Michael Kube-McDowell - The Quiet Pools

“Most, then? You?”

“What we think is conditioned on what we know, and what we know best is our own experience,” she said. “My experience is that men and women are different enough that I can say I prefer to be with one and prefer not to be with the other.”

“What kind of difference? Or is it one of those if-you-have-to-ask-you’ll-never-understand things?”

She shook her head. “It isn’t sexual, which is what everyone thinks. For me, it’s something about balance, or focus. Men make me jangle. They confuse me. I change around them, and I don’t usually like the changes. Their presence is a demand, somehow.”

Smiling, she added, “We’re not angels, mind you, and Sanctuary is no Utopia. But I find it a very calming place to be. In fact, that’s how I think of it—a place to be , not a place to do. Which I suppose is part of what Anna X was saying. Do you think she’s wrong?”

“I don’t feel like the kind of man she’s talking about,” he said. “But that’s nothing new. I had a friend who saw all his relationships that way. But I could never see mine that simply. They always seem so much more complicated than that, even when I think they’re going to be simple.”

“Did that include your trine?”

“And my marriage before that, and Vanessa before that, and Patti in Vernonia. They all started easy and ended hard.”

“Your trine is still alive, isn’t it?”

“Only a technicality. Only a matter of time. Jessie’s locked on someone new, and Loi—I don’t think I’m important enough to Loi for the amount of trouble I bring. Anytime I want, I can call and hear the death sentence. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Fields is already living there.”

“I wondered why you hadn’t wanted to call out,” she said. “Now I’m wondering why you’re content to just let it happen. Is it over for you, as well?”

He gazed into the basket of curled leaves and crisp petals. “Jessie was so—so agreeable, so accommodating, at first. It seemed like she was happy making us happy. I guess I never thought she was going to want more. I don’t even know how to win her back, because I never had to win her in the first place. Does that make sense?”

He had been spoiled by easy answers, she saw, by mind mechanics who pronounced their verdicts as quickly and shallowly as an on-air psychologist. Even if they were right answers, he lost the chance to learn from them—they meant nothing to him because they were won so easily.

“What do you miss?” she asked.

There was no hesitation. “Cuddling with her,” he said. “I never knew anyone so willing to cuddle and so comfortable to do it with. Loi could never sit still that long. She’d have to talk, or plan, or get up and go do something that needed doing. Jessie has a way of melting into you. We shot a lot of evenings on the couch, just wrapped together and humming along at warm.” A wan, sorry smile flickered across his lips. “She made me feel good inside. It was easy and I thought it’d always be there.”

Deryn nodded understandingly. “Is she happier now?”

He nodded glumly. “It seems so.”

“Then let her be.”

“Why didn’t she tell me what she wanted at the beginning?” he said with sudden anger. “Why did she let me think she was happy the way things were?”

Deryn made a bowl of her hands between her knees. “Years before I met your parents, I was in love with a man twelve years older than I,” she said. “He was very sure of himself and very much in command of his life, both things I admired then. He was an executive with a company that took very good care of him, so he could take very good care of me. We went to Hawaii, to Rio. He surprised me with presents, never extravagant, but thoughtful, perfect.

“We’d been together six months when he asked me to go with him to a doctor in New York. He wanted me to have an operation so that I could give him more pleasure during sex. He’d had such a woman in London, in one of the Triangle clubs. I didn’t even know such things were done.

“I can hardly believe it now, but I almost said yes. He was, I thought, a wonderful man. He loved me, he was giving me so much, why shouldn’t I do this for him? The closest I got to the downside was thinking, ‘Even if we break up, whoever comes next will appreciate it—’

“But when he left the next morning and it was just me by myself, everything changed. I had never had any surgery, never even broken a bone—no medical problems more serious than the flu. But I was going to volunteer to let someone cut and sew my body in the name of better orgasms. I was angry that he wanted me to do it. I was hurt that he wanted what a joybird had given him more than what he and I had shared—which up to that point I had thought was pretty wonderful.

“So I called him at work and told him I’d changed my mind,” she said. “I never heard from my ‘wonderful man’ again. He moved on to someone else, a friend of a friend of a friend. A few months later, they went to New York for two weeks. When they came back, she was so happy with herself that she couldn’t wait to tell everyone. I was still so miserable that I was actually jealous. And I had no idea why.

“It took me fifteen years to forgive myself for almost giving in and to understand how he managed to find someone who would. It’s the dirty little secret Anna X leaves out of her speech—that female scripts are just as destructive in their way.

“We’ll do anything when we think we have to have a man—trade any favor, tell any lie, take any edge. I said we weren’t angels. Most women are just like most men—trying to get what we want, trying to strike a bargain. It sounds to me as though you and Jessie just couldn’t agree on terms. Don’t wish you could make her be different than she is. If you do love her, wish that she’ll be happy.”

Christopher had been silent, amazed, through Deryn’s long unburdening. “I guess my heart’s been too small for that.”

“Hearts can grow, with proper care,” said Deryn with a gentle smile.

He nodded, lips pulled tight in a frown. “It’s almost time to take me back to the Shelter.”

“Almost,” she said, uncrossing her legs and rising gracefully to her feet. “But not quite. Come on. There’s something I want to show you.”

The Moon Chamber lay wheel-out below Spring Grotto, thirty meters of stairs and a double pressure hatch away from the corridors and compartments. Dimly lit and chapel-quiet, the chamber was a great open square bonded on all four sides by catwalk. The pale light seemed to rise up from the center space, like the glow from a fire pit.

Deryn led him by hand to the edge of the catwalk, and he looked down, unsuspecting. His breath caught, and he held her hand tightly as he swayed with sudden vertigo. Below their feet were the stairs, slipping past as the great wheel of Sanctuary turned. The transparent wall of plaz a few meters below their feet was invisible, except for the diffraction of dust pits and scratches.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” she murmured. “There’s one below every grotto—one each for Sun, Moon, Earth, and stars.”

The dark limb of the Earth had appeared, dotted with spiderstrings of fuzzy light which outlined continents. It sliced across the field of stars like a shadow.

“Look,” she said, “the forest fire in East Russia is still burning.”

Following her lead, they stretched out prone on the carpeted catwalk, heads propped on hands and peeking over the edge, like kids looking down from an upper bunk. The Earth rode past and was replaced by more stars, their glory and plenty and variety unguessed by any earthbound viewer. Ninety seconds later, the satland’s spin brought the planet into view again.