Mother of Storms

by John Barnes

  The other cliché is that couples have their fights on the zipline, and that’s the cliché Jesse and Naomi are acting out.

  Jesse does not know what this one is about. A week ago, after they watched the UN missiles get blown up, they drove out in the desert and they made love in the back of the Lectrajeep, the top thrown back so that it was all by bright starlight. They lay together afterward, touching and whispering, and she asked him a lot of things about growing up in the desert.

  It was the first time he ever felt like she wanted to know something about him without correcting it.

  After they got back, they made love more often in the next three days than they had in months. They didn’t go to any meetings, and he had lots of time to study.

  But since this morning they’ve been having this fight. It’s one of those really frustrating ones where Jesse can’t get Naomi to admit that it’s a fight; she calls it a “clarification.” As far as he can tell, the feelings she is clarifying for him at the moment are the ones that have to do with dumping him because she really likes him. He says so.

  “I knew you’d take it that way!”

  This does not reassure him. The two-person zipline compartments are barely large closets—their knees are almost touching and they can only lean back to get about three feet of separation at best, and Jesse’s shoulders touch both the wall and the door. So they are having this fight right in each other’s face.

  “I don’t understand,” he says.

  “I’ve told you, you’re not going to get what I’m saying if you try to understand it. Try to feel it, Jesse, can’t you?” She brushes her hair back from her face, and he sees that her eyes are wet, which startles him—somehow he had missed the point that all this is painful for her, too, and he’s embarrassed by that, so he stops arguing and listens for a moment.

  The hair comes farther back and he can see how pale her skin is around her freckles. Her eyes are huge wet pools and there’s a catch in her voice.

  “You probably thought we were just getting along great, didn’t you? I mean after we went out in the desert?”

  He doesn’t see where this is going.

  “I guess I should have explained but it didn’t seem like it would work if I did, Jesse. I—well, at the meeting, where everyone was watching the Siberian missiles get blown up, I was feeling so tired. I didn’t ever want to see any of that stuff again. And… well, you know, I got involved with you partly because it seemed like, oh, sort of a duty, I mean, you were intelligent and you liked me and I thought I could help you get your values clarified.”

  Jesse had not thought of himself as a duty.

  “But then as I got to know you… well, you know, I’m very lucky because I grew up with parents who had anti-centric life-and-Earth values right from the start, so I was raised not to be linear or centric. I mean, in most of the groups I’ve belonged to, that’s been my big strength; my big contribution to the group is that I don’t have to struggle against the old humanistic values. So it had always been my sharing my values with others, instead of them sharing theirs with me, because I usually had the values they knew they should have and I was happy to share.” She sighs and looks down at her hands, which are writhing like spiders mating in her lap. “But, see, Jesse, what I didn’t realize was that not only did you not understand real ecological values, you didn’t even know you should have them. So without meaning to—I mean, I’m sure you’d never do it intentionally, you’re a good person, Jesse—god, I’m being completely judgmental—” She is now crying, hard.

  Jesse is being pulled in too many directions. He wants to hold her and soothe her like he would a little girl, but he can’t help noticing that when her eyes are puffy and red, and snot is running onto her upper lip—especially after she’s just explained to him that she got involved with him as a duty to save his poor stupid ass from his bad values, which he never thought were bad in the first place—she is just not as attractive as she used to be. Except he’s also noticing that when she sobs, her big chest bounces up and down, too, and part of him wonders what it would be like to have her pinned down and sobbing while he squeezed it—and the fact that he’s having the thought (and that it’s turning him on) is making him a little sick to his stomach. Mostly he’s trying to figure out when and how she’s going to tell him that she’s going to dump him.

  She wipes her nose on her shirtsleeve, checks her watch, and goes on. “Jesse, the problem is that I started to realize that your values were very, very attractive to me. I mean, like, I started to think about… well, you always said I was pretty, and I started to think about what it would be like just to get attention for that. And out in the desert… I mean, it was meaningless, totally meaningless, it was just using nature because it was nice, without understanding nature really at all, but still—oh, Jesse, it was so nice. And there’s the orgasms too.”

  “Orgasms?”

  She sobs. “You know, don’t you? I explained it.”

  He sort of knows. “You mean the thing about female orgasm is being in touch with the world, or however that goes?”

  “You see what I mean, you didn’t even realize how important that was, or that you needed to listen and get it right.” She sniffles. “The point is, the female orgasm is non-centric, and it’s the spiritual energy coming out and linking you to the whole universe, making you feel how you should relate to everything—completely opposite of the centric male orgasm, which is technological and aggressive and all. So… so anyway, I always had a lot of trouble having orgasms—my mom’s discussion group used to have whole meetings about how Mom could help me with it—but when I, did I was very non-centric, I really felt the whole universe and I was just so full of love that I didn’t even know I was having sex anymore. But with you… in the desert… I had about ten of them, and I just had them totally selfishly. I mean, I was completely male and selfish! All I did was look up at the stars and come; I didn’t think about anything except that it felt good between my legs.

  “And this whole past week—I mean, I’ve been doing all the ‘in-love’ stuff that I shouldn’t. It’s been so much fun and I’ve enjoyed it so much… don’t you see where that’s leading? I always thought I was strong but I’m not. I’m just falling for all of this stuff like… like… I don’t know what, but I’m doing it. If I stay with you I might lose all my values, don’t you see that? I can’t… even though I really want to.”

  She checks her watch again, and Jesse looks at his and realizes that they are only a minute from the station in Hermosillo. That’s when she says, “So see, I’ve got to stop all this and get back to working on my values. I guess in a lot of ways what you will always represent to me is the person I could have been if I had been born that way or chosen to go that way—I don’t mean I could have been you, but I can see where I could have been perfect as your girlfriend and very happy and so forth, and I can see where that would be a lot of fun, but it is not important for me to be happy or have fun; the Earth needs people to care for it properly, and if I stay with you I’ll forget that. I found myself just the other day calling myself a uniter in front of other people—just as if this were the twentieth and there were two sides that were debating, instead of acknowledging that the world already is one, and we have to act in accord with its unity. Gwendy called me on it. That had never happened to me since I was a little girl. I’m not used to needing values-clarifying, and I don’t like having to be values-clarified.

  “So I’ve signed on with the Natural Ways Reclamation Project and I’ll be going down to Tehuantepec in Oaxaca State for a few months, to work on spreading correct values and on learning them from people who haven’t been polluted so much by centric and linear thinking. It was really fun and I guess I should thank you, except that the fun could have led me to act against my values, so instead I’ll just say I’ll miss you, because I think you’ll like that and it’s true.”

  As she’s saying the last sentence, there’s a distinct force in the compartment, pushing Jesse back in
to his seat cushions and making Naomi lean forward. Ziplines are so quiet and vibrationless that you only really notice motion when you’re stopping or starting.

  As she finishes, she stands up—almost losing her balance for a moment—and says, “And I’ve asked to be on the AIDS-ARTS-SPM patientassistance shift instead of the tutoring shift this time, so we won’t be working next to each other. Gwendy and Sibby and Foxglove are going by our place—I gave them a key—to get me moved out while we’re gone, so we don’t have to see each other after this, which I know would be painful for both of us. Not that pain to me matters, but it would be painful for you and I shouldn’t be selfish.” There are tears all over her face now and what she really looks like, to Jesse, is someone in an old flat movie who has been tortured into confessing to something she didn’t do. Then she leans forward and kisses his cheek, getting her tears on his face, and at that moment the car comes to a stop, the door opens into the exit passage, and she’s gone.

  Jesse’s first thought is that she must have rehearsed the speech to know exactly how long it would take, so that she could get the door timed like that. That’s Naomi, always thorough….

  He takes a long, deep breath, and suddenly realizes he has no desire at all to help barrio kids with their arithmetic today. He puts his thumb on the readerplate and says aloud, “This compartment back to Tucson.”

  “That will be two dollars and five cents for a trip of three hundred fifty kilometers or two hundred eighteen miles,” the car replies. “A single person riding in a double compartment incurs a surcharge of fifty-five cents because of the wasted space and resources. You may cancel this order and move to a single compartment for a refund at any time until the car begins to move. Thank you and have a pleasant journey.”

  The door slides closed. Jesse leans forward to press his face against the seat Naomi just vacated. There are two long strands of her hair there, and he runs his fingers over them; she never wore scent, but the seat is warm from her presence on it, and he imagines he can smell her on it.

  He stays there as the car begins to move, its acceleration shoving his face against the seat cushions.

  When she gets upset, the Deeper-speak gets pretty thick, but he got enough of it to understand, anyway, that although she is dumping him, it’s because she loves him too much, but doesn’t think he’ll fit with her ideals.

  He can fix this. When he gets back to Tucson—better not go home just yet or he’ll have to deal with her friends—he will get himself educated, active, and involved. In a few months with some effort he’s quite sure he can be one of the biggest activists at the U of the Az. He knows he’s bright, articulate, and hardworking; he just has to put those resources to work in the right direction. By the time she’s back from Tehuantepec, he can be a totally different person, if that’s what she wants. It might cost him some time (but he can drop some classes), and some money (but he can live on the line a while), but what else can he do?

  He leans back and lets Naomi’s hair lie on his thigh, so he can look at it. He thinks about her in the desert, and he remembers her saying that he gave her overpowering orgasms… and quite unbidden, the pictures of him comforting her like a child, and of her big breasts shaking while she cried, come to him as well. Before he knows it, he’s so horny that he’s squeezing his penis through his jeans, masturbating right here in the compartment, the way dirty old men supposedly do, and he doesn’t give a crap because he just can’t think straight until this gets relieved.

  It does in a moment, a brutal heave as if he were vomiting from his testicles. He sees the strand of her hair lying on his leg. The compartment air conditioning must be acting up, because it seems terribly cold in here, and somehow that sharpens the smell of his semen and the loneliness of the little space. He presses his head to the cushion where her beautiful butt was, just minutes ago, but it’s cold now.

  He has never felt so in love.

  After a while, though, the semen drying in his underwear is proving to be a fairly effective glue, the seat pressed against his face is less than comfortable, his eyes are stinging from his tears, and he just plain doesn’t think he can keep this up much longer. There really isn’t anything to do here, during the forty minutes back to Tucson.

  He gets out his lunch and eats early—it’s packed with all sorts of blodgy, gooey, grainy stuff that he doesn’t like much, most of it to be given away to little Mexican kids who will try a bite or two and then politely toss it when he’s not looking. This time he eats it all himself, which is probably a mistake. That kills about ten minutes. He uses one of the wet napkins to wash his face, tries not to notice that he’s feeling better (except in his stomach), and seriously thinks about this plan to become the leading activist on campus.

  Heck, if it doesn’t get Naomi back, there’s a couple of her friends who look like they’d be fun. There seem to be organizations dedicated to every possible course of action about the methane release (except maybe one to demand more methane). Once there’s an official report out of NOAA or UNESCO, the one or two campus organizations whose viewpoints are still relevant are going to grow like mushrooms.

  So if he joins the right one now….

  He chews himself out for a moment or two. He tries not to notice that in his self-criticism he is imitating Naomi. Jesse just doesn’t have the knack for it; he has never managed to dislike himself as much as Naomi dislikes herself. But he should be joining an organization because he believes in it and wants to work for it, out of a selfless love for….

  Oh, well, anyway, he will want to work for an organization that is on the right track, he knows he doesn’t want to work for one that isn’t, and since he has a reasonable way of finding out which is which, he should use it. Maybe Di can tell him something that will help.

  He unrolls a mirror from his wallet, sticks it to the wall, and, using the remaining wet napkins and his comb, cleans up enough to be reasonably sure that he won’t look obviously upset or worked up, because unfortunately Di is just the kind of dumb, affectionate big brother to get upset about what Jesse is feeling, rather than sticking to the issue of what Jesse would like to know. Then he takes his phone from his belt, slaps the video pickup onto the wall facing him, and calls.

  He puts it on a priority just high enough so that the call will reach Di at work, as long as Di hasn’t pressed the Urgent Only button. It will interrupt him at routine tasks but not in the middle of a meeting or anything; it will go over whichever lines and services are instantaneously cheaper in the complex dance of competing software, so that the signal is actually scattering over the Earth’s surface in little packets of a few milliseconds each. Jesse thinks about none of these things, but they happen anyway.

  Randy Householder doesn’t even trust people he admires. He figures it takes somebody big to have kept the investigation of Kimbie Dee’s death from getting anywhere. Violent-felony-for-forced-extraction is so ferociously prosecuted under the Diem Act that most organized crime won’t touch distributing those wedges—they even turn it in when they find it. So whoever’s behind it swings a lot of weight.

  Randy figures the only way the man he is looking for will get caught is if someone with even more power—someone incorruptible—is after him, and any such investigation would have to stay secret, and out of usual channels. Not that it doesn’t occur to Randy that he might be the only person who is really looking anymore.

  But if the secret investigation is being done by anyone, it will have to be connected to someone who is powerful, incorruptible, and passionately involved in the fight to stamp out murderpom XV—which can only be Harris Diem himself.

  So Randy has datarodents constantly searching and replicating, looking for any connection to Diem. One of them knows Di Callare is an occasional back channel to Diem, and—having nothing better to do—decides to hitchhike along on one of Jesse’s packets. It delays the ringing of Di’s phone by almost three milliseconds, but it also locates a hitherto unsuspected back-channel node between the White House and t
he science agencies, a node that has a lot of old Harris Diem code hanging around in it. Not the most likely place, but what Randy is looking for won’t be in any likely place.

  The datarodent looks around, decides this is good hunting, and dispatches packets to go find some of Randy’s other datarodents and have them send copies here. It doesn’t bother Randy about it, yet. If anything interesting comes through, it will.

  At NOAA, Di Callare is sitting in his office with his feet up on the desk, looking at a chart that keeps knotting and untangling itself as he talks to the computer. What he’s trying to do is to put together a set of tasks to parcel out to his team.

  Peter is a nice guy, and he has the best gut feel of anyone on the team for weather, but he’s a born plodder, one of those guys who’s afraid to draw even the most obvious conclusions. Talley has a lot of fire and imagination, and she’s often very innovative, but she’ll sometimes go out farther on a limb than she should and she has no political sense at all. Besides, because she’s exceptionally bright and witty, she makes Lori just a little jealous, and if Di works too closely with Talley for a few weeks, so that she’s in his conversation all the time, it makes a certain amount of trouble at home.

  On the other hand, if he pairs her up with anyone else, she tends to drive them crazy. No one but Di seems able to say no to her; it’s undoubtedly because she’s beautiful, but Di doesn’t see why that should make her right all the time.

  Mohammed and Wo Ping are mathematicians first and foremost, and they like working together. Normally that makes job assignments for them easy, but when they work together they also tend to throw away wilder speculations before reporting to anyone else… and he needs wild speculations just now. Maybe he can put Gretch, the summer intern, with them. Her math is lousy, so they won’t like her, but she’s got intuition nearly as good as Peter’s, and she doesn’t have enough experience to dismiss any idea as “too wild.”