Chapter 16

 

Cara

 

 

And now, Cara at the age of twenty-eight was alone in her own house for what amounted to the first time.

It should have been a good feeling. That was why she had bought the house in the first place, to have a quiet place to write, to work on her thesis then, books and articles later, to prepare her lectures, relax after work, with no one to whom she had to account or explain. She could choose her own furniture; decide for herself where to place, for instance, the china she had inherited from Granny

The china ended up piled on the second from the top shelf, above the everyday stoneware from her mother’s apartment, and she had more furniture than she had ever wanted, including that ugly brown couch and the elaborately carved buffet and her mother’s desk, long since converted to her own use. It was a massive thing, with thumb print-locked drawers and built-in keyboard and a screen set into polished Bahtan saegan wood, taking up much too much space in the living room. The chair was massive too, heavy wood and padded upholstery still contoured to her mother’s larger body.

So the place was furnished and arranged, and had been so for five years, but none of the arrangements had been her own choice after all, and the place did not feel as if it were her own place.

Still, the little house was mostly quiet now at night, and in the morning when she got up, and in the evening when she came home. She could walk in the door and put down her noter and whatever readers and data chips had found their way into her briefcase during the day, and there was no one to greet her with the latest domestic crisis. Her food keeper contained only the food she herself selected. There were no more containers of chopped and pureed food for Mother, no more odd items bought for or by the aides. And her laundry ran only once a week now, instead of daily.

She liked being able to turn on her music as loudly or as softly as she pleased, and play anything she wanted, the D'ubian concerts, for instance, at high volume. She enjoyed the innovative rhythms of the Duri group; Mother loathed them. Now she could play them whenever she liked. She could answer her phone without having to explain who had called, and why.

Not that there were that many calls at the moment. The Drs. Wood had left at the beginning of March; they were up north in Tuania right now, attending a multi-discipline conference on the latest vids from Or2-n73-4, and the most recent reports from the experts involved in the study of the arched structures there. That was a matter that dragged on and on; absorbed as she had been with the practical concerns of caring for Mother, Cara had not kept track of what was happening, but the Drs. Wood had given her summaries now and then, assuming that she would like to carry them to the woman who had first established a facility on the planet. Ned and Louise were wrong; Cara did not like to carry summaries. Mother was inclined to have major tantrums at continual accounts of failure.

But now Mother was gone, and Cara had taken Ned and Louise out to dinner before they left Bridgeton, by way of a farewell; they did not expect to be back from Tuania before summer. And Dr. Saizy p'Anotta, who would have been Cara’s godmother had either she or Dr. Lindstrom believed in such things, was now retired and involved with her text on single-cell abiogenesis at her mountain retreat beyond Barandia. She called now and then on weekends, taking a break from her writing, but the book absorbed her passions and her enthusiasm. She did not expect to be in Bridgeton much before next fall, if then.

And Ollie was at the Advanced School of Nursing at Port Wandali on the coast, taking courses that would lead to her degree in All-Species Obstetrics, which was good, but Cara missed her. Their friendship had been unexpected but satisfying. They talked by phone or computer several times a week, but it wasn’t the same as visiting face to face.

Ann was still there, of course, with the winter session wrapping up, the spring session beginning. Ann’s office was just down the hall from Cara’s – "A. Swift, Creative Writing and Poetry" in Gothic letters on the door, just past "C. Lindstrom, PhD., Alliance Literature, Ancient and Modern". But this was Ann’s busiest quarter; she speculated that spring turned students' thoughts lightly to love and poetry, and her classes were always packed; also she liked to help the Drama department if she could find the time, and the biggest production was always in the spring, just before graduation.

But Ann knew all about difficult childhoods and the emotional baggage they left. She had been raised by an aunt who had too many children and no interest in one not her own. Ann had no memory of her mother, leaving her with many wistful, unanswered questions. But that, she said, was better than the experience Cara had of her own mother. Ann knew all about Cara's mother.

So Ann tried to be there for Cara. She insisted on hauling Cara off for coffee after classes or out for a drink when they both had the time, where they could talk about everything and nothing, departmental politics, summer plans, their love lives, or anyway Ann's love life, which was varied and colorful, if not particularly successful. Ann, a year younger than Cara, had had boyfriends and lovers for her whole adult life. She had never had anything like a settled relationship – she had, in Cara's opinion, picked a long string of losers, as a matter of fact – but still, she had had men.

And Ollie, a young and healthy Bahtan, had had males, and was eager to get her hands on more. "I cannot wait to get home," she told Cara on the phone, her long tan Bahtan face on the screen drooping. "I cannot wait to get to my sisters again. It is spring!" she exclaimed. "It is hormones! I cannot be away from home at such a time!"

They spoke Alliance Trade together; Ollie spoke decent Earthian, and Cara, a reader in all languages, spoke Zamuaon well, Bahtan fairly well, and D’ubian a little, which was about as much as any non-D'ubian could, but they were both aware of shortfalls in nuances; they preferred a neutral language. Ollie said that she and her sisters lived in a neighborhood of mixed species, so they mostly spoke Trade at home.

"Can you hunt for a male alone?" Cara asked, venturing with this good friend into inter-species confidences.

"I can hunt," said Ollie sadly, "but I do not think I could capture one by myself. They are very sly, you know, very quick."

"Well," Cara said, comfortingly, "it won’t be too much longer. You'll be back before summer, won't you?"

"Oh, yes; I only hope my sisters will not have exhausted all the good ones yet," said Ollie.

It would be good to have Ollie back, even if she spent the first couple of weeks stalking males with her sisters. And the time with Ann was at least a variation in Cara’s routine – in the previous years it had often saved her life and sanity – and now she did not have to explain her failure to come home immediately after work. But she still felt a little wicked when she ordered a glass of wine or a cocktail; she had not felt comfortable going home with alcohol on her breath for a long time.

Even now, a second vodka brought about guilt and invariably an attack of what Cara called in her mind the Mothervoice. She wasn’t sure just what it was – conscience, perhaps, or some critical and perpetually disdainful alter ego that spoke in her head, but it had been with her since the winter. Alone in her little house, lying, perhaps, on her bed at night with the lights out, a single early spring insect buzzing and bumping across her ceiling, she could hear the Mothervoice hissing in her ear. Coming home drunk again, it would say. Wasting your time guzzling alcohol with that brain-dead sex-addicted Ann Swift. Stupid brat! "She’s a friend, Mother, just a friend," Cara would murmur, burrowing into her pillow away from the voice, but the voice followed her no matter what she did.

You could be doing something useful with your time, you lazy cow, it would remind her. You're still young. You could give up this literature garbage, get into the hard sciences, get your degree. That’s where you belong. That's what is important, that's what matters. Fiction – things that aren’t even real; what kind of crap is that for an adult to be throwing away her life on?

"I like literature, Mother," Cara would say, as she had said for years and years, after she had been accepted at the Alliance University of the Arts, after she had declared her major. "I'm not good at the hard sciences. I don't like the hard sciences, Mother."

What do you know about it, you empty-headed slug? said the Mothervoice. You're just lazy, that’s all, just lazy; you should be ashamed of yourself. I thought I raised you better.

And the only answer to that was so disloyal Cara shied away from it, even though the voice was only in her head, just like the voice that roused her from sleep in the middle of the night. Wake up, you stupid lazy bitch; are you going to sleep and let me die in agony alone? And just as she had done for five long years, Cara would leap out of bed, half asleep, waking only as she ran through the bathroom that connected the two bedrooms, hurrying to answer the mother who was no longer there.

Habit, nothing but habit, and one Cara could have done without.

The snow melted; only tiny patches remained in the cool shadows next to the buildings, and the trees had thick brown buds in the park between the Language Arts building at the Alliance University and the sprawling campus of the United Alliance Institute of Science. Cara could see the park not from her little office, but from the classroom upstairs where the freshman survey class met three times a week; she lectured, her eyes now and then caught by the flash of a bird beyond the window, iridescent scales and wing membranes sparkling in the sunlight. The red birds and the silvery birds wintered in the area of Bridgeton, but the green ones and the orange ones and the blue ones migrated south every fall. Their return was a promise of mild weather.

Ann popped into Cara’s office just before lunch with one of the literary journals in her hand. "I found this drifting around on my desk. Did you see this article?" she said, pushing the "on" button, and Cara glanced up from her noter; it was an article on the influence of current social and sexual attitudes on the interpretation of old folk tales.

"No, I missed it," Cara said, her mind still on freshman term compositions, but Ann pushed the journal at her and she took it, politely, and skimmed it; it was written on a light note, she saw. It was researched and footnoted, but it was entertaining, too. She glanced at the author; someone in linguistics and cultural anthropology over at the Institute.

"Isn’t that the sort of subject you were working with last year?" said Ann. "How come you didn’t follow it up?"

"Oh, I never really had time. And my period is more Early Industrial," said Cara, handing the journal back, and Ann waved it away.

"No, keep it, read it," she said. "You have time now, Cara; you ought to do some writing, you really should. The administration likes us to publish, you know. I thought of you as soon as I read this; he seems be working on the same sort of thing. You ought to call him, see what else he has on the subject."

"He’s an anthropologist," said Cara, "studying deeper cultural meanings. I was looking at the social aspect, just that, and the media, of course."

"Which he didn’t really get into," Ann pointed out. "And that would be worth a study all by itself."

"You’re the one into drama," said Cara. "I ought to talk with you, instead of this person, whoever he is." She looked at the journal. "J. B. Ramirez, PhD.," she read. "Do I know that name?"

"Yes, he's the guy who did that translation of the Zamuaon Gif'zi document last year, the sort of Gilgamesh thing; you read that, didn't you? All the controversy – but the historians have come out backing his translation, especially the Zamuaons."

"If he does translations, why is he writing articles about folk tales?" said Cara.

"Just a sideline? You should call him and ask,” said Ann. “Think about it, why don’t you? And read the article. Oh, and by the way, have you got a reader with Shakespeare's sonnets? I can't find mine; I think Bucky Yarlson borrowed it. He said he couldn't find it in the library and he needed it just for a day or two. Which will probably mean at least a month."

Besides which, Cara’s reader shelves were a lot better organized than Ann's; Ann tended to pile her things on any available surface and forget them. And this was what Cara did with the journal as soon as Ann was out of sight.

Ann was right, of course; Cara ought to write and publish, and she did have the time now, but she couldn’t seem to get her thoughts organized. It was spring, she supposed. The birds flitted from tree to tree; the grass grew lush and green under her feet as she walked from the campus to her house, from her house to the campus. That was one thing she really appreciated about her house, that it was within walking distance in all but the most inclement weather. Even a spring rain storm could not discourage her. For five years she had looked forward to the fresh air and beauty and silence and peace of this daily walk; she still found it a pleasure.

But inside the house was the Mothervoice, which seemed to become more insistent as the weather improved, as if afraid Cara would be distracted by the sunshine and the flowers and the sight of the students on the campus, wandering the paths in pairs, sitting on the benches under the trees, around the ornamental ponds and fountains and memorial statues, hand in hand, arm in arm.

"Let's double date; Roger has a cousin," Ann suggested over vodka martinis, but Cara made excuses. She didn't like Roger. He sold insurance downtown; he was loud and brash, inclined to laugh hugely at his own jokes, and he wore violently flowered shirts under a bright green jacket. He looked at Ann with a sort of wet-lipped gloating. He was a marvel in bed, Ann insisted, and this being an area in which Cara lacked experience, she let it alone. Perhaps something happened there that made up for the bright green jacket and the braying laugh, she thought.

Not that she would ever find out, wasting the years of anti-conception drugs. She was nearly thirty and had never had a lover, and doubted she ever would. Anyway, she saw no real need for one. They took up your attention and energy and – just look at Ann – became demanding and dominating and ugly-tempered, interfering with your work and your life. She had other uses for her time. In her student days at the university, she had been focused on her studies to justify her major to those, such as her mother, who felt it a demeaning choice, and to those, such as her adviser, who felt it a remarkable achievement for a woman not yet 25. Now she taught, and Ann was right; she should write again, and publish. She did not need the interference of a man.

Once upon a time, when she was an undergraduate, someone had fixed her up with a cousin; they had gone out to watch a ballgame, and Cara had dutifully cheered when her escort cheered. Later he had pawed at her, clawing at breasts and bottom, and kissed her with a wet, slobbery mouth, which she found frankly repulsive. She detached herself and made excuses to avoid him. Some years later, a quiet young man who shared a class with her had made conversation with her in the library and, in the back reading room late in the evening he, too, kissed her. At least, he put his lips against hers for a moment before he thrust his tongue, hard as a club, into her mouth, all the way to the back of her throat, at least that was how it felt; that was repulsive, too.

So it looked as if she was one of those women who just didn't like sex. Perhaps Mother had been right. She always held that men were a distraction and a nuisance, entirely unneeded. She would sooner have welcomed a D’ubian mine viper to the house.

What Cara needed to do was to concentrate on her career, and amusements not dependent upon men. When Ann chanced into a remarkably good deal on theater tickets, Cara split the cost with her and they dressed up and went together with no escorts, not even Roger, although there would have been a seat for him, as it turned out; the one beside Cara was vacant. The second seat over was taken by a slender man in an outdated suit, blond hair thrust behind his ears. He eyed Cara with disapproval and frowned at the empty seat between them, where she had put her coat, and yawned through the first act and slept through the second.

Ann pointed out several very nice bargains on concert tickets and heroically offered to go with Cara, but Cara knew Ann didn't care for classical music. She considered going by herself, but that wasn't much fun; she settled for listening to recordings at home, if the Mothervoice didn't spoil it with her tirades. Mother, and the Mothervoice, did not care for classical music, never had.

The ancient Zamuaons, Cara read, believed that music was the key to all existence, the rhythms to which the gods danced their eternal dances in the heavens. Only the damned rejected music and dance, the harmony of being. Listening to the ranting of the Mothervoice, Cara found this bit of philosophy often in her mind.

If she just kept busy, she thought, she could get through the spring. She was probably just adjusting to life without Mother. That was no doubt the reason for the Mothervoice. And the cure for that was to plunge into some new project, to be sufficiently absorbed that no such nonsense bothered her.

Spring Break was looming at the end of the week. Ann was going to spend the entire long weekend with Roger at White Reef, by the ocean; she hauled Cara off to the 61^st Avenue mall to look at filmy negligees and abbreviated sun tops, rushing the season. Cara looked, admired the effect of red against Ann's current hair color. Ann, naturally as fair as Cara, had decided to enter spring as a brunette; she liked bright colors and flashy jewelry and startling cosmetic effects.

And the summer clothes that had Ann's attention were a little too showy for Cara's taste. She had sturdy hiking shorts; she didn't need those very short shorts in gold fabric. She also didn't need a negligee and matching nightgown in shimmering shades of blue. Turning away, she nearly ran into a plump Zamuaon woman, whose white body hair set off the multicolored skirt she wore, and the hot pink shirt, and the five or six bangles on each wrist, and three earrings in each ear, and a remarkable selection of tail rings; Ann looked almost conservative in comparison. And Cara must have struck the woman as colorless; she eyed Cara with something like disapproval before turning off toward the rack of sun hats by the door.

And Cara suddenly felt colorless, and sexless, and cold and useless and alone, and the feeling persisted into the next afternoon. When she walked into her office and saw the journal Ann had given her, the one with the article by the anthropologist at the Institute, sitting there in the middle of her desk, she didn't think to wonder how it came to be there. She sat down to read it carefully, the whole thing, and then she looked up Dr. Ramirez' phone number and, before she could think about it, she plunged in and called him.

Luck was with her. She caught him in his Institute office between classes. She didn't attach her phone to her screen, and neither did he, so she had no idea how he looked, but he had a pleasant voice and a friendly manner. He didn't have his notes with him – he said the data cube must be at home – but he was perfectly willing to locate it and share it, and he didn't mind meeting her tomorrow; he even suggested a place, a coffee shop with a patio, which sounded nice in this lovely weather. This meant that she could use the weekend to work on her ideas.

Disconnecting from him, she succumbed to curiosity and ran his name into the screen and brought up his bio.

He was surprisingly good-looking, judging from his holo. He was about her own age, maybe a little older, skin black like good coffee with a touch of cream, for richness; he had dark intelligent eyes and an expression that went with his friendly manner on the phone. His credentials were impressive; he had indeed translated the Gif'zi manuscript, which turned out to be in a very early Zamuaon dialect, used by primitive tribesmen not thought to have a written language. It had, as Ann said, created quite a stir in academic circles, but the leading Zamuaon scholars endorsed it.

He had been born off-planet, some precarious mining colony, and had probably come here for the educational opportunities Haivran offered. She scrolled, investigating. Degrees from the Institute, where he taught. He was not married and had no children.

He had worked for over ten years at the Premier Escort Agency Inc.; he had left the Agency three years ago.

Dr. Gladys Park had worked her way through the university at an Agency; Cara could not remember which one. It seemed an odd occupation for one so precise. But she had worked for this Agency for eight years, and talked about it quite freely, only withholding names of her clients. Nearing fifty, she had never married and still had multiple lovers, although she was no longer for hire. Cara wondered if Dr. Ramirez also had multiple lovers; he was attractive, and would certainly have no trouble filling his bed any night of the week.

It was not her concern; she went back to his academic credentials.

Apparently it stayed in the back of her head, however; she found herself dressing the next day with more than usual precision, buttoning her shirt to the throat and the wrists, tying down her hair rigorously, avoiding scented cosmetics, allowing nothing that suggested she was at all interested in anything but his notes. It would be a brief meeting; he was involved, he had said, in another project right now, and he wouldn't be interested in any prolonged discussions about an old article, written and forgotten. Besides, it was a holiday weekend. No doubt he had plans.

She put the journal and her noter into her bag and arrived at Vincent's precisely on time. There were plenty of people inside and the patio was nearly filled, but Dr. Ramirez must have been on the watch; he caught her eye when he got up from a sunshaded table near the street and smiled. It was certainly him, handsome, black, but he was tall, much taller than she had expected, and much better looking in person, and his smile – well, it was a good smile. It was, in fact, a great smile that did something to her, caught at her breath and caused things inside her to stir.

Their eyes met; she felt a sense of impact, as if they ran against each other, hard. It made her dizzy. And that wasn't allowable; she took a breath and put out her hand. "Dr. Ramirez?" she said.

"Dr. Lindstrom." He took her hand; his was warm and big, like the rest of him, but it closed about her hand gently and held it for just a moment, and for just a moment she didn't want him to let go, not now, not ever.

Things were not, she realized, going to go quite the way she had imagined they would.