Native Tongue (25 page)

Rachel’s eyes stung, and she knew that tears might help her now. She’d managed to make him laugh at her, which meant that he was more relaxed, less on his guard. Tears would be the wise next move, and she owed that move to Nazareth.

She knew that. And she knew also that she couldn’t do it. It was too much. Women of the Lines learned early not to give in to tears except by choice, because tears destroyed negotiations. A woman who is weeping is a woman who cannot talk, and a woman who cannot talk most surely cannot interpret. The voluntary control of tears was a skill mastered for business reasons, but it proved useful in many areas of life, and it would be useful to her now. She would
not
cry, not even for Nazareth.

She pulled away from him, stepped back and set her arms akimbo, her hands on her hips in a stance that she knew he detested, and in a voice that carried as much contempt as she could muster she said, “Chornyak—your daughter
hates
that man!”

His eyebrows rose, briefly, and he brushed at his trousers where she had leaned against them.

“So?”

“You don’t feel that’s relevant?”

“You know better, woman. It has no relevance at all. We linguists haven’t married for any reason other than the sum of politics and genetics since . . at least since Whissler was president.
Nazareth’s opinions of Aaron Adiness are of no concern whatever.”

“There is an enormous difference between marrying someone you merely feel no love for, and marrying someone you hate.”

“Rachel,” Thomas said, sighing, “I’m trying very hard to be patient with you. But you’re doing everything you can to make that impossible. I will make just one more attempt—and we will leave Nazareth’s immature sentiments out of it. Aaron Adiness is superbly healthy, he comes of a Household with which we are anxious for closer ties at this time, he’s talented—”

“He’s nothing of the kind!”

“What?”

“Everyone knows, Thomas, that he’s a mediocre linguist!”

“Oh, come now, Rachel. . . . you women may ‘know’ something of that kind, but it has no more foundation in fact than any of the rest of your female mythology. Aaron is a native speaker of REM30-2-699, of Swahili, of English, and of Navajo; he has a respectable fluency in eleven other Terran languages and can get by socially in four dialects of Cantonese. His Ameslan is so exceptionally fluent and graceful that he has been hired to teach it to the
deaf
at several national institutes. And I have not even mentioned the dozens of languages that he can read with ease and translate with both skill and subtlety . . . the list goes on for half a page. Not talented! Rachel, when you go out of your way to be childish you lose all claim on courtesy from me.”

Rachel was ashamed now, deeply ashamed, and she knew that she had lost. There was no hope of salvaging this. She had succeeded in turning it into a fight, and one of their better fights at that. She went on only because she no longer had anything to lose.

“It’s an open secret, Thomas, that Aaron Adiness has a violent temper and an insurmountable conviction that the universe was created for his personal benefit! And that he allows both of those factors to interfere with the performance of his duties! You know it, I know it, everyone knows it . . . If he had fifty languages native and five hundred more fluent, it would
not
cancel out the fact that he cannot control his personal feelings even when he is on duty. If Nazareth hadn’t been the Jeelod interpreter when the negotiations for the Sigma-9 frontier colony leases were under way, there’d
be
no colonies on Sigma-9 . . . she had to do everything but belly dance to salvage the messes Aaron made every time he fancied someone doubted his divinity. He is cruel, and stupid, and vindictive, and petty—he’s worse
than any woman! And if you tie Nazareth to him for life, then you are worse than
he
is!”

Thomas had gone white; for some reason, although he could easily tolerate almost any sort of confrontation with others, having Rachel forget her place in this way always enraged him so that he had to fight for control . . . and she knew it, too, damn the bitch. He regretted now having even told her of his plans for Nazareth. He should have shipped her off somewhere and had the marriage performed in her absence, as Adam had suggested; for once, he agreed with Adam that he spoiled Rachel and that it was foolish of him to do so. Certainly he got nothing from her in return for his indulgence.

“Rachel,” he said, clenching his teeth to keep his voice from betraying that he was shaking with rage, “that’s a common pattern when youth is combined with genius. Aaron will outgrow both his temper and his arrogance, as does any man of that sort. And Nazareth will be well advised not to remind him of her alleged rescues of his diplomatic shipwrecks—I suggest that you tell her so. Because very soon he will make her, with all her spectacular scores on the linguistics tests, look like a chimp using Ameslan. The more primitive the organism, woman, the more swiftly it matures—of
course
Nazareth was a bit further along emotionally than Aaron during the Sigma-9 contracts! The advantage is a temporary one, milady, and she’d better remember it.”

“You’re determined then, Thomas? You want this show horse for the Line so badly that you’re willing to bind your own daughter to him for life when the very sight of him is repulsive to her? That’s your idea of fair return on the value she represents to your treasuries? What’s the problem, dear? Is somebody else after him?”

Thomas turned away in one swift movement, and Rachel knew she had him—he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t been afraid she’d see that in his face. But body-parl betrays, always; his abrupt move, graceless and entirely unlike him, was as revealing as any statement could have been. And it was her turn to laugh.

“Ah,” she cried, “that
is
it, isn’t it? You’re about to lose him, a prize stallion with a spectacularly curly tail, to one of the other Lines! And that can’t be allowed to happen!”

“It certainly cannot,” he said, his back still turned to her.

“Well . . . if that’s all it is, why not one of the other girls? You’ve got a houseful of brood mares, Thomas . . . why not Philippa? God knows your brother would be delighted to get rid
of her, he can’t stand any of his daughters, and she’s a strapping seventeen. Marry
her
off to Adiness!”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I wish to see what the genetic combination of Nazareth’s and Aaron’s abilities will produce,” he said coldly. “Philippa is entirely run of the mill.” His brief moment without mastery of himself had passed, and he turned to face her easily, his voice heavy now only with the message that she turned his stomach.

“Get on with you,” he told her roughly. “You’ve wasted enough of my time. Tell Nazareth she’s to be ready for the wedding on her fifteenth birthday, and let me hear no more about it. No—not one word, woman!
Get
! And he left their room, not waiting to see her obey.

Alone, Rachel laid her fingers loosely across her mouth, and closed her eyes, and she rocked silently. She did not cry now, either, though she could safely have done so . . . she turned
her
stomach, too. She had gone about it all wrong. She had let him catch her off guard, and she had done everything about as badly as she could have done it. She should have manipulated Thomas. Should have pretended only casual interest, even approval, when he told her his intentions. Then this evening, over a bourbon, she could have begun a discussion of the subject. She should never have challenged him directly, never opposed him openly . . . her decision to play the helpless belle had come too late, had been too rapid a transition, and had collapsed the moment he taunted her with it.

She knew she was too old and too worn with the bearing of seven children to have any erotic weapons left to use against her husband. But he was still vulnerable to other techniques, and she knew him better than anyone alive; she had only to set her self-respect aside and toady to him convincingly. She had made the sort of stupid errors a bride makes . . . a bride such as Nazareth would be, poor little girl . . . but a bride is saved from the consequences of her ignorance by the novelty of her body. Rachel no longer had that advantage. She had sacrificed her daughter to her own ego, traded her off for a few minutes of triumph over Thomas, triumph for which Nazareth would be the one who had to pay. The only shred of comfort she had was that the girl would never have to know how badly her mother had failed her, or how cheaply she had sold her out.

* * *

At Barren House the women listened to her, of course; it was courteous to do so. They made her a pot of strong tea, and they sat her down to drink it while they heard her out. But they had no sympathy to offer her.

“What did you expect?” they asked her. “You had slim chances when you started that interaction, and what little you had you threw away immediately. What did you
expect
the man to do when you defied him like that?”

“Oh, I know,” said Rachel wearily. “I know.”

“Well, then.”

“Thomas is completely wrong,” she said. “
Wrong
.”

“He is a man. Being wrong has nothing to do with anything.”

“If you behave like this often, Rachel,” Caroline observed, “I’m surprised he hasn’t signed the papers to put you away long before now.”

“I wouldn’t care if he did.”

“Rachel! Think of Belle-Anne, what they’ve done to her, what she’s become . . . you’ve been to see her! That’s a death sentence, worse than death . . . rotting away in a state mental hospital!”

“Thomas would never put me in a state hospital,” said Rachel. “The wife of the Head of all the Heads of all the Lines, in a snakepit ward? Tssk . . . that would never do. No, he’d send me to one of those places with a name like a dog kennel. Cedar Hills. Willow Lake. Maple Acres. You know the sort of place. Where I can sit all day in my rocker in a row of little old ladies in rockers, all of us doped into catatonia, waiting to be led off to bed and knocked cold for the night. Just as a change from the catatonia.”

“And why hasn’t he done that?”

“Because he’s used to me, and he’s very busy. He likes the way I keep his files in order. He counts on me to keep him from forgetting things. I make a great deal of money for the Household, and if he’s right there he can be sure I don’t slack off. I was a prime piece of brood stock, and he’s used to thinking of me that way. He hasn’t got time to break in a new woman and teach her to do all the things I do for him—it’s less trouble to put up with me. After all, he doesn’t have to see me for days on end. I am a convenience, with certain annoying qualities that he is able to avoid most of the time.”

“A perfectly ordinary marriage,” said Susannah, and the others agreed. A clever woman saw to it that as she grew older she
did
become useful in the ways Rachel had listed; it was the
only security she had, and all that stood between her and the rows of little old ladies on Thorazine.

“Poor little Nazareth,” breathed Rachel.

“A lot of good that does her now.”

“It does her no good at all,” Rachel agreed. “I say it all the same.”

“Well, say it here, and then keep it to yourself,” said Caroline. “The worst thing you could possibly do for her is sympathize with her. The quicker she toughens to what’s ahead of her, the less power it will have to hurt her. Don’t you dare go ‘poor littling’ her!”

“No. I’m not entirely a fool, though you couldn’t tell it by what I’ve done this day. I know better than that.”

“Go tell her, then, and do it properly. Before he does it.”

“Duty,” said Rachel. “Opportunity. Loyalty to the Lines. A woman’s place. The healing power of time. Fun and games. Fables and baubles.”

“Exactly. Get it over with, so that she can get used to the idea before she has to spread her legs for the Adiness stud.”

Rachel shuddered, and they poured her a last cup of tea. She took a long swallow, finished it, and then stood to go face her daughter. . . . She wasn’t quite sure where Nazareth was, but her wrist computer would tell her.

“Nazareth will come here afterward,” she said. “You know she will.”

“I hope so. Where else could she go?”

“Don’t tell her I was here before her, wailing and moaning. Please.”

“Of course not. She’ll be far better off if she thinks this isn’t bothering you at all. We know that . . . we’ve all had a turn in Nazareth’s shoes.”

Rachel stared at them.

“No, you haven’t,” she said bitterly. “Not one of you has had to marry a man she
hated
.”

That silenced them, and they nodded. It
was
rare, because actual discord between husband and wife was not an efficient arrangement for communal living. There tended to be fewer children from such marriages, and it was hard for everyone in the Household where the couple was living. Thomas must have had genuinely compelling reasons for this match, to have gone against so much experience and tradition—or else he was counting on Nazareth’s youth and innocence to be overcome by Adiness’ magnificent face and body. Nazareth had not yet caught her dose of Romantic Love; he might well be counting on it overtaking
her in Adiness’ arms. For Nazareth’s sake, they hoped that he was right and that it would take a good long time to wear off.

“We know a little something about it, then,” soothed Grace. “A little something; enough to be careful, Rachel. You go ahead now, and tell her. And we’ll be expecting her.”