The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories (45 page)

“Maybe.” I wadded the sheets together into a ball. I didn’t think that was it, though. Brown wouldn’t have lied about a new boy in his room in that case. And he wouldn’t have kept talking about my father in that edge way. I walked past Arabel. “Don’t worry, Arabel, if we have to go lezzy again, you know you’re
my first choice.”

She didn’t even look particularly happy about that.

My idiot roommate was awake, sitting bolt upright on the bunk where I’d left her. The poor brainless thing had probably been sitting there the whole time I’d been gone. I made up the bunk, stripped off my clothes for the second time tonight, and crawled in. “You can turn out the light any time,” I said.

She hopped over to
the wall plate, swathed in a nightgown that dated as far back as Old Man Moulton’s college days, or farther. “Did you get in trouble?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Of
course not. I wasn’t the one who tossed up. If anybody’s in trouble, it’s you,” I added maliciously.

She seemed to sag against the flat wallplate as if she were clinging to it for support. “My father—will they tell my father?” Her
face was flashing red and white again. And where would the vomit land this time? That would teach me to take out my frustrations on my roommate.

“Your father? Of course not. Nobody’s in trouble. It was a couple of fucked sheets, that’s all.”

She didn’t seem to hear me, “He said he’d come and get me if I got in trouble. He said he’d make me go home.”

I sat up in the bunk. I’d never seen a freshman
yet that wasn’t dying to go home, at least not one like Zibet, with a whole loving family waiting for her instead of a trust and a couple of snotty lawyers. But Zibet here was scared scutless at the idea. Maybe the whole campus was going edge. “You didn’t get in trouble,” I repeated. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

She was still hanging onto that wallplate for dear life.

“Come on”—Mary Masting,
she was probably having an attack of some kind and I’d get blamed for that, too. “You’re safe here. Your father doesn’t even know about it.”

She seemed to relax a little. “Thank you for not getting me in trouble,” she said and crawled back into her own bunk. She didn’t turn the light off.

Jiggin’ Jesus, it wasn’t worth it. I got out of bed and turned the fucked light off myself.

“You’re a good
person, you know that,” she said softly into the darkness. Definitely edge. I settled down under the covers, planning to masty myself to sleep, since I couldn’t get anything any other way, but very quietly. I didn’t want any more hysterics.

A hearty voice suddenly exploded into the room. “To the young men of Moulton College, to all my strong sons, I say—”

“What’s that?” Zibet whispered.

“First
night in Hell,” I said, and got out of bed for the thirtieth time.

“May all your noble endeavors be crowned with success,” Old Man Moulton said.

I slapped my palm against the wallplate and then fumbled through my still-unpacked shuttle bag for a nail file. I stepped up on Zibet’s bunk with it and started to unscrew the intercom.

“To
the young women of Moulton College,” he boomed again, “to
all my darling daughters.” He stopped. I tossed the screws and file back in the bag, smacked the plate, and flung myself back in bed.

“Who was that?” Zibet whispered.

“Our founding father,” I said, and then remembering the effect the word “father” seemed to be having on everyone in this edge place I added hastily, “That’s the last time you’ll have to hear him. I’ll put some plast in the works
tomorrow and put the screws back in so the dorm mother won’t figure it out. We will live in blessed silence for the rest of the semester.”

She didn’t answer. She was already asleep, gently snoring. Which meant so far I had misguessed every single thing today. Great start to the semester.

The admin knew all about the party. “You
do
know the meaning of the word restricks, I presume?” he said.

He was an old scut, probably forty-five. Dear Daddy’s age. He was fairly good-looking, probably exercising like edge to keep the old belly in for the freshman girls. He was liable to get a hernia. He probably jig jigged into a plastic bag, too, just like Daddy, to carry on the family name. Jiggin’ Jesus, there oughta be a law.

“You’re a trust student, Octavia?”

“That’s right.” You think I’d be
stuck with a fucked name like Octavia if I wasn’t?

“Neither parent?”

“No. Paid mother-surr. Trust name till twenty-one.” I watched his face to see what effect that had on him. I’d seen a lot of scared faces that way.

“There’s no one to write to, then, except your lawyers. No way to expel you. And restricks don’t seem to have any appreciable effect on you. I don’t quite know what would.”

I’ll
bet you don’t. I kept watching him, and he kept watching me, maybe wondering if I was his darling daughter, if that expensive jism in the plastic bag had turned out to be what he was boning after right now.

“What exactly was it you called your dorm mother?”

“Scut,” I said.

“I’ve longed to call her that myself a time or two.”

The sympathetic
buildup. I waited, pretty sure of what was coming.

“About this party—I’ve heard the boys have something new going. What is it?”

The question wasn’t what I’d expected. “I don’t know,” I said and then realized I’d let my guard down. “Do you think I’d tell you if I knew?”

“No, of course not. I admire that. You’re quite a young woman, you know. Outspoken, loyal, very pretty, too, if I may say so.”

Um-hmm. And you just happen to have a job for me,
don’t you?

“My secretary’s quit. She likes younger men, she says, although if what I hear is true, maybe she’s better off with me. It’s a good job. Lots of extras. Unless, of course, you’re like my secretary and prefer boys to men.”

Well, and here was the way out. No more virgie freshmen, no more restricks. Very tempting. Only he was at least forty-five, and somehow I couldn’t quite stomach
the idea of jig jig with my own father. Sorry, sir.

“If it’s the trust problem that’s bothering you, I assure you there are ways to check.”

Liar. Nobody knows who their kids are. That’s why we’ve got these storybook trust names, so we can’t show up on Daddy’s doorstep: Hi, I’m your darling daughter. The trust protects them against scenes like that. Only sometimes with a scut like the admin here,
you wonder just who’s being protected from whom.

“Do you remember what I told my dorm mother?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Double to you.”

Restricks for the rest of the year and a godspit alert band welded onto my wrist.

“I know what they’ve got,” Arabel whispered to me in class. It was the only time I ever saw her. The godspit alert band went off if I even mastied without permission.

“What?” I asked,
pretty much without caring.

“Tell you after.”

I met her outside, in a blizzard of flying leaves and cotton. The circulation system had gone edge again. “Animals,” she said.

“Animals?”

“Little
repulsive things about as long as your arm. Tessels, they’re called. Repulsive little brown animals.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “It’s got to be more than beasties. That’s elementary school stuff.
Are they bioenhanced?”

“You mean pheromones or something?” She frowned. “I don’t know. I sure didn’t see anything attractive about them, but the boys—Brown brought his to a party, carrying it around on his arm, calling it Daughter Ann. They all swarmed around it, petting it, saying things like ‘Come to Daddy.’ It was really edge.”

I shrugged. “Well, if you’re right, we don’t have anything to
worry about. Even if they’re bio-enhanced, how long can beasties hold their attention? It’ll all be over by midterms.”

“Can’t you come over? I never see you.” She sounded like she was ready to go lezzy.

I held up the banded wrist. “Can’t. Listen, Arabel, I’ll be late to my next class,” I said, and hurried off through the flailing yellow and white. I didn’t have a next class. I went back to the
dorm and took some float.

When I came out of it, Zibet was there, sitting on her bunk with her knees hunched up, writing busily in a notebook. She looked much better than the first time I saw her. Her hair had grown out some and showed enough curl at the ends to pick up on her features. She didn’t look strained. In fact she looked almost happy.

“What are you doing?” I hoped I said. The first
couple of sentences out of float it’s anybody’s guess what’s going to come out.

“Recopying my notes,” she said. Jiggin’, the things that make some people happy. I wondered if she’d found a boyfriend and that was what had given her that pretty pink color. If she had, she was doing better than Arabel. Or me.

“For who?”

“What?” she looked blank.

“What boy are you copying your notes for?”

“Boy?”
Now there was an edge to her voice. She looked frightened.

I said carefully, “I figure you’ve got to have a boyfriend.” And watched her go edge again. Mary doing Jesus, that must not have come out right at all. I wondered what I’d really said to send her off like that.

She backed
up against the bunk wall like I was after her with something and held her notebook flat against her chest. “Why do
you think that?”

Think what? Holy scut, I should have told her about float before I went off on it. I’d have to answer her now like it was still a real conversation instead of a caged rat being poked with a stick, and hope I could explain later. “I don’t know why I think that. You just looked—”

“It’s true, then,” she said, and the strain was right back, blinking red and white.

“What is?” I
said, still wondering what it was the float had garbled my innocent comment into.

“I had braids like you before I came here. You probably wondered about that.” Holy scut, I’d said something mean about her choppy hair.

“My father…”—she clutched the notebook like she had clutched the wallplate that night, hanging on for dear life. “My father cut them off.” She was admitting some awful thing to
me and I had no idea what.

“Why did he do that?”

“He said I tempted…men with it. He said I was a—that I made men think wicked thoughts about me. He said it was my fault that it happened. He cut off all my hair.”

It was coming to me finally that I had asked her just what I thought I had: whether she had a boyfriend.

“Do you think I—do that?” she asked me pleadingly.

Are you kidding? She couldn’t
have tempted Brown in one of his bone-a-virgin moods. I couldn’t say that to her, though, and on the other hand, I knew if I said yes it was going to be toss-up time in dormland again. I felt sorry for her, poor kid, her braids chopped off and her scut of a father scaring the hell out of her with a bunch of lies. No wonder she’d been so edge when she first got here.

“Do you?” she persisted.

“You want to know what I think,” I said, standing up a little unsteadily. “I think fathers are a pile of scut.” I thought of Arabel’s story. Little brown animals as long as your arm and Brown saying, “Your father only wants to protect you.” “Worse than a pile of scut,” I said. “All of them.”

She looked at me, backed up against the wall, as if she would like to believe me.

“You want to know what
my father did to me?” I said. “He didn’t cut my braids off. Oh, no, this is lots better. You know about trust kids?”

She shook
her head.

“Okay. My father wants to carry on his precious name and his precious jig juice, but he doesn’t want any of the trouble. So he sets up a trust. He pays a lot of money, he goes jig jig in a plastic bag, and presto he’s a father, and the lawyers are left with
all the dirty work. Like taking care of me and sending me someplace for summer break and paying my tuition at this godspit school. Like putting one of these on me.” I held up my wrist with the ugly alert band on it. “He never even saw me. He doesn’t even know who I am. Trust me. I know about scutty fathers.”

“I wish…” Zibet said. She opened her book and started copying her notes again. I eased
down onto my bunk, starting to feel the post-float headache. When I looked at her again, she was dripping tears all over her precious notes. Jiggin’ Jesus, everything I said was wrong. The most I could hope for in this edge place was that the boys would be done playing beasties by midterms and I could get my grades up.

By midterms the circulation system had broken down completely. The campus
was knee-deep in leaves and cotton. You could hardly walk. I trudged through the leaves to class, head down. I didn’t even see Brown until it was too late.

He had the animal on his arm. “This is Daughter Ann,” Brown said. “Daughter Ann, meet Tavvy.”

“Go jig yourself,” I said, brushing by him.

He grabbed my wrist, holding on hard and pressing his fingers against the alert band until it hurt.
“That’s not polite, Tavvy. Daughter Ann wants to meet you. Don’t you, sweetheart?” He held the animal out to me. Arabel had been right. Hideous little things. I had never gotten a close look at one before. It had a sharp little brown face, with dull eyes and a tiny pink mouth. Its fur was coarse and brown, and its body hung limply off Brown’s arm. He had put a ribbon around its neck.

“Just your
type,” I said. “Ugly as mud and a hole big enough for even you to find.”

His grip tightened. “You can’t talk that way to my…”

“Hi,” Zibet said behind me. I whirled around. This was all I needed.

“Hi,” I said, and yanked my wrist free. “Brown, this is my roommate. My freshman roommate. Zibet, Brown.”

“And this
is Daughter Ann,” he said, holding the animal up so that its tender pink mouth gaped
stupidly at us. Its tail was up. I could see tender pink at the other end, too. And Arabel wonders what the attraction is?

“Nice to meet you, freshman roommate,” Brown muttered and pulled the animal back close to him. “Come to Papa,” he said, and stalked off through the leaves.

I rubbed my poor wrist. Please, please let her not ask me what a tessel’s for? I have had about all I can take for
one day. I’m not about to explain Brown’s nasty habits to a virgie.