The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

by Connie Willis

  “And?”

  “And what? I may look depraved, but I don’t think freshmen vomit at the sight of me.”

  From her expression, I figured Mumsy might. I stuck the smelly wad of sheets at her. “Look,” I said, “I don’t care what you do. It’s not my problem. The kid needs clean sheets.”

  Her expression for the mucky mess was kinder than the one she had for me. “Recycling is not until Wednesday. She will have to sleep on her mattress until then.”

  Mary Masting, she could knit a sheet by Wednesday, especially with all the cotton flying around this fucked campus. I grabbed the sheets back.

  “Jig you, scut,” I said.

  I got two months’ dorm restricks and a date with the admin.

  I went down to third level and did the sheets myself. It cost a fortune. They want you to have an awareness of the harm you are doing the delicate environment by failing to abide, etc. Total scut. The environment’s about as delicate as a senior’s vaj. When Old Man Moulton bought this thirdhand Hell-Five, he had some edge dream of turning it into the college he went to as a boy. Whatever possessed him to even buy the old castoff is something nobody’s ever figured out. There must have been a Lagrangian point on the top of his head.

  The realtor must have talked hard and fast to make him think Hell could ever look like Ames, Iowa. At least there’d been some technical advances since it was first built or we’d all be floating around the godspit place. But he couldn’t stop at simply gravitizing the place, fixing the plumbing, and hiring a few good teachers. Oh, no, he had to build a sandstone campus, put in a football field, and plant trees! This all cost a fortune, of course, which put it out of the reach of everybody but richies and trust kids, except for Moulton’s charity scholarship cases. But you couldn’t jig in a plastic bag to fulfill your fatherly instincts back then, so Moulton had to build himself a college. And here we sit, stuck out in space with a bunch of fucked cottonwood trees that are trying to take over.

  Jesus Bonin’ Mary, cottonwoods! I mean, so what if we’re a hundred years out of date. I can take the freshman beanies and the pep rallies. Dorm curfews didn’t stop anybody a hundred years ago either. And face it, pleated skirts and cardigans make for easy access. But those godspit trees!

  At first they tried the nature-dupe stuff. Freeze your vaj in winter, suffocate in summer, just like good old Iowa. The trees were at least bearable then. Everybody choked in cotton for a month, they baled the stuff up like Mississippi slaves and shipped it down to earth and that was it. But finally something was too expensive even for Daddy Moulton and we went on even-clime like all the other Hell-Fives. Nobody bothered to tell the trees, of course, so now they just spit and drop leaves whenever they feel like it, which is all the time. You can hardly make it to class without choking to death.

  The trees do their dirty work down under, too, rooting happily away through the plumbing and the buried cables so that nothing works. Ever. I think the whole outer shell could blow away and nobody would ever know. The fucked root system would hold us together. And the admin wonders why we call it Hell. I’d like to upset this delicate balance once and for all.

  I ran the sheets through on disinfect and put them in the spin. While I was sitting there, thinking evil thoughts about freshmen and figuring how to get off restricks, Arabel came wandering in.

  “Tavvy, hi! When did you get back?” She is always too sweet for words. We played lezzies as freshmen, and sometimes I think she’s sorry it’s over. “There’s a great party,” she said.

  “I’m on restricks,” I said. Arabel’s not the world’s greatest authority on parties. I mean, herself and a plastic bone would be a great party. “Where is it?”

  “My room. Brown’s there,” she said languidly. This was calculated to make me rush out of my pants and up the stairs, no doubt. I watched my sheets spin.

  “So what are you doing down here?” I said.

  “I came down for some float. Our machine’s out. Why don’t you come on over? Restricks never stopped you before.”

  “I’ve been to your parties, Arabel. Washing my sheets might be more exciting.”

  “You’re right,” she said, “it might.” She fiddled with the machine. This was not like her at all.

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing’s up.” She sounded puzzled. “It’s samurai-party time without the samurai. Not a bone in sight and no hope of any. That’s why I came down here.”

  “Brown, too?” I asked. He was into a lot of edge stuff, but I couldn’t quite imagine celibacy.

  “Brown, too. They all just sit there.”

  “They’re on something, then. Something new they brought back from vacation.” I couldn’t see what she was so upset about.

  “No,” she said. “They’re not on anything. This is different. Come see. Please.”

  Well, maybe this was all a trick to get me to one of Arabel’s scutty parties and maybe not. But I didn’t want Mumsy to think she’d hurt my feelings by putting me on restricks. I threw the lock on the spin so nobody’d steal the sheets and went with her.

  For once Arabel hadn’t exaggerated. It was a godspit party, even by her low standards. You could tell that the minute you walked in. The girls looked unhappy, the boys looked uninterested. It couldn’t be all bad, though. At least Brown was back. I walked over to where he was standing.

  “Tavvy,” he said, smiling, “how was your summer? Learn anything new from the natives?”

  “More than my fucked father intended.” I smiled back at him.

  “I’m sure he had your best interests at heart,” he said. I started to say something clever to that, then realized he wasn’t kidding. Brown was trust just like I was. He had to be kidding. Only he wasn’t. He wasn’t smiling anymore either.

  “He just wanted to protect you, for your own good.”

  Jiggin’ Jesus, he had to be on something. “I don’t need any protecting,” I said. “As you well know.”

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding disappointed. “Yeah.” He moved away.

  What in the scut was going on? Brown leaned against the wall, watching Sept and Arabel. She had her sweater off and was shimmying out of her skirt, which I have seen before, sometimes even helped with. What I had never seen before was the look of absolute desperation on her face. Something was very wrong. Sept stripped, and his bone was as big as Arabel could have wanted, but the look on her face didn’t change. Sept shook his head almost disapprovingly at Brown and went down on Arabel.

  “I haven’t had any straight-up all summer,” Brown said from behind me, his hand on my vaj. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Gladly. “We can’t go to my room,” I said. “I’ve got a virgie for a roommate. How about yours?”

  “No!” he said, and then more quietly, “I’ve got the same problem. New guy just off the shuttle. I want to break him in gently.”

  You’re lying, Brown, I thought. And you’re about to back out of this, too. “I know a place,” I said, and practically raced him to the laundry room so he wouldn’t have time to change his mind.

  I spread one of the dried slickspin sheets on the floor and went down as fast as I could get out of my clothes. Brown was in no hurry, and the frictionless sheet seemed to relax him. He smoothed his hands the full length of my body. “Tavvy,” he said, brushing his lips along the line from my hips to my neck, “your skin’s so soft. I’d almost forgotten.” He was talking to himself.

  Forgotten what, for fucked’s sake, he couldn’t have been without any jig-jig all summer or he’d be showing it now, and he acted like he had all the time in the world.

  “Almost forgotten..nothing like..”

  Like what? I thought furiously. Just what have you got in that room? And what has it got that I haven’t? I spread my legs and forced him down between them. He raised his head a little, frowning, then he started that long, slow, torturing passage down my skin again. Jiggin’ Jesus, how long did he think I could wait?

  “Come on,” I whispered, try
ing to maneuver him with my hips. “Put it in, Brown. I want to jig jig. Please.”

  He stood up in a motion so abrupt that my head smacked against the laundry-room floor. He pulled on his clothes, looking…what? Guilty? Angry?

  I sat up. “What in the holy scut do you think you’re doing?”

  “You wouldn’t understand. I just keep thinking about your father.”

  “My father? What in the scut are you talking about?”

  “Look, I can’t explain it. I just can’t…” And left. Like that. With me ready to go off any minute and what do I get? A cracked head.

  “I don’t have a father, you scutty godfucker!” I shouted after him.

  I yanked my clothes on and started pulling the other sheet out of the spin with a viciousness I would have liked to have spent on Brown. Arabel was back, watching from the laundry-room door. Her face still had that strained look.

  “Did you see that last charming scene?” I asked her, snagging the sheet on the spin handle and ripping a hole in one corner.

  “I didn’t have to. I can imagine it went pretty much the way mine did.” She leaned unhappily against the door. “I think they’ve all gone bent over the summer.”

  “Maybe.” I wadded the sheets together into a ball. I didn’t think that was it, though. Brown wouldn’t have lied about a new boy in his room in that case. And he wouldn’t have kept talking about my father in that edge way. I walked past Arabel. “Don’t worry, Arabel, if we have to go lezzy again, you know you’re my first choice.”

  She didn’t even look particularly happy about that.

  My idiot roommate was awake, sitting bolt upright on the bunk where I’d left her. The poor brainless thing had probably been sitting there the whole time I’d been gone. I made up the bunk, stripped off my clothes for the second time tonight, and crawled in. “You can turn out the light any time,” I said.

  She hopped over to the wall plate, swathed in a nightgown that dated as far back as Old Man Moulton’s college days, or farther. “Did you get in trouble?” she asked, her eyes wide.

  “Of course not. I wasn’t the one who tossed up. If anybody’s in trouble, it’s you,” I added maliciously.

  She seemed to sag against the flat wallplate as if she were clinging to it for support. “My father—will they tell my father?” Her face was flashing red and white again. And where would the vomit land this time? That would teach me to take out my frustrations on my roommate.

  “Your father? Of course not. Nobody’s in trouble. It was a couple of fucked sheets, that’s all.”

  She didn’t seem to hear me, “He said he’d come and get me if I got in trouble. He said he’d make me go home.”

  I sat up in the bunk. I’d never seen a freshman yet that wasn’t dying to go home, at least not one like Zibet, with a whole loving family waiting for her instead of a trust and a couple of snotty lawyers. But Zibet here was scared scutless at the idea. Maybe the whole campus was going edge. “You didn’t get in trouble,” I repeated. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  She was still hanging onto that wallplate for dear life.

  “Come on”—Mary Masting, she was probably having an attack of some kind and I’d get blamed for that, too. “You’re safe here. Your father doesn’t even know about it.”

  She seemed to relax a little. “Thank you for not getting me in trouble,” she said and crawled back into her own bunk. She didn’t turn the light off.

  Jiggin’ Jesus, it wasn’t worth it. I got out of bed and turned the fucked light off myself.

  “You’re a good person, you know that,” she said softly into the darkness. Definitely edge. I settled down under the covers, planning to masty myself to sleep, since I couldn’t get anything any other way, but very quietly. I didn’t want any more hysterics.

  A hearty voice suddenly exploded into the room. “To the young men of Moulton College, to all my strong sons, I say—”

  “What’s that?” Zibet whispered.

  “First night in Hell,” I said, and got out of bed for the thirtieth time.

  “May all your noble endeavors be crowned with success,” Old Man Moulton said.

  I slapped my palm against the wallplate and then fumbled through my still-unpacked shuttle bag for a nail file. I stepped up on Zibet’s bunk with it and started to unscrew the intercom.

  “To the young women of Moulton College,” he boomed again, “to all my darling daughters.” He stopped. I tossed the screws and file back in the bag, smacked the plate, and flung myself back in bed.

  “Who was that?” Zibet whispered.

  “Our founding father,” I said, and then remembering the effect the word “father” seemed to be having on everyone in this edge place I added hastily, “That’s the last time you’ll have to hear him. I’ll put some plast in the works tomorrow and put the screws back in so the dorm mother won’t figure it out. We will live in blessed silence for the rest of the semester.”

  She didn’t answer. She was already asleep, gently snoring. Which meant so far I had misguessed every single thing today. Great start to the semester.

  The admin knew all about the party. “You do know the meaning of the word restricks, I presume?” he said.

  He was an old scut, probably forty-five. Dear Daddy’s age. He was fairly good-looking, probably exercising like edge to keep the old belly in for the freshman girls. He was liable to get a hernia. He probably jig jigged into a plastic bag, too, just like Daddy, to carry on the family name. Jiggin’ Jesus, there oughta be a law.

  “You’re a trust student, Octavia?”

  “That’s right.” You think I’d be stuck with a fucked name like Octavia if I wasn’t?

  “Neither parent?”

  “No. Paid mother-surr. Trust name till twenty-one.” I watched his face to see what effect that had on him. I’d seen a lot of scared faces that way.

  “There’s no one to write to, then, except your lawyers. No way to expel you. And restricks don’t seem to have any appreciable effect on you. I don’t quite know what would.”

  I’ll bet you don’t. I kept watching him, and he kept watching me, maybe wondering if I was his darling daughter, if that expensive jism in the plastic bag had turned out to be what he was boning after right now.

  “What exactly was it you called your dorm mother?”

  “Scut,” I said.

  “I’ve longed to call her that myself a time or two.”

  The sympathetic buildup. I waited, pretty sure of what was coming.

  “About this party—I’ve heard the boys have something new going. What is it?”

  The question wasn’t what I’d expected. “I don’t know,” I said and then realized I’d let my guard down. “Do you think I’d tell you if I knew?”

  “No, of course not. I admire that. You’re quite a young woman, you know. Outspoken, loyal, very pretty, too, if I may say so.”

  Um-hmm. And you just happen to have a job for me, don’t you?

  “My secretary’s quit. She likes younger men, she says, although if what I hear is true, maybe she’s better off with me. It’s a good job. Lots of extras. Unless, of course, you’re like my secretary and prefer boys to men.”

  Well, and here was the way out. No more virgie freshmen, no more restricks. Very tempting. Only he was at least forty-five, and somehow I couldn’t quite stomach the idea of jig jig with my own father. Sorry, sir.

  “If it’s the trust problem that’s bothering you, I assure you there are ways to check.”

  Liar. Nobody knows who their kids are. That’s why we’ve got these storybook trust names, so we can’t show up on Daddy’s doorstep: Hi, I’m your darling daughter. The trust protects them against scenes like that. Only sometimes with a scut like the admin here, you wonder just who’s being protected from whom.

  “Do you remember what I told my dorm mother?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Double to you.”

  Restricks for the rest of the year and a godspit alert band wel
ded onto my wrist.

  “I know what they’ve got,” Arabel whispered to me in class. It was the only time I ever saw her. The godspit alert band went off if I even mastied without permission.

  “What?” I asked, pretty much without caring.

  “Tell you after.”

  I met her outside, in a blizzard of flying leaves and cotton. The circulation system had gone edge again. “Animals,” she said.

  “Animals?”

  “Little repulsive things about as long as your arm. Tessels, they’re called. Repulsive little brown animals.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said. “It’s got to be more than beasties. That’s elementary school stuff. Are they bioenhanced?”

  “You mean pheromones or something?” She frowned. “I don’t know. I sure didn’t see anything attractive about them, but the boys—Brown brought his to a party, carrying it around on his arm, calling it Daughter Ann. They all swarmed around it, petting it, saying things like ‘Come to Daddy.’ It was really edge.”

  I shrugged. “Well, if you’re right, we don’t have anything to worry about. Even if they’re bio-enhanced, how long can beasties hold their attention? It’ll all be over by midterms.”

  “Can’t you come over? I never see you.” She sounded like she was ready to go lezzy.

  I held up the banded wrist. “Can’t. Listen, Arabel, I’ll be late to my next class,” I said, and hurried off through the flailing yellow and white. I didn’t have a next class. I went back to the dorm and took some float.

  When I came out of it, Zibet was there, sitting on her bunk with her knees hunched up, writing busily in a notebook. She looked much better than the first time I saw her. Her hair had grown out some and showed enough curl at the ends to pick up on her features. She didn’t look strained. In fact she looked almost happy.

  “What are you doing?” I hoped I said. The first couple of sentences out of float it’s anybody’s guess what’s going to come out.

  “Recopying my notes,” she said. Jiggin’, the things that make some people happy. I wondered if she’d found a boyfriend and that was what had given her that pretty pink color. If she had, she was doing better than Arabel. Or me.