"This really is astonishing," Jane said, applying herself to her salad again. "This main library must be a stupendous size. And think of the organization required to keep it operating smoothly. So what else did you learn about?"
"Mainly not to take spelling seriously. Like Lucky was saying this morning, spelling has been pretty haphazard until quite recently. My own guess would be that it didn't get to be awfully important in this country until Social Security. Did you know that most states didn't even have such things as birth certificates until this century? And some didn't require them until the 1930s or so."
"Well, I suppose there were still a lot of people outside cities having babies at home until then. Look over there, Shelley."
Doris Schmidtheiser had moved to another table and was talking with overbearing animation to an older couple. The woman sitting there was frantically signaling for their bill so they could escape if they got a chance, and the man was leaning back in his chair looking stunned by the sheer force of Doris's insistence.
"Poor things. Makes you feel we ought to rescue them, doesn't it?" Shelley said.
"No. Nobody rescued me. Least of all my best friend — who had the nerve to laugh at me when I took cover."
"She's probably trying to get people to come to her debate," Shelley said, ignoring Jane's accusation. "I do sort of feel sorry for her. Maybe I'll go. Just sit in on it long enough to swell the crowd a bit."
"What do you anticipate in the way of a crowd? Two or three misguided martyrs?"
"Oh, she might get a good turnout. After all, this whole Tsar thing is of interest to the people attending the convention. The Holnagradians, or whatever you'd call them."
"I think it's a swell idea for you to offer yourself up that way."
"You're not curious?"
"Not in the least," Jane said. "With my three kids, I've heard very nearly every subject on earth debated at some time or another. Though I'll bet this crowd won't sprinkle their arguments with terms like 'butt breath'. That's very popular just now."
Shelley laughed. "Might liven things up a bit if they did. So what are you going to do instead?"
"First I'm going to find the girls. They were supposed to check in with me—"
"Oh, I forgot. They came by the front desk while you were cravenly hiding in that oversized closet. They said they were going to take ski lessons this afternoon. Here on the bunny slope. And the little boys are still in the game room. They probably won't come out until it's time to go home."
"In that case, the first thing I'm going to do is take a nice, long nap. It's the only thing I'm going to do, matter of fact. I haven't had a serious nap in about two years. I mean a 'significant' put-on-jammies, get-under-covers nap."
Shelley signed the tab and Jane took care of the tip.
"Enjoy yourself," Shelley said as they parted ways in the lobby.
"I am," Jane said. "I really am."
Jane wasn't used to naps and woke up at four feeling stupid and disconcerted, as if she had a bad case of jet lag or had suffered a spell of amnesia and lost half a day. But by the time she'd showered and dressed, she was feeling quite refreshed. She took Willard out for a bit of a run and was just coming back when Mike and Mel showed up. Their faces were sunburned and Mel was limping along, exhausted.
"Did you have fun? Did you get hurt?" she asked.
"It was great, Mom!" Mike said. "And I did great for a first-timer."
"He sure did," Mel agreed. "I couldn't believe how he took to it."
"I met a girl I'm taking out to dinner, Mom, if that's okay," Mike said.
"Sure. Whatever."
Mike bounded across the parking lot to the men's quarters. Mel said wearily, "I'm a hundred and four years old. I could have been beaten with a baseball bat and feel better than I do now. Do you have any idea how much work skiing can be?"
"I thought you'd done this before."
"I had. Lots. When I was about Mike's age. Centuries ago."
"Then go take a hot bath and you'll feel better."
"I'd just drown," Mel said grumpily. "Why are you so damned perky?"
"Perky? Why, Mel, nobody's called me perky in ages. I had a nap."
"A nap," he said, his expression misty and filled with longing.
"Go take one yourself. It's a vacation. You can do whatever you want."
He put his arm around her waist and leered. "Not exactly anything. Not on this vacation anyhow, surrounded as we are by your children."
"Well, nearly anything. I'm going to rescue Shelley from the genealogists and see if the boys have suffered any permanent mental disability from a day with the video games. I'll come fetch you later and we'll have a nice dinner, okay?"
Mel agreed and limped off.
By the time Jane found the meeting room where the debate was going on, it was over. Applause spilled out into the hallway as she approached. The door was flung open and Doris Schmidtheiser plunged out, her movements jerky, her big angular face red and working with emotion. Though Jane tried to dodge her, they collided. Papers and folders flew everywhere.
Jane knelt to help Doris pick them up. The older woman muttered tearfully, "I'm sorry. I wasn't looking…"
"Quite all right. But I'm afraid you're going to have a time sorting this all out—"
But Doris wasn't listening. She'd grabbed an armload of papers, hoisted herself up and was practically running away.
Jane picked up the rest of the papers, tamped them down, and slipped them into an accordian-type folder Doris had dropped. She'd get them to her later, when Doris had calmed down. Jane peeked into the doorway and spotted Shelley. She waved a greeting and then got out of the emerging audience's way.
"What a rout," Shelley whispered when she joined Jane in the hallway.
"Mrs. Schmidtheiser ran into me as she came out. She was really upset," Jane said. "What in the world happened in there?"
"Let's go have a glass of wine by the pool," Shelley suggested.
When they were comfortably settled with tall tulip glasses of white wine, Shelley said, "I don't know exactly what happened. Most of the debate was like a foreign language to me. All sorts of sources were flung around. The genealogists, of course, knew the relative merits of them. I didn't have a clue. But it was apparent that Gortner got the best of poor old Doris at every turn. I don't think it was that he had a better case — although I could be wrong — but that he had a more scathing manner and presentation. You know — the kind of thing where you don't present your own side as much as you make fun of everything the other guy says."
Jane nodded. "The kind of thing kids are great at."
"Exactly. It was like watching a pretentiously clever teenager make fun of somebody. It was pathetic. Doris would trot out some document and flash it on the overhead projection screen and go on in a deadly manner for a while. Then Gortner would make some slick, dismissive comment like, "Surely you're not suggesting that this qualifies as a primary source…?" And the audience would laugh."
"Of course they would," Jane said. "That's a line that always brings the house down."
Shelley shrugged elaborately. "I don't explain 'em, I just report 'em. I have no idea what's funny about that. It was hideous. Poor old Doris. Not that she didn't manage to get in a few slugs of her own."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, sort of loony, dark allusions to 'enemies within' and that sort of thing. Suggestions that others in the Holnagrad Society weren't all they should be in regard to both the purity of their research and the respect owed her. I got the feeling she was taking digs at Lucky — Dr. Lucke. But I can't be sure. There might be another entire 'party' of people in this thing. Still, her venom was like nothing compared to Gortner's."