All over the cafeteria groups were huddled just like this, Molly thought, glancing about. Small groups of people, all conspiring, planning their conquests with glee, setting traps . . . Look-alikes, she thought, like dolls.
The Julie sisters had blond hair, hanging loose and held back with tiaras made of deep red flowers. They had chosen long tunics that dipped down low in the back, high in the front in drapes that emphasized their breasts charmingly. They were shy, smiling, saying little, eating nothing. They were fourteen.
Molly looked away from them suddenly and her eyes burned. Six years ago she had stood there, just like that, blushing, afraid and proud, wearing the bracelet of the Henry brothers. The Henry brothers, she thought suddenly. Her first man had been Henry, and she had forgotten that. She looked at the bracelet on her left wrist, and looked away again. One of the sisters had gotten to Clark first, and later Molly and her sisters would play with the Clark brothers on the mat. So smooth still, their faces were as smooth as the Julie faces.
People were trying to match up the bracelets now, and there was much laughter as everyone milled about the long tables and made excuses to examine each other’s bracelets.
“Why didn’t you come to my office this afternoon?”
Molly whirled about to find Ben at her elbow. “I forgot,” she said.
“You didn’t forget.”
She looked down and saw that he still wore his own bracelet. It was plain, grass braided without adornment, without the brothers’ symbol. Slowly, without looking at him, she began to pluck the silver bells from her own bracelet and when there was only one left on it, she slipped the bracelet off her wrist and reached out to put it on his. For a moment he resisted, then he held out his hand and the bracelet slid over his knuckles, over the jutting wrist bone. Only then did Molly look into his face. It was a mask — hard, unfamiliar, forbidding. If she could peel off the mask, she thought, there would be something different.
Abruptly Ben nodded, and turned and left her. She watched him go. Miriam and the others would be angry, she thought. Now there would be an extra Clark brother. It didn’t matter, but Miriam had counted on all of them to participate, and now it would be uneven.
The Julie sisters were dancing with the Lawrence brothers, two by two, and Molly felt a pang of sadness suddenly. Lewis was fertile, perhaps others of his group were also. If one of the Julie sisters conceived and was sent to the breeders’ compound, the next party for them would be the Ceremony for the Lost. She watched them and couldn’t tell which man was Lewis, which Lawrence, Lester . . .
She danced with Barry, then with Meg and Justin, then with Miriam and Clark, and again with Meg and Melissa and two of the Jeremy brothers; not with Jed, though, who stood against the wall and watched his brothers anxiously. He still wore his own bracelet. The other brothers had an assortment of bracelets on their wrists. Poor Jed, Molly thought, and almost wished she had given hers to him.
She sat with Martha and Curtis and ate a minced-beef sandwich and drank more of the amber wine that made her head swim delightfully. Then she danced with one of the Julie sisters, who was looking solemn now as the hour grew late. Presently the Lawrence brothers would claim them for the rest of the night.
The music changed. One of the Lawrence brothers claimed the girl Molly had danced with; the girl looked at him with a timid smile that appeared, vanished, appeared again. He danced her away.
Molly felt a tap on her arm, and turned to face Ben. He was unsmiling. He held out his arm for her and they danced, not speaking, neither of them smiling. He danced her to the table, where they stopped and he handed her a small glass of wine. Silently they drank, and then walked together from the auditorium. Molly caught a glimpse of Miriam’s face as they left. Defiantly she held her back stiffer, her head higher, and went out into the cold night with Ben.
Chapter 15
“I would like to sit down by the river for a little while,” she said. “Are you cold?” Ben asked, and when she said yes, he got cloaks for them both.
Molly watched the pale water, changing, always changing, and always the same, and she could feel him near, not touching, not speaking. Thin clouds chased across the face of the swelling moon. Soon it would be full, the harvest moon, the end of Indian summer. The man was so cleanly outlined, so unambiguous, she thought. A misshapen bowl, like an artifact made by inexpert hands that would improve with practice.
The moon in the river moved, separated into long shiny ropes that coiled, slid apart, came together, formed a wide band of luminous water that looked solid, then broke up again. Against the shore the voice of the river was gentle, secretive.
“Are you cold?” Ben asked again. His face was pale in the moonlight, his eyebrows darker than in daylight, straight, heavy. He could have been scowling at her; it was hard to tell. She shook her head, and he turned toward the river again.
The river was alive, she thought, and just when you thought you knew it, it changed and showed another face, another mood. Tonight it was beguiling, full of promise, and even knowing the promises to be false, she could hear the voice whispering to her persuasively, could sense the pull of the river.
And Ben thought of the river, swollen in floodtide, flashing bright over gravel, over rocks, breaking up into foam against boulders. He saw again the small fire on the bank, the figure of the girl standing there silhouetted against the gleaming water while the brothers pulled the boat up the hill.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come today,” she said suddenly in a small voice. “I got almost to your door, and then didn’t come the rest of the way. I don’t know why.”
There was a shout of laughter from the auditorium, and he wished he and Molly had walked farther up the river before stopping. A cloud covered the face of the moon and the river turned black, and only its voice was there, and the peculiar smell of the fresh water.
“Are you cold?” he asked again, as if the moonlight had held warmth that now was gone.
She moved closer to him. “Coming home,” she said softly, dreamily, “I kept hearing the river talk to me, and the trees, and the clouds. I suppose it was fatigue and hunger, but I really heard them, only I couldn’t understand the words most of the time. Did you hear them, Ben?”
He shook his head, and although she couldn’t see him now with the cloud over the face of the moon, she knew he was denying the voices. She sighed.
“What would happen if you had an idea, something you wanted to work out alone?” she asked after a moment.
Ben shifted uneasily. “It happens,” he said carefully. “We discuss it and usually, unless there’s a good reason, a shortage of equipment, or supplies, something like that, whoever has the idea goes ahead with it.”
Now the cloud had freed the moon; the light seemed brighter after the brief darkness. “What if the others didn’t see the value of the idea?” Molly asked.
“Then it would have no value, and no one would want to waste time on it.”
“But what if it was something you couldn’t explain exactly, something you couldn’t put into words?”
“What is the real question, Molly?” Ben asked, turning to face her. Her face was as pale as the moon, with deep shadows for eyes, her mouth black, not smiling. She looked up at him, and the moon was reflected in her eyes, and she seemed somehow luminous, as if the light came from within her, and he realized that Molly was beautiful. He never had seen it before and now it shocked him that the thought formed, forced itself on him.