Shelter (20 page)

    "It still doesn't make sense," Meredith said, and Jack and Constance both looked at her. "I mean, fine, I'm happy for both of you, Jack's a nice guy and Daddy was never around, anyway, so that's—well, it figures. And it was nice of Daddy not to be mean about it, I guess. But I still don't know why you're raising the remarriage issue now. Why not just tell them you know about the affair and it's fine and they should just ... go on as usual? Why change everything this way? And why now, so soon after the translation? Doesn't that look bad for PR?"

    "Good questions," Jack said quietly. "I'm wondering the same things."

    "Oh, shit," Constance said. "Dammit, Preston! You really have been spying, haven't you?"

    "What?" Meredith said.

    "Connie?" Jack said. "What—"

    "You have already lost too much, Constance. I did not want you to feel you had to lose—"

    "How, Preston? How did you know? How—"

    "Bar codes at point of sale, Constance. That particular retail outlet is participating in a MacroCorp marketing survey, so I had access to the information. "

    " Shit! I paid cash!"

    "The bar codes would still have been read, Constance, and the GPS would still have placed—"

    "Would someone tell me what the fuck is going on?"Jack said.

    "Maybe nothing," Constance said. She was shaking. "I don't know for sure yet. And I don't want to make it into a—into a damn press conference! Preston, go away."

    "Certainly, Constance." There was a small click, followed by Vivaldi. Meredith saw her mother take a deep breath. "Merry, would you mind leaving us alone?"

    "Sure," she said, and turned, her knees weak, to go upstairs, where she sank onto her bed and pondered what she had just learned. She had the queasy feeling that she understood the cryptic conversation between her parents, but she didn't want to think about that too much, not right now. The part about Jack was enough to absorb.

    But the more she thought about it, the more sense it made, and the more she realized that there had been clues all along: the way Jack had always been at her birthday parties, even though her father wasn't; the way he'd touched Constance's elbow to guide her into the limo after Merry was released from the hospital; the tone of Constance's voice when she mentioned Jack in her conversations to Brenda. Did Brenda know? Was that why she'd asked Constance all the marriage questions? How many other people knew?

    There was a knock on her door. "Honey?"

    "Corne in, Mom."

    Constance came in. "Is he here?"

    "I don't know. He's everywhere in the house, isn't he? But he's not saying anything."

    "Oh, Goddess." Constance rubbed her eyes, and then sat on the bed.

    "Jack's, uh, downstairs. I wanted to talk to you alone. Are you upset?"

    "No. I don't think so. I meant what I said about how it made sense. Mommy, are you pregnant?"

    Constance swallowed and looked away. "You don't miss much, do you? Well, we just checked. It looks like it."

    "Home pregnancy kit? That was the—"

    "Bar code, evidently. Yes."

    "And Daddy didn't want you to feel you had to end the pregnancy. That's what he meant about loss. And that's why it all happened now, so you wouldn't do anything. How does Jack feel?"

    "He doesn't know how he feels. I don't know how I feel. We don't know how we feel. How do you feel, Merry? If—if I had a child ... "

    "I've always wanted a brother or sister," Meredith said. "You know that."

    Constance laughed shakily. "This is turning into a very odd family, isn't it?"

    "It always was. But people are going to time the pregnancy, you know. Jack's going to have to do some fancy spin control."

    "There'll be a bit of scandal, yes, of course. We haven't figured out how we're going to handle that yet. I'm actually—it's very early on, only a month or so. So we'll probably say that I sought refuge in Jack's arms after the shock of Preston's translation, thereby cementing an old family friendship, and so forth, and if Preston acts delighted, well, it's nobody's business, is it?"

    "Just Daddy's," Meredith said bitterly. "Everything's his business. Are you getting a rig?"

    Constance sighed. "I don't know, honey. I might. I need to think about it some more. Are you?"

    "No."

    "Well, that sounds definite. Because you're afraid your father will pry?" Meredith looked down at the bedspread. "No. It's more than that. Because—because I don't want to be translated."

    "Well, not now, sweetheart, of course not. How can you even imagine it? But if you change your mind in a few years—"

    "I won't change my mind," Meredith said quietly. ''I'm a person. I'm a body. When I die I want to go back to the earth, not into cyberspace."

    "Your body would do that anyway," Constance said. "Just like your father's did." Preston's body had been cremated, his ashes scattered in the Pacific.

    "My spirit too," Meredith said. "If I have one, if there is one—I want to be part of the web of life, not the web of circuits. I want to survive the way people have always survived, in their children. We aren't meant to be immortal, Mommy."

    "You're only saying that because you're too young to imagine dying," Constance said gently.

    A fury she hadn't even known she contained propelled Meredith off the bed. She stood, fists clenched, glaring at her mother. "I can't imagine dying? What do you think I imagined the whole time I was in isolation?"

    Constance winced. "All right, all right, that was tactless of me. I'm sorry. Look, it's been a very tough day, and we've all got entirely too much to think about. All I'm saying is that you don't have to decide now. If you got the rig and chose not to be translated later, the files could be erased. That's all. I'm going to go back downstairs and see how Jack's doing. Come join us when you feel like it."

    She left, and Meredith, shaking, went to the window and stared down at the Bay. She waited until her trembling had stopped, until her breathing was steady and her mind clear. Then she went downstairs.

    Constance and Jack didn't hear her enter the solarium. They were sitting on the couch, Constance's head on Jack's shoulder and his arm around her waist, the fingers of their free hands intertwined. Meredith stood there, watching them. She couldn't recall such a moment of physical intimacy between Constance and Preston, and while she was pleased for her mother, the sight pierced her too. She felt as if they were in an isolation unit of their own making, as if she were watching them through thick glass walls. But the sight only confirmed the decision she had made upstairs.

    "Hi," she said, and they looked up.

    "You're getting as sneaky as your father," Constance said, with a wan smile.

    "I hope not. Are you keeping the baby?"

    "Yes," Jack said, quietly. "But you'll always be—"

    "I know," Meredith said. "Listen, I've decided what I want to do."

    They watched her expectantly, and she said, "I don't want a rig. I want to become a Temple novice."

    Jack raised his eyebrows, and Constance shook her head. "Merry, honey, you're too young."

    "I am not. I can live there and go to school."

    "You want to live there? I've driven my own daughter out of the house?"

    "No, Mom, that's not—"

    "Can't you just do what you're doing now? You go there every day anyway!"

    "Novices have to live in the dorms," Meredith said. "I can keep up with my schoolwork; Raji does. Look, it's not like I'll be far away. We can still see each other all the time. But that way you and Jack can get used to living here, and I can—"

    "You can get away from me," Preston said. "Right, Meredith?"

    She squinted up at the speaker. "Right, Daddy. That's exactly right. More than here, anyway. But that means you have to promise not to pester me, in Matt's office or anywhere else. Because if you do, I'll find some way to really get away from you. I'll go—I'll go live in, I don't know, Papua New Guinea or something. Do you understand?"

    "There are netlinks there too, Meredith. We are all one."

    Jack cleared his throat. "Preston, while we're at it, we need to set some very firm policies about what you will and won't do here, in the house. And Constance and I need to know you'll stick by them."

    "You have my word of honor."

    A lot that's worth, Meredith thought grimly. "All right. I'm going back to Temple now to tell Matt—"

    "Hold on," Constance said. "Hold on there, young lady. I'm coming with you. I'm not going to let you sign your life over to that—"

    "Mom, I couldn't if I wanted to. That's not how it works. You start with a three-month trial period." It was the length of time she'd spent in isolation, but she couldn't imagine anything more different.

    "Three months," Constance said, looking relieved. "That's fine. That will get this out of your system. That way you'll be back home well before your brother or sister is born."

    Eight

    LIFE in the novitiate dorm—a meandering, low-tech warren of cubicles and cots—took some getting used to. Meredith had never had to live in such close quarters with other people; while she had achieved a measure of protection from her father, in every other respect, she had markedly less privacy than she'd had at home. She was used to a twenty-by-twenty-two-foot bedroom on the other side of a large house from her mother; here she had a cot in a ten-by-eight-foot cubbyhole, with neighbors on either side behind thin plywood walls. The Temple dorm housed ten people in less than a quarter of the space she had lived in with her parents. There were no housekeeping bots. The novices themselves did all the cooking and cleaning, according to a rotating schedule; they bathed in spartan stall showers. The first few weeks, Meredith missed her luxurious bathtub far more than she missed her mother.

    She didn't let anyone know that she missed anything. Too many people expected her to fail, and homesickness would prove that they were right. Merry's first evening in the dorm, one of the other novices—a thin woman with black curly hair and a scowl—walked into her cubicle without knocking, looked Meredith up and down, and said, "I can't believe Matt's doing this. You're too young to be here."

    Raji, who'd been sitting on Merry's bed watching her unpack, cleared his throat and said, "Uh, Merry, this is Gwyn."

    "Hi," Merry said. There was going to be a meeting in an hour where she'd be introduced to everyone else; she hoped they'd be friendlier than this bitch. "I guess Matt doesn't think I'm too young. He's willing to give me a chance, anyway."

    Gwyn snorted. "I give you a week. This is no place for children, no matter how much money their daddies are giving to the Temple."

    "Gwyn," Raji said, "this isn't exactly a gracious welcome."

    "It's not supposed to be. If it were up to me, Raji, you wouldn't be here, either. The novitiate's a work ministry, not a boarding school." Gwyn squinted at Merry and said, "You will still be attending school, won't you?"

    "Of course," Meredith said, as frostily as she could. That was one of the concessions she'd had to make before Matt and her parents would even consider letting her become a novice. She'd tried to talk them into letting her pursue an entirely Net-based curriculum, the way Raji did, but even Preston vetoed that idea. "You need socialization with people your own age, Meredith. That is why we still have schools." At last they'd agreed to let her compress her seven—hour school day into four, as long as she kept her grades up, so she could spend more time on Temple duties.

    She knew her parents and Matt really agreed with Gwyn, though: no one expected her to get through the three-month trial, to be able to make this latest dramatic adjustment after the hospital. Everyone thought she was just in a snit about her father, or about Jack and Constance, or about the baby. "The news vultures are going to have a field day with this," Constance had told Meredith. "You know that, don't you? They're going to invent all kinds of stories about why you've moved out, especially once they find out that Jack and I are together."

    Jack had cleared his throat. "Connie, that's not Meredith's problem. The vultures would be dive-bombing us whether she was still living here or not. We can't all be looking over our shoulders for ScoopNet every second. Merry, don't get me wrong. I'd be delighted if you stayed at home. I think you have a right to live your own life, that's all."

    "Thank you. Thank you very much."

    "She could live her own life here too," Constance said. "But you'll be home in three months, Merry. It's like ... going to summer camp or something, only a lot closer."

    "Right," Merry said. It was nothing like going to summer camp, and she didn't intend to be back in three months, but arguing wouldn't accomplish anything. She wanted to live in a place where people knew the same things about beauty that she did, but she couldn't tell her mother that, because her mother only knew how to color inside the lines. She has to know more than that, Meredith thought. How could anyone have been alive for forty-four years and never felt her body blaze?

    But even Matt had been gently skeptical of Meredith's motives. "Merry, I know you're tremendously devoted to the Temple, and I know that intellectually you understand things like cooperation and interdependence. But the kind of community living you'll find in the novitiate dorm can be very difficult, even for adults."

    "You think I'm an idealistic kid."

    "I think you're idealistic, yes. I don't think that's a problem. I wish more people were more idealistic. As for your being a kid, well, we've never had anyone this young in the dorm. Most people are older and have had more varied life experiences when they come to us."

    ''I'm trying to get more varied life experiences! And Raji's not that much older than I am."

    "No, he isn't, but he's lived all over the world. He's lived in communes in Israel and Africa, not just in the privileged conditions of, ah—"