America 2040 - Golden World Part 20

She closed her eyes and felt only the tiredness, which faded, gradually, into nothing.

III.

INGENIOUS TALENTS.

SIXTEEN.

"Wake up," Jackie Garvey said. She herself had dozed, and now it was past midnight. She put her hand on his shoulder and shook him. "Hey, sleeping beauty, wake up."

He sat up suddenly, the thin blanket falling away from his muscular chest. "d.a.m.n," he said. "What time is it?"

"I'm not sure," she said. "Sorry. I fell asleep." He had leaned out of bed to pick up his tunic and was looking at his b.u.t.ton-watch with a frown.

"Jesus," he said, jumping out of bed to start throwing on his clothing, "you should have stayed awake."

Jackie sighed. That was exactly the comment she had expected him to make. It takes a long time to get to know some people, regardless of the degree of intimacy. With others, like Rocky Miller, you get to know them maybe a little too quickly.

"You'd better take a shower," she said.

"It's too late, d.a.m.n it," he snapped.

She smiled with her lips. "I thought you said you didn't care if she did find out."

He looked at her angrily. "This just isn't the right time." He paused before opening the door, turned, and winked at her. "I don't know about tomorrow night."

"I don't either," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"I think it's time we put the brakes on," Jackie said.

He grinned. She'd said that before. "We'll talk about it." He went out and closed the door behind him.

In fact, she'd said after the first time that that was it, and then it had taken him only a few minutes with her to make her change her mind. Well, he knew what he was doing when it came to women.

Jackie, however, had no idea what she was doing. It had seemed harmless enough at first. And, to be fair, she felt she had some justification. She couldn't believe that Duncan was having an affair with Mandy Miller, not at first, but even if Rocky was a little boy in a lot of ways, he didn't seem to be a liar. And he had cried a little that first night when he told her about seeing with his own eyes Duncan and Mandy in a deep embrace. His tears had been quite manly, squeezing out of his eyes and sliding down to be swiped away quickly with the back of his hand, but his voice had thickened, and she had known exactly how he felt, even if she wasn't married to Duncan.

Jackie Garvey would never have characterized herself as being a vengeful person, yet she went into Rocky's arms with just a bit of vengeance in her heart, even though logic told her that she was hurting no one but herself. Then it had happened so quickly that there had never been a time when she could have stopped it. The guy was slick; in a contest, he could, she felt sure, be the champion woman-undresser of all time. Not that she'd resisted... she was definitely not promiscuous, but shewas a healthy, normal young woman.

"Well, listen, Rock," she'd said, after they had made love, "I don't think you'd believe me if I said I didn't enjoy it."

He had laughed.

"But never again. It's a trip with a one-way ticket, and I am not going along for the ride."

But she was so d.a.m.ned lonely.

"Rocky, this has gone far enough, " she'd said, after the second night in her quarters.

So, here we are, she thought, a few weeks later, and the lady has just had her bones pounced again, to her rather audible and obvious pleasure, and once again she'd said, "I think it's time we put the brakes on."

The difference was that this time she meant it.

Didn't she?

The door would be locked. The lady would not be in. It was over. Finished. And her body, remembering, regretted that decision. She groaned. "Well, Garvey," she said aloud, "you've had s.e.x with the number-one and number-two officers. You can start on the juniors now." She got out of bed and showered. Funny, she'd never felt the need to do that with Duncan. She'd wanted only to lie at his side, to feel the warmth of him, to let sleep come in a gentle kiss, and she had eagerly awaited the day when she would awaken and he'd still be beside her.

Whoever the h.e.l.l said stolen fruit is the sweetest was a psycho.

Ah, Dunc, it would have been so good, the two of us together. Who could make a better service wife than a servicewoman? Who would make a better wife than a woman who thought that he, Duncan Rodrick, could be used as the perfect model in case the Maker wanted to recall the entire race for defects and start over?

And it made her angry to know that she'd given up without a fight. He'd simply pulled away, gone off somewhere by himself-or with Mandy Miller, as the case might be-and she, the dutiful lieutenant Jackie Yes-sir! No-sir! Garvey, had wilted away and pined. Too late now. But, d.a.m.n it, why did she feel she'd been unfaithful tohim ? Stupid.

"You have only Rocky's word for it that there's something going on between him and Mandy, " a part of her said. "Mandy is a decent person. She wouldn't play such games."

"h.e.l.l, Mandy is awoman . We're all constructed with the same built-in weakness."

"So, if you are going to feel like that, why don't you get into the compet.i.tion with Sage Bryson for the admiral?"

Oh, h.e.l.l, she thought, disgusted, she'd come a long way down to even be thinking such gossip as that.

But women were funny creatures, weren't they?

She fluffed her pillow and tried to go to sleep, but her mind was in a rebellious mood. It gave her an image of Rocky going home with the scent of her all over his body. Perfume and woman essence.

Women were very sensitive to smells, and because there were only four varieties of perfume in Hamilton, there were three out of four chances that Mandy wouldn't use the same one she'd selected. Had she deliberately let Rocky go without showering? Was there something deep in her subconscious that wanted the whole situation to blow sky-high so she'd be rid of him? But that said that she was too spineless to tell him, and mean it, that it was over.

She knew that she was a capable officer, an adult. She had always been near the top in any compet.i.tive effort. When theSpirit went back to Earth with a load of Omega goodies, she'd probably be promoted at least two grades in rank. She could see it now: Captain Jacqueline Garvey, commanding the good starship...Unrequited Love . But she didn't really want to be captain of a ship. She wanted to be the second mate-he'd been married once before-of Duncan Rodrick.

And if Mandy smelled strange perfume and the musky essence of woman on Rocky, the dumb b.a.s.t.a.r.d had it coming.

As it happened, Mandy did. As it also happened, it wasn't the first time. She didn't know who the woman was, and she didn't really want to know, but she knew her husband well and had sensed the change in him weeks ago. The lingering fragrance-not hers-on his shirts when she opened the hamper.

A reluctance to meet her eyes. And above all, a new belligerence. She had not and would not confront him, nor would she match his belligerence.

When he came into the house, she was already in bed. She'd had to have Doc, the medical robot,prescribe reading gla.s.ses in the last month, and she'd chosen a pair with simple black frames.

"You're home," she said when he came into the bedroom, pulling off his shirt.

"Your thrill for the day," he answered, moving on through into the bathroom.

She went back to her reading. The scientific teams were gathering so much information about the new planet that it was a night-and-day job just to keep up. She was going over the lab report on vegetables that had been fertilized with the waste of the miners. She had made a note that the colonists could cut their daily food supplements to one-third of the standard amount, for Amando's vegetables were, if not rich, at least almost adequate in vitamins and trace elements.

Rocky crawled into bed, said, "Good night," and turned his back to her.

"You're putting in a lot of hours," Mandy commented.

"Someone has to," Rocky said, "with Rodrick off joy-riding with his teenage buddy."

"Oh, Rocky-" She said it before she took time to think, impatience in her voice.

"Oh, that's right, " he said, "I mustn't criticize the great hero. "

"Good night," she said stiffly.

He was silent for a long time. She tried to concentrate on the reports.

"Look, could you turn off the G.o.dd.a.m.ned light?"

She was tired. Her workload was heavy. Her marriage had gone sour. When she'd sensed that Rocky had finally worked himself up to having an affair, she didn't really care. s.e.x, although she enjoyed it, was not one of the preoccupations of her life. She didn't miss it. When, infrequently, Rocky initiated a s.e.x act-she could no longer think of it as making love-she made no protest and, by habit, partic.i.p.ated.

But she felt relief, more than anything, when he found a release for his pa.s.sions elsewhere. Or, at least, that's the way she'd had it a.n.a.lyzed.

That one kiss she'd shared with Duncan under Omega's two lovers' moons had caused her much pain.

She had never conceptualized herself as a cheating wife. Self-disgust had been nagging at her from the time she first recognized that the inexplicable, magnetic, and mutual attraction between Duncan and her had become something more than just physical. It sometimes made her furious to understand that there was a part of her that she could not control. And when Rocky angrily told her to turn off the light before she was finished reading, she felt belittled and immediately lashed back.

"If it's bothering you," she responded, "why don't you sleep on the couch?"

"Good idea," he shot back, throwing back the sheet violently and stalking to the door to the living room.

There he stopped. His face was that of a stranger. "I haven't been sleeping too well in that bed anyhow. I never did like sharing my bed with another man."

Don't do it, she warned herself.Don't be dragged down to that level . But there was some guilt in her, and that guilt contributed to her reaction, for it is human nature to fight back more strongly if an accusation is based on truth. "How dare you accuse me? You come home stinking of another woman, and you dare to accuse me?"

Rocky forced a hard little laugh. "Ah, Miss Purity. Before you get too holy on me, ask yourself who started it!" He slammed the door behind him.

She threw the stack of reports to the floor. "d.a.m.n!" she whispered. "d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n." There was a basis, however slight, for his reasoning. Shehad started it. She'd found great and secret pleasure in those long talks with Duncan Rodrick in the observatory during the long trip out. She had kissed him in the moonlight. If a wife had that intuition that almost always told her when her husband began an affair, the husband could probably also sense when a wife's affections were altered.

Amanda Miller was the product of an old-fashioned home. Her parents had been very conservative, religious, and active campaigners in the effort to restore the stabilizing effects of the closely knit family unit to American life. She herself believed that marriage was a contract of honor, and that if a man and woman worked at it together, any problem could be overcome. It was a matter of pride to her that her father and mother had lived happily together all their lives, and when she had married Rocky, it had been with the intention of making her marriage as lasting and as beautiful as that of her parents.

But now she remembered something her father had said: "An extramarital affair, Amanda, is the world's worst excuse for divorce. The s.e.x urge is a universal human weakness. I do not, of course, condone s.e.xual promiscuity, but on the other hand, that most common lapse from the vows of matrimony is human, and forgiveness for it does not even approach the divine. When divorce results from one partner falling from grace, adultery is not the cause of the rupture of the marriage-the cause is false pride, for a person with a true sense of his or her own self-worth will realize that the spouse's adultery is not, in most cases, a personal, intentional blow. In fact, it usually has nothing to do with the way the erring spouse feels about his or her mate. "

But Rocky is selfish and even cruel and callous, she thought, but as her anger began to fade, Mandy realized that she would have to be the one to do something to keep the marriage together-if she wanted it to stay together. Rocky, after all, had such poor self-image that he was always feeling persecuted by his commanding officers.

But he'd always put her on a sort of pedestal. He'd thought her to be the most beautiful, desirable woman in the world. And she'd known before she married him that there were aspects of his personality that were immature. Perhaps, if she'd given him more support... perhaps, if instead of spending the majority of her time with her own work she'd spent more time with him...

She got out of bed, threw a robe over her brief sleeping gown, and padded into the living room. "Are you asleep?"

"I'm trying to go to sleep."

"I'd like to talk. Just for a minute."

"It's late."

"Just for a few minutes?" she asked.

"What is there to talk about?" he asked sullenly, then rolled over to face her. "Us." She sat down in a chair facing the couch. "I guess the first thing we have to decide is if we want to stay together."

He just grunted.

"You seem to have the impression, Rocky, that I've done something wrong. Will it do any good for me to tell you that I had never slept with a man until I married you and that you are still the only man I've ever been in bed with?"

"How'd you do it then, leaning against a wall?" he asked.

"I see," she said, holding her temper. "Do you want to file for divorce?"

There was a long pause. "I'm not sure," he said finally. He was looking at her as she sat, so calmly, so self-a.s.sured, with the light from the bedroom showing just one side of her face.

"When do you think you'll be sure?"

"I don't know."

"May I ask why you're so sure I'm being unfaithful?"

"That's one of the things wrong with you, " he said. "You can't even call s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g."

"All right, how are you so sure that I'm s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g somebody?"

"Not just somebody, love," he said angrily. "I saw you inhis arms. I wasn't deliberately spying on you, either, if that's what you're thinking. I was on duty and things were dull, so when I heard that our dear captain was going outside, I turned on the night eyes just to see what was going on. It was a touching scene."

"All right," she said. "You saw me kiss him. I don't suppose you'll believe that that was the one and only time, that it hasn't happened again, hadn't happened before, and won't happen again."

To his surprise, he found himself wanting to believe her. He had always taken great pride in her. She was not only a respected scientist, she was one h.e.l.luva lot of woman. Back on Earth he had always enjoyed the way men turned their heads to look at her when they entered a restaurant. For a long time he had felt that no matter how badly-the world treated him, he could always count on this one person being on his side. He had missed that. But he hadn't realized just how much until she had started talking about divorce.

"You ve never lied to me before, Mandy," he said.

"I'm not lying now."

"Why did you kiss him?"

"Because I'm human, I guess. Because the chemistry is right between us. Because it just happened there in the moonlight."

"Did you enjoy it?" She started to ask,Why would you ask a thing like that? But she was trying to heal a breach, not get back into an argument. "For a moment. If you were watching, you saw that it didn't last long."

"You're not lying?"

"No."