The Golden Fleece (19 page)

Adam had done his level best to refresh his arguments when the new terminology became fashionable. “It’s always been the case,” he told his wayward wife, “that people have indulged in some activities for the sake of the ends to which they serve as means—purposive, or telic, behavior—while indulging in others purely for the sake of the momentary, or paratelic, sensations they produce. The most obvious instance is the difference between eating food for its nutritive value and eating for the sake of taste sensations. What PIAs are doing is redressing a balance that had been tipped in favor of the paratelic—one of whose consequences was a society in which more than half the population was morbidly obese. It wasn’t just that we’d become a consumer society, but a society that found pleasure in the act of consumption rather than using its purchases to building anything substantial. PIAs will restore the balance; while TGADs allow us to maximize paratelic pleasure, PIAs will allow us to maximize telic pleasure in accomplishment and achievement: Pride
and
Joy. We’ll all have the means to become better people, Lilith.”

“But that isn’t what will happen, Adam,” she had insisted, stubborn in her rebellion. “What will actually happen is that an already-divided society will become even more divided, between people without opportunities, who blot out the misery of their circumstances with TGADs, and people with opportunities, who’ll delight in addiction to more-or-less rewarding kinds of work, wallowing ecstatically in the saintliness of deferred gratification. What will happen, in the long run, is that the members of the middle class will become even more insanely smug than they are now, thanks to the focusing powers of PI A. I don’t want to be a part of that, Adam. I want to be a
whole person.
I want to be
my own
person, not some drug-addled slave to concentrated ambition.”

And so the argument had rumbled on, while Adam experimented with various kinds of PIA patch, until he found the one best suited to his particular vocation, while Lilith had worn the shortest sleeves she could find—in dead and living clothes alike—to show the world that her arms and mind were clean. That kind of cleanliness, in her perverted opinion, really had been next to godliness—but the conventional kind had fallen increasingly under the responsibility of Adam, who had become more and more intent on keeping a tidy house, as well as a tidy appearance and a tidy mind.

In retrospect, he should have realized five years before it actually came about that the break-up was inevitable, but he really had loved his wife, just as she had loved him, in her fashion. That was one thing the patches seemed impotent to affect; all the telically-focused bioscience in the world had not yet succeeded in manufacturing a reliable love-potion—nor in finding a cure for love-sickness, for those of a contrary disposition.

~ * ~

After the soup, following tradition, came the fish course. The sole was, of necessity, farmed and genetically modified—which led the conversation in a perfectly natural way to the prospects for the revivification of the oceans. Adam, as the party’s bioscientist, was forced to take on the role of expert judge, even though he had never worked with vertebrates and had no expertise in ecological engineering.

“We’re winning the battle,” he assured Judith, who seemed genuinely interested. “The declining pH and the extinction rate grab all the headlines because even blissed-out paratelics can understand simple numbers, but they don’t reflect the complex truth of the situation. The key to the whole problem—global warming included—is new and better algae. Get the algae right and not only will the fish will flourish, but the problematic surplus of carbon dioxide will be mopped up with far greater efficiency than any mere forest will ever be able to achieve.”

“And it tastes good too,” Eve put in, referring to the marine salad garnish, which had been transported from the Atlantic littoral that very morning.

“My mother used to give us seaweed to eat when I was a kid,” Nick recalled. “Laverbread, they used to call it. Extinct now, I dare say.”

“Only in the shops,” Adam assured him. “The sole’s magnificent, Eve—done to perfection.

“Thanks,” Eve said. “It’s very difficult to judge the frying time, especially when you’re doing six at a time in a mammoth pan, but if you can get the butter to exactly the right temperature....”

“Eve’s a genius in the kitchen,” Nick put in, cheerfully interrupting her.

“Not just in the kitchen,” Eve supplied, blushing slightly as she realized that the remark might be taken for a
double entendre.
She hadn’t been intent on advertising her skills in the marital bedroom, but her expertise as a mother. Baby Samuel— who was two years old now and not, technically speaking, a baby any longer—hadn’t uttered a sound thus far, and probably wouldn’t.

There, but for fortune,
Adam thought, allowing himself another twinge of regret as he pretended not to notice the delicate pink flush that had stained Eve’s pale porcelain cheeks. He knew, though, that there had been more than one kind of fortune involved in Eve’s decision to abandon her career in accountancy to concentrate on household management. Nick Miller made more money than all four of his guests put together; Ruth could no more afford to give up her career than Lilith had, even though a solicitor specializing in company law probably commanded a substantially higher salary than a university teacher who was still four or five years away from a professorship. If he’d been slightly more fortunate in filing patents, Adam’s might have been a different story, but he was convinced that Lilith’s detachment and eventual defection from their joint enterprise had cost him dear in more ways than one.

When Eve and Nick got up to clear the plates for a second time, Adam turned to Judith and asked whether her edutainment work ever involved her with the university.

“Not really,” she said. “It’s mostly aimed at younger age-groups. I’m not much of a talking head farmer in any case, more an infrastructure planner. What sort of web resources do you use in your teaching?”

“I don’t do that much teaching, to be honest,” Adam admitted. “Lecturer’s just a title. I have postgrad students, but they’re really my research assistants. Basically, I’m a lab rat.” He added one more mental click to the tally of things that he and Judith didn’t have in common, and assumed that she was doing the same.

He was almost grateful when Ruth leaned forward across the table to address them both in a quasi-confidential manner, saying: “I really envy Eve. I know the domestic goddess thing is supposed to be old-fashioned, but it can’t ever go out of style, can it? And she’s so utterly perfect in the role. Seth does more than his share, bless him, but even between the two of us we just can’t find the time to do the housekeeping to this standard, let alone entertaining.”

Adam knew that it was a matter of focused attention rather than time, but it would have been impolite to say so. “Eve is an artist,” he said. “Even when she was training to be an accountant, she was an artist. Whatever she does, she does with an unmatchable flair. It’s Nick I envy.”

“And I envy you for being able to say so without fear of reprisal,” Seth said, smiling at Ruth to emphasize that he was only joking.

Ruth smiled back as if she believed him. No matter what somatic engineers might accomplish in the future, Adam thought, Ruth would never look half as beautiful as Eve.

In spite of all the food-bearing skills they had developed, it still required all Nick and Eve’s collective effort to carry in the silver platter bearing the roasted suckling pig, neatly encircled by a chain of roast potatoes, topped and tailed with conical heaps of diced carrot and broccoli florets. They had to make a second trip to bring the plates, which they had left behind in order to give their guests an adequate interval to admire the meat.

Once the plates had been distributed, Nick began to carve. Adam was the only person at the table who had ever practiced dissection, but he had to concede, to his secret chagrin, that Nick was a better slicer than he would ever be. The chorus of murmurous admiration went on for a long time, renewed when Eve brought out the sauceboat. Adam, in his capacity as oldest friend, helped out by pouring more wine, making sure that he got a particularly opulent glassful of the ‘98—which he then had to gulp, in order to pretend that he’d been more scrupulous in his division. Nobody seemed to notice, except Eve, who didn’t seem to mind.

Adam observed that Eve waited until everyone else had started eating before she picked up her fork; even then, she took up her wine-glass in her other hand instead of her knife, in order to have a few more moments to watch her guests’ reactions.

Their reactions would have been effusive in any case, but Adam’s was perfectly sincere. The pork was superb, the sauce ambrosial. He saw Eve smile as she put her wine-glass down to take up her knife, and knew that for her, that had been the critical point of the whole evening. The dessert was still to come, and would doubtless be unimaginably sweet, but he and Eve both knew that the heart of any meal is the main course, and that the moment when the main course is put to the test is the first succulent mouthful.

Adam smiled discreetly sideways at Eve, to signal his recognition of her contentment, and gave her a near-imperceptible nod. That brought an extra twitch of broadness to her smile, which she maintained while she cut the meat on her plate, added a moderate complement of sauce-steeped vegetables and slowly brought the fork to her mouth, savoring every instant of expectation. Adam was still staring at her as her head snapped back, and then jerked forward. The mouthful of food was blasted out again, scattering its glutinous fragments in every direction before they cascaded down upon the tablecloth and her immediate neighbors’ plates.

Ruth screamed. Seth’s jaw dropped. Adam couldn’t see Judith’s reaction because he had already turned his back on her as he leapt to his feet, but he saw Nick’s.

Nick was utterly horrified, and for one fleeting moment the expression on his face was pure wrath: anger that his dinner party had been spoiled, and that his carefully-laid plans had
gone wrong.
By the time the anger was replaced by concern, Eve had fallen to the floor, jerking uncontrollably.

Adam knelt down beside her, supporting her head and forcing the edge of his napkin into her mouth to make sure that she couldn’t bite through her tongue. “Phone an ambulance, Seth!” he said, trying not to shout. “Tell them it’s a type-two NA seizure. Ruth, get me a cushion from the sitting-room. Judith, get these chairs out of the way and help me pull her clear of the table-legs. She’ll be okay, as long as she doesn’t damage herself.” The last assurance, meant for Nick—whose concern was mounting exponentially—was not entirely honest. Adam was no doctor, but he was a bioscientist, and he knew perfectly well that the world had not yet seen the worst of type-two seizures, and that no one had any idea as yet of the full scope of the damage they might do.

Everyone did as Adam told them to do; he was, after all, the only bioscientist in the room, fully entitled to set goals and benchmarks in a situation of this sort. When Eve was clear of any hard surfaces, laid on her side with Adam and the cushion both supporting her head, everyone became preternaturally still, as if they could somehow force motionless on the victim of the fit by means of their own contrived inertia.

“Call a cab, Judith,” Adam said, when the silence became unbearable. “Nick can ride with Eve in the ambulance; Seth, you and I can follow it with Judith. Ruth will have to stay here, with Samuel.” When Ruth opened her mouth to object he added: “Samuel knows you, probably better than me. I need to go with Eve.” He didn’t explain why he needed to go with Eve, allowing Ruth to infer that it was some kind of medical necessity.

Nick was becoming hysterical, in spite of Adam’s brief reassurance that all would be well. The future possibilities opening before his vivid imagination were putting his earlier horror to shame. For a moment or two, Adam thought that he might have a second seizure victim on his hands, but then Ruth grabbed hold of Nick and hugged him, babbling that it would all be okay, that type two seizures were eminently treatable, and never fatal.
Hardly ever
would have been more accurate, but it wasn’t an occasion for accuracy.

By the time the ambulance arrived, well within the official response-time target. Eve had passed into a quieter phase of unconsciousness and Adam felt sure in his own mind that she really would be okay. He gave a curt report to the senior paramedic, and then stood aside as Eve was loaded on to a stretcher and borne away. The cab that Judith had called was already waiting; it followed in the ambulance’s slipstream all the way to the hospital, with Adam, Seth and Judith wedged in together on the back seat.

Once they reached the hospital, however, there was nothing to do but surrender control to the staff and wait. Adam knew that the waiting would be hard; telics always found waiting hard, especially in the wake of something going wrong. Open-ended waiting was the worst of all. Pleasure In Achievement was all very well, until achievement was frustrated—as Adam had had abundant opportunity to discover during and after the divorce. He left the job of calming Nick to Seth, who seemed both willing and able to take it on, while he sat down, uncomfortably aware that all the color must have drained from his cheeks, and that his distress must be clearly visible.