Dorien felt himself disliking Sister Miriam, and he despised himself for it. Here was a devout good nun who had devoted herself without stint or reservation for years to a project of his own choosing. And the best he could manage as a man of God was a shameful envy because the years were treating her less badly than they were treating him. Disgusting! He could imagine how tiresome his confessor must find him, always having to admit that he was still just as vain as he’d been the time before.
But it was not fair! She had no right to still look like that, to command the room she entered and the attention of everyone in it that way. That sort of effect was the natural right of men; it had no place in the life of a woman. He, Father Dorien, needed that effortless dignity, that power—he might just as well admit it, because that was what it was—she had power. She didn’t need it at all; it was no use to a woman. The Lord’s finger had slipped somewhere along the way, and Dorien resented it. And now here she was, asking to be relieved of the pleasant assignment she’d had for so long and sent into the public wards of the city hospitals. Bad enough that she should appear saintly; Dorien felt that he as not going to be able to bear it if she really was saintly.
“Sit down, Sister, for heaven’s sake,” he said, to put an end to her looming over him; and then when she had murmured the usual nunly tripe about the pleasure of obedience and done as he ordered, he regretted it. He’d forgotten to have the low wooden stool set at the end of the table for her, and she’d had no choice, in her obedience, but to take one of the elaborate high-backed chairs. In which she did not look like a humble nun being obedient, but rather like a medieval queen affecting a simple throne, meeting perhaps with one of her slightly dissipated advisors. I am getting old, Dorien thought, and I am going to get older; I make foolish little mistakes. I hope I do not start making foolish big ones.
She sat waiting patiently, her eyes cast down and her hands folded decently inside her sleeves; as always, the perfect nun. She could not initiate a conversation without his permission and he hadn’t given it; he let her wait, while he glared at her and thought about what he might want to do about her request.
It had come through proper channels, a discreet note hard-copied from his secretary’s comset, saying only that she considered her usefulness in her present post at an end and humbly requested transfer to a nursing position in one of the large public hospitals in Washington. Signed, “In obedience, Sister Miriam Rose.”
Why? Why would she want to do that? Now she had nothing to do but supervise a dozen well-trained nuns at their terminals, correct their work when it wasn’t precisely right, push papers around now and then, report to him once in a while. Why would she want to trade that sweet sinecure for a hospital nursing post? It made no sense. No sense at all. He regretted that he had allowed another priest to become her confessor, just because he had been so busy; if he had seen her regularly he would have been prepared for this instead of being taken by surprise. Why would she want to go into—of all things—nursing?
True, nursing today was not what it had been in former times. There were healthies beside every bed in the public wards, even in the poorest areas. (Not that Earth had anything that could accurately be called poverty any more, but such judgments are always relative; citizens who had nothing but ample food and clothing and housing and education and medical care considered themselves poor.) And with healthies there, a nurse no longer had to do the grubby things. If the patient was in a medpod, she didn’t have to do anything except be available if something in the pod malfunctioned or the patient developed a sudden craving for the flesh-and-blood presence of a human being. The healthies kept the patients clean and dry and at a proper temperature and properly oxygenated; they kept them fed and hydrated and medicated; they turned them and exercised them and entertained them; they dressed and tended wounds. And every smallest item of relevant information about the patient’s condition and care was monitored by the healthies and transferred constantly—all nicely summarized and charted—to the central terminals at the nursing stations.
Nevertheless, a nursing post meant spending all your time with sick people, and if you were not doing grubby work yourself you were still responsible for making sure that it had been done, and there was nothing attractive about it. Why would Sister Miriam trade her quiet small office in the convent, opening on the soft hum of the computer room, her windows overlooking the gardens and the brook, the peace and quiet and order of the religious life, for the pandemonium of a big city hospital’s public wards?
Be careful, Dorien! he told himself. Be extremely careful. This is only a woman, but this is not an ordinary woman. And when an extraordinary woman makes a request that is itself extraordinary, she is probably up to something.
“Sister!” he said, not kindly. She looked up without expression, as if she had not had to spend a full ten minutes waiting to be addressed. She was still beautiful, he thought, if you weren’t enthralled by dimples and curls and curves. “Sister, your request is absurd. I am inclined to refuse it for that reason alone, without further discussion. Except that your dedication over the years has been exemplary, and I have no reason to believe that your mind is weakening. I will therefore permit you to tell me why I should allow you to do something so stupid. You may explain yourself, Sister—briefly. You have my permission to speak.”
“I dislike being useless, Father,” she said, her voice quite flat and unexpressive. “I am quite useless at this time.”
“How are you useless?” he asked her sharply. “You may speak.”
“I have supervised the revision of all the materials that the women of the Lines are likely to use as devotional items, Father; you will realize that although they insist on translating every last begat into Ládan they will never use most of it. There are parts of the Bible that are suitable for reading aloud as devotions, and then there is all the rest of it—suitable only for including in sermons or for reading to oneself. Since women do not preach, Father, none of that is likely to be widely circulated.”
“But it will be read, Sister. You may speak.”
“Within the Lines—not beyond. I beg your pardon, Father; I do not mean to sound disrespectful.”
Still that flat dull voice . . . what had happened to her magnificent voice? Without the voice he realized that she wasn’t half so imposing, and he felt a bit more charitable toward her; perhaps she looked better than he did, but she certainly didn’t sound any better. He spoke to her more gently, from this new perspective. “Sister Miriam,” he said, “I’m either missing a point or I don’t have the information necessary to follow you. Please—speak freely. What, precisely, is the situation?”
“All those materials,” she answered, “the Psalms, the Beatitudes, the Nativity Story from Luke, the Easter sections and the Creation Story—all that sort of thing, suitable for reading aloud—has been carefully revised. You have my word, Father, to the extent that I am competent to give it: there is now no hint of feminist taint in any of those materials. Where references to the Blessed Virgin could be made more prominent . . . foregrounded . . . that has been done. You have seen all these items yourself and have approved them. The computer program for automatic revision has been refined to such an extent that the nuns rarely need to change anything—and Father, when they do, always remembering that they are presently working with the less essential materials, they have had years of experience. They don’t make errors as they did in the early stages. They do not need my supervision any more. As more materials are completed, they will simply be forwarded to you for reading; if there is any problem, you will send them back. I have prepared a detailed manual for use when the computer does not seem adequate, or when the wording provided by the program is for some reason not entirely suitable. If a new nun were added to the revising staff tomorrow, Father, she would not need me; she would have the program in the computer to do most of the work, the manual available in case of difficulty, the other nuns with their years of experience to advise her if the manual is not
enough, and you as final arbiter. What possible need could there be for me, in these circumstances?”
“In sum,” he observed slowly, “you have successfully completed your task. You may speak, Sister.”
“I am very sorry, Father,” she said, surprising him, “but that is too complimentary; I could not accept it in good conscience.”
“My dear Sister, your description certainly sounded like an account of a successfully completed project! Please explain—you may speak.”
“Father,” she said, “there were two tasks assigned to us. One—the revision for the Láadan materials—is well in hand, yes. Everything has either already been finished or its completion is assured without further assistance from me. But the other task—that of transferring the women’s fervor to the Blessed Virgin and thus leading them to Mother Church—in that, we have not done so well. We regret that, Father—we are indeed sorry.”
Father Dorien shrugged his shoulders and made a careless gesture with one hand. “Sister Miriam,” he said indulgently, “it’s true that you and the other sisters failed to bring about a mass conversion . . . you did not gather in tens of thousands. But you did well enough, and you need not reproach yourself. Have I ever complained? You may speak.”
“You haven’t complained, Father—no. You have been most generous. I am afraid the task was just beyond us. Perhaps, if we could have had priests at the devotionals, to truly fire the women, things would have gone differently. But Father, the fad is almost over now. Except within the houses of the Lines, where things are as they always were, women no longer hold Thursday Night Devotionals. Not even in the largest cities. And so you do see, Father; I am not needed. Not any longer.”
Dorien thought of the last set of revisions she had sent to him. It wasn’t surprising that they kindled no religious fire in women; women were theologically illiterate, and they had to be attracted to the Lord by the rhythm and power of words and music well assembled. He had tried reading some of those recent bits aloud, and it had been like reading a comphone directory. Less effective than that, in fact, because alphabetized names in lists have a certain hypnotic quality. He didn’t understand why the revisions necessary to clean up the heretical tendencies should have resulted in such dull and plodding and unmelodious stuff, but he did understand why the results could not hold the frail attention of women.
“All right, Sister,” he said suddenly, making up his mind to be done with it. “I understand. I agree that the other sisters can go on without you, and no doubt they, too, will be free of this before long; the King James is large, but it isn’t infinite! I even agree that you should be released from what must have become no more to you than a running in place. However—” Here he stopped, and raised his right index finger beside his face. “—that does not explain why you have requested transfer to, of all places, the public wards of a huge urban hospital! You’ve done your duty, Sister, and done it well and faithfully. If you want something new, why not something a bit more tasteful? You may speak.”
“I enjoy nursing,” she answered. “I have always enjoyed it.”
“Then why not private nursing, Sister? Or nursing in a small hospital in some pleasant place? In the mountains? At the seashore? In a lovely little New England town? Why, in the name of all the saints, Washington General? That terrible place! Why there? Or anywhere else of that kind?” He shook the finger at her. “It smacks of excessive religiosity, Sister! One thinks of the ancient nuns and their barbarous habits—kissing the sores of lepers and so on—and much, much worse. Is that what’s going on with you, Sister? If it is, I won’t allow it. You may answer.”
She raised her eyes and looked directly at him, for the first time since the interview began. But there was nothing compelling in her glance. They were bland, dutiful eyes; a pretty color, nothing more.
“Father,” she answered, “I tell you from my heart; I am bored with peace and quiet. A fault of character, I know. But I have had peace and quiet and tranquility until I am sick of them all. I would like some excitement . . . some bustle. A change, Father.”
“Oh. Yes, I see.” It was reasonable enough. He should have seen it for himself. “Do you want even more excitement, perhaps?” he asked her, teasing. “Shall I send you out to a frontier colony? You may speak, Sister.”
“If you wish, Father.” Her eyelids dropped. “It would be my privilege to obey.”
Dorien drummed his fingers on the table edge, considering the idea. Should he do that? No . . . no, he didn’t think so. “No,” he told her, “I don’t want you where—if those bizarre females took it into their heads to translate . . . oh, Confucius, for example . . . it would be hard for me to get you back. If I send you out to the colonies you’ll be indispensable in a month, and they’ll insist on keeping you. No—I won’t do that. But I’ll make you an offer, Sister Miriam Rose the Bored. I’ll transfer you to Washington General, as you wished. On the condition that if I need you back again you will come without protest or delay—and that if you find Washington General more than you bargained for and would like to be bored again, you’ll send me a message and I’ll find you something more pleasant. Will that do, Sister? You may speak.”
“I would be grateful, Father,” she said. He could see that she was pleased. “You are very kind.”
He was, thought Dorien. He was damned kind. But he could afford to be. She might have stayed elegant, but she’d gotten dull. Insipid. All that boredom she’d been talking about—it had leaked through her pores and made her boring, too. She didn’t even seem beautiful, now that he thought about it, especially sitting there slumped the way she was. He resisted the urge to order her to sit up straight and throw her shoulders back; you couldn’t say that to a woman. Why, she was only passable to look at. All bones. Poor old thing, of course she was bored. And she needed other women to gossip with, and so on.
It gave Father Dorien great satisfaction to let her have exactly what she had asked him for; he was embarrassed now, to think that he’d been suspicious of her. Granting her request would be a kind of recompense for the insults she’d suffered from his over-active imagination. She thought him very kind, and so did he; but he would deny it.
“Not at all, Sister Miriam,” he said cordially. “Not at all.”
CHAPTER 24
“This year’s Pulitzer Prize for Colonial Literature is sure to be a matter of intense controversy everywhere except on Terra’s Eastern Seaboard. We can now look forward to renewed—and wholly justified—demands, especially from Luna and New Evergreen, for the Colonial Pulitzers to be chosen and awarded by colonial juries. The ossified pedants who made this year’s award (only one of them under seventy-five years of age!) have again ignored reality and remained with their distinguished bald heads firmly encased in the literary sand.
“The obvious winner, not only this year but for the preceding three years, is the brilliant young symphonovelist Kalaberra Courtney. It is a disgrace to the planet Earth that the award went instead to the tiresome semi-autobiographical warblings of Hassan P. E. Pritchard, the only frog in the tiny pond of Settlement Thirteen. Never mind that Pritchard’s life is boring, his style unreadable, and his personality insufferable! He is the product of a Terran Multiversity, and his tedious works can be recognized as novels even by small children—that is apparently all that the Pulitzer Committee demands.
“‘Meanwhile, the work of the true literary giants of the colonies continues to be almost impossible to obtain here on Earth even in cheap chiplet versions. Under the circumstances, the simple fact that Pritchard accepted the tainted award is proof enough that he is nothing but a hack.”
(from “Bookbits,” by literary critic Lincoln-Jefferson Stratargee, SPACETIME HOLOMAGAZINE)
“This room has a genuinely awe-inspiring ugliness,” Heykus said solemnly. “It must have cost . . . oh, as much as the setup-pack for a new colony of one hundred settlers. On an Earth-type planet, of course. A man wouldn’t want to overstate the situation.”
The other
men, already seated and waiting for him, looked at one another and then at their surroundings, while Heykus stalked to the head of the table—if something shaped like your average amoeba on the move could be said to have a “head.” The tallest and most cadaverous of the group was an old-line bureaucrat named John Charles Sundbystyner, who’d known Heykus for fifty years; he closed his eyes, sighed as if he were in mild distress, and answered with his usual dynamic intonation . . . absolutely flat. It’s not easy to achieve a controlled monotone in Panglish, but Sundbystyner was famous for his. “Heykus,” he droned, “you say that every damn year. It’s tiresome, and I’ve told you so before. In fact, last year you gave me your word that you’d get somebody on your enormous staff—for which there is no conceivable excuse—to write you a new opening line.”
“Get off him, Sundy,” snapped the man at his right; to his left, the last member present added, “Second the effing motion, John Charles. We’re not here for a seminar in stylistics.”
Sundbystyner’s eyes opened, his eyebrows climbed his forehead, and he snorted. Heykus noted appreciatively that even the snort did not deviate from the monotone, and considered congratulating the old fart for his consistency and his prosodic skill, but he discarded the idea as inappropriate. Aldrovandus Barton was absolutely right; stylistics was not the point. And if Sundy were given the least encouragement he’d go on for half an hour. Heykus settled for a comment as predictable as his opening complaint had been.
“The reason I say that every year,” he noted, sitting down, “is that this cursed room is redone every year. Aren’t they ever going to quit?”
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