Works/Formal Gardens

I had walked away from that battlefield, so I didn't plan to hate her for the reasons that women are expected to hate other women. I had other, perfectly adequate, reasons to hate her. I did notice how the people in the concourse reacted as she walked through it, of course, but that was their problem.

"You are Doctor Hargreaves," she said, reaching the far end where I waited. I expected her to have an accent for some reason; she didn't. "I am," I replied. "And you are very clearly Arcys Ceratia. Do you have a title of some kind?"

"I am normally Arcys," she said.

"Is that a familiar form of address?"

"I suppose .... Call me Ceratia if it bothers you. Where is the hotel?"

"Do you need to get your bags?"

"I have only this," she said, indicating the briefcase-sized bag over her shoulder. Of course she could travel light. Probably nothing but a supply of mineral tablets and whatever paperwork she had. A few racy novels for bedtime reading. It startled me how automatically the venom flowed.

The hotel clerk overwhelmed himself with obsequity. "Madame Ceratia. Of course we have anticipated you! We have placed the special lamps in your room, and you will find, I believe, that your private balcony is in an optimal location during daytime hours - and let me say how pleased we are to welcome you as our first guest from your system -" She didn't correct his use of a title.

I stepped up as she moved away and watched with no particular surprise as his face chilled. But then, some of us value efficiency over effusiveness.

I was trying to think of the best way to remove myself when she saved me the trouble. "I don't think there's any preparation we need tonight, is there? I have been a long time in a closed space." I shook my head and she strode for the lifts without looking back, or noticing the reactions as the crowd parted.

Invisibly I went to my room - which had no private balcony. I took my pills, stared at the ceiling for a while, and tried to sleep.

- - -

I wandered into the lobby around eight, having made no arrangements to meet her. Probably she was still up on her balcony sunning. She wouldn't have eaten breakfast anyway. But there was a clot of people with electronics and noise, and I knew before I had completely tunneled into it that she had to, inevitably, be the center.

"... First visitor here from ...."
"... quite an honor ...."
"... Do you mind telling us a little ...."
"... We'd like to ask you about ...."

I caught her eye long enough for her to see me, and went to breakfast. Midway into the second cup of coffee she sat down across from me.

"I suppose that was necessary," she said.

"You seemed comfortable enough with it."

"I'm not accustomed to being a novelty. It's unpleasant."

"I suppose that would depend on what kind of novelty you are. Do you want anything? Water with a lemon in it?"

"Citric acid is bad for me." She scratched idly at a small bit of hardened skin on her left forearm. It chipped off and fell onto the table by the salt shaker. She didn't notice.

"I don't think we need to compare notes until just before the session," I said. "Go get some sun. It's going to be a long time under artificial light." She nodded, stood up, and walked off without a word.

After she left I picked up the small flake of bark, already brown, and stared at it until the remains of my coffee were cold.

- - -

"You're overdressed," I said when she sat down.

She pushed a stray blade of hair from her forehead and fixed her eyes on me. No whites. Green, a different green from her skin, with a black hole of an iris in the center. I looked away quickly.

"You resent working with me," she said.

"I resent being forced to work with you," I replied. "Since you bring it up. I was perfectly capable of performing these negotiations myself."

"I'm sure it was not a statement about your competence -"

"Then what was it a statement about? Are you aware that I have been asked explicitly, though not in so few words, to shut up and let you do all the talking?"

"I was asked here as well," she said. "You assume malice that doesn't exist."

I sat stonily.

"If it's still important to you to get this, then the very least you can do is make certain I'm well-informed. Yes?"

I sighed. "You're right. Okay, tell me what you know already."

It was the usual case of the just cause versus the evil conglomerates. The Planetary Commission, to be fair, did have a primary mandate to make the colonies pay for themselves ... but that didn't imply the need to destroy the only remaining ecological sanctuaries on the planet.

"But there are already preserves for that sort of thing," the corporates would say, inevitably. "We have taken great pains to keep intact broad-spectrum samples of the entire ecosystem." Unsaid: We made you some nice space bubbles so you could keep a few specimens from this ball of dirt, at considerable expense we might add, and now you want to prevent us from mining the entire planet? Who cares about a few alien bugs and gymnosperms anyway?

I was grinding my back teeth again. Damn it, why did they send her? I could feed her information all day long, but not force of conviction. She was barely even paying attention to me.

"This is important, you know," I said.

"I don't dispute it," she replied. Poker-faced. I didn't know how to react; she refused to give me a peg to hang anything on.

"Do you really think I'm overdressed?" she asked.

"I think that's probably something someone would wear to a party. A very formal party. Black tie." It was difficult to imagine that the long straight skirt and the form-fitting bodice were growing from her; although it was possible to see the seams where the petals partially fused, there was no telling where those petals were actually emerging from the skin; it was difficult to say where she ended and the dress began.

She scanned my solid gray pants and my stolid, faintly striped, white blouse. "I'll change," she said, and stood up abruptly. Immediately her dress fell to the floor, and she stood there, green and unblemished. She closed her eyes, serene, and I could not stop looking as small bits of color budded in various places, then spread, expanded ... and almost before I could follow the process, she was wearing another skirt and a considerably less revealing white blouse, almost the twin of mine. She reached down and pulled off her shoes, in strips and chunks, bits of bark scattering in various directions. She let the bark reharden and brown into a fresh pair, watching absently.

"I hope you won't insist on pants," she said. "They're very difficult."

"You didn't need to do that right here," I said.

"You weren't shocked," she replied. "I need to go rest for a short while now. I don't think I need any more briefing. I'll see you at the session."

I watched the discarded petals for a while, already shriveled and black against the dun carpet.

- - -

The first session went as well as could be expected, given that it was mostly introductory. The panel, the Commmission members in whose hands the decision about an entire planet rested, looked asleep. I wanted to stand up, cross over to their table where they sat facing us, and walk the length of it, slapping each face out of its complacency.

"Are you going to have dinner now?" Ceratia asked me.

"I suppose so."

"I would like to join you."

I didn't imagine I could prevent her, so I didn't. She ordered water and iced tea. Apparently caffeine wasn't bad for her.

"If you'd like these negotiations to end in your favor," she said without preamble, "I would suggest a little less hostility."

"I refuse to toady like those people," I said. "Sycophancy is their tactic. Not mine."

"I wasn't talking about hostility toward your adversaries," she said.

I stared. "I haven't done or said anything hostile to you."

"It was obvious to everyone in the room. We have to present a united front, or you will undo everything I can do for you."

I set my glass down on the table hard enough to splash. "Really. What, exactly, can you do for me?"

She stared at me for a while, drinking her tea. If she wasn't going to say anything I wasn't either. Finally she said, "I've never had someone dislike me before."

"I find that hard to believe."

"I haven't. You don't like me. I need to know why."

"I've told you why."

"That's not what I mean."

"I don't understand what you do mean."

She studied me for a while, then stood up and left - the silent exit I was now coming to expect. I had trouble eating my dinner. In fact, I was so rattled that I almost forgot to take my pills that night before bed. And I didn't sleep well again.

- - -

The next morning's session seemed oddly pro forma. I was being mute - couldn't have any of that hostility seeping out. Ceratia wasn't trying too hard, but I couldn't be too upset about her lack of energy because the other side's was far more acute. The two corporates both looked severely rumpled, like they'd had a bad night; I was pretty sure one hadn't shaved. Their voices were subdued and everything about them screamed exhaustion. They had certainly been perky and well-pressed the day before .... When the morning session was adjourned I turned to ask Ceratia about this mystery, but she had already left the room.

I puzzled over it through lunch. Since the sessions wouldn't resume until fairly late in the afternoon, I decided not to wait until then; I wanted to strategize with her as far from the scene of the crime as possible. I went up to her room and pushed the buzzer. No response.

It seemed pretty unlikely she was out; she needed as much sun time as possible in order to keep up her strength for the sessions .... I buzzed again.

The door flew open. Ceratia, wearing nothing except an outraged look. "Go!" she said. "We can talk later."

"I just want to -"

"Leave!" she hissed. And then I saw why. Moving around in the bedroom behind her, he was not fully visible through the darkness of two doorways, but enough for me to recognize one of the members of the Commission panel.

She slammed the door in my face.

- - -

I couldn't look at her during the afternoon session. I couldn't even think. Rage headache, pushing out at my skull in all directions, pounding away from the inside. I wanted it to explode and consume everything in the room. I wanted to see Ceratia shrivel and blacken, with the smell of burning leaves and compost. I wanted all the stupid faces on the Commission to melt away while screaming in pain.

Instead I said to Ceratia, "I'm calling off the negotiations. You blew it."

She quickly recovered and said, "Can we discuss it first, please?"

"There is nothing to discuss!"

"Not here! Please."

I don't know why I waited, when what I really wanted to do was scream at her, then and there and for quite a while. But then we were in her room and she was sitting under the sunlamps and I was watching her.

"You accused me of not having enough of an interest in your cause," she said.

"I didn't."

"Yes. You have this idea that something doesn't count unless you say it aloud. I think you need to check your assumptions. Apparently I have more interest in it than you do."

"You -" I couldn't even form the sentence. I would explode, then and there.

"I'm prepared to get a decision in our favor by any means necessary. That's what I was brought here to do. Your group leaders consider this a very high priority. Do you?"

I stood stunned for all of fifteen seconds. Then I walked out. Silently.

- - -

I would quit my job. That was it. I'd have the sessions called on irregularities; I'd have her penalized; I'd have the panel investigated for misconduct; and I'd quit my job. All of them, none of them any better than the others.

I missed my floor and had to change to the down shaft.

I buried my face in my pillow for a while. Woke up with no idea of what hour it was. Went back to sleep.

I dreamed I was walking through a garden of genital flowers. Pink to red, striated, variegated, a maze without end of obscene blooms with scents that drove the brain wild. The urge was to get down on all fours and crawl through them, let their petal tongues rub against me and perfume me with sex stink, thrust my own tongue into their blossoms and taste them, kiss them rudely, the final, sexual evolution of the pollinator. A human insect, flying blindly from plant to plant, my bare limbs uncontrollable in my lust-blindness, and covered in a dusting of pollen.

Instead I walked through the garden endlessly, endlessly, until finally I couldn't hold it back anymore and I crumpled and fell into the dirt, rolling around like an itching animal.

That's when I woke up with wet sheets and remembered I had forgotten to take my pills.

I stood up and went to the mirror. I tried to avoid that, ever since the day when I'd had a screaming fit and cut most of my hair off and gone to the doctor. Generally, now, I'd clean my teeth in the morning and get a brief glance, at most, as I washed my face. The last time I'd had a really good look at myself, really studied, was the day I'd realized I didn't need to wear a bra anymore. It had been a mixed reaction even then.

I couldn't sleep any more. I did a little research instead.

- - -

I didn't quit my job. I didn't have the sessions called. I didn't file a protest. I didn't say one damned word. The corporates seemed to have recovered from their binge, but it was clear they had been only the preliminaries; she'd spent the rest of her time working on the panel, who spent the whole of her final argument watching her, as one, with luststruck and loving gazes. One of them was female. It was nice to know she didn't discriminate.

I had been working on finding some excuse to talk to her when it was over, but she surprised me instead. "I have a departure in two hours. Would you like to go have a drink first?"

"A drink as in alcohol?"

She nodded. "We appreciate alcohol as well. Let's call it a celebratory drink. I don't want to anticipate, but I believe the judgement is fairly certain."

"You think." I sighed. "Let's go."

I had to get halfway down my vodka sour before I could breach it. "I learned a few things last night."

She looked at me, waiting.

"You emit chemicals. Scents. It's not just your looks. Humans find you irresistable, don't they? Can you turn it on and off?"

"I can make it stronger, if I need to, yes. There is always some lingering effect. Except for you," she said, studying me the same way she had before.

"I can explain that too," I said. "I take drugs every night to remove my sexual characteristics. I don't generate some of the normal hormones anymore, or give off any of the usual scent signals ...."

"Why?" I looked up from the last of my drink to see her eyes wide.

"Because I don't like the way people use sex," I said. "For example, seducing a whole panel to get the outcome you wanted. It's wrong, just like having a hotel clerk or a random stranger treat you differently because they lust for you -"

"A doctor would let you do this?"

"You act as if I asked to have my arms amputated," I said angrily.

"Not your arms -" She stopped herself. "Why didn't you carry out your threat today?"

"Because it was important enough to get at any cost. You were right about that. I still wish you hadn't, though, and I still hate my group for sending you here to do it."

"But you got your verdict!" she said. "And you feel your cause is a good one, yes? The right thing to do? So why is it bad to do this in service of the right cause?"

"That's too easy," I said. "What if they'd hired you to do the arguing for the other side? Where would my good cause have been then?"

"It wouldn't have mattered," she said, finishing her drink.

"How can you say that?"

"Because they still would have had you to use as a defense against me."

When my eyes cleared, she had left the bar. I had no idea how long I had been staring into nowhere. But the ice in my glass had melted.

I went back to my room and packed my suitcase. Then I opened it again and removed my stock of pills. I considered the matter one more time and then threw them down the waste chute.

I turned out the lights and went down to check out, thinking of flowers.

Copyright © May 2003. Do not distribute or reproduce.