Eclipses v1 0, p.17
Eclipses (v1.0), page 17
“Beth, I was so afraid I would never hold you like this again,” he said softly.
“Car’s warm!”
They had not heard Erik open the door.
He felt Beth’s body loosen; then she stooped over to pull on the stockings. She was puzzled by Aram’s comment, but still smiling as she took his hand, as if he—or she—needed some kind of reassurance.
Once on the path, Beth walked quickly to ward off the cold. Aram raced to keep up with her long stride all the way to the car. She climbed inside and stuck her feet under the blower. Aram got in the driver’s side, Erik into the cramped area behind the seats. It was a small vehicle, little more than a covered scooter, useful only for quick trips to the depot to pick up small packages or whatever was not too heavy to strap onto the carrier racks on the top. With two adults and a child, the car was about at capacity, and it took off sluggishly when Aram slipped it into gear. But its very smallness brought Beth close to him. She put her hand on his knee, and he glanced over to see her still looking puzzled but still smiling.
Erik leaned forward to look at his mother’s feet. “Where are your boots?”
“Somewhere at the bottom of the Rift River, I suspect,” she said. “There was a flash flood …”
“Were you near Mount Hammil when it blew?” he asked excitedly. “What was it like?”
“So it was Hammil,” she said, then nodded thoughtfully. “Nearer than I would have liked, though it’s odd that we heard nothing. No blast noises. Tremors, though—strong ones.”
Aram felt queasy. He remembered the niggling worry he’d had that she might have strayed into the volcano’s blast zone last month. It had persisted despite the vulcanologists’ assurances that the entire area had been thoroughly cleared before the explosive eruption. No one had been injured except a few courting reptiles they had been unable to roust from the area. Still, one slim woman on a quiet solar bike might have been overlooked. He remembered all too clearly the circumstances under which he’d first seen Beth—standing right atop the ledge that Kelly had packed full of explosives. She had ignored the warning whistles and told him years later she had thought it was a bird calling, a bird she’d never heard before.
Foresters had helped the vulcanologists drive the wildlife out of the danger zone with smoke bombs and some favorable weather conditions that kept the smoke low and effective. They had used noise generators, too, and strobe lights during the last night. All that activity would be difficult for any human to misinterpret, but a blast whistle didn’t sound like a birdcall, either, and Aram had harbored concern for her safety. The awful thing now was realizing that it did not compare with the hours of terror he’d endured between the two messages last night. Beth’s death would have been terrible; but if she had simply decided not to come home, he couldn’t have endured.
“Aram, what’s wrong?” she said.
“How close were you?” he said, his voice feeling choked.
“To the blast? About fifty kilometers, if I’ve placed Ham-mil correctly. If I hadn’t been stupid enough to camp in a dried-out riverbed, I’d have been fine and home on time— well, almost on time.”
Erik laughed. “Wait until I tell Alexi and Pola. You’re always telling us to watch for water, but you—”
“Do as I say, not as I do,” Beth said. “And remember that it was fall in the riftlands, with no rainfall for months.”
“Yes, but you wouldn’t have let us do it. Is that what made you late? You should have been home a month ago. Dad was worried, and Maria finally got fed up and went back to the farm.”
“Maria’s gone?” Beth turned to look at Aram.
She would be feeling guilty for inconveniencing Maria, and Aram was at a loss to understand how that could be after all these years. He patted her knee comfortingly. It was warm to his touch. “Don’t worry. Maria left the keys and a long list of instructions for me to turn over to you.”
Beth fell silent and turned to stare out the window. And for the rest of the trip home she answered Erik’s questions with monosyllables. Troubled, Aram kept his eyes on the road. He couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable about Beth’s silence. She was too sensitive about this compulsion she had to contribute her share to the household, too willing to underestimate her own worth. Even worse, her remorse over being late in picking up her burdens had wiped that sexy smile right off her face.
Beth retreated from her family at the first opportunity. There was nowhere to hide, but they were unlikely to disturb her during a bath; her need of one was obvious and easy for them to accept.
She selected one of the warm whirlpools that was set back from the swimming pool in a little grotto. Ginger trilliums were overgrowing the entrance with broad, heart-shaped leaves that glistened like satin. Inside, she was screened from view. She needed time alone to think, and maybe the swirling waters would help soothe the knot that had tied up her stomach the moment she’d learned Maria had gone home and Aram had the keys and list of instructions. It was one thing to deal with Maria on the issue of the household subcontract— just how to do it had taken weeks of planning while she’d rafted the Rift River. Dealing with Aram was quite another. She wished she had a year to think of how to do it. After all, if she took the same stand with Aram that she had planned to take with Maria—take only the part of the subcontract that suited her—it would be Aram who would be left to solve the problem of what to do with the rest of the contract, not Maria. That hardly seemed fair return for his doing what he thought was a kindness. He had far more important things to do than find someone to oversee levels of cordwood and sand in preparation for blizzards. Furthermore, he might be reluctant to give up the catering contract year-round on Maria’s behalf. He knew Maria enjoyed doing it and probably never noticed that for twelve years Maria continued to take special pains to gratify Aram’s needs, not Beth’s. He would be at a loss to understand why Beth wanted full control, especially after he learned the whole purpose in not accepting the entire contract was to provide Beth with more time to pursue the programming courses. It would sound insane. If he inquired about what field of programming she was interested in, as he was sure to do, and she told him that she didn’t know yet, it would sound insane to him. He always knew exactly why he did something. In Beth’s place he would be able to tell precisely how much of his day he needed to devote to training, studying and everything else, including catering. Beth had no idea of how much time she would need for retraining, no idea of how much time the catering would take when she wasn’t simply following Maria’s preplanned menus. But if she wasn’t going trekking in the summer, she knew she would need a diversion, and catering Aram’s gathering would provide that diversion. The time adjustments would get resolved eventually.
Beth realized she had been sitting on the step of the pool in water only hip deep. She eased herself down until the water swirled over her shoulders. The feel of it was familiar: the currents like those of the Rift River, the heat like the sun’s. But she didn’t find herself soothed. Instead, she was shrinking and becoming angry at the familiar fears. She’d spent twelve years enduring greatland apple pies and cobblers and Bettys and strudels and dumplings and upside-down cakes, not to mention jellies and jams, all planned and prepared by Maria from the first day each year there were half a dozen ripe fruit until the last apple was gone—all because they were Aram’s favorite fruit. Beth liked apples, too, but she was far more fond of Serensunar’s raspberries, which grew wild in the low-lying valleys and canyons. Maria knew of Beth’s fondness for raspberries, and she did see to it that they were served once or twice each season. And Beth always thanked Maria, and Maria would nod, and Beth had the feeling that if she had failed to thank Maria (as Aram failed to thank her for the apple desserts when he was busy) raspberries would never be served again. And wouldn’t it be nice just to have a bowl of apples on the table after dinner (or raspberries!) perhaps with goats’ cheese instead of sugary desserts? Yes, half the problem—no, maybe all of it—was that even after twelve years the social atmosphere of the estate had Maria’s stamp on it. Not Beth’s, not even Aram’s! And that wasn’t fair, either.
But if it was unfair, why had Beth waited twelve years to change it? Beth sighed. She knew why, and knew Aram wouldn’t understand. If she had found the diamonds she could have had raspberries any time she wanted and never have given a thought to how much having them would lower her credit column. Aram wouldn’t understand why she hadn’t had them anyway, for Aram’s credit column had more aughts before the decimal than anyone’s on the planet, and Beth’s signature against it was as good as Aram’s. So he’d be worried about being fair to Maria, and he wouldn’t presume to change the contracts she had left, especially one as important as the catering contract, without consulting her. Then Beth would have to face both of them, two on one. She had seen Aram conduct enough negotiations to know she’d be at an immediate disadvantage. How could she change the preponderance of power on their side? How would Aram do it if then-situations were reversed?
Well, she thought sulkily, he would first be able to show he could handle the contract year-round, that the training she wanted to take wouldn’t interfere. That meant having to decide which training she wanted to take, and Beth knew that reading the complete list of abstracts on the courses Research City offered through the computer facilities would take days. Again she sighed. There was a commscreen behind the trillium, and she could at least get started right now. Time was a'wasting while she sat in the whirlpool.
The commscreen was programmed to power up when the sensor was hit with water so that bathers could send and receive calls if they wished. But it would default to the communication mode, and Beth wanted to consult the educational catalogs. She climbed out of the bath, grabbed the gooseneck on the commscreen and pulled it out from behind the leaves. Some of the stems snapped and the scent of ginger wafted up from the juices flowing from the wounds. Beth keyed in her request to scroll the listings she wanted, positioned the screen so she could read while sitting in the water, then settled back into the pool.
Secretly she hoped one of the first abstracts displayed would catch her eye, but an hour later she was still unenthused about anything she had seen. Lazily she washed her hair, peeking at the commscreen between rinses. It had gone from ballons to ballot, neither of which seemed worth reading, when the please switch to receive mode light came on and the tender bell tinkled. Aram was probably wondering if she had drowned in the bath, or it might be one of the children. She splashed water at the screen, something she remembered she had been reluctant to do for a long time after she first saw the commscreens in the poolroom and learned how they were activated. Intellectually she knew the entire apparatus was hermetically sealed, that she could even take the commscreen to the bottom of the pool with her and carry on a conversation with someone halfway across the planet if she cared to use self-contained breathing apparatus. She couldn’t do anything but comm, for the sensor defaulted to the communication mode every time it got well wetted; and, of course, at the bottom of the pool there was no way to keep the sensor dry. Aram had assured her these special commscreens couldn’t electrocute her no matter what the conditions. Still, she’d checked the failure rate of the device’s hermetic seals. None twelve years ago, and still none in the two or three times that she’d checked again. (Erik had, of course, discovered it was fun to comm underwater, and he did take the commscreen to the bottom of the pool.) Zero failures was not an atypical rate for Serensunarian products used in such a critical fashion. The manufacturers pointed to their records with great pride and continued to ply their crafts with success.
Aram’s face didn’t look prideful, she noticed as the commscreen brought him into focus. His brow was wrinkled and he was drumming his desktop with his fingers, no doubt having seen the acknowledgment light on his own screen but impatient at having to wait for the main computer’s logical exit from the program that displayed the abstracts. Splash-time response included, he must have waited all of four seconds. His commscreen would still be blank; optics from the pool-room had to be deliberately activated, and Beth didn’t feel like getting out of the water again.
“Yes, Aram,” she said, to let him know she was there.
“Beth, I’m sorry, but I have to leave and will be gone overnight. The engineers started up the land reclaimer last week, and I’ve just learned it has failed again. I really must go to evaluate the situation for myself.”
Beth had thought of the land reclaimer as a very large tractor until she’d seen the prototype machine assembled last spring. It was ten meters tall and didn’t just shove growth and rocks around; it devoured trees, stones and boulders alike and scooped up half a meter of clay or bog, whatever lay under the thin topsoil, pulverized everything, spit out crushed rock if there was too much for proper balance of new topsoil and spread the concoction out the back end. It had been developed in Research City and was being experimentally used in some of the low-lying mountain valleys. When it was fully operational, it would be disassembled and flown to the southern edge of the Empire to reclaim tropical forest that could then be opened to colonists.
Beth tried not to sound happy when she said, “I understand.” Time, after all, was exactly what she had been wishing for. She had figured the first step of this new plan, and if she could get through that much, maybe she’d think of what to do next before Aram returned home.
“Just in case I have to stay a while, I’ll leave the keys and Maria’s list here on my desk,” Aram said,
Beth sat bolt upright in the water. “No!”
“Pardon? Are you rinsing your hair? All I can hear is water, and for a moment I thought you said ‘no.’ ”
Her response had been instinctive—just gut reaction to knowing that if she didn’t say no, it would be giving her tacit approval to leaving everything the way it had been for twelve years. Aram still had no real clue that anything was different this year. He was glancing up; someone else was in the office with him or talking to him from another commscreen. He looked in a hurry. She should let him go. The land reclaimer was important.
She sank back in the water. “No,” she said again. It sounded weak, but the water was motionless and soundless. He heard her clearly this time.
“Well, where should I leave them?” he asked, definitely impatient and eager to be on his way.
“I don’t care, but not with me … except for the key to the larder.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Aram, I think … well, maybe it can wait until you get back.”
“Beth …” From the tone of his voice and the look on his face he might just as well have said, “Dammit, Beth, speak up or shut up.” But even if he couldn’t see her (for which Beth, cowering under the warm swirling water, was eternally grateful), he knew something was wrong. He leaned back and clasped his hands in his lap, a familiar gesture that somehow permitted Beth to take a breath and let her heart slow down. She felt relieved and tried not to think of how angry she would be when she remembered it tomorrow.
“It probably shouldn’t wait,” he said gently. “Something to do with the household contracts?”
“Yes. I don’t want them all this year. I want only the catering contract, and it would be nice if I could have it prime, not subbed.”
Aram looked surprised. “In its prime form it’s year-round work. What happens when you go trekking next summer?”
“I won’t be going next year,” Beth said.
Aram frowned, seemed unsure of what he’d heard.
“It’s time for changes around here,” Beth said. “More raspberries and fewer apples. And I think the children should get involved with the catering, too, pick up some responsibility. Alexi’s almost twelve, and I don’t think he knows what a crumb brush is for, let alone how to plan for fifty people and have to feed seventy-five when they show up.”
Aram shook his head firmly. “It’s unwise to give juveniles more contracting power than they’ve earned. They don’t get a chance to learn that the credit column is not inexhaustible.” “Oh, not that part,” Beth said quickly. “I’d do that. And if Alexi isn’t ready to do the planning, I’d do that, too. I … Aram, that’s just a tiny part of it. I want the responsibility, the entire responsibility. At least then we can have something beside farm food.”
Aram’s brows shot up, and Beth felt herself sinking. She couldn’t think of anything more to say, and she didn’t feel as if what she had said was the least bit convincing. Aram must be terribly confused right now. What did Alexi’s not knowing what a crumb brush was have to do with raspberries? Aram had been wolfing down Maria’s farm food since he was a boy, obviously liking it, and Beth had not even proposed anything in its place.
“Umm, perhaps I should describe what I have in mind,” she said, and felt pleased she had thought to say that because she now had a dozen dinner plans to tell him about, acquired over years of silently criticizing Maria’s events.
“No, no, never mind,” Aram said.
He was going to turn her down out of hand. “A bit of elegance doesn’t have to mean stilted, you know,” she said bitterly. “It can be simplicity and—”
“Anything you do will be fine, I’m sure,” Aram said. “I trust you completely. I haven’t the slightest worry that you, of all people on Serensunar, would not understand the chemistry of the dinners and parties. It will be nice to see you participate more. I only wish I could be home more with you and the children.” Aram nodded thoughtfully for a moment, then added, “And maybe you have a good idea.”
“Huh?” Beth said.
“I could give the rest of those household contracts to Alexi.
He’s been with me a lot this summer, and I think he has a feel for negotiating with the subs.”
“That’s a lot of work for a boy,” Beth said doubtfully, and didn’t add that she,‘an adult, had been doing it for years.
