by Rebecca Ore
“Dr. Peterson?”
“I help Julian.”
God, a live-in shrink. Maude looked at Springer and said, “How are you doing these days?”
“Fine now that I recognized the Lord wanted me to be a painter, not a word preacher. Get the words tangled sometimes. Dr. Peterson here keeps track of my medicine better than Berkeley.”
“So you met Julian in Berkeley,” Dr. Peterson said.
“In Berkeley. He followed me here,” Maude explained, thinking the black psychiatrist, psychologist, whatever, could make of that what he would.
“From Berkeley.” Dr. Peterson looked at Julian.
“She was cheating welfare,” Springer said. “Pretending to be crazy. I broke her of it.”
“You’re in the triptych,” Dr. Peterson said.
“Yes, I came to see it, if it’s still here.”
“Couldn’t sell it until you saw it,” Springer said. He went in the house.
Instead of following him, Dr. Peterson grasped Maude’s elbow and held her back just long enough for the door to close. “He’s stabilized nicely now. We don’t need him to be stressed.”
“His paintings must be selling,” Maude said.
“Enough for a middle-class living. He’s not rich. I hope you’re not going to try to leech off him.”
“He can support a live-in shrink, I take it.” Maude opened the door. Dr. Peterson fumbled to hold the door for her even though she’d had to open it herself.
“Back here,” Springer called.
On the left, Maude saw herself, a worried-looking woman with pouches under the eyes, long nose bent down at the tip, holding a gun between her hands, gun as prayer beads, rosary. The center panel showed a glacier churning up skeletons, a terminal moraine of skulls, impossibly articulated hand bones, and rib cages. The right-hand panel showed Luke and Betty with shadows around their heads instead of halos.
Maude had been expecting something gaudy, more primitive rococo—her shooting the witches, Doug sprawled on the coffin, the fish swimming through the air. “What happened to the ghosts?” she asked Springer.
“All the souls God wanted he took up to heaven,” Springer said. “Others the computers ate.”
Dr. Peterson said, “We don’t believe in ghosts.”
Maude said, “I like the central panel best.”
“Oh, it does end in ice,” Springer said. “But not for a long, long time.”
Maude thanked him for showing her the triptych and drove back to the building on top of the hill. It was a new library. She went in and saw the building was huge, light and airy. Computer terminals sat in various places, green lights glowing alphanumerics. Maude saw three women behind the desk, heard them talking in Standard English, not country, about a new regional library headed by a woman from Indiana. Maude came over and said, “What happened to the old library?”
“It was obsolete,” the youngest woman said. “No computers. All the libraries in Bracken County are linked now. We even can get interlibrary loans from any participating library in the country.”
Maude sat down to one of the patron terminals and called up all the books listed under automotive engineering, then engineering in general. Maude on the net—in the magic time, that metaphor turned real would make her an electronic spider stepping out on the circuits to eat us trapped in computer tangles. But now, she felt the computer eat away the last of her magic, making her just another person in a world of dying generations. A last fragment of wishing to be more special than the general run of humanity tugged at her.
“We’ve switched to the universe of rules that work the same for everyone,” Maude said. She pushed that last fragment of special power into the computer.
TOR BOOKS BY REBECCA ORE
* * *
Alien Bootlegger and Other Stories
Being Alien
Becoming Alien
Human to Human
The Illegal Rebirth of Billy the Kid
Slow Funeral
COPYRIGHT
* * *
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
SLOW FUNERAL
Copyright © 1994 by Rebecca Ore
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue New York, N.Y. 10010
Tor ® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ore, Rebecca.
Slow funeral / Rebecca Ore. p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-312-85201-0
1. Witchcraft—Virginia—Fiction. 2. Women—Virginia—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3565.R385S57 1994
813’.54—dc20 94-2976
CIP
First edition: July 1994
Printed in the United States of America 0987654321
Created with Writer2ePub
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