by E. M. Foner
Blythe had rented out the pool area of the club for her party at a price Kelly couldn’t even imagine, since her economic outlook hadn’t had time to readjust to her Stryx credit balance. In addition to Donna’s and Kelly’s families, the guests included a large number of young people who had learned to swim before coming to the station and were friends of Blythe, Paul or Chastity.
Both of the EarthCent employees crouched low in the water, Kelly because she was embarrassed that her old bikini no longer contained her comfortably, and Aisha because the modest one-piece swimsuit Shaina had helped her hunt up in the Shuk was the most revealing garment she had worn in her life. It had taken every ounce of diplomacy Kelly could muster to talk the girl out of sewing legs onto the swimsuit. Even though Aisha’s father had taught her rudimentary swimming skills in a muddy river when she was a child, the girl was relieved that Dorothy provided her with an excuse to remain with Kelly at the shallow end.
The kids cavorted at the deep end to show-off, many of them skinny dipping, but Blythe herself wore a stylish swimsuit with detachable skirt and shawl accessories that made her look almost well dressed when she came out of the pool. By the time Dorothy had used up her excess energy for the day, Kelly felt like she had been pickled in hydrogen peroxide, or whatever chemical they were using to keep the water so clear. She handed Dorothy up to Aisha and then clambered out of the pool after them, where they gladly wrapped themselves in the towel-robes provided by the pool attendant. Aisha volunteered to take Dorothy in search of an ice cream in the club area.
“What are you oldsters talking about so seriously?” Kelly asked Donna, as she approached the poolside bar where her best friend was in deep discussion with Joe and Stanley.
“The kids,” Donna replied, with a furtive glance to see if anybody else had come up. “It’s nice to see Blythe around people her own age for a change. When she’s interacting with customers, you’d think she was twenty going on fifty, and I feel more like her half-witted sister than her mother.”
“It’s not that bad,” Stanley reassured his wife. “Since I started working for the girls, I’ve been surprised at times by just how young their thinking can be. They just don’t have the experience to be afraid of anything, which can be a big advantage in business if you have Stryx partners to rescue you from your worst mistakes.”
“Do you think she and Paul will tie the knot?” Joe asked, never being one to beat around the bush.
“She’s never said anything about it to me, but they’re both still young, so give it time,” Donna replied, though she didn’t sound very confident of the outcome herself.
“And how old were you when you became Mrs. Doogal?” Stanley asked his wife facetiously.
“That’s different,” Donna protested. “I needed a place to stay, and besides, you’re eight years older than me so we averaged higher.”
“Weren’t you a teenager when you guys married?” Joe asked Donna.
“I was practically twenty,” she objected. “Besides, I might have been a little bit pregnant.”
“And Kelly might be a little bit rich,” Stanley observed by way of comparison, drawing a laugh from Donna and Joe.
Kelly glared at her husband and erstwhile friends, even as the smell of the heavily buttered popcorn from the faux-antique movie theatre popper on the bar triggered a new spell of nausea.
“I’m telling you all for once and for all that it’s not really my money,” Kelly gritted out. “It’s just another Stryx set-up, I can feel it in my bones. In a couple weeks, Jeeves will be at my door with a seven trillion Stryx cred bill for something, and I’ll be a couple hundred billion short.”
“Don’t worry,” Donna assured her, seeing that Kelly really did look borderline sick. “Even if they garnish your salary, we can always stretch the payment schedule so you aren’t working for nothing.”
“In the long run, we’re all dead,” Stanley commented cheerfully. “That’s how economists used to justify everything to themselves, though of course, the ones making the decisions had guaranteed government pensions.”
“When are we headed back to Kasil?” Joe asked. “You have to feel sorry for those folks, calmly preparing for the end of their world by watching it come. Yet they seemed to love their children and they certainly have big families. I just don’t get it.”
“I did check with a Kasilian woman about that, whether the priests discouraged them from using birth control,” Kelly said. “She looked at me funny and answered that children are always a blessing.”
“But in your report you said the population was actually very small,” Donna pointed out. “Didn’t Dring tell you there were more than a hundred times as many Kasilians back when they started withdrawing from the galaxy?”
“Something doesn’t add up,” Kelly concurred. “Jeeves told me that the Stryx have already dispatched a science ship to pick up all the auction items, and when I asked him why a science ship, he said because they’re big and carry shuttles. But if I know my Stryx, the whole auction was just an excuse for them to send in a science ship to work out a solution to the Darkness business. And they want us to go back next week,” she concluded, finally answering Joe’s earlier question. “I invited the Cricks along again, since Mary and the children seemed to enjoy it so much.”
“Maybe a shrinking population is what put them off of wealth,” Stanley suggested. “What I heard about it second-hand suggests they were pretty acquisitive back in their prime, so even though they blew an incredible fortune fixing up their old world, there was plenty left over. If you imagine a population falling a hundred-fold or more, the cycle of inheritance would load the survivors down with more objects than they could possibly use.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Kelly mused, recalling what Aisha had told her about the economics of her village. “Their cottages and other structures all looked solidly built, so they probably don’t have a construction industry at all.”
“From what I saw, their spare resources go into the telescope industry,” Joe contributed. “Fascinating equipment. I wish I could have brought one home, but nobody was selling.”
“I thought they had recreated a pre-industrial society,” Donna said. “Aren’t telescopes kind of high-tech?”
“They have craftsmen who work miracles without electricity,” Joe replied. “I have no doubt that those people could build a rocket using waterwheels and draft animals for the machine shop work, but of course, the telescopes are mainly about craftsmanship. They have a lens-grinding guild and a metal-working guild that produce the required parts, but the farmers I spoke with were all quick to point out that they had built at least part of their observatory by themselves.”
“All of this to watch their own doom approaching and not do anything about it!” Kelly exploded in frustration. “Did they think that restoring their world to something like its original condition would change the laws of physics and save them? Why, they could have bought a dozen established colony worlds for the money they plowed into a planet that may as well be condemned.”
“Their telescopes are an art form,” Joe said dreamily, his eyes shut in remembrance. “Picture an ancient mechanical watch, with gear works that look like Kelly’s knock-off. Then blow it up to the size of a lifeboat, with mirrors and lenses attached to moving parts all over the place. Dring told me that even before they retreated to Kasil, their personal observatories were the envy of stargazers the galaxy over.”
“Lot of good it will do them when they’re all dead,” Kelly repeated her point for emphasis as she looked down at her dress watch. “And it’s not a knock-off, it’s a replica.”
“Are you in a hurry to get Paul married off?” Donna asked Joe, bringing the conversation back around to the beginning. “I thought he was plenty busy with his lab work and helping out with Mac’s Bones. To tell you the truth, sometimes I suspect that Blythe might be a little too wild for Paul, though she does a good job of hiding it. I can’t imagine what she gets up to on those business trips of hers.”
“You WHAT?” Kelly demanded. “And where would that have left me?”
“Trophy bride?” Donna suggested, as Joe struggled to pull himself back into the present to face the fire.
“I didn’t mean, I meant, I would have married you when I was twenty,” Joe explained hastily.
“When you were twenty, I was fifteen,” Kelly objected. “They still have laws about that sort of thing on Earth.”
“So I would have married you when you were twenty,” Joe amended himself.
“Do you have a problem with nineteen?” Donna demanded. “Are you saying there’s something wrong with Stanley?”
“Timeout,” Stanley declared, to Joe’s relief. “The kids are coming.”
Paul and Blythe arrived at the bar at the same time that Aisha returned with Dorothy, who was obviously of the opinion that her robe was a giant, wearable napkin intended especially for sloppy ice cream eaters.
Kelly nudged Joe and whispered, “I want an ice cream,” and he gladly seized the opportunity to flee the scene and get back into his wife’s good graces at the same time. Dorothy immediately transferred her formidable abilities to monopolizing Paul’s attention, and Blythe drew Aisha off to a quiet side table.
“Thank you for coming,” Blythe said to Kelly’s assistant. “Actually, I’d been hoping for a chance to talk with you.”
“Does it have to do with the asylum status for the runaways InstaSitter has been hiring?” Aisha asked. “I asked about it in the weekly report I filed with EarthCent when Kelly was away, but I haven’t heard anything back. Kelly said we’d never get an answer, but that as long as the Stryx grant asylum, it doesn’t matter what EarthCent thinks.”
“No, this is about Paul,” Blythe said without batting an eyebrow. “You like him, don’t you?”
Aisha dropped her eyes and her face darkened noticeably. “I don’t know him that well,” she mumbled. “And besides, I would never think of liking him that way when you two are so obviously, uh, a couple.”
“I talked to Libby about it since she knows more about relationships than anybody,” Blythe continued as if Aisha hadn’t spoken. “She suggested we have a contest for him.”
“What?” Aisha squeaked in astonishment. “I mean, I know that Libby has been running a dating service forever and that she matched up Kelly and Joe, but, you asked her about Paul and I?”
“Libby said we should either have a contest or cut him in half,” Blythe replied. “I think she was joking about the Biblical solution, but you can never be sure with the Stryx.”
“What kind of contest,” Aisha asked quietly after a long pause, which told Blythe everything she wanted to know.
“She said we should just agree on something,” Blythe replied with false bravado as she wilted inwardly. “Are you good at any games?”
“No, not really,” Aisha confessed. “I can dance, though I’m out of practice, and I used to work with my mother sewing in our shop. I can do henna, cook some, and the usual housework, of course.”
“I can’t do any of those,” Blythe replied grimly. “Maybe I can learn to cook, though. Are you in a hurry?”
“In a hurry?” Aisha repeated, thinking this must be the strangest conversation that had ever taken place on Union Station. “I don’t even understand why you’re doing this.”
“Neither do I,” Blythe replied, almost angrily. “And that’s what has me upset.”
Twelve
When Jeeves and Joe set the Nova down at Kasil’s ancient spaceport, the farm carts were already waiting at a discrete distance to transport the arrivals to Cathedral. Dorothy and Kevin were the first two down the ramp, followed by Borgia, who raced across the weathered tarmac to greet her Kasilian dog friends. The scene gave the detached EarthCent ambassador an idea.
“What about the dogs?” Kelly asked, holding the High Priest’s arm to support the older woman as they shuffled cautiously down the ramp. “Before you cured Becky of her callings, she told me that the visions mainly had to do with the natural cycle of your world; the migrations of wildlife, the renewal of the forests, a celebration of life. Those dogs look pretty happy to me. Has anybody asked them if they want to get eaten up by a giant hole in space?”
“It’s not a hole, my dear,” Yeafah replied, patting Kelly’s hand. “And we celebrate the complete cycle of life, not just the births.”
“Let’s accept for the moment that you speak for all Kasilians,” Kelly began, a line that sounded to Joe like it came from one of her old novels dramatizing courtroom events. “Let’s accept that this whole consensus thing is real, and that at least since the time of the Prophet Nabay, your people have had the ability to know when they were of one accord. But are the dogs and the fish and the birds all part of your consensus? Do you only value them as part of some planetary aesthetic, as a proof that you have restored your world?”
The High Priest came to an abrupt halt at the bottom of the ramp and studied the special ambassador’s face. For a moment Kelly was afraid that she had finally made Yeafah really angry, and that the old Kasilian was going to blind her with the inner light she possessed in abundance. But as it turned out, Yeafah was simply taking another long look at the aura that Kelly didn’t even know she possessed before the trip to Kasil.
“I wish I knew how the Stryx picked people for jobs,” the High Priest finally said with a sigh as she started walking towards the wagons. “The hardest part of my office has always been finding and promoting the priests who do the actual work. It’s easy to test their ability in math and astronomical observations, and the aura tells the story of the heart, but how do you measure whether somebody will make the right decisions or say the right things?”
“Are you trying to change the subject?” Kelly asked suspiciously.
“I’m trying to compliment both you and the Stryx,” Yeafah replied patiently. “While I assure you that we don’t view the cycle of life as some sort of performance art, it does seem that in our quest for transcendence, we may have overlooked some important variables. The synod scheduled to coincide with my return from Union Station will be the perfect opportunity to bring up your point and announce my resignation.”
“You can’t resign,” Kelly protested loudly. “You have to negotiate saving your planet with me!”
“I have already carried out the will of one great consensus for my people,” Yeafah replied. “It’s time to give a new leader a chance, hopefully one who won’t make as many mistakes as I have.”
“A Grand Competition?” asked Dring, who was waiting for them as they approached the second wagon. The first conveyance, carrying the Crick family and Dorothy, had already set off towards the forest road.
“It is the only way to select a High Priest,” Yeafah confirmed. “If the synod approves immediately, it could take place in twenty days.”
“I can’t wait twenty days,” Kelly objected. “I’m co-hosting a conference next week to establish new regulations for the local ice-harvesting industry. My intern isn’t ready for that sort of responsibility yet, and I didn’t even brief her.”
“The competition itself takes at least another five days,” the High Priest informed her. “It depends on whether there is full agreement on one candidate or whether a further trial is required. But the extra time will give me a chance to look into the issues you have just raised. I don’t have a strong gift for communicating with the other species myself, but some of our people have the ability to conduct limited discussions with the great birds who aid us with long distance transportation, the long-lived sea creatures and some of the forest dwellers.”
“And the dogs?” Joe asked hopefully, as he boosted first the High Priest and then Kelly into the cart.
“Even I can tell what a dog is thinking,” the High Priest replied with a smile. “The challenge is getting them to consider a subject othe
r than food, chasing things that might turn out to be food, or protecting those who feed them. Of course, I don’t believe our dogs would choose to leave us under any circumstance. It’s not in their nature.”
“Why would the dogs leave you?” Kelly asked. “The idea is for you to leave and bring the dogs with you, along with the rest of your planet’s life as well.”
“What an interesting mind you have,” Yeafah observed with a dry chuckle. “I thought you were trying to convince me that we are selfishly ignoring the creatures of Kasil who aren’t part of our consensus. But now it appears you are arguing that in addition to not having the right to decide their fates, we must also make our own destiny subservient to theirs.”
“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing for the last ten millennia in any case?” Kelly countered. “Haven’t you made yourselves into model stewards of the land? Maybe your people were acting out of a different kind of selfishness, a sort of quest for species retirement, or maybe you were doing penance. The important thing is that having done it, you have a responsibility to continue.”
“Dogs are tricky,” Joe warned, speaking from experience. “If you don’t watch out, they’ll have you waiting on them hand and foot.”
“I recall a legend about a species where an individual who saves the life of another becomes a slave in all but name,” Yeafah replied thoughtfully. “They believed that anybody who interfered with the fate of another individual must accept responsibility for the outcome. Since a dead person has no needs and a live person has many, it becomes the duty of the savior to provide for all of the needs of the one who would have left it all behind. I believe this philosophy led to a highly dysfunctional medical system.”
“Where’s Jeeves?” Kelly asked, looking around as the wagon entered the forest. “He should know about this competition thing as soon as possible. The rest of us should return to Union Station and come back again next month.”
“Jeeves flew off as soon as we landed,” Joe informed her. “Probably wanted to check on Metoo. If we were anywhere else I could take us back to the station myself, but the tunnel is still restricted access, so we need Jeeves along. I’d love to spend a long vacation here sometime, but it wouldn’t be fair to Paul to stick him with running Mac’s Bones for a month without even warning him ahead of time.”
