Дэймон Найт - Orbit 7

“Of course,” he mumbled, “my account may differ significantly from the what-would-you-say … the official account of the Irish Church. It lacks the nihil obstat. Events such as these, possessing still some flavor of controversy, resist our efforts to order them by simple schemes.”

Charmian Levin, sitting behind Emma, touched a penciltip to a knob of her spine. Emma stiffened and tucked in her blouse.

“History is never simple, of course, until we cease to care too terribly much. One might liken the mechanism of tolerance to the painter’s trick of aerial perspective: with distance, we lose the edge and color of things. We gain, perhaps, the vista.”

Charmian, who at fifteen was the oldest girl at Inverness, swiveled ninety degrees on her stool and, with a schooled gesture, fluttered the white banner of her hair. “Oh, August—such blague!”

The yellow eyes lowered to regard the girl’s glasslike sandals. The old man wondered, with a small sad spite, what part of his monthly salary they had cost.

“I was rather straying, wasn’t I? To return, then, to the Papal Bull of 2034—”

Emma wrote in her notebook: “Papal Bull, 2034.”

“—which was dubbed, almost immediately, the ‘Mad Bull,’ due to a short-lived effort, within the Roman hierarchy, to call the Pope’s sanity into question. But, as the instigators of this plan were themselves immortal survivors of the Plague and, by this new pronouncement, excommunicate, their actions served only to hasten the schism that John was seeking to bring about.”

Emma wrote in her notebook: “Heretics excommunicated.” Charmian’s pencil traced a line along her lower rib.

“I think, in retrospect, that John acted in the best interests of his church, even though the immediate effect was an eighty percent reduction in its membership. That figure indicates how much, even then, the new sensibility had found itself at odds with the traditional outlook that the Church represented, for the ratio of mortals to immortals in the general population was then, as now, a mere fraction of one percent. In England and other more advanced nations, the falling-off had been much more drastic than that. In twenty thirty-two, two years before the Mad Bull, the Roman Catholic population of Britain had declined by fifty percent from its level at the turn of the century. And in other churches the decline was even more precipitate.”

Emma wrote: “2032, 50%.”

“The Church’s real strength was in Central and South America, areas where disease and famine still maintained, if artificially, a sense of the mortal and a need to believe in an afterlife. But this could hardly be considered an enduring strength, founded as it was on ignorance and poverty. I think these considerations help to explain John’s ruthlessness. The continued toleration of immortals within the Church could only have vitiated its potential as a what-shall-I-say … a rallying-point for the mortal element. And in this he was successful, as we know. We may judge it a small success, but possibly it was the only one that could have been wrested from the circumstances.”

Emma wrote: “The Church victorious.”

Mr. Harness asked: “Are there any questions? Charmian?”

“It still, you know, doesn’t seem fair. I mean, most of that eighty percent that got booted out still believed all that stuff, didn’t they? And then just to be told that it didn’t make any difference , whether they believed. Could they help it they were born immortal?”

“On that point you would have to consult a Jesuit. The Church’s position is that they could and can help it. We are all, or rather”—and again, and even more devastatingly, the lips crumbled - ”you are all heretics. It’s not essentially different from the notion of original sin.”

“But, I mean! It’s genetics.”

“Yes—alas,” said Mr. Harness.

Emma closed her notebook.

“Emma?”

“Please, I have to go to the lav.”

Leaving Mr. Harness’s room, Emma stepped squarely on Charmian Levin’s splendid foot. She could almost feel, in her own foot, the pain she’d caused.

Once, in her first months at the Inverness School, Charmian had been Emma’s best friend, but those days were gone forever. It was fruitless to suppose otherwise. Too much had been said on both sides, and there was no longer a basis for mutual respect.

Nevertheless, she did, bolted in the loo, open Charmian’s note and read it, once, before flushing it down. It was an invitation to dinner that night with Charmian’s family. Any reply was, of course, unthinkable. Mr. Levin was a business associate of Arthur Schiel, and if Emma’s mother ever learned … It was bad enough (as Mrs. Rosetti had often pointed out) that Emma was finishing out the term at Inverness on the tuition provided by Arthur Schiel, but to visit the Levins now , to have to answer their well-meaning questions, to stand again in Mrs. Levin’s proud salon, that perfect little temple of the New …

There was a knock on the door of the stall. “Emma, it’s me, Charmian. I want to talk to you. Please.”

“No.”

“I have to talk to you. I told old Who-Shall-I-Say it was an urgent matter of feminine hygiene. Did you read my note?”

“No.”

“You did read it. I can tell when you’re lying, you know. Emma, I’m sorry for anything I said that might have offended you. I didn’t mean it. I’ve been sick thinking about it, just sick. You have to come to dinner tonight.”

“Do I?”

“I told my mother you were. She’s always asking after you. She said she’d order a special cake from Wimpy’s for us. We can be utter pigs about it.”

Emma started to cry. It had not been a conscious cruelty on Charmian’s part, for Emma had never told her, or anyone else at Inverness, about Walt. Her new address was ignominy enough.

“Is it what I said about God? Is it that? I’m sorry, but I can’t help what I believe, can I? I’d really like to believe in God, but I can’t. I think it’s a perfectly respectable idea, though, considered intellectually. I’d probably be happier if I did believe in him, but even then, I couldn’t be a Catholic. They wouldn’t let me. And I don’t care what your church says—”

But Emma had never told Charmian she was a Catholic!

“—a person can’t help the way he’s born. Will you come to dinner?”

“It’s impossible.”

“Just this once. I can’t talk to anybody anymore. Ellen is so basically stupid. You’re younger than I am, but two years doesn’t make that much difference. Emma, I need you—just desperately.”

It was another ten minutes before Emma was persuaded. On their way to the tubes, Charmian said, “I have some tickets for Westminster Abbey. St. Theresa’s going to be there.”

“In person?”

Charmian arched a chalk-white brow. “Mm.”

“Oh, wonderful!” She caught Charmian about the waist and kissed her cheek, leaving a scarlet smudge.

They are more passionate , Charmian thought with a somewhat grudging approval. She said: “You really are my best friend, you know.”

Emma caught hold of the older girl’s hand and smiled, but she could not bring herself to echo her words. It was not that she would, exactly, have been lying: Charmian was indeed her best—and her only—friend, as Charmian knew quite well. It was just that, even liking someone so awfully, it is unpleasant to be at their mercy.

Once you started burning their incense, they just didn’t let you stop.

Noon, the First Friday of May. Along the High Street the shoppers offered to the vivid sun their English limbs, white for sacrifice. Like the very molecules of the air, flesh, warming, seemed to move at a quicker tempo. Mrs. Rosetti passed before the great moneyed pageant of shop-fronts with a mild intoxication, as of amphetamine, scudding, a cloud. Dawdling, Emma followed.