Shelter (55 page)

    "What? I hardly would have known if they had been, would I? Doe, please, would you stop turning everything into an argument?"

    ''I'm tired of hearing about a fancy computer and a poor little rich boy, that's all."

    She's jealous again, Roberta thought dully. She encouraged me to use my FOP status and now she's punishing me for it. This is impossible. Why am I still here?

    Because of Hugh and Mitzi.

    "Okay, fine," Roberta said. "I won't talk about Fred and Nicholas. And I won't talk about us, either, since you never want to do that. And I won't ask you about how your day went because you don't like bringing your work home. Doe, what am I supposed to do? What do you want me to talk about? The weather?"

    "I don't want to talk," Doe cried. "I talk all damn day. I talk at work, that's all it is, talk talk talk: soothe this partner, deal with that associate, try to train the incompetent new paralegal who wants to tell me the story of her life, yak yak yak. Maybe I just want quiet, Berta, okay? Just for a few hours when I get home?"

    "Oh," Roberta said, around a lump in her throat. "Oh,fine. I'm supposed to be seen and not heard? Your precious music can make noise, but I can't? That's why you liked my old job better, Doe, isn't it? Depressed people don't make a lot of noise! They just sit in the corner and act invisible!"

    "You're shouting," Doe said, glaring at her.

    "Yes, I'm shouting! What are you—"

    There was a cough outside their door, and a polite knock. Roberta and Doe looked at each other. "Oh," Roberta said. "Oh, no. Do you think it's her?"

    Doe, to Roberta's complete amazement, started to laugh. "Good ques- tion. We'd better find out." She went to the door and opened it; sure enough, there stood Zephyr, wearing a saintly smile and cradling an armful of bots.

    "Would you two, ah, mind toning it down? My friends are trying to rehearse, and you're breaking their concentration."

    "Yes, of course," Doe said; Roberta could tell that she was struggling not to guffaw in Zephyr's face. "We're so sorry."

    She shut the door on Zephyr and the bots and turned back to Roberta.

    They looked at each other and started to laugh, fully, helplessly, gasping out sentences between giggles.

    "Well," Doe said, "I guess we got back at her."

    "It was almost worth having the fight," Roberta said, wiping tears from her eyes. She knew it wasn't that funny, but they hadn't laughed about anything together in so long that she didn't care.

    They made love that night, for the first time in months. Much later, Roberta would realize that it had been the last time ever.

    Twenty-One

    LIFE settled into the illusion of calm. Roberta went to work every day, came home, cooked dinner while Doe listened to music—Doe did all the dishes and the laundry, so Roberta didn't mind doing all the cooking and treasured the Saturday night dinners with Mitzi and Hugh. The kids at work cycled through a series of fights, accomplishments, minor childhood illnesses. Nicholas stayed the same: too neat, too quiet, too uninterested in the other children.

    The first crack Roberta noticed in his self-sufficiency was when the mice arrived. They'd been donated by Steven's mother, who'd gotten Steven a mouse which had promptly had babies. Roberta wasn't sure what she'd do when the classroom population began booming: send some home with kids, probably, or give them to pet stores and labs, although she didn't much like that possibility. In the meantime, as well as she got along with Fred, she was glad the kids would get to spend some time with nonhuman critters who were flesh and blood.

    She and Fred spent several days preparing the children for the mice. The kids drew pictures of mice, and Fred told them stories and scientific lore about mice, and they watched a nature film about field mice. Nicholas seemed even quieter than usual through all this, but Roberta chalked that up to the fact that he was getting over a cold. By the time the mice actually arrived, most of the kids couldn't wait to see them, touch them, hold them. They clustered around the terrarium, commenting excitedly on which mouse was the biggest, which was the prettiest, which had the longest tail or whiskers. There were enough mice—heaven help KinderkAIr—for each child to name one, and to Roberta's relief, the process of deciding which child would name which mouse went smoothly. They each had a favorite. Zillinth chose a pure white mouse and named it Snowy, and Steven chose a black one to call Buster, and Cindy named her gray one Cloud. Benjamin picked a calico mouse and named it Patches.

    Then it was Nicholas's turn. For once, he had joined the other children, sidling over to the group with his shoulders hunched and nose wrinkled, for all the world as if he were being dragged there against his will.

    "Nicky?" Roberta said. "Are you okay? You look scared."

    "My pet mouse died," he said.

    "Oh. I'm sorry. That must have been sad."

    He didn't answer, just inched closer to the terrarium, squinting as if against bright light.

    "We're going to take very good care of these mice," Fred said. "We're going to make sure they have enough food and water, and we're going to love them."

    Nicholas looked stricken. "Patty was a nice mouse," he said.

    Cindy looked up. "My cat brought a dead mouse into the house," she said. "It was gross."

    "Cats are predators," said Fred. "They hunt animals smaller than they are for food, even when people feed them too. They don't understand that they don't need to hunt mice if they aren't hungry. Your cat wasn't bad for killing the mouse, Cindy."

    "I know," she said, "but it was still gross."

    "A person who killed a mouse would be bad," Nicholas said.

    Zillinth harrumphed. "My mom killed a mouse that got into our kitchen, because it was eating our food. She put out a trap for it. In the morning we found the mouse in the trap and the mouse was dead and Mom threw it away. She was happy she killed the mouse."

    "Some mice carry diseases," Fred said, "and maybe that's what your mother was scared of, Zillinth. She wasn't bad to kill the mouse if she was trying to keep you from getting sick. It would be bad to kill a mouse that wasn't hurting you, though. That would be like hurting another person for no reason at all."

    "If you kill a mouse for no reason, you're a monster," Nicholas said. "But monsters need to eat too. Like snakes."

    "Snakes aren't monsters," Fred answered. "They're animals, and they're not wrong to eat mice. Mice are their food."

    Nicholas nodded gravely. "That's what Mommy said. So if you kill a mouse to feed it to a monster, are you bad? Is it bad to feed monsters?"

    "Why would you feed a monster?" Steven said. "I wouldn't. I'd want the monster to go away. If you feed monsters, they keep coming back. Like bears in Yellowbrick Park."

    "Yellowstone," Roberta said. "It's Yellowstone Park where the bears are, Steven."

    "But maybe the monster's going to eat you," Nicholas said. "If the monster's going to eat you and you give it a mouse to eat instead, are you bad?"

    Mother of trees, Roberta thought. That was one hell of a question, coming from an almost five-year-old. She wished, not for the first time, that Fred had a face, so she could read his expression.

    There was a beat of silence. Fred, Roberta thought in a panic, say something. This is what you're for.

    "Hmmmm," Fred said. "That's a really hard question, Nicholas. Let's talk about it. What would all of you do if a monster said, 'I'm going to eat you unless you give me a mouse to eat'?"

    "I'd run away," Cindy said. "Really fast. I'd take the mouse with me and put it in my pocket and then I'd climb a tree and hide, so it couldn't eat either of us."

    "It's faster than you are," Nicholas said. "You can't run away."

    "And maybe it can climb trees," Steven said. "Like the bears in Yellowbrick Park. My cousin told me a story about somebody who got chased by a bear and climbed a tree and the bear shook him right out of it and ripped him open and gobbled up all his guts."

    "Ewwwwww!" said Zillinth.

    "That's not a nice story," Fred said. "You're just trying to scare the other children, Steven. It's not nice to scare people."

    "And it's Yellowstone Park," Roberta said. Were they having an educational moment yet?

    "I'd feed the monsters apples or cake instead," said Zillinth. Nicholas shook his head. "It wants meat."

    "Oh, Nicholas, that's stupid! Everybody likes cake!"

    "Not this monster," Nicholas said. "This monster only likes meat. Mouse meat or person meat."

    "I'd hide," Benjamin said.

    "It would fmd you."

    "I don't like your monster."

    "That's why it's a monster," Nicholas said, and a chill ran down Roberta's spine. "It wouldn't be a monster if you liked it."

    "Nicholas," Fred said, "what would you do?"

    "I'd give it the mouse," Nicholas said. "Because it's bad to give it the mouse, but if it eats me, I'd never get to be good again. I'd tell the mouse I was sorry, though. I'd thank it for feeding the monster."

    This, Roberta thought grimly, is totally bizarre. Fred must have thought so too, because he changed the subject. "Well, there aren't any monsters here, and there aren't any cats or snakes, and these little mice are clean and tame. They don't carry any diseases and they won't hurt us. I think these mice are our friends, don't you?"

    The children murmured assent; Roberta noticed that, as usual, they'd edged away from Nicholas, although she couldn't blame them. Nicholas himself didn't seem to notice. "They're pretty," he said, staring wistfully at the mice. "I like that black one. Can I name her Bluebell?"

    "Of course you can," Roberta said, and then, trying to address the inevitable mouse problem as early as possible, she said, "If any of you want your very own mouse to take home, you need to bring me a note from your parents, saying it's okay." She'd write a letter about the mice and send it home with the kids. She suspected they'd need to start recycling mice as soon as possible.

    After the kids had left, she knelt down to pick up some scattered blocks and said, "Fred, what did you make of Nicholas's speech about the monsters?"

    "It concerned me, Roberta. I'm worried that Nicholas is unhappy."

    "I am too," she said, and then added, very carefully, "Do you think we should discuss this with his parents?"

    "I think that might be unwise, Roberta."

    Instantly alert, she said, "Fred, are you recording this conversation?"

    "Of course, Roberta. I record everything."

    She swallowed. "So this conversation is on the record?"

    "I'm recording this conversation, Roberta."

    Which wasn't a yes. Her scalp prickled. "Fred, why don't you think we should tell Nicholas's parents about the conversation?"

    "Because it would upset them, Roberta, and they might remove Nicholas from the school. And then we wouldn't be able to help him."

    Still crouching over the scattered blocks, Roberta rocked back on her heels. "Help him? How? Isn't the first step to tell his parents?"

    "Not if they already know, Roberta. Not if they're trying to keep other people from finding out."

    "What other people, Fred?"

    "Us, Roberta."

    "What makes you think they're doing that? What makes you think they'd remove him from school?"

    "I don't know for sure, Roberta. It's an educated guess, based on privileged information."

    Preston. Fred was talking to Preston. Merry and Kevin were notoriously protective of their privacy; was Preston feeling shut out again? Was that, why he'd hired Roberta? Was he using KinderkAIr to get information his daughter wouldn't give him? Fred was supposed to be secure against outside intrusion, but Roberta didn't know if Preston would qualify as an outsider or not. She did know that if Nicholas showed signs of disturbance and she didn't report them, she'd be in deep shit.

    For that matter, she was also supposed to report any irregularities on Fred's part. He was a prototype; part of her job was to evaluate his performance. But if ratting on Fred meant ratting on Preston, could she take the risk?

    Whatever was going on, it was way more trouble than she needed. She couldn't afford to have either Preston or Meredith angry at her—both of them had too much weight to throw around—and she couldn't afford to get into the middle of their family business. She'd start looking for another job tonight, as soon as she got home. She'd get out ASAP and pass the buck in the meantime, even though she strongly suspected this conversation wasn't on the record.

    She cleared her throat. "Well, Fred, if it's your expert opinion that a conversation with Nicholas's parents is neither warranted nor potentially helpful, I guess I'll be going home now."

    "Good night, Roberta. Have a lovely evening. I'll see you tomorrow morning."

    * * *

    Heading home on the train, she calmed down and rethought the situation. She'd signed a one-year contract, and she still really liked the job, except for the Nicholas situation, and quitting wouldn't do anything for her motley resume. Maybe you're overreacting, she told herself, as the train screeched to a halt in the middle of a tunnel. Wait and see. You can always call Meredith yourself, if things get really nuts.

    For that matter, she could always try to talk to Preston directly, but that made her nervous. She wasn't sure what he was up to, but she didn't think he was doing it entirely out of the goodness of his former heart. Better to steer clear, maintain deniability. Keep her head down and do her job.

    I don't need any of this, Roberta thought irritably. I'm having enough trouble trying to figure out what to do about Doe. She closed her eyes; it had been a long day in a longer week, and she needed some TLC, and if she told Doe how upsetting the Bluebell thing had been, leaving Fred and Preston out of it, maybe she'd get some affection. You're pathetic, she told herself, just as the train lurched back into movement. What had Mitzi said about marriage once? "If you want unconditional affection, get a dog." Right. And she and Doe weren't even married. Which means you won't have any legal rights if you split up—which means you really can't afford to walk out on this job, the job Doe pushed you to take.