She looked frightened.

  I said carefully, “I figure you’ve got to have a boyfriend.” And watched her go edge again. Mary doing Jesus, that must not have come out right at all. I wondered what I’d really said to send her off like that.

  She backed up against the bunk wall like I was after her with something and held her notebook flat against her chest. “Why do you think that?”

  Think what? Holy scut, I should have told her about float before I went off on it. I’d have to answer her now like it was still a real conversation instead of a caged rat being poked with a stick, and hope I could explain later. “I don’t know why I think that. You just looked—”

  “It’s true, then,” she said, and the strain was right back, blinking red and white.

  “What is?” I said, still wondering what it was the float had garbled my innocent comment into.

  “I had braids like you before I came here. You probably wondered about that.” Holy scut, I’d said something mean about her choppy hair.

  “My father…”—she clutched the notebook like she had clutched the wallplate that night, hanging on for dear life. “My father cut them off.” She was admitting some awful thing to me and I had no idea what.

  “Why did he do that?”

  “He said I tempted…men with it. He said I was a—that I made men think wicked thoughts about me. He said it was my fault that it happened. He cut off all my hair.”

  It was coming to me finally that I had asked her just what I thought I had: whether she had a boyfriend.

  “Do you think I—do that?” she asked me pleadingly.

  Are you kidding? She couldn’t have tempted Brown in one of his bone-a-virgin moods. I couldn’t say that to her, though, and on the other hand, I knew if I said yes it was going to be toss-up time in dormland again. I felt sorry for her, poor kid, her braids chopped off and her scut of a father scaring the hell out of her with a bunch of lies. No wonder she’d been so edge when she first got here.

  “Do you?” she persisted.

  “You want to know what I think,” I said, standing up a little unsteadily. “I think fathers are a pile of scut.” I thought of Arabel’s story. Little brown animals as long as your arm and Brown saying, “Your father only wants to protect you.” “Worse than a pile of scut,” I said. “All of them.”

  She looked at me, backed up against the wall, as if she would like to believe me.

  “You want to know what my father did to me?” I said. “He didn’t cut my braids off. Oh, no, this is lots better. You know about trust kids?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay. My father wants to carry on his precious name and his precious jig juice, but he doesn’t want any of the trouble. So he sets up a trust. He pays a lot of money, he goes jig jig in a plastic bag, and presto he’s a father, and the lawyers are left with all the dirty work. Like taking care of me and sending me someplace for summer break and paying my tuition at this godspit school. Like putting one of these on me.” I held up my wrist with the ugly alert band on it. “He never even saw me. He doesn’t even know who I am. Trust me. I know about scutty fathers.”

  “I wish…” Zibet said. She opened her book and started copying her notes again. I eased down onto my bunk, starting to feel the post-float headache. When I looked at her again, she was dripping tears all over her precious notes. Jiggin’ Jesus, everything I said was wrong. The most I could hope for in this edge place was that the boys would be done playing beasties by midterms and I could get my grades up.

  By midterms the circulation system had broken down completely. The campus was knee-deep in leaves and cotton. You could hardly walk. I trudged through the leaves to class, head down. I didn’t even see Brown until it was too late.

  He had the animal on his arm. “This is Daughter Ann,” Brown said. “Daughter Ann, meet Tavvy.”

  “Go jig yourself,” I said, brushing by him.

  He grabbed my wrist, holding on hard and pressing his fingers against the alert band until it hurt. “That’s not polite, Tavvy. Daughter Ann wants to meet you. Don’t you, sweetheart?” He held the animal out to me. Arabel had been right. Hideous little things. I had never gotten a close look at one before. It had a sharp little brown face, with dull eyes and a tiny pink mouth. Its fur was coarse and brown, and its body hung limply off Brown’s arm. He had put a ribbon around its neck.

  “Just your type,” I said. “Ugly as mud and a hole big enough for even you to find.”

  His grip tightened. “You can’t talk that way to my…”

  “Hi,” Zibet said behind me. I whirled around. This was all I needed.

  “Hi,” I said, and yanked my wrist free. “Brown, this is my roommate. My freshman roommate. Zibet, Brown.”

  “And this is Daughter Ann,” he said, holding the animal up so that its tender pink mouth gaped stupidly at us. Its tail was up. I could see tender pink at the other end, too. And Arabel wonders what the attraction is?

  “Nice to meet you, freshman roommate,” Brown muttered and pulled the animal back close to him. “Come to Papa,” he said, and stalked off through the leaves.

  I rubbed my poor wrist. Please, please let her not ask me what a tessel’s for? I have had about all I can take for one day. I’m not about to explain Brown’s nasty habits to a virgie.

  I had underestimated her. She shuddered a little and pulled her notebooks against her chest. “Poor little beast,” she said.

  “What do you know about sin?” she asked me suddenly that night. At least she had turned off the light. That was some improvement.

  “A lot,” I said. “How do you think I got this charming bracelet?”

  “I mean really doing something wrong. To somebody else. To save yourself.” She stopped. I didn’t answer her, and she didn’t say anything more for a long time. “I know about the admin,” she said finally.

  I couldn’t have been more surprised if Old Scut Moulton had suddenly shouted, “Bless you, my daughter,” over the intercom.

  “You’re a good person, I can tell that.” There was a dreamy quality to her voice. If it had been anybody but her I’d have thought she was masting. “There are things you wouldn’t do, not even to save yourself.”

  “And you’re a hardened criminal, I suppose?”

  “There are things you wouldn’t do,” she repeated sleepily, and then said quite clearly and irrelevantly, “My sister’s coming for Christmas.”

  Jiggin’, she was full of surprises tonight. “I thought you were going home for Christmas,” I said.

  “I’m never going home,” she said.

  “Tavvy!” Arabel shouted halfway across campus. “Hello!”

  The boys are over it, I thought, and how in the scut am I going to get rid of this alert band? I felt so relieved I could have cried.

  “Tavvy,” she said again. “I haven’t seen you in weeks!”

  “What’s going on?” I asked her, wondering why she didn’t just blurt it out about the boys in her usual breakneck fashion.

  “What do you mean?” she said, wide-eyed, and I knew it wasn’t the boys. They still had the tessels, Brown and Sept and all the rest of them. They still had the tessels. It’s only beasties, I told myself fiercely, it’s only beasties and why are you so edge about it? Your father has your best interests at heart. Come to Daddy

  “The admin’s secretary quit,” Arabel said. “I got put on restricks for a samurai party in my room.” She shrugged. “It was the best offer I’d had all fall.”

  Oh, but you’re trust, Arabel. You’re trust. He could be your father. Come to Papa.

  “You look terrible,” Arabel said. “Are you doing too much float?”

  I shook my head. “Do you know what it is the boys do with them?”

  “Tavvy, sweetheart, if you can’t figure out what that big pink hole
is for—”

  “My roommate’s father cut her hair off,” I said. “She’s a virgie. She’s never done anything. He cut off all her hair.”

  “Hey,” Arabel said, “you are really edging it. Listen, how long have you been without jig jig? I can set you up, younger guys than the admin, nothing to worry about. Guaranteed no trusters. I could set you up.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want any.”

  “Listen, I’m worried about you. I don’t want you to go edge on me. Let me ask the admin about your alert band at least.”

  “No,” I said clearly “I’m all right, Arabel. I’ve got to get to class.”

  “Don’t let this tessel thing get to you, Tavvy. It’s only beasties.”

  “Yeah.” I walked steadily away from her across the spitting, leaflittered campus. As soon as I was out of her line of sight, I slumped against one of the giant cottonwoods and hung on to it like Zibet had clung to that wallplate. For dear life.

  Zibet didn’t say another thing about her sister until right before Christmas break. Her hair, which I had thought was growing out, looked choppier than ever. The old look of strain was back and getting worse every day. She looked like a radiation victim.

  I wasn’t looking that good myself. I couldn’t sleep, and float gave me headaches that lasted a week. The alert band started a rash that had worked its way halfway up my arm. And Arabel was right. I was going edge. I couldn’t get the tessels off my mind. If you’d asked me last summer what I thought of beasties, I’d have said it was great fun for everyone, especially the animals. Now the thought of Brown with that hideous little brown and pink thing on his arm was enough to make me toss up. I keep thinking about your father. If it’s the trust thing you’re worried about, I can find out for you. He has your best interests at heart. Come to Papa.

  My lawyers hadn’t succeeded in convincing the admin to let me go to Aspen for Christmas, or anywhere else. They’d managed to wangle full privileges as soon as everybody was gone, but not to get the alert band off. I figured if my dorm mother got a good look at what it was doing to my arm, though, she’d let me have it off for a few days and give it a chance to heal. The circulation system was working again, blowing winds of hurricane force all across Hell. Merry Christmas, everybody

  On the last day of class I walked into our dark room, hit the wallplate, and froze. There sat Zibet in the dark. On my bed. With a tessel in her lap.

  “Where did you get that?” I whispered.

  “I stole it,” she said.

  I locked the door behind me and pushed one of the desk chairs against it. “How?”

  “They were all at a party in somebody else’s room.”

  “You went in the boys’ dorm?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “You’re a freshman. They could send you home for that,” I said, disbelieving. This was the girl who had gone quite literally up the wall over the sheets, who had said, “I’m never going home again.”

  “Nobody saw me,” she said calmly “They were all at a party.”

  “You’re edge,” I said. “Whose is it, do you know?”

  “It’s Daughter Ann.”

  I grabbed the top sheet off my bunk and started lining my shuttle bag with it. Holy scut, this would be the first place Brown would look. I rifled through my desk drawer for a pair of scissors to cut some air slits with. Zibet still sat petting the horrid thing.

  “We’ve got to hide it,” I said. “This time I’m not kidding. You really are in trouble.”

  She didn’t hear me. “My sister Henra’s pretty. She has long braids like you. She’s good like you, too,” and then in an almost pleading voice, “she’s only fifteen.”

  Brown demanded and got a room check that started, you guessed it, with our room. The tessel wasn’t there. I’d put it in the shuttle bag and hidden it in one of the spins down in the laundry room. I’d wadded the other slickspin sheet in front of it, which I felt was a fitting irony for Brown, only he was too enraged to see it.

  “I want another check,” he said after the dorm mother had given him the grand tour. “I know it’s here.” He turned to me. “I know you’ve got it.”

  “The last shuttle’s in ten minutes,” the dorm mother said. “There isn’t time for another check.”

  “She’s got it. I can tell by the look on her face. She’s hidden it somewhere. Somewhere in this dorm.”

  The dorm mother looked like she’d like to have him in her Skinner box for about an hour. She shook her head.

  “You lose, Brown,” I said. “You stay and you’ll miss your shuttle and be stuck in Hell over Christmas. You leave and you lose your darling Daughter Ann. You lose either way, Brown.”

  He grabbed my wrist. The rash was almost unbearable under the band. My wrist had started to swell, puffing out purplish-red over the metal. I tried to free myself with my other hand, but his grip was as hard and vengeful as his face. “Octavia here was at a samurai party in the boys’ dorm last week,” he said to the dorm mother.

  “That’s not true,” I said. I could hardly talk. The pain from his grip was making me so nauseated I felt faint.

  “I find that difficult to believe,” the dorm mother said, “since she is confined by an alert band.”

  “This?” Brown said, and yanked my arm up. I cried out. “This thing?” He twisted it around my wrist. “She can take it off any time she wants. Didn’t you know that?” He dropped my wrist and looked at me contemptuously “Tavvy’s too smart to let a little thing like an alert band stop her, aren’t you, Tavvy?”

  I cradled my throbbing wrist against my body and tried not to black out. It isn’t beasties, I thought frantically. He would never do this to me just for beasties. It’s something worse. Worse. He must never, never get it back.

  “There’s the call for the shuttle,” the dorm mother said. “Octavia, your break privileges are canceled.”

  Brown shot a triumphant glance at me and followed her out. It took every bit of strength I had to wait till the last shuttle was gone before I went to get the tessel. I carried it back to the room with my good hand. The restricks hardly mattered. There was no place to go anyway. And the tessel was safe. “Everything will be all right,” I said to the tessel.

  Only everything wasn’t all right. Henra, the pretty sister, wasn’t pretty. Her hair had been cut off, as short as scissors could make it. She was flushed bright red and crying. Zibet’s face had gone stony white and stayed that way. I didn’t think from the looks of her that she’d ever cry again. Isn’t it wonderful what a semester of college can do for you?

  Restricks or no, I had to get out of there. I took my books and camped down in the laundry room. I wrote two term papers, read three textbooks, and like Zibet, recopied all my notes. He cut off my hair. He said I tempted men and that was why it happened. Your father was only trying to protect you. Come to Papa. I turned on all the spins at once so I couldn’t hear myself think and typed the term papers.

  I made it to the last day of break, gritting my teeth to keep from thinking about Brown, about tessels, about everything. Zibet and her sister came down to the laundry room to tell me Henra was going back on the first shuttle. I said goodbye. “I hope you can come back,” I said, knowing I sounded stupid, knowing there was nothing in the world that could make me go back to Marylebone Weep if I were Henra.

  “I am coming back. As soon as I graduate.”

  “It’s only two years,” Zibet said. Two years ago Zibet had the same sweet face as her sister. Two years from now, Henra too would look like death warmed over. What fun to grow up in Marylebone Weep, where you’re a wreck at seventeen.

  “Come back with me, Zibet,” Henra said.

  “I can’t.”

  Toss-up time. I went back to the room, propped myself on my bunk with a stack of books, and started reading. The tessel had been asleep on the foot of the bunk, its gaping pink vaj sticking up. It crawled onto my lap and lay there. I picked it up. It didn’t resist. Even with it living in the room
, I’d never really looked at it closely. I saw now that it couldn’t resist if it tried. It had tiny little paws with soft pink underpads and no claws. It had no teeth, either, just the soft little rosebud mouth, only a quarter of the size of the opening at the other end. If it had been enhanced with pheromones, I sure couldn’t tell it. Maybe its attraction was simply that it had no defenses, that it couldn’t fight even if it wanted to.

  I laid it over my lap and stuck an exploratory finger a little way into the vaj. I’d done enough lezzing when I was a freshman to know what a good vaj should feel like. I eased the finger farther in.

  It screamed.

  I yanked the hand free, balled it into a fist, and crammed it against my mouth hard to keep from screaming myself. Horrible, awful, pitiful sound. Helpless. Hopeless. The sound a woman must make when she’s being raped. No. Worse. The sound a child must make. I thought, I have never heard a sound like that in my whole life, and at the same instant, this is the sound I have been hearing all semester. Pheromones. Oh, no, a far greater attraction than some chemical. Or is fear a chemical, too?

  I put the poor little beast onto the bed, went into the bathroom, and washed my hands for about an hour. I thought Zibet hadn’t known what the tessels were for, that she hadn’t had more than the vaguest idea what the boys were doing to them. But she had known. Known and tried to keep it from me. Known and gone into the boys’ dorm all by herself to steal one. We should have stolen them all, all of them, gotten them away from those scutting god-fucking…I had thought of a lot of names for my father over the years. None of them was bad enough for this. Scutting Jesus jiggers. Fucking piles of scut.

  Zibet was standing in the door of the bathroom.

  “Oh, Zibet,” I said, and stopped.

  “My sister’s going home this afternoon,” she said.

  “No,” I said, “Oh, no,” and ran past her out of the room.

  I guess I had kind of a little breakdown. Anyway, I can’t account very well for the time. Which is edge, because the thing I remember most vividly is the feeling that I needed to hurry, that something awful would happen if I didn’t hurry.