Always

by Nicola Griffith

  The grey-haired man was Neil, and although he was competent, it was clear he was not well. His cheeks acquired a faintly purple tinge and he ran out of breath very quickly, and had to rest every now and again. Everyone seemed used to that.

  We knelt again. Sensei surveyed us, paused, and said, “Free play.” Electricity rippled down the line of students. Petra and Jim moved regretfully off the mat and sat to one side. Free play is not for beginners.

  Chuck, Mike, Neil, the two men I hadn’t worked with, and I ranged in a circle around sensei, Mike looked around, nodded, said “Hei!” and Neil charged at sensei, and then flew through the air in a tucked ball, and one of the anonymous students ran and was flung on his back, and then Chuck, whom sensei stepped to meet so he couldn’t collapse with fear before making contact, and then Mike, who rolled backwards, then me. I ran without breathlessness, smiled as the currents brushed and I described an elegant spiral and rolled out and was on my feet again even before Neil came charging in once more.

  The more truly expert an aikido player is, the more closely movement on the mat during free play resembles the Brownian motion of particles in suspension. Sensei moved slowly across the canvas, flinging bodies random distances, never letting the group close in or a pattern develop. But against six opponents no one can keep that up forever without taking them out permanently, one by one, which is why, generally, only those who aren’t too far from being yudansha take part in free play: gradually, no matter how good one is, things start to get just a little ragged, just a little rough. The goal becomes one of pushing away rather than guiding. I’ve seen more than one person get hurt in such situations.

  Sensei lasted two and a half rounds before the raggedness became serious. He stiff-armed Mike in the center of the chest and he went down with an ashen-faced thump; sensei immediately stood straight and clapped his hands twice. Everyone sagged a little. Neil was gasping; the others were breathing fast. So was I, but not in distress.

  Sensei offered his arm to Mike, who came off the mat looking fine.

  “Angelo,” he said, pointing to the student with the mustache whom I hadn’t worked with, and we began again. Angelo was ragged after two people: shoulders tense, fists clenched, steps small and abrupt. Sensei let everyone have a go at him before pointing to someone called Donny. Then Neil.

  And then it was my turn, and Mike charged first, like a young bear, and I smiled and bowled him neatly into the path of Chuck and they went down in a tangle, and then I turned to help Neil fly, and then sensei ran at me and dived to roll and come at me feet first and I refused the challenge and leapt over him like water bursting over a stone and sparkling clear and bright in the sun, before dipping and rising under Angelo, tossing him up like a whitewater rapid flips a raft, and joy fizzed under my skin as he turned turtle and came down flat on his back and I was spinning, taking Donny into a headfirst fall that would have broken the neck of anyone who didn’t practice falling two hours a day. Blood rushed sweet and hot under my skin and laughter bubbled up through me and I loosed it. It was a lovely day.

  DORNAN WORE black jeans and a jacket and had taken the sapphire out of his left ear.

  “What are you smiling at?” he said crossly as we drove north to meet my mother and Eric.

  “Not a thing.”

  He wriggled uncomfortably, tugged at his jacket cuffs and then his seat belt. I wasn’t sure why he was so tense. He’d already met my mother. She hadn’t eaten him.

  “We’re going to be early,” he said.

  “Yes.” If you were early, you could check out exits, and crowd choke-and vantage-points before you had to settle down. You could scan the clientele, get a feel for who might do what. Except that when we parked by the massive totem outside Ivar’s Salmon House and went in, my mother and Eric were already at the far side of the enormous room at a table cornered by two picture windows, sitting drenched in the westering sun that poured across Lake Union and turned their chardonnay to bottled summer, but they rose with such glad smiles, such open shoulders and wide hands, that I smiled, too, and felt a jet of the same joy I’d experienced that afternoon.

  I walked to the table slowly, absorbing the vaulted space, the forty feet of native canoe suspended from the roof beams, the rounded faces of the Inuit and Aleut servers—not unlike the Sami in the north of Norway and Finland—the deep reds and creams of painted native carvings on the walls. Even the music sounded Sami, too, which made sense when one considered the fact that Alaska and Siberia were separated only by the narrow Bering Strait. The smell of salmon did not fill me with horror.

  They had thoughtfully left the two chairs facing the best view, which meant I had to sit with my back to the door, but if I turned in my seat slightly I could watch reflections in the window. There were three possible exits.

  We all sat as though we meant to stay: shoulders down, feet flat, back relaxed. To start, everyone but me ordered the clam chowder. I opted for the green salad, on the theory that if I could manage fruit, I should be able to manage green leaves. The chowder arrived first. It smelled like pale, thick brimstone. I swallowed. When my salad came, I found that if I avoided the cheese, it would be edible.

  We talked of our day. I told them about aikido, about Petra obviously thinking it was a stigma to work with another woman, about the joy of falling at speed.

  Dornan talked of his morning, lunch at a French bistro downtown, the growing franticness of the film production. “Time is getting short. They only have another four days on their star’s contract, and she wants to leave before that. The director is threatening to go, too, and take the stunt actor with him.” Eric wanted to know who the star was, and he and Dornan talked happily about favorite TV shows. My mother and I smiled at each other, and I realized that I was quite relaxed.

  We talked of Eric’s day at Spherogenix and then Encos, the companies’ focus on bioengineering specific immune-system proteins. He sounded urbane and relaxed, but it was clear he was passionate on the subject.

  “You’re a scientist?” Dornan said.

  “I have an M.D., but I don’t practice.”

  “Why is that?”

  He paused. “I was twenty-five. I was a doctor. Patients would put their lives in my hands and trust me to help them. I found myself unwilling to play God. I don’t mind playing business but people’s lives . . . I was afraid.”

  I had been wondering why he didn’t practice, and Dornan had simply asked.

  “Are you still afraid?” he said.

  “No. Or at least I don’t think so. Plus I’ve come to see that negotiating development licenses ultimately affects many people’s lives. It’s different, though. Doing so at one remove.”

  The difference between squeezing someone’s warm neck with your hands and launching a smart bomb from two miles up. I nodded.

  “Plus,” he said, “I get to have lunch with all the big-shot investors, mostly famous CEO-type people.”

  Else laughed. “But what he really likes is the people the famous CEOs attract.”

  He smiled at her, then at me and Dornan. “I admit it. I like the shallow glitz.” And he and Dornan talked about the relationship between celebrity and big business, and when the conversation morphed back into a discussion of what was going on with Seattle biotech, I watched a cormorant airing its wings on one of the dock pilings.

  “But of course a lot depends on a proposed South Lake Union real estate development project.”

  I focused. “Real estate? How does that tie into biotechnology?”

  “One of the city’s major developers is trying to get various concessions from local government—a spur from the proposed light rail line, relaxed commercial/residential zoning, and so on—in order to essentially create a biotech hub on the lake’s south shore.” I tried to visualize the area: the northern edge of downtown, then I realized that those were probably its lights shining across the water. “If he succeeds, then half the people I’m talking to would relocate, at favorable lease rates and certain city and co
unty-level tax breaks. But in order to assure those favorable terms, they would in turn have to make concessions, commitments to employment levels, diversity quotas, environmental controls, and so on.”

  Something in my brain began to tick.

  “Naturally, all this affects pricing and long-term product viability, which are my major areas of concern.”

  “So if the city’s getting less tax money, why is it a good thing?” Dornan said.

  “Hubs are good because they attract other businesses. Like, for example, software nexuses in Silicon Valley and here in Seattle.”

  “Coffee,” Dornan said, nodding. “Tully’s, Starbucks, Seattle’s Best.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Also beer and tea and chocolate,” he mused. “Seattle’s Best Chocolate, Dilettante, Fran’s, Red Hook, Stash, Tazo—though those might be Oregon, now that I come to think of it.”

  All delivery mechanisms for nice, respectable drugs; all things that would get a Scandinavian through the winter.

  “That’s the way it seems to work,” Eric said. “Once an industry perceives that the business climate is favorable, that the employee base has the right education, that others will travel to a particular city in order to take employment there, then it will relocate. Others follow.” He made a rolling motion. “It snowballs.”

  “Ah.” Dornan nodded wisely. “Fashion.”

  Eric laughed. “Of course. Though they’d hate to admit it.”

  The cormorant launched itself from its perch and flew out over the water.

  “Zoning,” I said. “Is it hard to change?”

  “Not as hard as it should be,” my mother said.

  “It depends,” Eric said, with a glance at her. “There are some good arguments for keeping zoning flexible. But perhaps there’s a particular reason you asked?”

  “My warehouse.” My mother looked at me. Dornan looked at his wineglass and sighed. “I was thinking of selling it, only now I discover that that’s exactly what someone wants.” And I explained what I believed had been happening. “This morning I found out my agent has run off, and taken my files and a few others with her. Her assistant tells me that she’d been negotiating to purchase several properties along that stretch of the Duwamish, all industrial property. Only he couldn’t figure out why, who she was negotiating for, or who would be interested in it. So I was just thinking, maybe she’s found a way to change the zoning. How would she go about that?”

  “City or county council vote. Most of the time they just rubber-stamp the recommendations of a zoning committee chaired by one councillor and half a dozen civil servants. They will usually indulge in a pro forma public meeting before formulating their recommendations. For high-visibility issues, though, the individual councillors will make up their own minds. That is, they’ll let interested parties make it up for them by means of campaign contributions, promises of future development dollars, and public and behind-the -scenes support for the councillors’ pet projects.”

  “Buying votes—that simple?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “The way of the world,” my mother said. “Favors for favors. For example, that’s one of the reasons I’m here: the Norwegian government’s licensing agreement with a large software company is ending shortly and there are interesting new parameters to explore, particularly relating to security. I’m talking to the executive team purely informally, as a favor to the Labour Party.”

  I forgot the zoning issue. “The party, not the government?”

  She nodded.

  Party politics operated only in the domestic arena. “You’re thinking of going back to Norway.”

  Her face smoothed into that automatic pseudo-candid expression all career diplomats—all politicians—learn, but then she paused and glanced at Eric. He shrugged: your daughter, your decision. She took a deep breath. “Yes.”

  “What have they offered you?”

  “The Ministry of Culture and Education. For now.”

  “Well, well, well.”

  “What?” Dornan said, looking from me to Else to Eric and back again. “What?”

  Eric took his wife’s hand. “Aud has just discovered that her mother has greater ambition than she knew.”

  “You’re aiming for the top,” I said.

  “Yes.” Now that she had made up her mind to tell me, she seemed quite calm about it.

  “What’s your timetable?”

  "Move back later this year, assume the junior cabinet position next year, then ...”

  “Madame Prime Minister.” We all looked at each other. “But why?”

  “Victor Belaunde,” she said. “Do you remember?”

  It had been a long time, but Belaunde, onetime Peruvian ambassador to the UN, had been quoted in our household all through my childhood. My mother was very fond of quotations.

  I said from memory, “When there is a problem between two small nations, the problem disappears. When there is a problem between a big country and small country, the little country disappears. When there is a problem between two big countries, the United Nations disappears.”

  “It’s even more true today than it was then. Norway needs to be bigger. We have work to do. But the sense of importance must come from inside. That’s what I want to do.”

  “You want to change the world.”

  She didn’t deny it.

  Dornan looked around the table, shook his head, and said, “It’s genetic.” Which everyone seemed to find funnier than I did.

  “Aristotle,” Eric said, with the air of a magician producing a rabbit from the hat. “Humans have a purpose in the world, and that purpose is to fulfill their destiny.”

  “Destiny is a pretty creepy word,” Dornan said, and then, with a disarming smile, “depending on the context.”

  “Quite so. There again, Aristotle also said that greatness of soul is having a high opinion of oneself.”

  “Yes,” Dornan said in his best Trinity debating voice, “but do we believe him or Socrates when it comes to moral action? Socrates declared that it’s impossible to know the right thing and not do it. Aristotle, on the other hand, asserted that one can have the knowledge but fail to act because of lack of control or weakness of will.” He was enjoying their surprise. “Straw poll: Aristotle or Socrates?”

  “Aristotle,” said Eric.

  “Aristotle,” my mother said, but more slowly.

  They looked at me. “Socrates,” I said. “Because it’s all about what you mean by ‘knowledge.’ And ‘the right thing.’ ”

  They looked interested.

  “There are hierarchies of knowledge. It depends on which you privilege: somatic knowledge or extra-somatic. If you tell a child the fire will burn if she sticks her hand in the flame, she’ll only believe you if she knows what hot means.”

  “You mean like the razor?” my mother said.

  “Razor?”

  “You were seven, or perhaps eight—old enough, anyway, to have had more sense—and you found a razor blade on the turf at York races, and picked it up, and I said, ‘don’t touch it, that’s sharper than any knife,’ and you just couldn’t help yourself, you had to see how sharp it was. You tested the edge on your thumb and bled all over your new shoes.” She turned to Dornan. “We had to spend half an hour in the first-aid tent until she stopped bleeding.”

  Dornan grinned. I looked at my thumb.

  “You were saying?” Eric said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, think of religion. If you believed, really and truly, that you would spend eternity burning in hell for having sex with your brother’s wife, you wouldn’t do it.”

  “Unless you couldn’t help it. And if you’re nineteen and in the grip of powerful hormones, you’re next to helpless. Reason might not exist.”

  “Yes, but while you’re feeling the rush of hormones, at that moment, you know—physically, somatically—that having the sex is the right thing. It doesn’t matter what your frontal cortex is trying to tell you. Except that I sound as though I
think our minds and our bodies are separate things, and they’re not.”

  Before I got myself even more muddled by trying to explain how I thought of the layered brain—the limbic system not under conscious control, the cerebral cortex being a lightly civilized veneer over everything— Dornan stepped in.

  “So,” he said, with a Groucho Marx eyebrow waggle, “if Aristotle is right, are we to believe that (a) most politicians are weak, or (b) uncontrolled, or (c) just not smart enough to know the right thing?”

  “Politicians are like con men,” my mother said. “They persuade themselves to believe ridiculous things, and then pursue them in all sincerity.”

  Startled silence.

  “Which is why powerful people need people they love by them, to say the unwelcome thing, to help them believe what is right.”

  It was the first time I had heard her use the word love. We had never said to each other, I love you. When I was little, it had never occurred to me to believe otherwise. By the time I was old enough to wonder, I would not make myself vulnerable enough to ask.

  Over after-dinner drinks we talked about politicians, and family members and lovers who had damned or saved them, and Eric paid the bill, and we walked outside and stood on the dock for a while. Dornan and Eric moved down the ramp a little, and a Canada goose waddled fatly behind them, hoping for a handout.

  My mother and I watched the water. It was the blue-black of an old-fashioned Beretta that someone had oiled lovingly for twenty years. It heaved lazily, constantly, and the reflected boat lights smeared and ran like Day-Glo paint.

  My mother and I watched the water for a while. “You didn’t say what you thought of my plan for national politics.”

  “Eric seems as though he would be willing to say the unwelcome thing. I would, too.”

  “Thank you,” she said, “I would listen.” And I imagined us clasping hands in the dark, though neither of us moved.

  LESSON 6