A Paradigm of Earth

by Candas Jane Dorsey

  “Are you out of your mind?” Ace quietly grated to Morgan. “Coming here without security? Didn’t you think something like this would happen? You’re not a fucking civilian any more. Thank heavens you forgot to take off your chip.”

  “Well, you rose to the occasion,” Morgan said, still shivering from being coatless in the near-zero outside. “Or were you just here on a date, like that queer-basher from the Sun said?”

  “I wish,” said Ace. “I don’t have time for a private life since I got this fucking assignment, and if I did, would I have brought the straight-arrow Ice Queen here?”

  The other woman blushed, with what this time? Anger? Embarrassment? Humiliation? “I’ll get the squad car,” she said, and she slipped out the door into the uproar outside.

  “Well, that’s that partnership out the window,” said Ace as she held the door shut.

  “Don’t be so paranoid,” said Morgan, rummaging for her coat on the overcrowded coatrack. “It’s pretty obvious you’re queer.”

  “You shouldn’t have said that, about her,” Nancy said unexpectedly. “You did it to shock us. And you hurt your friend.” She had found her coat, a voluminous old duster with several wool sweaters underneath, and was struggling into the layers. “And besides, who are we?” she continued. “We don’t know you. You don’t have to justify yourself for us. I’m just a one-night stand for Morgan, she’s just an assignment for you.”

  A one-night stand for Morgan? Well. “You knew who I was?” said Morgan. “Before you talked me up?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Nancy, “from vid, you know, vid news,” and there was still heat there, even despite the media scrum.

  “Okay. But I do my job, anyway.” Ace kept talking as she opened to the other one’s impatient banging on the door. “You know, my boss assigned me ’cause he thought I could get into her head better.”

  The other woman, back, was still angry. “And why assign me?”

  “Why not, kiddo, you can pass for a lipstick lesbian, I can hold your hand in the club and no-one will care.”

  “You knew the rules of this place, I didn’t. You didn’t have to make me look stupid.”

  Ace moderated her tone. “When else can I hold my friend’s hand, and on duty too, and no-one raises an eyebrow? And it was even your idea!”

  The darker one laughed, a little tensely. “Next time I’ll make you dance with me.”

  “Sure, kid.”

  “Let’s go; I double-parked.”

  They pushed out through the crowd, Ace holding her jacket over Morgan’s head to foil vidhounds and paparazzi. They tumbled into the car and Ace peeled out like a stock car driver. The heater in the cop car was efficient, and Ace tossed her jacket into the back seat. Nancy stuffed it on the shelf at the back to foil the last camera truck, which was still following until Ace two-wheeled a couple of comers, deked down an alley, and lost them.

  “Neat driving,” said Nancy.

  “I took a course,” said Ace. “Not that it matters. They know where we’re going. We just have to get there first.”

  Morgan untied her hair, which was now considerably disheveled, then pulled out the decorative side-combs (amazingly, still there), used them to comb the length of her hair smooth and put them back to anchor the tendrils away from her face. Nancy, stroking Morgan’s hair, broke the silence. “Do you ever get the feeling that there’s no God?”

  They all stared at her, except Ace who shoulder-checked a glance and said, “What the fuck?”

  “Well, sometimes I feel so good, and I know then, then that there must be no God.”

  “Who watches the watchers then?” said Morgan.

  “Someone will show up,” said Ace. “This is too good to be true.”

  “Are you, are you gay?” said Nancy meanwhile to the other cop.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “No, I think not.”

  “Thinking got nothing to do with it, kid,” Ace said, and her symmetrical fair face split into a twisted smile. “You can’t think about it, or you get too screwed up. You just gotta do it.”

  “So why tell me about it?” said Morgan.

  “Why not? You’re the most public queer around.”

  “I’m not even exclusively lesbian,” Morgan protested.

  “Doesn’t matter. You know it’s queer you’re damned for, if you don’t watch out. You found out tonight what the tabloids are gonna say, about you and that one, just because they know you fuck women.”

  “And you? What do you think?”

  “I’d like to live in your house,” the dark-haired cop said. “That’s what I think. So never mind those mofes, they’ll die unhappy.”

  “Hey, tough talk!”

  At the house, Ace grabbed Morgan and Nancy by the upper arms, hurried them toward the house. “Get in there. The camera trucks will be here any minute. And stay the fuck in there until I get ahold of McKenzie. This is just another fuckup, and it’s your bloody fault.”

  Nancy giggled, but Morgan sighed. “Yeah, right. Sorry. Look—want to come in to call? That little shack must be cold. It really is fall now—look, our breath shows.”

  “No,” said Ace as the other woman said, “It’s heated.” The two watchers looked at each other. “Maybe later,” said the other, who, it dawned on Morgan, must be nicknamed Kid, for all the times Ace called her that. “Besides, we’re on duty,” Ace said, and Kid started to laugh, laughed until tears beaded on her lashes.

  “Goodnight, then,” said Morgan. “You know the door is open if you want to come inside.”

  “And you,” said Ace as a parting shot, “stay the fuck inside!” The two cops went off across the yard to the little security shed where no doubt they would be able to listen to Morgan and Nancy make love, if that was still on the program. Morgan closed the front door, turned and found Nancy grinning at her.

  “Hey, if we’re supposed to stay inside, I can certainly think of something to keep us busy,” Nancy said breathlessly, and Morgan decided that the program was still on track. She reached inside Nancy’s layers of sweaters, seeking her body. They fumbled with the fasteners on each other’s coats, and Morgan stripped Nancy of layer after layer of sweaters until they were both giggling. Nancy stepped out of the entry, into the living room, said, “Nice.”

  Morgan said “Never mind that now,” and pulled her by the hand, led her up the stairs and down the hall to the door of her room. Pushed open the door, and Blue and Marbl were sitting by the window, engrossed in each other’s touch. Blue stood, Marbl running from the telescoping lap. Blue reached one hand for each face, touched, and a shiver went down Morgan to her roots.

  “Is this the, this the alien?” said Nancy. “Wow. Spinal. ’Scuse me.” She went by Blue into the room, turned around looking at it.

  “What is that?” Morgan said involuntarily to Blue. “Remember what I said to you.”

  “I am only a conduit,” said Blue, and went silently out, like a dream. Nancy looked at Morgan’s ocean-deep eyes. Black as space, she thought, and wondered how she knew how black is space. How did she know what Nancy was thinking? Morgan wondered, and thought, Backwash, which would have made her shiver except that she had a more immediate reason. Nancy went to the middle of the rug, still watching Morgan, and took her clothes off slowly, without deliberation, a child going in to swim.

  But not a child going in to swim. Her body was lush and pale, and she took Morgan’s hand and guided it into the cleft below her blonde pubic hair so Morgan could feel how she was eager to go on.

  “I’m sorry,” said Morgan. “You scare me. You are so brave.”

  “No, just cold. I want to get under the covers.”

  She glided into the sheets. Morgan unbuttoned her shirt, pulled the combs from her hair so it fell free, hid behind it while she undressed. The furnace was still running on its summer program as the fall had been long and warm, so now the air was cool against her tight nipples, tight belly, cooled the heat of her. She stopped with the duvet in her hand, halfway throu
gh shaking it across the bed.

  “How old are you?” she said.

  “Twenty-six,” Nancy said.

  “I am thirty-nine,” Morgan said, and slid her cooling body against the source of young heat, and the capable hands reaching for her—

  —and some time in the storm that followed, that lasted until the pale pre-dawn, Morgan with her mouth on the other’s sweet-tasting clitoris, raised her head for a moment to see the curve of belly and breasts and throat, and thought, how can this be me, who makes her vibrate so? and put her mouth back, and felt the cooled air fall from the cold window panes across her back and feet, and felt her own vibration, and felt a blue tide full and high through her vision, and heat following it, and sank again into the undertow and was willingly swept away.

  In the morning she finally fell asleep beside the finally sleeping youth, woke three hours later to that unfamiliar feel of another (and not cat-sized) body in her bed, and looked across the rumpled thick hair of the sleeping woman to meet the eyes of Blue who was standing in the doorway, smiling a little, and holding Marbl, the cat who would not suffer herself to be held, holding Marbl, two warmths, side by side.

  “I don’t want any dream better than this, not now,” she said to the alien, her friend.

  “What?” said Nancy, half-waking.

  “Never mind,” said Morgan. “Sleep.”

  And they slept, and woke, and that was Saturday.

  “That was the famous alien you saw last night,” teased Morgan, “and you didn’t even blink an eye.”

  “I was busy,” Nancy said, and Morgan laughed.

  “You are the best, the best lover I have ever had,” said Nancy. “You know, you know the feeling you get sometimes when you meet someone, that you’re like dazzled by the presence of that person in the world? Like they should have a fan club and you should be president, you know? That’s how I feel about you right now.”

  “Hush,” said Morgan. “That’s crazy talk. Don’t make me suspicious of you, or I’ll have to call the cops.”

  “Oh, no! The cops!” Laughing, Nancy tackled her back into bed. “Come on, I’m not, not crazy, just enjoying you. When we were making love, to be able to send you off like that, I was amazed, such a sense of power, that I could do that to someone like you. It’s hard to resist that feeling.”

  Morgan smiled. Last night she’d felt a kinship of memory, but now she wondered, had she ever been twenty-six in quite that way? But she might as well enjoy it. She knew very well that when the grey man arrived later that day, she would be in trouble. Not that she didn’t deserve it—she had been stupid. But like a kid with a chocolate-smeared face, she was thinking that the endorphins were worth it.

  She turned to Nancy again and silenced her voluble compliments with a long kiss.

  The cop at the door was “Randy”—May Murphy. “I’ve got a message from the boss,” she said.

  Morgan looked at her. “I would have thought he would be here himself to give me hell.”

  “He’s busy doing damage control.”

  “Oh, yeah, try to make me feel guilty!” Morgan grinned.

  “You should,” said May. “He says to tell you, verbatim, ‘You’re a pain in the ass. Next time you want to get laid, let us know. We’ll run a proper bodyguard op.’”

  “Did he throw anything?”

  “Say what?”

  “Shout. Throw things.”

  “He never shouts. He never throws things. He’s known for it. He gets quiet—and deadly. He was pretty quiet.”

  He never threw things? Morgan smiled. “Fine. Tell him …”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell him if I want to get laid, I’ll let him know.”

  By evening Morgan knew she and Nancy would not be lovers again, but she was not sure Nancy knew yet. Nancy had stayed in the house all day, had been flirting with Russ and John, circling Delany with wary but friendly overtures, leading Morgan to think, she is young! Jakob wasn’t home; it’s just as well, Morgan thought, I’m not sure I want to see that challenge. Jakob would not have been quiet about his reactions to the blanketing of the house in Nancy’s predatory sexual interest.

  As for Blue, Nancy had shown remarkably little interest in the effort of conversing with such a foreigner; Blue’s life was not relevant to her, and she had tended during the day to react to Blue as a rival for Morgan’s time.

  But the club had given her the solution as well as the problem. Morgan telephoned the sexually voracious friend-from-the-past, Kyla, and said, “Come over for dinner.” When she realized her own need to give Nancy a new scent to follow, she laughed at herself wryly, and went to talk about it all, aboveboard, with Nancy.

  After Kyla left with Nancy, a consummation clearly to be wished despite everyone involved being aware it was a set-up, the household settled back in the living room around the fireplace, feet up on chairs or tables, the fire crackling and flames providing a Rorschach background to their talk. It was peaceful to be alone together again.

  “So, you have had an adventure too, Morgan my dear,” said Jakob.

  Delany laughed. “All of us. What a kid that was!”

  “Sweet,” said Russ.

  “Stupid,” said Morgan. “I was lucky. The night I chose to have a temper tantrum—well, it could have turned out much worse.”

  “But how was she?” said John, who had missed everything but supper, and Kyla and Nancy’s courtship dance. Predictably, Nancy had flirted with John too, but he had seemed almost offended by that.

  “None of your fucking business,” said Morgan genially.

  “She sure didn’t know what to make of us, eh, Blue?” Delany laughed. “The two weird ones. The crip and the pigmentally challenged.”

  Blue began to sing: “Am I blue … ?”

  “I think that’s your first joke!” said Delany after the gust of laughter abated.

  “No, I made one last Thursday, don’t you remember?”

  “No.”

  “I remember,” said John. “It was at seven o’clock exactly.”

  “Yes, that’s the one,” said Blue. “I knew you would remember.”

  “And how was she, really?” said Jakob sotto voce.

  “How was yours?”

  “My adventure? Good times, my dear, but strenuous. You know, they really liked me as a lunatic addict. Now that I’m just a lunatic, I make them nervous. Too serious. So no groupies, malheureusement.”

  “Oh, well, never mind,” said Morgan. She put her feet back up, and turned her gaze into the fire, content to have her family around her, and be at peace.

  The flames suddenly begin to burn more and more iridescently, with flashes of purple and blue and white. The fire grows and surrounds Morgan, but she feels cool within it. The witches burned for feeling too much: can anyone really feel too much? the voice is dispassionate. No, Morgan’s dream voice answers, but lots of us try to avoid it, anyway. The flames turn cool, icy cerulean, and begin to scorch her like dry ice.

  She woke suddenly. She was still in the chair, and the fire had burned down. The room was cool, and she was shivering.

  “You okay?” said John, who’d noticed her start upright.

  “Sure,” she said. “Napping. Would you hand me over that afghan there, please?”

  “Afghan?”

  “Knitted blanket. Thanks.”

  Morgan tucked the cover around her legs, and Russ fed the fire. When the flames leapt up, they were the safe results of burning pine—only a reservoir of pitch popped now and again to send an ember into the fire screen. But Morgan wasn’t sleepy any more.

  The endorphins lasted a couple of giddy days, helping Morgan weather the annoyance of the grey man and the invasive and predatory media attention. When they receded, however, they swept out like a tidal bore in a catastrophic retreat, and when Morgan picked herself up, she was in the midst of another attack of grief. She hated being ambushed like this.

  You don’t get over it, you just get used to it, Judith had said on that vis
it where they’d talked, and this unexpected attack of anguish, just when she had felt life reassert itself, was proof.

  Impatient, she waited for the police to clear away the morning’s stubborn fringe of videorazzi, then went out to tend the garden, using the ferocity of blade and tine to substitute for catharsis. Struggling with tools scaled for average North Americans and thus too big for her, as well as old and worn so that the shovel blade and rake tines were loose on their splintery handles, she got sweaty and irritated, overwhelmed with the ludicrousness and Lilliputian nature of humanity’s travails. But gradually, as she knew would happen, the persistent necessity of weed and soil took precedence over her fury at entropy.

  Blue came out in work clothes. “Can I help you?”

  “Put on your gloves,” she said. “So you don’t get blisters.”

  Whoever had tended the monastic garden of the previous owners of this tatty mansion had been far from ascetic: native plants mixed eclectic with perennials and self-seeding hardy annuals, crowded into borders around the house and filling the front yard from fence to veranda. It seemed as if the gardener had, after setting out the grand design, fallen prey to age or distraction, for when they’d moved in the caragana hedge was overgrown and untidy, the raspberry canes were invading the lawn, and the lilacs had grown leggy and unhealthy. Nevertheless, in the way that a solidly planned garden will assert a certain planned profusion even after many years of neglect, it had flourished through spring and summer only sporadically tended, spring bulbs and flowers cycling into summer’s peony and poppy, cosmos, lavatera and flax, hollyhock and plume poppy, fireweed and a profusion of native plants hitherto unknown to Morgan, and culminating with a final vivid array of burning bush in September. But now all was withering.