The Library at Mount Char Part 34

"Of course." Jennifer cringed back from her, desperation and helpless misery flas.h.i.+ng across her face for a split second before her professional calm rea.s.serted itself. "I'm sorry."

Carolyn could see that she really was, too. She had believed every word. And, coward or no, Jennifer had a kind heart. She only ever meant to help. Carolyn took her voice down to conversational levels, slipped her fury back into its sheath. "It's OK. I'm sorry too. It's been kind of a long day. Long week, whatever."

"Of course. Still friends?"

"Of course." This was true. It was also completely irrelevant. She wondered if Jennifer understood that.

"Good. I'm sorry, Carolyn. I didn't mean to push. But we do need to talk. I think you're more upset than you let on."

"I'd like that." She felt like screaming. Instead she gave a wan smile. "But not today, OK?"

"OK. But soon."

"Sure."

Jennifer nodded. Then, with her professional duties discharged, she turned her attention back to her little silver pipe. A moment later she blew out an enormous cone of smoke and made a little "ahh" sound. "I have to say, though, you've got amazing coping skills." She shook her head. "Between us, you aren't the first person David's nailed to a desk. Maybe it's like a fetish or something? He pulled the same thing on Peter last month. Peter at least lived through it, but he's a wreck. If I don't keep him drugged to the eyeb.a.l.l.s, he just curls up in the nearest corner and cries." The bowl of her pipe flared orange as she took another drag. "Not that I'm judging, mind you. I'd be a mess myself."

Carolyn looked up, surprised. She a.s.sumed David had come to visit them all at one time or another. "He's never...?"

"Nope. Not me. Not so far, anyway. I'm starting to think he never will."

"Really?" Interesting. "Why do you think that is?"

She shrugged. "I'm not sure. It could conceivably be grat.i.tude. There have been times when he would have been in some pretty bad pain if it weren't for me."

"I remember. But...grat.i.tude? David?"

She sighed. "Yeah. You're right. Probably not. I always try to think the best of people. It's a weakness. It's more likely that he's worried that someday I'll just leave him dead."

Carolyn had been chewing over ways to bring up this very topic. She thought she knew the answer, but she owed it to Jennifer to be sure. "Would you?"

"Would I what?"

"Leave him. Dead."

Jennifer looked up from her pipe. "Well, now. It's funny that you should ask. Something very like that came up just the other day. He and Margaret were having one of their evenings"-she arched an eyebrow significantly-"and I was supposed to come by in the morning and do my thing."

"Heal them?"

"Resurrect them."

"Seriously? Both of them?"

Jennifer nodded. "At least once a month, lately. It's Margaret's idea, I think. It started a couple years ago with broken arms. Since then it's sort of escalated. Once he's done with her, he has a sort of hangman's noose for himself."

"I see."

"Do you? Explain it to me, then." Jennifer sighed. "Anyway, I was standing there looking at them-it was a real mess, half a day's work at least-and it occurred to me how no one ever seems to have any idea how much time has pa.s.sed when I bring them back. And with Alicia's thing about clocks"-she smashed them if she saw them, Carolyn kept hers in a drawer-"it can be kind of difficult to tell one day from the next around here." Jennifer took another puff. "So I thought about it for a minute, and then I shut the door and went down to get breakfast."

"Wow." Carolyn shook her head, grinning. "A day or two without David, huh?"

Jennifer grinned back. "I didn't think any of you would mind."

"We would have given you a parade. Why didn't you say something?" Jennifer's expression flickered to darkness. "Well...it didn't exactly work out."

"What do you mean?"

"Father came home early," Jennifer said quietly. "That afternoon. He was the one who found them, who brought them back."

Carolyn felt a cold burst of fear on Jennifer's behalf. Just as Carolyn did translations as needed, it was Jennifer's responsibility to resurrect them when they died, either at a preordained time requested by the deceased or, in the case of accident, as soon as possible. Intentionally forsaking your catalog wasn't as bad as sharing it, but it was bad enough. "Oh...oh no. What did he do?"

Jennifer looked at her levelly. "He took me up to the bull."

"Oh my G.o.d."

"I know. I've never been so scared in my life. He didn't make me get in it or anything, we just went up there. And I got a stern talking-to. Professional responsibility, the patient relies on you, et cetera."

Carolyn goggled at her. "That's it?" The bull was probably a little excessive for this, even by Father's standards. But she would have expected something like fifty lashes. Fifty minimum. Nothing up to "skinned alive" would have surprised her.

Jennifer nodded. "That's it."

"Any idea why?"

Jennifer shrugged. "He's never been as hard on me as on the rest of you, but for something like this...well, I was as surprised as you are."

Carolyn gave her an expectant look.

"I don't actually know, but...look, this is just between us, OK?"

Carolyn nodded.

"It crossed my mind that if something happened to Father, I might be the only one around who could bring him back."

"What about-"

"Liesel"-one of Father's courtiers-"is getting on in years and, honestly, she was never much good to begin with. Anyway, I've heard rumors that there might be...political issues. That was always an uneasy truce. Liesel was never particularly happy with this iteration of reality, is what they say. So far as I know she and I are the only other ones who've studied the white folio." The white folio, medicine, was where the secret of the resurrection was written down.

"Interesting." Carolyn considered. "Have you thought about what you'd do if it came to that?"

"Came to what?"

"If Father were dead," Carolyn said levelly, "and you were the only one left who could bring him back."

Jennifer's eyes went wide. Speaking formally, as if to an audience, she said, "I would resurrect Father, of course."

"Of course," Carolyn said.

Then, whispering, "I-Carolyn, I don't know if you know this, but there are things you don't even want to think about. Not around Father, maybe not anywhere. I mean that literally. Not even think." She paused, then said, very quietly, "He can hear."

"I know," Carolyn said, also whispering. She did, too. But there's also such a thing as a calculated risk. She wondered if Jennifer knew about those. Probably not. Gentle, frightened people didn't think much about calculated risks. "He can't be everywhere, always. Can he?"

Jennifer's eyes narrowed. She looked away, then busied herself with the drawstring on her bag. "I don't want to hear any more of this. I mean it, Carolyn. Not now, not ever. I won't say anything about it-I won't even think anything about it, if I can help it, but don't ever say anything like that to me again. If you do I'll go straight to Father. Am I understood?"

"You are," she said. The professional part of her mind noticed that Jennifer had used the phrase 'Am I understood?'-Father's preferred version-rather than the more colloquial 'Understand me?' that the rest of them used among themselves. Must be spending a lot of time with him, Carolyn thought. "I won't. And I didn't really mean anything, Jennifer, I just-"

"Yeah. That's fine. No problem, really. We'll pretend it never happened."

Carolyn nodded. It seemed safer not to speak.

Jennifer slipped forceps into her bag and pulled it shut. "OK, look. I need to go. And I imagine you could use some time to yourself."

"Also a bath. But thank you, Jennifer. For everything."

"You really are welcome." Jennifer hesitated. "Look...later tonight Rachel and Alicia and I are going to smoke some weed and go up and watch the Milky Way. Just us girls, but Peter made a picnic basket. We'd love to have you come along."

"That's really nice of you, but I can't. I'm a little behind. I've got a test coming up and-"

Jennifer held up her hand.

"What?"

"Forgive me, Carolyn, but that's bulls.h.i.+t. You're not behind in anything. The way you work you could be dead for a year and still be two weeks ahead of schedule. Why don't you come with us? It'll be fun. You still remember fun, right?"

Carolyn gave her another smile, noticeably cooler. "I really can't."

"Yeah." Jennifer drummed her fingers against the door frame. "I wasn't going to bring this up until later, but-"

"I really need to-"

"Just give me a second. OK? I'll be quick."

Carolyn gave a very small nod. She wasn't smiling at all anymore.

"Thank you." Jennifer drew in a breath. "Look...part of my catalog is that they teach you how to talk to people. Some people, you want to talk around the edges of a situation. Others, you want to fluff things up, put the best face on it that you can."

"Oh? How interesting."

"But with the strong ones, the best approach is to dispense with that sort of thing. You just lay out the facts. That's what I'm going to do with you."

"I appreciate that. You've always been a good friend, Jennifer. You've always been very-"

Jennifer held up her hand again. "Spare me. I'm being straight with you, Carolyn. Do me the same courtesy."

Carolyn nodded. "All right. If you like. What do you want to tell me?"

"Thank you. Here's what I think: There's a particular species of crazy that people around here are p.r.o.ne to. Margaret has it worse than anyone I've ever heard of. David has it as well. They're both lost causes-I'll try, but unless things change radically, what they have is not something I'm going to be able to fix."

"What's that got to-"

"You're showing signs as well," Jennifer said soberly. "I was going to bring it up anyway, even before this...business...with David."

"Signs?"

"With this particular species of crazy, you stop trying to make things better. You start trying to maximize the bad. You pretend to like it. Eventually you start working to make everything as bad as possible. It's an avoidance mechanism." Jennifer looked Carolyn directly in the eyes. "It can't actually work. That's why they call it crazy."

"I see," Carolyn said. "That's very interesting. Thank you for that information."

Sighing, Jennifer leaned back against the door frame. "Yeah. OK. Just think about it, all right?"

"I will."

Jennifer opened the door and, blessedly, stepped out into the hall. "Look, if you don't want to come tonight, that's fine. I can't make you. But I think you should. That's my professional opinion, and my opinion as your friend. Also, in the unlikely-but welcome-event that you'd like to talk more about, you know, the other stuff, you know where to find me. Lacking that, best of luck to you and you have my condolences."

They looked at each other for a long moment. Finally, Carolyn said, "Is that all?"

Jennifer rolled her eyes. "Yeah. That's all."

"Thanks again."

"Sure, of course. We're going to meet at the jade stairs around sunset."

Carolyn shut the door.

II.

When Jennifer was gone, Carolyn went down to the baths. They were communal and unis.e.x, but there was no one there at the moment. She filled one of the tubs with the hottest water and bathed herself. She stood up and dried off.

She took down a clean robe to dress, looked at it, then hung it back up again. She filled the tub a second time. She felt the filth of him on her even still. She rummaged in the closet until she found a very stiff brush and a caustic soap used to remove tar or certain toxins. She scrubbed herself with these until her skin was raw, scrubbed until her skin was bleeding. She only stopped when she noticed she was sobbing. Then she composed herself and dried off a second time.

Rachel came in while she was dressing. She gave Carolyn a sympathetic look. "Hey," she said. "How are you holding up?"

"Fine. Why?" She busied herself with putting up her hair.

"I, um...you know. I heard." Rachel walked over and put her hand on Carolyn's shoulder. "If you want to come by later, Alicia and I could-"

Carolyn looked down at Rachel's hand. "Thank you," she said, "but I'm fine. Really, it was nothing."

"Um...OK. If you say so. But if you change your-"

"You're very kind." Her tone sounded a little bit like David's. Neither of them recognized this consciously, but Rachel let her hand drop.