Текст книги "Woman on the Edge of Time"

Автор книги: Marge Piercy

Соавторы: Marge Piercy
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

“Like what you and Diana did?” Jackrabbit arched his brows.

“Maybe I fear that.”

“But Diana and Bolivar have different gifts. The intensity we slip into together lets us keep up our intimacy although weeks pass apart. Our intimacy has always been centered on work. Even at our most intense and coupled, we turn outward and give to the community.”

“True, Luciente,” Sojourner said. “Your binding with Diana kept you from working well. Never did you work together, yet you fed on each other.”

“Bolivar gets nervous too,” Hawk said tentatively. “Bolivar teases Luciente a lot, and it makes per feel silly. That’s how Bolivar pays Luciente back or punishes per or something.”

A gray‑haired person with a deeply weathered face next to Bolivar smiled broadly. “It’s true, how not? Bolivar out‑maneuvers Luciente. Bolivar’s clever, quick‑witted. Luciente’s talkative but not witty. Luciente can’t strike back quick enough to win verbal battles. Now, Luciente thinks through things politically much more carefully than Bolivar. Everybody in Mouth‑of‑Mattapoisett knows Luciente was recruited for the reaching‑back proj not only for per sending, but because of political soundness. Person can rep us clearly and fairly. But Luciente uses that political weight as a weapon against Bolivar. You smite each other with your different gifts. Isn’t that perverse, no?” The gray‑haired person beamed from one to the other.

“Then Bolivar too is afraid,” Parra said. “We go too fast. Let’s ask Bolivar what person fears.”

“If I’m Jackrabbit’s past, how frail. Luciente is the present. The past disappears. Health is Luciente, growth is Luciente–according to Luciente! Yet Jackrabbit and I work well together. What’s backward about that? We love each other differently at twenty‑five and nineteen than we did at nineteen and thirteen, but–”

Jackrabbit said to Luciente, “You’ve never stopped loving anybody you loved, you know that. Why can’t you inknow how it is for me? You don’t think you’re stale on Bee because it’s years old.”

Sojourner narrowed her eyes at Bolivar. “Suppose you won this little war? You have Jackrabbit all to yourself. Luciente goes off. Jackrabbit can’t travel with you all the time without giving up per workshop. Jackrabbit just put in for defending and mothering. How can person combine mothering with a wandering life like yours? You’re with us maybe a week out of the month.”

“I never tried to comp Jackrabbit into traveling with me all the time. Only sometimes we’re warmed to work together.”

“But it’s Jackrabbit’s work more than Luciente keeping per here in Mattapoisett, no?” The fat person spoke.

“Fasure.” Bolivar sighed. “Jackrabbit is more bound to place. Always when we traveled together, person would get irritable. Would sleep badly, grow a mean temper, and sling me.”

“Luciente,” Sojourner went on. “Suppose you won your war against Bolivar and whittled per down in the eyes of Jackrabbit. Will you give up Bee and spend all your free time with Jackrabbit? Will you give up the reaching‑back proj or your work in the genetics base to work with Jackrabbit, the way Bolivar does?”

“That isn’t what I want!” Luciente said hotly. “Bolivar doesn’t respect me!”

“Do you respect Bolivar?” Parra asked with interest.

“Why … yes.”

“Why?”

“Person is a good artist.”

“Luciente and Bolivar, sit down face to face inside the ring. Look at each other. Then let’s be quiet a few minutes. I’m not sure whether we should continue or just leave you to talk. The source of friction seems to lie in your lack of rapport–no friendship yet constant contact. You must set aside time to speak. To deliver your critting and praising privately.”

Luciente and Bolivar pulled the table apart and sat down face to face in the middle, where they looked at each other with itchy embarrassment. Connie turned to Parra to say softly, “Something puzzles me. It seems like everybody is careful not to say what seems real obvious to me–that Jackrabbit and Bolivar have … well, they’re both men. It’s homosexual. Like that might bother a woman more.”

“But why?” Parra looked at her as if she were really crazy. “All coupling, all befriending goes on between biological males, biological females, or both. That’s not a useful set of categories. We tend to divvy up people by what they’re good at and bad at, strengths and weaknesses, gifts and failings.”

She felt as if she had run into a blind wall. Yet Parra fascinated her. She could be no more than twenty‑one or twenty‑two, yet she was serving as people’s judge. Doctor of rivers. She herself could be such a person here. Yes, she would study how to fix the looted landscape, heal rivers choked with filth. Doctor the soil squandered for a quick profit on cash crops. Then she would be useful. She would like herself, as she had during the brief period she had been involved in the war‑on‑poverty hoax. People would respect her. There’s Consuelo, they’d say, doctor of soil, protector of rivers. Her children would be proud of her. Her lovers would not turn from her, would not die in prison, would not be cut down in the streets, like Martin.

How she had stood over him in the morgue, shaking with rage–yes, rage–because he was dead without reason. Because everybody was poor and the summer was hot and tempers flared and men without jobs proved they were still men on the bodies of other men, on the bodies of women. They had both been twenty when they married. From the cruelty of the Anglo boy who had got her pregnant and then ran in fright, saying she could prove nothing, Martin had healed her. She had told him the truth, yet he had married her. They were both twenty‑one when he was dead. A knife in the heart. He had been so beautiful.

Tears flooded her eyes in a hot flush and then eased back. She was lying on the hospital bed. Laughter rattled from the nursing station. “I caught you with your pants down, baby! Gin!”

“Shit! You got me with a mittful of face cards.”

Martin had been dead almost half the time she had lived. What was the use of crying now? Yet she mourned him freshly, thinking that in the future they might have lived side by side few: half a century. There he could have that respect he longed for, the respect whose lack tormented him like a raging thirst. He loved her enough to marry her soiled by another man but not enough to back down once from a challenge, an insult, a threat. There Martin could have had his respect, his dignity, he could have had his work and his leisure. His life. He had admired in her those months at the community college, paid for in blood. In Mattapoisett she too would have respect. And learning.

“Listen,” a female voice was saying from the nursing station, “we only got another week or two stuck over here. Then it’s back to K building and we’ll have a foursome for bridge again. I get tired playing gin every night.”

“I don’t know why, sugar. You beat me all the time. If we weren’t playing penny a point you’d have cleaned me out!”

ELEVEN

“We already have your brother’s signature on the permission form,” Acker told her, rubbing his squared‑off beard. “But we want you to give us your permission too. We want to be sure you understand how we’re going to help you. We want your wholehearted cooperation.” His eyes, the color of milky cocoa, waited on her.

“So you feel less guilty what you’re doing to us?” She slumped sullenly on the edge of her bed. He kept pestering her.

“What are we doing? Giving you a chance to get out of the hospital. Make a better life. End these episodes of destructive violence. That as a long‑term goal. As a short‑term goal, we’re going to move all our patients out of this state hospital into a ward in NYNPI–a nice research ward. You don’t know what it’s like to be in a well‑equipped mental hospital. No dormitories. You can room with your friend Sybil. Good food. Your family will visit you when you’re right in Manhattan.”

“And a chance to get my brains scrambled like Alice.”

“In two months Alice will be home, Connie. If you leave us, you think you’ll be home in two months?”

“Yeah, I wasn’t doing so bad.”

“You won’t go back to G‑2. If you transfer out of here, you’ll go back where we found you–on the violent ward, L‑6. With comments on your record about how uncooperative you proved to be.”

She turned to the wall and would not speak to him and after a few minutes he strolled off. He would be back.

That Sunday, finally Dolly came. Dolly pranced into the ward to embrace her, then held her at arm’s length. “You lost so much weight, Connie! How wonderful! It’s like one of those reducing farms rich bitches go to.”

“Not much like them.” Connie smiled. “Is Nita here?”

“They wouldn’t let us bring her in. She’s outside with Vic. Come on to the window and we can wave.”

Down below she saw a tall well‑built man in ice cream white holding Nita by the hand. They were watching a woman searching for something in the grass and Vic was laughing and nudging Nita. “Nita! Nita!” Connie hollered out the window, but Nita did not hear her. Instead the weekend attendant gave her a sign to shut up. Reluctantly she obeyed, craning down at Nita.

“Dolly, you look beautiful,” she said when she turned from the window. “You lost some weight too?”

Dolly had dyed her hair a fiery orange‑red. She was dressed in a sleek green and yellow pants suit without sleeves, and she had kept on her sunglasses. “Oh, carita, it pays more if you look Anglo, you know? And they like you better skinny, the ones with money. Geraldo, that prick, left me with debts and no money. I have to break my behind hustling till I get clear of my debts.”

“Dolly, take off the shades. I can’t see your expression. It’s like talking through a wall.”

Pouting, Dolly took off her glasses, wincing at the light. A little prickle ran up Connie’s neck. “Nevertheless, darling, everything is going fine for me and mine, let me tell you. I’ve done okay without that big honcho. I work hard but the marks come running and I make better money than ever before, much better than with Geraldo. Listen, Connie–last week I made four hundred! In one week! How’s that?” Dolly’s words spilled out.

“Dolly, did you maybe bring me a little something?”

“How could I forget? I mean forget to tell you. I didn’t forget to bring for you. Now listen–I gave the old bitch at the desk thirty dollars for you in your account. Now, if you hold out your hand casual like, I’m going to slip you another five for extras. This place don’t look like no luxury hotel, but you can buy yourself a little something to take the edge off.”

She held out her hand and Dolly slipped a bill in it, folded up. “And my clothes? Did you maybe bring me some clothes?”

“Daddy, he said you were in the hospital and didn’t need street clothes. So I brought you two nightgowns, an old one you had and one of my own special ones, with real handmade black lace so you won’t be ashamed in the hospital. I wore it when I was having my operation, and it brings me down to look at it!” Dolly chattered as if nothing would ever bring her down. “Also I decided to bring you some dresses anyhow. What do men know what women need? I see you got a dress on, if you can call it that. So I brought you the turquoise and your green print and the red. You could use some new dresses, Connie. You lost so much weight, I don’t know if these will fit.”

“The turquoise, it’s from a long time ago. When I was with … Claud. It’ll fit.”

“If you give me your new size, I can get you a nice dress, the length they’re wearing now … . Listen to me–I gave the old bitch at the desk thirty dollars for you, and if you hold out your hand, I’m going to slip you another five for extras.”

“Dolly, you did that!”

Dolly was folding the bill up. “Come on, don’t you get it? Stick out your hand natural like.”

Dizzy, she stuck out her hand, and Dolly again gave her a five. Oh, well, she could use it. She stared into Dolly’s intense eyes, the pupils too big, too shiny. “What are you on?”

“Me? Like always–a little of this, a little of that.”

“You’re on more than a little of something.”

“I got to stay skinny, carita. The money is with the Anglos and they like you skinny and American‑looking. It pays more if you look Anglo, you know. Sometimes I say I’m of Spanish mother and an Irish father, and that’s why I have the beautiful red hair. Even the hair on my thing, I dyed it red–Connie, you wouldn’t believe it.” She giggled.

“Is it speed?”

“A little, once in a while, to keep my weight down. Who can stand those assholes? They drive me crazy. They’re all pigs. But I’m much better off without that prick Geraldo, you know? This one, Vic, he was a real ballplayer–no joke.” She giggled again. “He played a season with die Cleveland Indians, except he was born in the Bronx like me. He’s okay, Connie, it’s purely business. He’s a good businessman. I’m not crazy about him, but so much the better, you know? I was crazy for Geraldo, and what did I get besides a lot of trouble?”

“Is it Vic’s idea you take that poison? It’ll burn you out.”

“Listen, Connie, I’m in terrific shape! Look at me. I weigh one hundred seventeen–you believe it? And last week, you know what I earned on my behind?”

“Four hundred dollars,” she said wryly.

“How did you guess? Not bad, hey? Nice clothes, pretty things for my baby. Mamб keeps Nita Tuesday through Saturday and then Sunday I get her and I have her till Tuesday morning.”

“Carmel’s got her all week?”

“What other mother do I have? Sure, Carmel’s got her. It works out better.”

“Dolly, this is not good. You don’t have your baby inside, your daughter you only see weekends like an aunt, and you’re taking poison that burns out your soul.”

“Don’t be silly, Tнa. You forget what the world’s like, shut up here. I’m on top now. I know what I’m doing. And last week I made four hundred dollars!”

“Dolly, please. Get me out of here! I beg you. Get me released. Talk to them!”

“Hermana, how can I do that? Luis signed the papers. I didn’t have a thing to do with it. You have to talk to Daddy about getting out.”

“Please, Dolly, do something. I beg you. Look around this ward. They’re operating on us. They’re sticking needles in our heads!”

“Yeah?” Dolly looked around vaguely. “Daddy says they’re famous doctors from a university. That they’re for real helping you so you won’t have to go in again. He says you’re going to be in a hospital in Washington Heights. I could get to see you all the time. It’s real hard to get up here, you know?”

“Dolly, you think I need an operation? Look at me.”

“Connie, am I a doctor? What do I know? At least it’s clean in here, not so depressing like last time.”

“I don’t want their help, Dolly. I want to go home! Listen–I’ll work. Tell Luis I’ll do anything! I’ll work in his sweatshop nursery. I can get temporary office jobs. Tell Luis that!”

“You shouldn’t go on feeling sorry for yourself, Connie–that’s your problem. We can rise above what we are if we have the will. Look at me! After Geraldo, that prick, left me flat, with no money and lots of debts, I didn’t cry long. I cried, sure, but then I went out and got myself a white pimp. I lost twenty‑two pounds, you know? I took myself in hand and I haven’t gained a pound in weeks! I dyed my hair on my head and”–lowering her voice coquettishly–“even the hair on my thing. I say I’m of a Spanish mother and an Irish father. Sometimes I say my mother was a contessa.”

“I think that’s Italian.”

“No, it’s Spanish. Anyhow, they’re johns–what do they know? I make money hand over fist. Just last week–”

“Dolly, please, listen to me!” Connie interrupted, near despair. “They’re going to do an operation on me. You go look at that woman in the corner, the black woman, Alice. That’s what they want to do to me. At least let me come home for a weekend. To eat real food. To see you and Nita. Please, Dolly, talk to them.”

“Sure, honey. Once you’re in New York, why shouldn’t you come visit me? A weekend wouldn’t be so good, but maybe a Sunday together? It’s nice of Vic to bring me up here, but how many times can I get him to do it? He knows the value of money. He used to be a real pro ballplayer with the Cleveland Indians. A white pimp is better than a brother, Connie. It’s strictly business, but he brings good customers. Businessmen, buyers, salesmen. When you get out, I’ll get you some money and help you set up in a nice apartment. Daddy took your stuff into storage, he threw a lot of it out. But I kept some for you, pictures and stuff I know you want.”

She stood at the window watching Dolly emerge from the building and Nita break free of Vic and race toward her, hugging her around the thighs. Dolly pointed up at the window and Nita, looking puzzled, waved obediently at the building. They went off, Vic and Dolly talking at once. She stood at the window, staring long after they had disappeared.

She remembered something she had heard Dr. Redding say to Superintendent Hodges: that they had used up five thousand monkeys before they began doing these operations on patients. Used up. She had heard him say he had wanted to work with prisoners–he thought the results would be more impressive–but there had been such an uproar about three little psycho‑surgical procedures at Vacaville in California that his team decided to work with mental patients. “After all,” he had said, smiling his best ironic smile, “they made a court case and a bleeding heart publicity brouhaha about three procedures, while San Francisco Children’s Hospital does hundreds with sound and thermal probes–mostly on neurotic women and intractable children–and no one says boo.”

Thus, after the five thousand monkeys, they were being used up one at a time. She marched over to Sybil. “Sybil, they’re going to finish us. It’s death, no matter what they call it.”

Sybil sat cross‑legged, facing her. Her eyes questioned.

“It’s true this is a locked ward. But the hospital here has lousy security compared to our old wards. I know I could get out of here, if I could get off this ward.”

“How? We eat here, we lie here. There’s not even a porch.”

“If I made them think something’s wrong with me.”

Sybil’s hands rose and floated in the air, graceful and helpless as doves. “You could die of smallpox before they’d do anything.”

“Would you try if I did?”

Sybil looked down. She flexed her fingers, sighing. “Without money?”

“I have ten dollars. With that we could take a bus for a ways. Then we could hitchhike. Skip says women can always get a ride. Just so we get away from the hospital. People are too suspicious here.”

“We’d get picked up before we could reach a bus station.”

“It’s summer. Suppose we sleep in the woods and we walk as far as we can. They can’t watch all the bus stations in every town. Please, Sybil, if I think up a good plan?”

“Since the last series of shocks, I don’t have energy.”

Indeed, as she looked into Sybil’s face she realized how thin and how drawn Sybil was, with that inmate pallor they all shared.

“But we could help each other. We could keep each other’s courage up … . My niece won’t help; she’s too spaced out. But if we got to New York, she’d give us money, I know she would. She’d be real impressed by you, Sybil. She’s into astrology and she’d be excited about witchcraft.”

“If we’d done it sooner … when we were on L‑6. I’m tired, Connie, I’m weak. They’ve drained my power. It consumes all my power just to keep out the evil vibrations on this ward.”

“If we got away we’d be safe!”

“Ten dollars! That wouldn’t get us far. We have to eat. When they caught us, we’d be ruthlessly punished!”

“Sybil, what are they going to do to us anyhow?” She gestured toward Alice’s bed.

“At least they only do it to you once.” Sybil looked down. “Is it really worse than electroshock? I still can’t remember all kinds of things I know I knew before!”

“Sybil, you’re getting to be an … old patient.” Before her she could see the chronic wards, row on row of metal beds full of drugged hopeless women. A terrible silence. “Don’t let them wear you down!”

Sybil smiled, cold as a moonbeam. “I can’t do it. I haven’t healed. My pride is hollow … . But I’ll help you.”

“They’ll punish you if you help me and I get loose.”

Sybil shrugged. “Not like they’ll punish you when they bring you back.”

“I’ll ask someone else.”

“Don’t you dare! Haven’t we been friends? Don’t you think my loyalty has some value?” Sybil drew herself up. “Perhaps if you do escape, I’ll consider it in a new light. It’s by far the most intelligent plan for you to escape first with my assistance. Then when you’re safe, you can assist me.”

That evening after lights out, she lay quietly weeping.

Maybe Luciente could help. When she reached her, Luciente was swimming in the river with Jackrabbit, both of them diving and rising and splashing. Luciente hauled herself onto the bank, her hair plastered to her head and her body naked and dripping. Connie turned quickly away as Jackrabbit too clambered up on the grass. “We’ll get dressed, Connie. Don’t hide away!” Luciente obviously thought it was funny. Jackrabbit and she dried themselves on big towels and trotted off to Luciente’s space, with herself following very slowly behind. They were laughing ahead, and she felt left out and awkward. How could theyhelp?

She loitered up the path. When she opened Luciente’s door, they were both roughly dressed and between them they were making the bed. “Our family met last night,” Jackrabbit told her. “I put in as ready for mothering and military service. But everybody decided I ought to take care of going on defense before starting to mother. I know it’s logical, but I feel a little parted. I want to mother a lot more than I feel like marching off for six months to wherever the enemy’s pestering us now.”

Luciente was eyeing her with a gather of skin between her eyes. “What’s wrong, Connie?”

When she described the ward and the project, Luciente grew still. She sat on the not quite made bed with her hands crouching on her spread knees. “So soon. It promises ill.”

“It’s bad, real bad? That’s what I thought. I’m scared.”

Jackrabbit, puzzled but interested, curled up with a pillow behind his back. Luciente frowned. “It’s that race between technology, in the service of those who control, and insurgency–those who want to change the society in our direction. In your time the physical sciences had delivered the weapons technology. But the crux, we think, is in the biological sciences. Control of genetics. Technology of brain control. Birth‑to‑death surveillance. Chemical control through psychoactive drugs and neurotransmitters.”

“Luciente, help me escape!” Her hand trembling, she touched Luciente’s sinewy arm. “Before they do that to me.”

Luciente shuddered. “Sticking a log in somebody’s eye to dig out an eyelash! They had not even a theory of memory! Their arrogance … amazes me.” She snorted.

“Can you help me? Please.”

“Of course we can!” Jackrabbit said, stroking her shoulder, but Luciente paced with her face screwed up.

“I can’t interfere in the past, Connie,” she said slowly. “But I can give you advice. That’s free as the wind. As we say, nobody asks for it and everybody gets it.”

“I thought I might fake a sickness scary enough to make them take me off the ward and then I could escape.”

“You’d have to be able to create and sustain a high temperature. I could teach you, but it’d take time. I must discuss these problems with my time‑travel proj.” Luciente marched over to her television set, fiddled with some dials and spoke into her kenner. In a short while she was meeting with several people. Most of them appeared on the screen as they spoke, but a couple were apparently too far from a set and spoke only through the kenner. Connie strained her ears to hear, but most of the argument was in a weird jargon, about gliding, and fast and slow marcon, flebbing, achieving nevel.

“I’m sorry I bothered the two of you. I guess you were planning to be alone,” Connie said to Jackrabbit, his long body curled up.

“It’s like my naming. Every time I take a step, I start jagging. I want to go back where I was. Not really. But I need Luci today, I need a clear interseeing of who I am and what I was wanting. I feel lost, a little bottomed.”

“You don’t want to go on defense?”

“Fasure I do. I put in for it. Only, after I make a decision, I feel thinned. As if I just lost eight other selves.” He sighed, writhing restlessly on the bed and casting a baleful glance at Luciente in tense discussion at the TV set.

When Luciente turned to them, she was frowning lightly. “Everybody agrees your pass is urgent. But no one is confident you can learn to control body temperature in a week. Marat recommends acute appendicitis, a common health problem in your time. It wasn’t always accompanied by fever and could be easily faked.”

“No good!” Connie said. “They wouldn’t think it was such a big emergency. Why take me off ward? They’d wait till the doctor came in. Weekend is the time to get out, because they’re understaffed. And, Luciente, appendicitis, it’s not contagious. They never believe us anyhow when we say we’re in pain.”

“Zo, what about a head injury? Faking unconsciousness is easy. I could teach you to go into delta in a few lessons.”

“Let me think.” Connie turned and almost tripped over an object leaning on the wall. “What’s that?”

“Careful! It’s a weapon. I didn’t get a chance to turn it in today. We had practice at noon.”

Connie detoured it carefully. “I’m trying to think. Maybe.”

Luciente’s kenner spoke in a loud, demanding voice. “Corydora here. Thought you were planning to test those results from Tennessee.”

“Tonight. I’ll do it tonight after supper.”

“Thought we were having a town meeting about the Shaping controversy.”

“Fasure. Will do it between supper and the meeting. I set everything up.” Luciente spoke calmly. Connie could sense she was feeling great pressure. As she spoke into her kenner she stood there flatfooted, with her legs as if braced, and looked from Jackrabbit to her with level measuring gaze. Immediately she flicked her kenner and spoke. “Morningstar, can you take Dawn to have her teeth checked? I’m caught to my neck.” Then she spoke to Dawn. “My appleblossom, Morningstar is taking you to Goat Hill. I will see you at supper and tomorrow we’ll work together in the upper fields.”

Suddenly Connie saw her mother’s mother: a peasant woman dressed in black with her hair pulled back tight as if to punish it. With eight children, with close to forty grandchildren, with cows and pigs and chickens, she stood with that calm weighing expression as crisis after crisis broke over her. Everyone would be fed, everybody would be comforted, everyone would be healed, to each would be given a piece of herself. Luciente had some of that in her, Connie thought, but with more control and less ultimate despair.

“I think I want to learn how to play dead … or knocked out anyhow. I’ll let you know for sure tomorrow.”

“I’ll ask Magdalena how best to teach you,” Luciente said, and smiled at Jackrabbit. “In about an hour I’ll ask her. Tomorrow morning, Connie sweetness, graze me and we’ll start.”

Embarrassed, Connie immediately broke contact.

“Tina, please. Watch for us. I want to talk to Sybil for a minute only. Momentito?”

Tina nodded, looking them over curiously. Perhaps she thought they were lovers. Anyhow, she stood near the door watching for attendants, while Connie whispered to Sybil, “Would you stage a fight with me?”

Sybil touched Connie’s cheek lightly. “Why not?”

“They’ll give it to you afterward. They’ll come down on you.”

“Maybe they’ll send me off this ward. Outside I know the rules. I’m an old hand.”

“Maybe they’ll just do you sooner.”

“Maybe the saddest person will be the last to be ‘done.’ Like death row.”

She began spending all the time she could safely steal with Luciente, studying control of her own nervous system. In the morning Luciente was walking with Bee and White Oak, pausing at the big board in the square in front of the meetinghouse to read the newest notices, poems, proposals, and complaints.

With you

Well coupled: I could wade

in warm water

and melt like a sugar cube.

ANYONE WHO DOESN’T CLEAN DIVING GEAR DESERVES TO DROWN!

Do you value yourself lower than zucchini? Vote the SHAPERS!

Class starting in bacterial fertilizers, Tuesday 8 P.M., Amilcar Cabral greenhouse.

Cellist wanted, antique music quartet. See Puccini, Goat Hill.

WANDERING PLAYERS: Goose Creek players visiting this week. Thursday: THE ROBBER BARONS (historical satire); Friday: WHO KNOWS HOW IT GROWS (Shaping drama); Saturday: WHEN TIME FRAYED (drama of battle at Space Station Beta).

“What’s all this business about Shaping?” Connie asked as they read the notices.

“The Shapers want to intervene genetically,” Bee rumbled. “Now we only spot problems, watch for birth defects, genes linked with disease susceptibility.”

“The Shapers want to breed for selected traits,” Luciente said. “It’s a grandcil‑level fight.”

“What do you think?” she asked curiously.

White Oak said, “Oh, we three are all Mixers. That’s the other side. We don’t think people can know objectively how people should become. We think it’s a power surge.”

Luciente pointed. “Look, there’s my notice. Two people signed up last night. But we need at least five.”

Connie read the notice. “Why do you want to learn Chinese?”

“They do interesting work in my field. On my next sabbatical, I’m going to travel there.”

“Bee, will you go too?”

“Not so. I traveled too much when I was involved in reparations to former colonies. I never want to move my body again! I got so weary. No, on sabbatical I want to follow a line of research our base decided against–foolishly.”

She turned to Luciente. “Will you really go off to China without him?”

“How not? For half a year. Person won’t run away.”

“Ah, but without you to argue with day and night, my brain will turn into a jellyfish. You’ll come back and find me a Shaper. Who’ll keep me politically correct, who’ll chew me over?”

White Oak had begun to warble a song that Connie had heard people singing lately all over the village:

“Someday the past will die,

the last scar heal,