That brought her wide awake; and she lay there staring at the ceiling, shocked at her own thoughts. It was true. She loved him. She had loved Grandfather Verdi, too; she knew that now. She loved the old women at Barren House. She loved Nazareth Chornyak, whose face she’d begun to seek out first whenever she went into a room where linguists were; she knew she made excuses to touch Nazareth as she passed her, to brush an imaginary thread from her tunic or straighten an imaginary wrinkle… to rub aching muscles after a day of difficult work… yes, she loved Nazareth as well. It seemed to Michaela suddenly that she was running over, brimful and running over, with love. For Lingoes! For filthy, effing Lingoes, unspeakable Lingoes, that she’d hated all her life as did any decent citizen, that had taken her baby and killed it and given her a hunk of metal in exchange… Where had all that love come from? She had not known she had it in her, that ability to love.
Thomas, now, she felt no love for, any more than she’d felt love for Ned. She had turned her attention to convincing him that he had seduced her, because she knew his power and respected it and she knew no other way to make use of it. But she felt no love for the man. Loving someone who considered you only one small notch above a cleverly trained domestic animal, and made no secret of it — that is, loving any adult male — was not possible for her. It would be a perversion, loving your masters while their boots were on your neck, and she was a woman healthy of mind. Like most women she had suffered one violent case of the Romantic Love that everyone learned about in Homeroom and had spoonfed to them (with a giant spoon) by the media. When she was very young. And like most women, that one case had cured her for life.
It had been her good fortune that it had happened to her before she met the man she was to marry, sparing her the soul-destroying experience of “falling in love” — and then out of love again — with her own husband. She serviced Thomas, as she had serviced Ned, and she had no reason to believe she’d lost her touch. Thomas would never be like Ned, never a fool, never swift-melting putty in a woman’s hands, no. But she worked at it very hard, and she was extremely careful; she knew that she was as nearly indispensable to Thomas now as it was possible for any woman to be, with such a man. As indispensable as poor Rachel, at least; probably more so. And he would be wondering where she was — it was past time for her to be seen up and about her duties.
“I’m tired,” she said aloud. “I’m absolutely worn out. I cannot get out of this bed and go upstairs and be a nice lady.” After which, of course, she stood up, stripped the bed of its sheets for the laundryroom, pulled on a robe for her definitely necessary trip to the nearest shower room, and headed out into the corridor to begin her day. At least in the daytime she was too busy to be haunted by her row of little old ghosts, with Ned as their token youngster. She shut the nonsensical plaints of her victims up in her room along with her bone-weariness, and went gracefully about her business.
She was very late; when she reached the diningroom it was nearly empty. All the children had gone long since, and even the section where the adults ate was thinly populated. Mostly by the very senior men, who no longer went out on negotiations, and who reminded her unpleasantly of what she’d only just put out of her mind. She stood in the doorway trying to decide where she should sit and seriously considering skipping breakfast altogether. She could go straight on to Barren House, where they’d give her a cup of good tea and some fresh-baked bread, and where she could count on good company and good conversation. Versus sitting with one of these men and being told what the world was coming to and how it was all the fault of either the President or the women, depending on which had most recently irritated the old gentleman in question.
There was a touch on her arm, and she jumped; she hadn’t heard whoever it was coming up behind her. Clingsoles were wonderful for a house with scores of busy people coming and going; they kept down the racket. But they gave you no warning that someone was near you, which could be inconvenient at times.
It was Nazareth who had touched her, though, and that was a note of hope at last in this otherwise miserable morning.
“Natha,” she said. “You’re late.”
“So are you. Disgustingly late. Come have breakfast with me, and we can be disgustingly late together.”
“Here?”
“Of course not here. Come on, I happen to know that there’s a health crisis at Barren House that demands our immediate attention, Nurse Landry. I’ll vouch for it if necessary. You don’t want to eat with those old creakers, do you?”
“Not particularly,” Michaela admitted. “But I expect I ought to do it anyway. Sort of a public health service.”
“No, you come along with me, I need you worse than they do; I feel this terrible pain coming on,” said Nazareth. And before anything more could be said she had moved Michaela out the door, across the atrium — where the latest A.I.R.’s had not yet come out of their privacy area, which meant nothing at all to be seen there — and through the service rooms onto the street. Nazareth wasted no time in anything she did, and years of experience with her brood of nine had given her a firm way of bustling another person along that was impressive even to a professional nurse who did professional person-bustling. At the slidewalk, Michaela applied the brakes, both to catch her breath and for the principle of the thing.
“Hey!” she protested, laughing. “It’s too early for running! I wasn’t brought up jogging and hoeing before daybreak like you mad linguists — could we walk now? Please?”
“We could. But I had to get outside before someone saw me and invented an emergency for me.”
“They do that, do they? I suppose that’s why I see you here at the big house so rarely.”
“Absolutely right,” said Nazareth. “My father devoutly believes that a linguist not in use is a linguist being wasted, and he allows no linguist to be wasted. I stop by very early to see whichever of my kidlings happens to be around, and then I hightail it back home.”
Home. That would be Barren House.
“You could get caught, going by the diningroom,” Michaela noted.
“Yes… but how else was I to get your attention? I assure you that if I stood in the atrium and shouted at you I would definitely get caught. It was safer to slip in and grab you, you perceive.”
The walk had started to turn into a jog again, and Michaela knew Nazareth couldn’t help it; hurrying was as natural to her as eating and drinking. But she stopped, and reached out to turn the other woman round to face her.
“Let me take a look at you,” she said, holding Nazareth firmly with a hand on each shoulder. “No, Nazareth, don’t go tugging away from me! I’m not at all sure you’re well… perhaps I should suggest to your father that you spend another few days at the hospital, since it’s so pleasant there? Hold still, woman, so that I can see you! They’ll still feed us, if we don’t get to Barren House till noon — hold still.”
Nazareth smiled at her, declaring that she gave up, and Michaela looked her over thoroughly in the morning light; it was more reliable than indoor light. Still much too thin, she thought. Much too thin. Tall as she was, a good four inches taller than Michaela, the gauntness was still obvious. Especially in the plain tunics she wore. Her hipbones stuck out, still.
“I won’t eat more,” announced Nazareth with determination, reading her mind. “Don’t bother instructing me, Nurse. I eat enough already. I have always been a gawk — just ask my erstwhile husband — and I am not going to change to one of those motherly types at my advanced age.”