The Judas Rose

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  The men are on their best behavior until they find out who they are sharing this evening with. If it turns out to be someone they know well, the Coloridons will bring out the innocent-looking fruit drinks laced with forbidden chemicals for which they are famous in their social circle and soon Doby and O.J. will abandon all pretense of good manners. But not yet. Not while for all they know the fourth husband invited is an important client, or the head of a famous clinic, or a celebrity with enough public clout to do their reputations harm. Krol and Doby and O.J. have not gotten where they are, young as they are, by risking their reputations.

  The men are standing by the oval window, talking shop talk, and Cassie thinks how unfair it is. When they go to their offices, they wear their white labcoats and the antique stethoscopes and they are impeccably attired; when they go out in the evening all they have to do is switch to black labcoats and pin miniature stethoscopes to their neckties, and they are impeccably attired; even the most formal occasion requires of them nothing more than a silk shirt beneath the black labcoat, perhaps with vertical tucks, perhaps with a narrow black cummerbund. They have no decisions to make, they have no conception of what a woman goes through. She wonders how they would like it if they could never set a foot outside their homes, or invite guests into their homes, without the obligation of earning points for their spouse by being the best-dressed person present.

  “There can only be one best-dressed woman in any group of women, O.J.,” she had pointed out to him once when he was complaining about her own performance of this obligation, “and all the rest of the women have to be the losers and go home and be tormented about it.”

  “Please,” he had said, turning his back to indicate that he couldn’t bear the sight of her. “Do not make yourself even more ridiculous by attempting to express mathematical concepts.”

  She is aware of Brune beside her now, and she turns her head to smile thinly at the other woman. At least they are failures together. At least Brune has not worn anything enough better than what Cassie is wearing to let her try any sort of alliance with Burgundy.

  Brune says, “I could kill her, you know.”

  “I could help you,” Cassie agrees. “How will we do it?”

  “Slowly! Very slowly, with lots of little tiny pins, so she is completely spoiled a long time before she is dead—so she has time to know it and think about it a long time before she is dead.”

  “Brrrr. . . . Brune, don’t!” Cassie knows Brune is not serious; she has seen Brune carefully carry a spider outside her atrium area and set it down gently in her yard in a safe place. Brune is gentle; still, Cassie does not want to hear the vicious talk with the ugly pictures that it makes in her mind.

  “I’m sorry. Maybe. But you know she did this on purpose. She knew what it would mean for you and for me, and she did it on purpose all the same, curse her!”

  Cassie shrugs, trying to seem indifferent; sometimes Brune is a little melodramatic. “Oh, well,” she says. “That’s what women do, Brune.”

  She is conscious that she might not be so calm if she had Brune’s problems to deal with. O.J. has told her about Doby Phalk being recruited for colony placement by the Department of Health, and about the game he is playing—pretending he prefers to remain here on Earth, so they’ll offer him better terms; O.J. tells her that Doby is sure to get what he wants, because they want him badly. “Ideally suited for colony placement,” is what they say about Doby. Cassie will be sorry to lose Brune, but maybe Doby will be kinder to her when they get out to the colonies; she hopes so. She doesn’t like always having to feel sorry for Brune; it distracts her, and it makes her feel uneasy and insecure.

  “Who do you suppose the other couple will be, Brune?” she asks softly, to change the subject. “Maybe the woman will be even more spectacular than Burgundy is. Could we get that lucky?”

  “We could pray,” Brune says sullenly. “Dear Heavenly Father, may whoever comes through that door be an even worse bitch than Burgundy is.”

  The door speaks immediately as she pronounces the last word, making Brune jump, and Cassie giggles and pats Brune’s hand a couple of times, reassuringly.

  “Leonard Joseph Verdi,” says the door in the precise Irish accent that is so fashionable this year. “And Mrs. Leonard Joseph Verdi, born Elizabeth Caroline Chornyak.”

  There is a stunned and total silence, which is what the Coloridons had intended, and Krol is grinning the satisfied grin of a triumphant man with a triumphant wife at his side as he tells the door to open and it slides silently into its case to let the new couple in.

  Verdi! And Elizabeth Chornyak Verdi! If it had been only the man, it could have been a coincidence—after all, there are tens of thousands of people with names like Verdi and Jefferson and Noumarque and Hashihawa who aren’t linguists of the Lines. But no Verdi who was not one of the Verdis would have a wife born a Chornyak; that is farther than coincidences can be made to stretch.

  Brune has prayed for a bitch, and her prayer is answered. There in the doorway, handing her plain brown cape to the servomechanism, stands what is without any question a bitch of the Lines. A Lingoe bitch! Her straight pale hair is cut short like a child’s and it is obvious that nothing has been done to it except to brush it. It just hangs there; it is shocking and ugly. She is wearing a garment of a good quality beige fabric, but it is only a straight tunic with square ample sleeves and a square neck; it reminds Cassie of the garments that are issued to women prison inmates. There are beige clingsoles on the creature’s feet, she is wearing a wrist computer and narrow plain gold wedding ring, and that is absolutely all. Neither Cassie nor Brune would have gone alone into a dark closet dressed the way that this woman has seen fit to come to the dinner party at the Coloridons. (The man is not as interesting; he is dressed like any man, in a pair of dark trousers and a shirt and a jacket and a tie. His hair is in a moderate reagan cut. Nothing there to remark upon. But the woman!)

  Behind her, O.J. grabs her elbow with his fist (she has not heard him coming up behind her) and hisses. “Close your mouth, Cassie, for god’s sake!”, and she realizes that she is standing there gaping at the new arrivals with her mouth hanging open, and that Brune is doing the same thing, and that Burgundy is smiling the rapturous smile of a woman who has just tasted something delicious and knows that there is much more of it to be tasted. Burgundy moves forward as Cassie’s mouth snaps shut; she welcomes the linguists into her home, taking the woman’s arm and leading her into the room. And now the slots in the walls are all glowing and the servomechanisms are moving swiftly, silently, to take the trays of appetizers and drinks from them. There aren’t going to be any unusual chemicals in these drinks, Cassie realizes, and she is grateful for that; she hates the way O.J. behaves when he uses them and is—as he puts it—“nicely relaxed.” And it means that O.J. won’t insist on putting the flyer on illegal manual control when they go home; Cassie is terrified without the automatics, especially after dark, and terrified that they’ll be caught; it makes her furious that O.J. complains about the potential for disgrace when she doesn’t come out first in some trivial social competition like being best-dressed, and then risks the total disgrace of being arrested for endangerment of traffic and flying under the influence of controlled substances.

  Cassie’s mind is racing . . . what does she say now? She knows Brune is thinking the same thing, and that for once their husbands are not precisely comfortable either. Lingoes! How could the fourth couple at this “informal dinner party” be a pair of Lingoes? Cassie knows very little about them, but she knows this: they do not mingle socially with people outside their own families and business circles. It does not happen. Ever. How has Burgundy pulled this off? And what should Cassie do? She sees herself assuming an expression of very wellbred distaste, inventing some sort of gracious excuse, floating elegantly from the Coloridon house with a quick smile back over her shoulder, showing them all that she knows what constitutes decent behavior, even if Burgundy doesn’t . . . should she do that
? Would that be the right move? What if that’s not what O.J. wants? What if it would be a serious mistake? And what is Brune going to do?

  Cassie is almost grateful when Brune grabs her wrist, mumbling an excuse, and flees for Burgundy’s powder room, dragging Cassie with her; at least that way the exit is Brune’s fault, not her own, and it will give her time to think. She knows that it is important for her to think, before she has to go back out there.

  Alone in the little room with her, Brune stands pale and shaking, leaning against the lady-vanity. It is playing something romantic that Cassie does not recognize, and the mirror behind it clears for service, showing Cassie that she does not look one bit better than Brune does. “Revert!” Cassie spits at it, and the mirror clouds again obediently.

  “Cassie,” Brune is asking, “how did she do this?”

  “I don’t know. How would I know?”

  “Does this mean we’re going to have to sit at the table with them? And eat with them?”

  Aha! Cassie hears the bell ring—her first chance this evening, this terrible evening, to score even one point. She can’t let it pass, sorry though she is for Brune; she has her obligations to O.J. She looks casually past Brune, as if to spare her the embarrassment of a direct glance, and she says sweetly, “Why, Brune, dear . . . I had no idea you were prejudiced!”

  It will be something she can tell O.J. later, if she needs it. How Brune looked, caught flat out like that. Cassie feels a little strange at the idea of eating with Lingoes, too—that’s normal. That’s reasonable. That’s forgivable. But Cassie knows better than to ever admit that she feels that way! Only a very ignorant woman could be unaware that although prejudice is a perfectly normal human failing, only someone from the lower classes would ever admit to it aloud.

  She is still standing there, smiling, waiting for Brune to stop breathing fast and shivering and say something back, feeling the warm satisfaction of the earned point, when the door speaks to them. It says, “Ladies, your husbands require your presence.” Of course they do. Cassie can just imagine. The door waits thirty seconds, and when there is no response it says it again. It will keep that up until something happens to stop it. But it isn’t a sophisticated model, it will be easy to fool; Cassie reaches over and opens it wide, then lets it close again. The door is convinced that she has gone out; it stops delivering its message. This won’t gain them very much time—the men will only punch it up again—but even a minute or two will help. And Cassie, from the vantage point of victory, feels inclined to be protective toward Brune right now.

  “Cassie,” Brune is saying, “I can’t go back in there. I can’t.”

  “You can. You have to.”

  “I can’t do it, Cassie.”

  “Brune, stop talking nonsense and help me think what to do. We have to do the right thing, and we have to figure out what that is, fast! Stop being an idiot, and help me think.”

  “Why? So that you can tell O.J. and he can tell Doby? About what I said, about eating with them?”

  “You say something useful, and I won’t tell,” Cassie offers promptly. “I promise.”

  “I’ve remembered something,” Brune says slowly. “I know how Burgundy did this. Is that useful enough?”

  “Tell! Hurry!”

  “Burgundy belongs to the Hospital Auxiliary, Cassie, right? And what they did this year for their annual project was to redecorate the women’s Chapel at the hospital.”

  “So?”

  “So, remember the Thursday night whatever-they-ares, those religious kind of club meetings, where the nurses go, and sometimes the linguist women? Remember, Cassie, it was on the popnews? Thursday Night Devotionals! Remember? They said women all over the country had been going to those.”

  “Krol would never have let Burgundy go to something like that, Brune! You’re crazy!”

  “For a psychotherapist’s wife, you use the term a bit loosely, dear,” Brune coos, and Cassie swears under her breath. O.J. will be livid if he hears about that, and he will hear about it if Brune tells Doby.

  “All right, Brune, we’re even,” she admits, furious with herself for being caught in such a baby mistake. “But I don’t have time to let you gloat about it right now. Just tell me what you mean so we can decide what to do.”

  “It’s obvious,” Brune tells her. “Burgundy must have met one of the linguist women when she was over at the hospital doing something on that decorating project! They would get to talking, about how things looked—”

  “You saw how that woman was dressed! She doesn’t care how anything looks!”

  “But Burgundy wouldn’t have known that, Cassie. It would have been perfectly natural for her to start up a conversation, and then one thing would lead to another, and pretty soon. . . . You know how she is, when she wants something, Cassandra Joan—she always manages. And that would have been the perfect opportunity.”

  It makes sense. It is the only likely explanation. Krol couldn’t have been the one responsible, because the Lines never went near psychotherapists or any other kind of therapist. Brune is undoubtedly right. Burgundy must have wandered in on a Thursday night when she was at the hospital with Krol, with a plastispray sample or a holo for the chapel wall or some such thing, and met a lady Lingoe and struck up a conversation. Leading to this. Cassie doesn’t like accepting it so fast, but it makes sense, and nothing else makes sense. There is no Rent-A-Linguist service; it has to be Burgundy’s doing, and where else could she have met a woman of the Lines?

  “All right!” she snaps. “It sounds right. So what do we do?”

  The door is haranguing them again, at thirty second intervals. The men will be angry by this time.

  “Brune, we’ve got to get out there,” she whispers urgently, feeling certain the men have turned the door’s ear on now. “And we have just one decision to make.” She runs the plan by Brune . . . inventing an excuse to go home, sailing fastidiously away, demonstrating their good breeding, leaving Burgundy stuck with the collapse of her dinner party and the unspoken trashword “Lingoe-lover” hovering over her exquisite perfect dinner table. But Brune shakes her head, firmly, angrily, and hisses at Cassie, “No! Absolutely not! Things have been changing. I know several very high-placed families whose children have been in the Interfaces with the linguist babies! You can’t talk against the linguists the way our mothers do any more . . . Cassie, I heard on the popnews that at Georgetown University the Department of Language Science is changing its name back to Department of Linguistics!”

  Cassie feels dizzy. Thank god Brune knew! What if she hadn’t known? God, what a near thing! And now she knows she is in Brune’s debt, and she hopes Doby will take her out to the colonies soon.

  “Well, all right—what are we going to do, Brune?” Cassie demands. “Tell me what we’re going to do!”

  The two women stare at each other, both contemplating the same horrors, and Cassie thinks with sudden dismay that Brune is going to vomit, and then there will really be trouble, because with the room’s ear turned on everyone will hear her. But Brune shudders once, all over, and she pulls herself together. A remarkable performance! Straightening; smoothing; gathering up. Blood does tell, and training, too. Brune comes of a good family, her mother belongs to the very best clubs, and Brune went to Midwest Oak. Not as classy as Mary Margaret Plymouth, but several cuts above the place Cassie had been fool enough to settle for.

  “Silly Cassie,” Brune says, managing the cool smile from some reserve for which Cassie cannot help admiring her. “Of course I’m not prejudiced, any more than you are. Of course we won’t leave, and make ourselves look ridiculous. But quick—what are we going to talk about?”

  It’s a good question, Cassie thinks. The right question. Obviously they can’t talk about fashion. Or about managing the home or decorating it—the Lingoes live communally, like animals. It can’t be clubs—the Lingoe women have to work all day every day, they wouldn’t have time to be in social clubs even if you invited them. Only men talked either polit
ics or business. . . .

  “Oh!” Cassie has a sudden inspiration, and she is the one now who grabs Brune and pulls her along. Under her breath, very fast, as Brune stumbles to keep up, she says, “We’ll talk about the colonies! She’ll know all about them, the Verdi woman I mean, because she’s a linguist. And that’s always a safe topic!”

  Back in the recreation area, Cassie sees that the linguist woman is standing, just like a child would stand, in front of the antique color-fountain that Burgundy Coloridon picked up once at an auction. The woman claps her hands, and the fountain rewards her with a shower of rainbows, and then she laughs. She whistles, a long liquid trill, and gets a different rainbow pattern, and she laughs again. Just like a child! How can she dare do that? Cassie would have been so ashamed. . . .

  What happens next brings all the other women to stunned attention. Even Burgundy. To their complete bewilderment, the four husbands begin to laugh, too, and go straight over to join the Lingoe bitch at the color fountain. While Cassie and Brune and Burgundy stare, they begin a syncopated pattering of clapping hands and snapping fingers and whistling, and the fountain’s display becomes a glory of color, a tumult of rainbows, all around them.

  Cassie and Brune have both come back with the same thought, that Burgundy cannot have this new plum all for herself, that they must find a way to invite the couple from the Lines to parties at their houses, that the only question is which one of them will accomplish that first. They have both been planning their campaigns, anxious to begin. Now they have forgotten all about it. Watching their husbands, their husbands and the woman, having a wonderful time—they have forgotten what it was they wanted to do. Cassie dares to sneak a look at Burgundy, and it delights her to see that even the holodress is not enough to make her hostess invulnerable. She feels left out, too, just like Cassie and Brune are feeling left out; like them, she is frozen in place and doesn’t know what to do.