Chapter 17.

 

Jared

 

 

Dr. Lindstrom's phone call caught Jared in his office as he sorted through his noter and downloaded data for future reports. If he felt ambitious, he could work on this over the three-day weekend, but he had, in fact, already talked with the Drs. Wood on the phone, an informal report for the Tuanian conference, and he felt no urgency about written reports. Next week would be fine.

And the weather was going to be much too nice for sitting around with his notes. Bridgeton was a bit too far north to have warm weather during the break between winter and spring quarters – in his experience, this was usually the occasion for a major snowstorm – but Spring Break, which was scheduled a little later, was often pleasant, and it was going to be perfect this year. He wanted to be outside in it; he wanted to go hiking, maybe take Terry and Gina fishing up at Blue Fish Lake with Issio; this sounded like an ideal weekend.

He sat in his office looking out at leafing trees and a wash of young green over the grass as he talked with Dr. Lindstrom, who did not have her phone on her screen; at least the little light wasn't on. So he couldn't see her, but her voice was pleasant, if that meant anything. It took him a minute or two to remember the article she referenced; it had been just a stray thought he had played with between classes, until he began work on his current project, but it had been fun. She liked it, and she had her own slant on it; if he hadn't been busy, he might have followed up on this in some sort of collaboration.

But it was better for her to work on her own, he thought; he didn't think he recognized the name from the journals, so she didn't do that much writing of her own and she no doubt needed the professional credit. He could, however, share his notes with her, supposing he could find them; he began to rummage through his desk drawers as they talked. The cube wasn't there. It was, he guessed, in his desk at home.

And she no doubt had better things to do with a long weekend, but she seemed very interested in this project, so when he suggested that they meet for coffee tomorrow afternoon, when he had found his cube, she agreed at once. "We don't have to take a long time," she said. "I'm sure you have plans. Isn't it lovely weather?"

"Yes, beautiful," he agreed, "and Vincent's has a patio; suppose we meet out there? Would two be a good time for you?"

"Perfect," she said. "I really appreciate this, Dr. Ramirez. This will be a great help to me."

"Good," he said. "I hope it will."

And the name was tugging at his brain, naturally enough. The late Dr. Margo "Fuck 'Em" Lindstrom by way of her notes, her preliminary recordings, were all constantly before him right now. The Drs. Wood had known her most of their lives, he gathered. Others at the Institute had vivid memories of her, not that they especially wanted such memories, but Dr. Lindstrom had been hard to forget. Her holo hung in the hall by the classroom in which she had taught before she was tapped for the Azuri/zai project, and he had, of course, seen it, a grim, square, plain woman with a cold glare. The Dr. Lindstrom on the phone had sounded much too sweet to be related to Dr. Margo Lindstrom.

So he ran her name into the screen and found himself looking at the holo of a delicate blond with clear blue eyes, slightly built, looking younger than her stated age of 28, but trying, he thought, to look older. Her clothes were buttoned-down and conservative, not an unnecessary centimeter of flesh revealed, and her hair was tied back severely, although a few tendrils escaped. Repressed, said that part of his mind trained in such assessments during his Agency days, maybe shy, but not, he thought, as grim and forbidding as Dr. Margo Lindstrom –

Who had, he discovered in her bio, been her mother.

Well, that was a surprise. He had heard something about a daughter, who taught something or other at the University; he had imagined someone built on the solid lines of a farm truck. He would never have connected Margo Lindstrom, the substantial Wagnerian Valkyrie in the holo in the Biology department, with this delicate blond beauty.

But here she was, something of a prodigy with a doctorate at 25, All-Alliance Literature, of all things, at the opposite extreme from her mother, he thought. He found it interesting; he began to look forward to the hour he had promised her tomorrow afternoon. It would be fun to see how she compared with her legendary mother, and to guess why she differed.

She wasn't married, he saw, no children; resolute spinster, his Agency assessment said again, and at least she had that in common with her mother, who boasted she had no time for love, and made no secret of the fact that she had got her daughter out of the prebirth tanks at Fetal Management with purchased sperm. He wondered if this gestation influenced the daughter's outlook on sex and relationships, and it occurred to him that that, too, might be worthy of research one of these days, when he wasn't as busy, when he had moved on from the current project, which couldn't be brought to a conclusion anyway, he knew. It was fun trying, that was all.

He made a note to remember the cube, two o'clock at Vincent's Friday afternoon.

 

Friday afternoon was more like summer than spring; there were even flowers on the verge of opening, and the shrubs had buds on display, and the grass was thick and deeply green, with a rich clean smell. Jared, cube in his pocket, noter in one hand, paused on his porch to enjoy it for just a minute.

The Hardesty sisters were both outside, Phyllis digging near the bushes at the side of the house, Lillian rooting around in the vegetable garden in back. Gina was sprawled on their porch swing, absorbed in a reader, sunshine glinting on short blond hair; just turned 13, she had recently discovered fantasy literature, and she was deep into the stories of King Arthur and his Round Table, which Jared had loaned her last week.

Directly across the street, two of the Bahtan sisters were out in their yard, pruning and clearing the tangle of growth just inside the fence. By summer their yard would be a miracle of plant life, vegetables and flowers in a heady mass everywhere. Al was sitting at the picnic table on Jared’s lawn with Clyde, playing cribbage and drinking Zamuaon beer. Mimi was sweeping the porch of their house by hand, humming to herself as she worked. Issio was sprawled on the lounger, shirtless, barefooted, the sun gleaming on his gray-black body hair and picking out the Zandrian ruby in his silver tail ring as the tip of his tail twitched back and forth, proving he was not asleep even if his eyes were closed. Sofi was running errands downtown, taking advantage of the school holiday.

And the D'ubians were not at home. Jared knew this, because Terry was sitting on the grass looking bored, and experimenting with chords on the old guitar Mimi and Clyde had bought him at a second-hand store. Spotting Jared, he sprang up, clutching the guitar, full of hope. Gina might be happy with King Arthur’s court, but her little brother had his mind on more interesting occupations.

"Because it's so a nice!" he said. "They say it’s going to rain all next week. We won’t have another chance to go fishing for days and days."

"We could go tomorrow," said Jared. "We could get up early and go Sunday, for that matter. And take Gina."

"It couldn't be as nice as today," Terry protested. "Gina could go today. I bet Clyde would like to go. Wouldn't you, Clyde? And maybe Issio would go too."

Clyde lifted an eyebrow over his cards but kept his eye on his opponent. Issio twitched his tail and yawned. "Clyde and Issio might go tomorrow," said Jared, "but they look pretty contented where they are today. And I need to do some things this afternoon."

"Like what?" argued Terry. "You don’t have to go to work today. You have the day off. I mean, it’s Spring Break, right?"

“All weekend,” Jared agreed. "So I don't have to work tomorrow or the next day, either. Today I have a meeting."

Terry regarded Jared’s noter without favor. "You shouldn't have meetings on holidays," he said. "I won't when I grow up. I'll go to Linden's world and take over the farm for Dad and go fishing and play music all the time. Or Mom's; I bet I wouldn't have to have meetings there, either."

Jared would bet he was right. Gillian had signed a renewable two-year marriage contract with a man who owned an obscene number of casinos and Virtual Reality palaces on Saffosio, one of the playground planets around the fringes of the Alliance central core. He had plenty of credits, and seemed happy to spend some of them on his contract wife and her offspring. Jared regarded Gillian with a certain professional respect, if no liking; she had taken a pretty face and a lack of moral scruples and made an excellent living for herself. She hadn’t liked Linden’s World, but she had made good money on that contract, and now she had a contract she found more agreeable in a place she liked better.

Jared had made fewer compromises, but then he hadn’t been able to ignore his scruples, and his goals had been more modest. He had his degrees; he had his house; he had work he enjoyed, he had his friends, a family of his own choosing. He missed Maud. Her absence was a deep and nagging pain that would never leave him. It had been nearly a year, and the pain had not diminished. But there was still life to be lived, and on a day like this, he found it possible to imagine it. And if young Dr. Lindstrom kept it brief, as she had said, he could be free in time to take Terry to the swimming pool at the Institute for an hour or two.

But he wasn't going to raise Terry's hopes now. "Let’s plan on tomorrow," he told Terry, and Clyde laid down his cards down and began to count them, fifteen two, fifteen four, and a run is seven.

"I would go fishing on Sunday," said Issio, eyes closed. "Sofi has a ma/hifez match tomorrow."

"She does?" said Terry, instantly distracted.

"A small match, her circle and the Red Path circle." He opened his eyes and focused on Terry. "Gina will go with us. I would take you also," he said, "if you desire."

"Hey, yes," said Terry with enthusiasm.

"Ten o’clock tomorrow morning," said Issio, and closed both eyes.

"And we could go fishing Sunday morning," said Clyde. "Sound okay, Jared?"

"Very okay," said Jared, pocketing his noter. He headed off down the porch steps; the Bahtan girls across the street looked up and waved at him, and he waved back and got into his car. As he punched in the address for Vincent’s, he glimpsed movement on the second floor of the Bahtan house and he looked up in time to see a thin young Bahtan male, naked except for a towel wrapped around his waist, easing himself through one of the front windows. He made it as far as the edge of the porch roof before the other three Bahtan sisters appeared at the window. Wundra scrambled out and caught the male by the ankle and yanked him back inside. He screamed, pitifully. The window slammed shut.

Jared grinned and pushed the power button and headed downtown.

He was just in time to corner a table with a sunshade where there was a view of the street, passersby, cars, rather than the back entrance and the alley and the garbage chutes. He ordered coffee and dropped the data cube into his noter to take a quick look at it before young Dr. Lindstrom arrived, to refresh his memory if she asked questions. There were a lot of people out today in the sunshine; the schools were all closed, which meant that students and teachers were loose on the town. There was a group of young people at a large table, deep in one of those intense philosophical discussions that would later be moved to a beer hall catering to college students. There was a couple at the next table, deep in contemplation of each other. Jared regarded them with amusement and a touch of sadness. He had not begun to date. He had chatted with a young woman from the psych department, but she took her life and herself so seriously; he didn't think he could spend any amount of time with her without laughing, which would offend her. He had been approached by a teaching assistant from one of the math departments, but he couldn't really find that much in common with her.

In fact, no one compared with Maud; he was going to have to search for a long time before he met her match, and he didn't really want to bother. He could satisfy desires easily enough without committing to an inferior relationship; there were Agencies, and he thought that was the direction he was going to go when he finally tired of the celibate life, an unusual state which he had not precisely chosen; it was only that no one appealed to him. But he knew all about Agencies, after all, and if he wanted love, well, he had his friends, his virtual brothers and sisters, big and little, and aunts and uncles, and he needed nothing more.

He flipped the noter page and was aware of someone coming out on the patio; he looked up at Dr. Cara Lindstrom.

The holo on the screen had not done her justice.

She was not very tall, but her small figure was perfect, and she carried herself gracefully. She did, indeed, favor the buttoned-down look, quiet blues and grays, shirt fastened at the throat, sleeves fastened at the wrist, but her hair refused to cooperate; loose tendrils formed a bright halo as they caught the sunlight. And her eyes, a deep bright blue, were alert and eager; they swept over the crowded patio, looking for him.

He stood up, offering a friendly smile, and she saw him. No doubt she had looked him up on the screen. Certainly she recognized him; she had seen his holo.

Their eyes met; he felt the impact. It was an almost physical sensation; it left him a little dazed. She felt it too, he thought; she stopped short, stared at him, looking as dazed as he felt.

She said, "Dr. Ramirez?" and offered her hand.

"Dr. Lindstrom," he said, taking her hand, and automatically putting out his mind to see if he could read her. Her blue eyes had a slightly bewildered look about them as she scrambled to reconcile the tall black man at the table with the studious holo in his screen bio; he was not the only one surprised at the actuality of the person. Her surface thoughts were confused; she also was reeling.

Beyond that, he could not penetrate; just like Maud, her mind was protected by a smooth white barrier, bringing his mind to an abrupt halt.

They sat down. He remembered to let go of her hand, but his eyes didn't want to let go of her. She didn't seem all that anxious to let go of him, either, but she wrenched herself away to order coffee from the robowaiter, and then she briskly opened her bag and pulled out her noter and he tried to return his attention to work. "I located my notes," he said, probably not the brightest opening remark.

"I'm sorry I made you go to the trouble," she said, "and I really appreciate your letting me see them."

"No trouble at all," he said, passing the cube across the table. He could not recall that he had ever felt this way about someone just met. Instant, overpowering attraction; even with Maud it had taken a few meetings, conversation, the exploration of what they had in common. What did he and this young woman have in common? He knew that she had an interest in folk tales, as he did. If she taught all-Alliance literature, she might read, if not speak, a little of the other languages, although that wasn't required, since everything had a Trade translation, too. He had met many people of all species who relied on this. But she would have some knowledge of Alliance cultures, which would give them two things in common.

Three things, counting this unexpected feeling; he didn't doubt that she shared it. She was giving him quick glances when she thought he might not be looking; he couldn't read anything specific at the top of her mind, which was all that was available to him, but he could feel the surprise and the curiosity and the interest. It matched his own.

It had been three years, more or less, since he worked for the Agency, but he had learned how to get and keep a conversation going, and he had learned how to draw out a client, how to find out what he needed to know about her, even if he couldn't read her mind. This wasn't a client, but he still needed to know everything he could about her; he was astonished at how much he needed to know.

He set about doing it. It took him the better part of an hour to realize that she needed to know about him, too.

Her grandmother had named her – Cara Marie, she said, a pretty name; "Cara" meant, in one of the old Earthian tongues, "beloved," he told her, thinking that it was a very suitable name. And Gram had named Jared, and that name had to do with descent, being descended from, well, he supposed his ancestors, like most people. She smiled; she had a delightful smile.

"What does the 'B' stand for?" she asked, looking at his name in the journal.

"That," he said, "will never be known. I use it because it makes a nice rhythm; otherwise I'd happily forget about it."

"It's that bad?"

"It's much worse," he assured her, bringing that lovely smile to her eyes.

Yes, she did read other languages, all the Alliance languages, in fact, except D'ubian, of course, of which she had no more than a smattering. He had a little more, having grown up in a mining colony with a large D'ubian population, and he knew a little about the D'ubian life style, as much as an outsider could observe; she thought that was interesting. Languages had always come easily to him as far back as he could remember. They came easily to her, too, although she had less exposure to native speakers, more formal instruction. And she spoke Earthian and Zamuaon and Bahtan as well as Trade; she had several Zamuaon acquaintances and two very close Bahtan friends, she said. They practiced vocabulary and accents, their language and hers, but they gossiped, she admitted, in Trade.

Living in a multi-species neighborhood, he had an easy way of improving his own accent. "A D'ubian group too?" she said.

"Off and on; they're not always there."

"The Lohm group teaches in the music department at the university, and we talk sometimes, but it's hard to get past the ordinary things – you know, the weather and what they're serving at the cafeteria."

"The Duri group talks about music; they're teaching one of my neighbors. So we get a little past the weather, but not very far."

"The Duri group; I know them! I have some of their recordings! I love their music."

She knew the more familiar folk tales from the Zamuaons and the Bahtans and the Earthians, although she said her primary interest was the early industrial phase of these societies and the literature developed at that time. And she was interested also in the music; yes, she liked the classics from all cultures, although she rarely got to the concerts; she contented herself with recordings. Her schedule, she said, shrugging.

"Oh, that's a shame," said the man who had arranged his schedule around season tickets for over a decade. "That's one of those things you have to make time for, no matter what your schedule is."

"That's true. But you get caught up in what you're doing, and it seems like such a lot of effort to keep up these sorts of interests, and you just don't," she said, and hesitated momentarily, and blurted it out after all. "I was looking after my mother. She was an invalid. A stroke. She died last winter."

Jared was well aware of Dr. Margo Lindstrom's condition; he had assumed that she had been cared for in a nursing home. He had had no idea that her daughter had done any of it herself. "I'm sorry," he said. "That must have been very difficult for you."

"She was so unhappy," she said, a sympathetic phrase recited automatically, as if she had said it many times. Dr. Margo Lindstrom, as far as he was aware, had been born unhappy and had devoted her life to making everyone around her as unhappy as she was. He wondered if this extended to her daughter.

"I should say," he said, just to get it into the open, "that I read your bio on the screen. I imagine you read mine." She flushed and nodded, smiling at her noter. "So I know who your mother was. Her work was highly regarded at the Institute."

"Yes," she agreed, looking into her coffee cup, which was empty; he signaled to the robowaiter. "Anyway," she said, with the air of changing the subject, "I did get to the theater early in the spring; a girlfriend and I went to Long Twilight. We enjoyed it very much. Do you like the theater?"

He did; he had, in fact, taken Gina and Lillian to Long Twilight, although they had had to reschedule twice, when the Hardesty house developed a dramatic leak in the roof, and when Terry broke his leg. That had happened, he and Dr. Lindstrom realized, on the night when she and her friend had gone together; they might, in fact, have met at the theater a month ago, a near miss that brought them to a momentary silence, staring at each other.

There were shadows falling across the table; the students by the fence were long gone to their beer hall, and the couple at the next table had left also; the patio emptied as the afternoon grew older, and the breeze grew cooler. They still had their noters on the table, along with their coffee cups, several times refilled, but they hadn't really gotten much work done, Jared thought.

He did not remember how it happened that he had his hand on the table right beside hers, lightly touching her, in fact, but he did, and he didn't move it. "It's getting late," he said, and hesitated. He hadn't done that much dating; there had been Maud, and there had been clients who already had the expectation of intimacy, and he hadn't actually asked anyone for a date in years. He felt clumsy and stupid and determined. "I saw," he said, fumbling, "your bio, as I said, so I know you're not married."

"I read yours," she said, looking at their hands, side by side on the table top. "You're not married either. Only it didn't say – partners or anything – "

"No, not anything," he said. "Are you – "

She shook her head, not lifting her eyes. "No," she said. "Not anything."

Okay, he thought, and took a breath. "So," he said, "if I asked you to dinner . . . " A lightening-fast glance at him, a flash of blue eyes. "Tonight," he said; nothing ventured, nothing gained.

She took a deep, somewhat shaky breath. "I'd love to," she said. He waited for a "but", which didn't come. He took a breath of his own and his hand, entirely without his permission, closed around hers, and a second later her hand turned and her fingers interlaced with his. He could almost see the heat they generated together.

But he felt hesitation; she had something on her mind. "You should know," she said, coming to a decision of her own. "Because I did read your bio. All of it," she said, with another fast glance, quickly withdrawn.

Well, it was hardly a secret. "You ran into the Agency connections," he said, and she nodded, not looking up. He tried to read those surface thoughts, embarrassment, uncertainty. "Problem?" he said, trying to guess where it lay. In the three years of his retirement, he had come to realize that a great many women thought his experience guaranteed them an outstanding night in bed; he had been thankful for the refuge of a monogamous relationship. He had never been aware, at the Agency, of so great a weight of expectations. He didn't feel this young woman was thinking on those lines, though. Did she have some bias toward a religion, or rigid morals that restricted sex? The thought drifted through his mind that he was going to have to work very hard to get her past these inhibitions, and he was already revolving the ways and means in his head.

"No, not – only," she said, "I ought to – you should know."

Having gotten that far she stalled; he waited. The robowaiter rolled past, sensors taking note of their half-filled cups. He waved it away. "Tell me," he said, gently, because whatever it was, it mattered to her.

"I don't think," she said in a rush, "that I like, you know, intimacies. So I thought you ought to know, if you're expecting – " He didn't laugh; he might have made a small sound, which brought her eyes up to his face. "I don't imagine you've heard that before, at the Agency," she said, eyeing him.

"Well, actually I have," he said, "but as it turned out, she was mistaken. Would you mind if I asked if you know for sure – "

"If she thought she didn't like it," she said, diverted, "how did you – did she call the Agency or something? Why would she do that?"

Although he seldom gave names, he had talked with Maud about his clients, the odder ones, the amusing ones. And there had been shop talk at the Agency, but other than that, he didn't discuss his work. So he hesitated for a moment, but Harriet had married, he had heard, and was living in the south, and he thought this lovely young woman across the table needed an answer.

"You understand I can't give names, details, anything like that," he said, and she nodded. "Briefly, she called the Agency because she wanted to make quite sure before she joined a celibate service order across the ocean; she wanted to know she had exhausted all of the possibilities." He hadn't laughed when Harriet had explained this to him. He wouldn't laugh now. Harriet had been entirely serious; so was Cara. "Which is why I asked," he explained. "You're being frank with me, which I appreciate; I think we should discuss it. Have you tried it?" And this was a subject he would have expected to dance around for at least a few more hours, more likely several dates, and that frankness confirmed that she had noticed the heat of their two hands, the power of the attraction holding them here as the spring day faded into twilight. She might think she didn't like it, but he suspected that, like Harriet, she wasn't all that insensitive. Harriet had called the Agency, after all. Cara had spoken of it to a man she knew only slightly. In neither case was this the act of a woman who didn't care.

She considered it for perhaps five seconds; now that the subject was open, she wasn't wasting time. She was going to jump right into the middle of it. "No," she said, with a faint blush, "but I don't like being touched or kissed, things like that. It doesn't – I don't like it."

The funny thing, although he was trying hard not to smile, was that she really believed it. And he didn't think she intended it as a challenge, but he couldn't help taking it as such. "I see," he said, and spared a look at their surroundings. Three women, not young, bundled into sweaters, sat at a table at the far end of the patio, heads together. There was a plump Zamuaon woman with white body hair and a lot of jewelry in the opposite corner, sitting alone absorbed in a reader. The robowaiter glided among empty tables. The sun was setting, leaving a soft pink glow in the sky above the buildings at the end of the street. There were two or three pedestrians on the other side of the street, and cars passed, ignoring them all.

"All right," he said, "just for the purpose of research, Dr. Lindstrom." He held on to her hand, moved the cups and the nearly-forgotten noters on the table top out of the way, and cupped his other hand around her head, feeling hairpins, a hard twist holding her hair back, and the pure silk of her hair around these restraints. She had just time to gasp; he wasn't going to give her a chance to think.

Leaning over the table, he kissed her. He made it romantic, more what she might have seen in a vid, less what she might have encountered from overeager young University students, who were apt, Cindy always said, to go at you wet-lipped and drooling. If this represented all of her experience, he wasn't surprised it had turned her off, and he wasn't about to remind her of it. He felt surprise and something that wasn't dislike at all; he paused long enough to look at her, to confirm this, and then he drew her toward him again because she wasn't the only one who didn't dislike it. He could feel a little of her reaction in the way her lips responded to his; he was surprised at the strength of his own reaction. He had to remind himself to go slowly; he had to remind himself that this was a girl who had never actually gotten beyond kissing, who might need time to get used to what she was feeling now.

She was getting used to it quickly, if he were any judge.

He took a breath and got up and pulled her out of her chair and into his arms so that he could do a proper job of it, and she gave him a look of dazed pleasure and met his lips with something very like eagerness. He could feel her body against him, the sweet curves of it fitting so well; he held her and forgot, momentarily, where they were, how they came to be there.

He could hear her breath coming fast; he could feel a heat building to match his own. And this was much too fast. She would look back and wonder if he had merely responded to what could be interpreted as a dare; it would take all kinds of effort to get that idea out of her head, he thought. They should not start on such a chancy note. He drew back again, forcing himself, and smiled into her eyes. "Dinner," he said.

"I don't want to stop." She was holding on to his shirt now, both hands.

"But we should."

"No," she protested. "Why? I don't want it to get away!"

"It won't get away."

"How do I know that?"

"I know that."

She looked at him and a flash of the purest mischief came into her eyes. "I think you're afraid to keep going!"

"Yes," he said at once. "I am, because I want to start our relationship in the best possible way. Because it's going to be a relationship. I know that already. And I don't know that we should rush this. We're going to have plenty of time."

She may not have believed him, but she smiled anyway and her arms slid tight around him. "Lovely. So what do you think, should we start at my place or yours? I mean, you're the one with experience."

Okay, he had made a very proper attempt to slow down, and it hadn't worked, and should he waste time on a lost cause? "What seems best to you?" he asked her. She might be uneasy about a near stranger in her house. She might be uncomfortable, having left the bed unmade, or dust on the table. On the other hand, she might prefer to begin in familiar surroundings as she ventured into unexplored territory.

She gave the question the briefest of considerations. "I'm at Seven Tree Circle, by the university," she said. "Where do you live?"

"On 24^th Avenue."

"So my house is closer. We should go there." And she was smiling up at him, those kissable lips right where he could reach them, and she had her arms around him, and he had his around her, and maybe she was right; this was something that should be enjoyed at once, while the fire burned hot, while their bodies flamed together as they touched, while she balanced, dazzled and eager, on the cusp of new adventure.

And so did he.

They went to her place.