Forge of Heaven (16 page)

And a glass of white wine. Maybe two glasses. It had been a day.

It had been, he remembered,
two
days. And he was home. Safe.

The ship was on approach now, for docking at about 440h. It had become tomorrow’s problem. Tonight his wife had decided to cook, and thanks to that decision and a small crisis with a beauti-

Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 1 0 1

cian, he had the privacy and comfort of his own well-secured walls around him, instead of a restaurant where the media might insert a lens in the table bouquet. It damned sure beat takeout and a nap in the office for a second night. Whatever Judy’s personal reasons, whatever fuss she was having with their teenaged daughter, it was a very good night for her to have resurrected her culinary skills.

He found her in the kitchen, in an apron, pushing buttons on the grill and looking domestic and frustrated, her meticulous coif-fure a little frayed. He came up behind her, having gotten half a surly glance, put his arms around her—still no yielding—and kissed her cheek.

“You can pour the wine,” Judy said.

He saw the wineglasses—two—on the white tile counter. He pressed keys on the fridge: it delivered the chilled wine, and he slipped the bottle under the opener. Hiss and pop, as the wine began to breathe.

Wonderful sound.

“Pour it,” Judy said. “Pour me one.”

Not good. Not celebratory, that was sure. He poured two full glasses and handed her one.

“Our daughter,” she began.

“Dye didn’t solve it?”

Mistake. Judy took a deep, angry breath. And took a large gulp of the expensive wine before she set the glass down on the counter.

Thump, face averted, both hands flat on the counter. “Setha. Setha,
your
daughter—her friends—her friends, Denny Ord and Mark Andrews . . .”

“I know them.”

“Clearly you don’t know them well enough! They’ve been arrested. Swept up in a Freethinkers’ dive down on Blunt!”

A moment of panic. “Kathy wasn’t involved.”

“Kathy was with me.”

“Good.” Deep breath. “Good sense of her.”

“Do you understand me? Our daughter has friends in
jail
.”

“They’re both from good families. I’m sure they were doing what all young people do at one time or another, slipping down to the Trend. She wasn’t involved in it, and their parents will get them out of their mess. It’ll all pass.”

1 0 2 • C . J . C h e r r y h

“I want some support, Setha! I want some backing here!”

“I’m sure I’ll back whatever you think needs backing, but I’m operating on short information, at the moment, Judy. She wasn’t with them, and I’m sure the boys haven’t done anything but be in the wrong place. It will all work out.”

“You don’t understand!”

“I know I don’t understand, Judy. I’m asking for information.”

“Her
friends,
this Denny and Mark . . . I’m forbidding her to associate with these people. Forbidding her even to speak to them, ever again! I want your backing in this. I want her school sessions changed! I want her to transfer to St. Agnes!”

“That’s a little extreme, isn’t it? If you haven’t seen the news, Judy, a lot of people are getting swept up on Blunt at the moment.

Nine-tenths of the people hauled in may be innocent, maybe even just passing on the street, and nobody’s even going to notice if two teenagers got into the sweep. There’s a security watch on. They’re pulling in everyone who’s anomalous down there, no proof these boys are actually guilty of anything at all but bad timing. I certainly don’t think there’s any need to pull Kathy out of a school where she’s happy.”

“She’s running with the wrong people, Setha! She bleaches her hair, her friends get arrested—three guesses, Setha, where she was supposed to be today, when she
didn’t
get arrested! With them! I’ll bet, with them!”

“Judy, proportion. Proportion.”

“She’s cut sessions before now to go down there! Did you know that? She’s cut three sessions this month, and the school didn’t report it, because
they
didn’t think it was significant, and I just happened to see her attendance record when I excused her out today to get her hair done! That’s what’s going on, Setha! I can’t quit my job! I
refuse
to quit my job because I can’t trust my own daughter to be at sessions without checking up on her every minute! If I can’t trust her to go to sessions or to be home when she’s supposed to be home, what can I do?”

He took a deep swallow of wine himself. “We can certainly have a talk with the school administrators about their reporting policies.”

“I stayed home from work today. I had Renee come here, and I Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 1 0 3

made it abundantly clear I didn’t want this bleach job talked about in the shop.”

“Did it work? The dye?”

“It’s at least better. And then when Renee left— Have you seen Kathy’s closet?”

“I—no.”

“Things that don’t fit decently, low cut blouses—she’s asked me for clothes money three times in the last month, and what she buys is a disgrace, an absolute disgrace, Setha! Sweaters down to here.”

A measurement low on Judy’s own elegantly bloused bosom.

Which generated a grease stain on the mauve silk to which Judy at the moment seemed oblivious. “Pants that show everything! Shoes you can’t walk in! Tees with crude language and shorts that wouldn’t make decent underwear! I took her shopping after Renee finished.”

“That sounds like a good thing.”

“I took her to lunch. We had a perfectly nice lunch. Then I took her down on Lebeau, to Marie Trent’s.”

Judy’s favorite shopping venue, where the establishment brought outfits out one at a time, modeled on live mannequins, and served tea while the systems constructed your purchase to fit your own physique and your own coloring.

“What did we spend on this venture?”

“Plenty! Her hair styled, a manicure, and Jeanne Lorenz jewelry. And then she didn’t want the clothes once they made them.

Marie Trent herself tried to explain to her that she does have too much bust and she could stand a little sculpting, and meanwhile she should deemphasize that feature with a perfectly beautiful look for her. Kathy said to Ms. Trent’s face that
she
could do with bigger breasts and her shirts all looked like sacks. At that point, Ms. Trent said I could take her out of the shop, and I tried to, but Kathy threw a fit, a screaming
fit,
Setha! I was so embarrassed.

I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. And Kathy wouldn’t leave the shop. Kathy kept saying, quote, no bitch could throw her out, and nobody could talk to her that way, and that she was your daughter . . .”

“God.”

“Oh, yes,
your
name got into this. Now, are you worried? Kathy 1 0 4 • C . J . C h e r r y h

said she knew grotesques on Blunt with more taste, this, when another customer had come into the shop! Ms. Trent threatened to call the police.” Judy was shaking. She picked up the glass and almost slopped the wine over the rim getting another sip. “I can never go back there, Setha. I can never go back there. I don’t think I ever want to leave the apartment again in my life!”

“Judy.” He did feel sorry for her. Glass and all, he put his arms around her. “You have to go back there. Tomorrow. I’d advise an apology to Ms. Trent and a very large purchase. Break the budget.”

“I don’t know why Kathy’s acting like this, Setha, I don’t understand it!”

“I’ll talk to her.” At the moment he had Judy in his arms and a wineglass precariously crushed against her bosom. He disengaged carefully. “Are you all right?”

“I need you to be home and deal with this!”

He was suddenly aware of a burnt smell. “I think the fish is done.”

“Damn!” Judy burst into tears and grabbed the oven door.

“I’ll talk to Kathy.” It was an escape. Judy was about at the screaming stage herself, and it didn’t do to push her to communicate. As Judy should learn about Kathy someday, except they were too much alike. Two queens couldn’t possibly sit on the same throne.

Cutting school sessions and sneaking out into the real nether-side of Blunt, however, was a serious matter. A screaming fit in Marie Trent’s was serious on another level, an exposure to gossip that did his wife and daughter no good, and him no political good at all under present circumstances, with the media on the hunt and frustrated. He’d better call Marie Trent’s himself, apologize pro-fusely, and buy something extremely expensive for Judy, trusting Marie Trent had Judy’s sizes in the computer.

He could do all these things
after
he’d dealt with Mr. Andreas Gide, tomorrow morning, assuming the ambassador’s ship arrived on schedule.

God, Judy and Kathy could time things amazingly. One night he spent at the office, and they were immediately at each other’s throats.

He took the lift up to Kathy’s hallway, walked to Kathy’s door.

Hesitated. Knocked.

Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 1 0 5

“Kathy. It’s your father.”

“Go away!”

“Kathy, I’ve got a ship from Earth on my doorstep and your mother’s burning supper downstairs. We need to talk.”

“No!”

“I heard about Marie Trent. I sympathize with your position and I’m not sure her clothes are your style, but can we possibly avoid stationwide media coverage?”

A heavy thump. Something hit the wall. Little thumps then as bare footsteps marched to the door.

It opened. Kathy stood there flatfooted, a beautiful teenaged girl in a gray, too-old-for-her skirt, a chic white silk blouse half-unbuttoned and hanging its tail out to the left, and her hair an unKathy-like and shocking red-brown, with her olive complexion.

Behind her, the closet was a disaster area, clothes, mostly black and gray and white, flung over the bed and onto the floor, along with a confetti of fabric bits on the floor. His daughter’s chest was heaving. She had a scissors in her hand.

“She threw out all my clothes and put her damned castoffs in my closet!”

He heaved a sigh. “We’ll find your old clothes. Put down the scissors.”

“She says she put them in the disposer! Those were my
favorites
!

She hates me! Everybody hates me!”

“Damn. Look, Kathy.” He put a hand on her shoulder. Kathy flung it off, a hazard with the scissors. He took the implement out of her hand, reached in his pocket and extracted his wallet, and now that he had her slight attention, drew from that mesmerizing object a credit card, holding it up between them. “Kathy, I’ll give you five hundred on my card. Just go buy something on your own tomorrow, without your mother. I’ll excuse you out of sessions.”

Five hundred had secured his daughter’s solid interest. She wiped her eyes and took the card.

“I just don’t know why she can’t leave me alone.”

“I’m on your side, right down to the point you cut your sessions, which is in the school records. On that score, I have an objection.

Cutting up your clothes . . . I can almost sympathize with that.

They don’t suit you.”

1 0 6 • C . J . C h e r r y h

“I hate them!”

“The clothes? That’s evident.”

“The school. The damned school! I hate them, too!”

“Don’t use that language, please. What’s the trouble?”

“They’re a bore, and they’re always finding fault, no matter what I do.”

“Ippoleta Nazrani?”

“Is a skinny-ass whore.”

“Language. Language, Kathy.”

“Mignette.”

“Pardon?”

“I want to change my name. I want to change schools.”

“Why?”

“I’m bored. I’m bored, bored, bored,
bored
with those fools.”

“Boredom rather well damns your own imagination, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t care. I don’t like always having to watch what I do, watch what I say, all because
Ippoleta
is so good and so sweet. She’s a lump. She’s just a lump. She’d wear these things! I won’t!”

“Kathy.”

“Mignette. I want to be Mignette. It’s what my friends call me.”

“Mignette.” It was always something new with the female of the species. She wanted to change her school and change her name. As if that would solve it all. “I hope I’m still your father.”

“Mother’s not my mother.” A furious kick at the detritus of fabric snips on the floor. “Not anymore! And I haven’t got anything to wear and she says I’m not to talk to Denny and Mark, who are the
only
intelligent people in my whole class. And she embarrassed hell out of me with this
stupid
haircut and this
stupid
dye job and I have to go out in public and have that
stupid
woman tell me I’m fat because I have a chest and she doesn’t!”

“You know, Kathy—Mignette—I completely sympathize about the remarks. But you can’t pitch a fit in your mother’s favorite shop. She took you there because she cares about you and she wanted to give you what she thinks is pretty.”

“She took me there because she thinks I’m fat, too, and she doesn’t like my clothes and she hates my friends and she’s thrown out all my stuff, and she just drives me
crazy,
papa, she just drives me crazy!”

Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 1 0 7

Now it was tears. Hormone wars, he’d about bet, fiftyish wife and teenaged daughter, who physically took after his side of the family. He gathered his outraged daughter in his arms and hugged her hard. “There, there, Mignette or Kathy, you’ll have five cee to go fix this tomorrow. You’re a good kid. You manage pretty well, all taken together—you don’t do drugs, you don’t do illicits, you usually don’t do things that I have to explain on the news and I appreciate that, I respect it, I really do. You can just come by the office tomorrow when you get through and show me what you’ve bought. And I’ll talk to your mother.”

“She’s not my mother, I tell you!”

“I’m afraid you’re stuck with biological fact, darling girl, you’re hers as well as mine, which is why you’re always fighting with each other. I want you to wash your face, tuck your shirttail in, and come downstairs.”

“No!”

“You can’t starve. I’m sure it’s a lovely fish, even a little singed.