The Judas Rose (9 page)

She had known, even then, that Ham Klander's major concern in life was to avoid any unnecessary labor, and she'd gone out of her way to be sure he knew that the grass which was offered with the more traditional yards was specially bred to stop at one-and a-half velvety inches, and would never have to be cut. “And there's a service contract that comes with it, Mr. Klander,” she had added. “When you buy one of those you can forget about maintenance; the company comes around every month or two and does whatever needs doing.”

He'd grinned at her and told her to call him Ham, and he'd hugged Melissa to him as if she were already his property. And Melissa hadn't opposed him, of course. She had looked like a terrified scrawny rabbit; she was hugged in under his big arm and clasped to his side so hard that Jo-Bethany was sure it must have hurt her. Nobody had ever held her like that, but she was positive it couldn't be comfortable. And there the yard was, this minute, just as it had been displayed on the comset catalog. Number 171, French Townhouse Courtyard. Jo-Bethany loathed it, and so did Melissa, but if Ham liked it that made no difference at all, and Ham liked it very much. He said it had class, and Ham valued class.

“Hey, Jo?”

She jumped, startled, realizing that she'd let too many minutes of his monologue go by without an encouraging murmur, and she gave him her swift attention.

“Yes, Ham,” she said. “I'm sorry. I must have been daydreaming.”

“I didn't call you in here to daydream, Jo.”

“I know you didn't, Ham.'

“You think you could manage to stay awake for two minutes?”

And then she heard it. What he'd said before. It had taken her brain that long to get over the shock and present it to her awareness.

“Oh!” she said, foolishly.

“Oh? What does that mean . . .
oh?
”

“Ham, you can't be serious,” she said slowly, her fists clenching at her sides. It was possible that he was teasing her. He thought it hilariously funny to tease her, or Melissa, or any other woman unfortunate enough to be close at hand; if he could make that woman cry, he was genuinely amused. It was good sport, teasing women.

“Damn right I'm serious,” he told her, and he grinned just the way he always had. That grin that says I'm the boss and you're nothing and if you don't like it you can stop breathing.

“Ham, don't tease,” she pleaded.

“Hoo baby . . . I'm not teasing. You'd better listen, Jo-Bethany.”

She bit her lower lip and watched him. Hating the grin; hating the way he lay there on the couch with his hands clasped behind his thick neck and his shoes making marks on the upholstery that somebody else would have to clean up; hating his expensive suit and his expensive shirt and his immaculate fingernails that Melissa tended; hating everything about him. He was laughing at her.

“Jo-baby,” said her brother-in-law, “I've already signed your contract. You start Monday morning . . . and you move Saturday afternoon, so you'll be right there to start in bright and early.”

“Ham,” she said softly, “I don't believe it. You wouldn't send me to work for—” She paused, because it wasn't a nice word, and then she said it anyway. “You wouldn't send me to work for Lingoes, Ham.”
Not even you
, she thought.

“At the salary they're offering?” He made a small circle in the air with the tip of one shoe, admiring its silver gleam. “You can be damn sure I
would
send you, lady! And I
am
sending
you. We can use the money . . . I've got big plans for that money. Three hundred credits a month, plus room and board, Jo—that's a good four hundred a month in my pocket. I'd send you to work for the devil himself for that kind of money.”

Jo-Bethany reached behind her for a chair that was near the window, not taking her eyes off him, and sat down carefully. He meant it. He really meant it.

“Please, Ham,” she said, deadly serious now, and frightened. “Please don't do it.”

“I told you. I've
done
it. I've already signed the papers.”

“You can't do this. You can't send me to live with linguists.”

He didn't bother to answer that. It was his legal right, as her guardian, to send her anywhere he chose, as long as it didn't endanger her physically. She was talking nonsense, and he had no tolerance for women's nonsense.

“Well?” he demanded. “Have you got anything else to say, Sis?”

“Yes.”

“Say it, then. I've got things to do.”

“Ham, if it's the money, why don't we do something that would bring in
real
money? I don't mean three hundred credits a month, Ham. I mean
real
money!”

“Jo, don't start that shit about going out to the colony planets again. I'm warning you.”

“Ham, you're not thinking! They need nurses desperately in the colonies, and they need men like you—strong men, young vigorous men who can get things done! We could have twice the income we have here, Ham . . . and why not? There's nothing here you couldn't have on—”

“Shut up, Jo.”

He swung his legs over and sat up straight, slamming the heavy glass he held in his hand down on the tabletop.

“But, Ham—”

“
I said shut up
.”

Jo-Bethany closed her mouth, convinced, and sagged in the chair. She knew why he didn't want to go out to one of the colonies, even those that had been there long enough to be well established and very comfortable. If he did that, he might end up involved in some real work; Hamilton Norse Klander was not about to be involved in real work. Right now he pushed a button all day. Every thirty minutes. The rest of the time, he sat and watched the robots to be sure they didn't stop doing what the pushed button signaled them to do. And that was absolutely the sum total maximum of work that he was willing to do in this
world. Jobs like that were rare in the colonies, and they didn't go to able-bodied men.

“Ham,” she began, because there wasn't anything to lose, “‘I'm not suggesting that we go to a
frontier
colony. I mean some place like—”

“Hey!” he shouted, and she hushed instantly. “If I was going to go anyplace, lady, it would
be
a frontier colony, someplace where men can stretch out and
be
men! I'm not afraid of any goddam thing they've got, and you'd better remember that! But I'm not going anywhere, because I like it right here where I am.
You
are the one going someplace, lady.
You
, day after tomorrow, are going to march your skinny butt over to Chornyak Barren House and move in there to be their live-in nurse. Where I won't have to look at your ugly face or listen to your effing whining and nagging all the time. And I don't want to hear any more out of you about it.”

She didn't answer him. There was no point in it. But he wasn't quite through.

“One more thing, Jo-Jo,” he said, narrowing his eyes at her. “Just one more thing. Let's say you've got some shitty idea about going over to Family Court and complaining that I'm forcing you to do something you shouldn't have to do, or some shit like that. Let's just say that's occurred to you. I want you to know, dear Jo-Bethany, that if you even
think
about doing that I'll put your sweet little sister into nursing training so fast she won't have time to pack! You got that? You foul this up, Jo-Jo, and I'll see to it that you're
both
out working . . . I could
use
two salaries coming in. You just think about that.”

She stared at him, not caring now whether the hate showed or not, and she was taking a deep breath, getting ready to tell him what a despicable excuse for a human being he was, no matter what he did to her for it, but she didn't get a chance. Melissa was there before she could speak, standing in the livingroom door clutching her shoulders in her hands, shivering, huddled into herself. They must have been talking louder than Jo had realized.

Ham Klander looked at his wife, gave one snort of disgust, and lay back down on the couch to watch the fun.

“Oh dear God, no,” whimpered Melissa Ann Klander, in the faint thin voice of one about to swoon or flee, “oh dear God, no, Jo-Bethany, please don't let him do that to me! Oh please, Jo, please, you have to go . . . Jo, I couldn't stand it! I couldn't! The baby . . . Jo, I'd have to leave her, if Ham makes me go into nursing training, it would kill me, Jo, I couldn't. . . .”

Jo-Bethany had no earlids, that was true. But thirty years of practice had given her a remarkable skill at tuning out her sister's drivel. Melissa had large breasts and a pretty face and long red hair, which had been enough to get her Hamilton Klander. She had no discernible intelligence or common sense. What passed for communication with Melissa was an almost unbearable confused hodgepodge of silly sentences and parts of sentences strung together any old way, with everything said at least three times, and no sentence said in ten words if fifty would do, and most of it based on the single theme of Poor Little Me. There'd been no money to send either of the Schrafft girls to a marital academy, and Jo-Bethany had not had Melissa's physical advantages, for which blessings and the single state that accompanied them she was profoundly grateful. But there were times when Jo-Bethany wondered if a marital academy would have been able to teach her sister the basic principles of ordinary conversation—if so, it might have been a good investment.

“Jo-Bethany!” Melissa wailed. “You're not listening to me!”

“Of course she isn't,” Ham said flatly. “She doesn't care anything about you, sweetheart. She doesn't even
care
if I have to put you in training and send you out to work and the baby has to go to daycare! Why
should
she care? Hell, it's not
her
baby!”

That was worse garbage than Melissa was putting out, thought Jo-Bethany, calm now. In the first place, Ham made good money. This wasn't an elegant or expensive neighborhood; it was a blue collar suburb, but it was comfortable. He had a nice house, he had his French courtyard, he had nice furniture and nice clothes and all the toys a man of his age could yearn for. There was a sporty groundcar, and a pair of flyers—one ordinary and one with several illegal features added, for going out with the boys. There was a comset in every room and a swimming pool in the basement made to look like a tropical lagoon, complete with waterfall. There was a robot Irish setter, well-trained, without the disadvantages of either shedding or shitting. Ham didn't need for Melissa to earn one cent. As for the baby, it was Melissa who needed Flowerette, not the other way around. No baby in the United States was allowed to do without anything it might need, ever, and the daycare centers were absolute Baby Heaven. Flowerette . . .
stupid
name! . . . would be much better off at daycare, where she would be superbly cared for, than she was here at home. With her mother constantly clinging to her and weeping over her and panicking every time she made a noise she hadn't made previously, and teaching her to cower in terror before Ham's every word and gesture.

But Ham knew his prey; garbage or not, drivel or not, Melissa's carryings on had the effect on Jo-Bethany that he'd been aiming at. And Melissa was only just getting started. She had fallen to her knees in the doorway and thrown her hands over her face, and knelt there weeping as if she'd been whipped, swaying back and forth like a mourning bereaved mother of seven. . . . Jo-Bethany's stomach knotted, watching her. And watching Ham, who was beaming at his wife in a positive glow of pleasure. Jo supposed that if Melissa would begin to bleed, there on her knees, in some tasteful way, he would be even more delighted.

Any minute now, Melissa would begin crawling across the room toward her sister, pleading and dithering. She would not plead with Ham, because that might irritate him; she would plead with Jo-Bethany, and if that meant trouble for Jo-Bethany it was a shame, but it couldn't be helped. Just so it didn't irritate Ham.

Jo-Bethany couldn't face it. Suddenly, she had the feeling that however repulsive it might be to live with the Chornyaks it could not possibly be as repulsive as watching Melissa grovel and Ham gloat. And watching Flowerette learning how to grovel just like Mama. It could not possibly be that bad.

While Melissa was still only rocking back and forth on her knees, keening, before she could begin the crawling and begging, Jo-Bethany stood up. “All right!” she said sharply. “Stop it! I'll go, Melissa . . . don't worry about it.”

Her sister raised her face from her hands, and Jo-Bethany noted that even with all her hysterics she was still blandly pretty, the reliable cosmetics she wore still unsmudged, the rosy color from the weeping almost becoming. That would not last, she thought; give Melissa ten years, and her performances would make her ugly. Melissa would not find that out in time, of course.

“Oh, Jo-Bethany! Sweet Jo!” she began, and no doubt that would go on for a while, until Ham got bored watching the wife-robot he'd created and pushed some different equivalent of a program button.

Jo-Bethany genuinely loved her sister. She had always loved her, pitiful and pathetic though she might be, since the day their mother had laid her in the older girl's arms and said, “Jo-Beth, this is
your
baby.” She had been, too, because Cleo Schrafft had been interested only in her sons. She walked over and drew Melissa to her feet, set her hair to rights with one sure hand, kissed her damp forehead, and went straight on up to her rooms without a word.