Assigned a Guardian (18 page)

Kayla picked up on the same thing, apparently. As they crossed into a spacious, well-lit office, with a sitting area toward which Jane led them, she asked, “I really don’t mean to be rude, Ms. Loggins, but isn’t that something worth fighting harder for? I mean, the girls in the education wing don’t even know that Lourcy House isn’t, I don’t know, a reform school where you get sent if you can’t bear to fulfill your true duty as a woman, marry as quickly as possible, and serve your husband. I wish I’d known…” She looked at Patrick. He couldn’t say it made him happy to hear her express a wish whose fulfillment would imply their not having come together and fallen in love, but he knew how ambitious a person his wonderful fiancée was and he didn’t begrudge her the wish.

But then Kayla made him very happy, for she said, “No, actually, that’s not true. I guess if I’d known about your plans for Lourcy House, I wouldn’t have been ready to see Patrick’s point. But… what about girls like my friend Melanie Foster? I’m guessing you heard about what happened?”

Jane nodded sympathetically.

Kayla continued, “Should Melanie have to go through the whole first thirty years of her life not knowing that she has a choice besides getting married? It just seems… Melanie doesn’t want to date, but her guardian makes her. And then she’ll probably get pregnant, of course.”

“Through her own choice,” Patrick said. “That’s one of the reasons she has a guardian. One thing that the Basic Law has done is virtually eliminate rape and even sexual harassment.”

Jane said, “You may be surprised to hear me say this, Kayla, but the birthrate really is important. Since the incident with you and Melanie Foster, I’ve been following her academic record, with Melanie and her guardian’s permission, and she’s definitely a candidate for the advanced studies program here—which, I should tell you, is not our only program. Lourcy House is for any woman who can’t find happiness in marriage, and who is willing to work at what she’s good at, here among us. Think of it this way, though. Should Melanie come here at twenty, and deprive Draco of the chance to have four more colonists who could be intellectual leaders?”

Patrick looked at Kayla, who was clearly pondering Jane’s words.

“But…” Kayla said musingly, and then continued more rapidly, grabbing onto the thread of her argument as she went, “but couldn’t she do both? Why couldn’t she live here, date here, get married here?”

Jane smiled patiently. “Kayla, dear, I look forward to having this conversation again when you have a family.”

Kayla’s face fell, but she forged on, the frustration coming out in her voice. “With all due respect, Ms. Loggins, I don’t think that’s fair.”

“No, it’s not fair,” Jane agreed, “but it’s the case.”

Patrick felt his mouth open in wonder. Jane Loggins was a force to be reckoned with: no wonder the liberal moderates pinned their hopes on her, and no wonder the Learys and their party let her do as she liked out here. If Jane wanted to, she could probably single-handedly bring social unrest back to Draco, with her ideas and her personal presence. But it seemed that part of her genius must be that she didn’t want to do that.

“Was your endorsement of the Basic Law real, then?” Patrick asked.

“Yes,” Jane said simply. “When I decided that I could in good conscience support the Learys, it was a matter of deciding what sort of deal I wanted to carve out in return for my public support. There was absolutely no doubt that I caused the accident that destroyed the subspace link, but that paradoxically gave me a kind of power, because of course I had become a kind of anti-hero to the opponents of the Basic Law. I could have fought it and lost, or I could choose something positive. I chose Lourcy House.”

“Why did you call it Lourcy House?” Kayla asked.

Jane chuckled. “It certainly wasn’t because I thought you were coming.”

Kayla laughed with her; Patrick could tell that the two women liked each other instinctively, and that made him very happy. “No, it was because your father’s view of how the colony’s administration should run deserved to be kept alive, as unrealistic as it turned out to be. It was a model of governance better suited to a university than to a struggling colony, with decentralized committees and a panel of deciders. We use it here to govern ourselves, albeit in a modified form; your father didn’t believe in a single person having executive authority.”

“Which is hilarious,” Patrick said, “knowing the man and the way he ran his corporation.”

Kayla giggled. “Yes—I think the only executive authority he believed in was his own. He just would never admit that he was a monarch.”

“At any rate,” Jane said, “I’m the monarch here.”

“Of course,” Patrick said. “What are you offering us, your majesty, and what’s your price?”

“In good time,” Jane replied, “which will not be very long from now, I promise. I’d like to show you over Lourcy House first, though, and have you meet a few of the women, so that you understand a little better what I’m going to ask of you.”

* * *

The mystery of the full parking lot was solved early on in the tour Jane gave them. As they walked through the breezeway to the north wing that Jane told them was the residential part of the house, she said, “On the ground floor are the sex rooms,” matter-of-factly.

“The what?” Kayla asked.

Jane laughed. “I often think that if it weren’t for the sex rooms, Lourcy House would be some sort of a space-age nunnery. But although the thirty-eight of us who live here have decided not to marry, most of us have normal sexual urges.”

“But who…?”

“Whom do we fuck?” Jane asked with a merry laugh. “Well, some of us fuck one another. Mostly, though, we send out.”

Now Patrick laughed. “Seriously?”

Jane nodded. “There are quite a few older men among the first-gens who’ve separated from their wives, or have an open marriage of one or another sort.”

Patrick suddenly remembered one of his co-workers talking about ‘going to Lourcy House’ in a way that had completely mystified him—so much so that he had not even asked what the man had meant, because he was sure he must have misheard.

“You have, um, parties, don’t you?” he asked. “A bloke at my station said something, and I didn’t understand it—but I think I do now.”

Jane nodded, smiling. “There was one last night,” she said. “That’s why it’s so quiet around here right now—I went to bed at midnight, but usually they keep going until two or three.”

“Wait,” Kayla said. “
You
were at the party?”

“Of course,” Jane said. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Some of the girls call me insatiable.” She laughed and led them up the stairs to the residential floor.

In the big common room on the second floor, they met Jackie and Laura, the other two deciders of Lourcy House.

“It’s so nice to meet you, Kayla,” Jackie said. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Laura said, “Congratulations on your engagement—I think the whole colony is cheering.”

Jackie looked at Jane. “Have you told them about the offer?”

Jane shook her head. “Let’s do that now.”

When they had all sat down in a corner of the room, which was empty but for them, with Patrick and Kayla on one couch and the three deciders on another, looking like a sort of interview panel, Jane said, “Our offer is really very simple: I endorse you for the council, and then for the governor’s office. You run a campaign that supports the Basic Law, but you emphasize that the colony needs to have a conversation about returning the vote to single women.”

“Why do you think that will work?” Kayla asked.

“Because of women like Melanie Foster,” Laura replied. “Melanie has a dad, and he was
not
happy about what Marjorie Leary did. He’s an important member of the Learys’ party, and we’re hoping you can get him to come over to the liberal moderates.”

Jackie said, “The politics around the Basic Law are about balance. Eventually, I think we all know it will have to be repealed. Some of us would like it repealed sooner, others later. We think the Learys have overplayed their hand.”

“Marjorie and John aren’t bad people,” Jane said. “I have no regrets about supporting them when I did. But it’s time for us to move forward.” She looked at Kayla. “Slowly.”

Kayla smiled wryly. “For the sake of our backsides, if nothing else,” she said.

Chapter Nineteen

A text from Melanie came the next morning.

You there?

Yup.

Is it true?

What?

Oh, I don’t know. THAT YOU’RE ENGAGED? That Patrick is running, with Jane Loggins’ endorsement? That my freaking DAD is endorsing him?

Yup.

Can you come have lunch? Do you have morning sickness yet?

MELANIE!!

It could still freak Kayla out how matter-of-fact everyone on Draco was about sex.

Giggle… Sorry (but not really). Do you?

NO!!

Can you ask your hunk if you can come have lunch with me?

YES, FINE. If you promise not to make me blush 100% of the time.

Sigh. I suppose I can try.

* * *

Melanie was Kayla’s maid of honor, when the Learys married Patrick McDowell and Kayla Lourcy in the grand lobby of the admin building, two weeks later. Beforehand, there was a meeting between the Learys and the (future) McDowell-Lourcys (Draconian law made no provision for forcing a wife to take her husband’s name, and both Kayla and Patrick thought that keeping the Lourcy name around was a good idea).

Kayla had expected that that meeting would be terribly tense—even angry—but both John and Marjorie were very gracious. John, whom Kayla met then for the first time, seemed a much nicer person than she had expected. He was also drop-dead gorgeous. Not like Patrick, of course, but still… something seemed to happen to alpha men past fifty, if they kept in shape—they made your knees weak with a combination of wisdom and dominance.

“I admired your father so very much, Kayla,” he said to her, when the four of them sat down in the governor’s office. “I’m very glad that you and Patrick are going to be taking over.”

“What?” Kayla couldn’t help saying. It was all she could do not to sputter it.

Marjorie said, “Jane managed this very well. The writing is on the wall, and John and I have earned our retirement.”

“You can say that again,” said John. He turned to Kayla. “I doubt it’s much consolation, but I want you to know that Marjorie got quite the paddling herself for the stunt with you and Melanie.”

“John!” Marjorie said. But when Kayla looked at her, she was smiling.

“Losing the support of Gerald Foster was something that could have been avoided, and things might be very different,” John said, not angrily but matter-of-factly, as if they had had this conversation before, perhaps with a great deal more emotion.

“Yes,” Marjorie agreed, and turned to Kayla. “I made a bad miscalculation there, and I got what I had coming.”

Now she realized that Patrick was looking at her; she knew there was something she should say. The old Kayla never would have, she knew, but trying to be gracious had gained greatly in importance for her over the past two months, since the
Jupiter
had reached its destination and everything had seemed to be turned upside down.

“Marjorie,” Kayla said “I misjudged you, and I’m very sorry.”

“Thank you, Kayla,” Marjorie said. “That means the world to me.”

* * *

Kayla had tried to make some pronouncements about their wedding night: how she didn’t want it just to be at their house, how she knew that there weren’t hotels and things on Draco, but maybe Jane would let them use a nice room at Lourcy House. But Patrick had put his foot down and told her that he would be planning the wedding night, and she should concentrate on having a good time at the reception, which was of course in the admin café.

It was more of a political rally, really—or perhaps a kind of coronation, for the Learys announced right after they had married Kayla and Patrick in the simple words, “We pronounce you husband and wife,” that they were endorsing Patrick for governor. Nevertheless, there was a rather good cake, and a very good band playing waltzes and swing from the old, old days. The Draconians loved live music, because nothing—Kayla agreed—relieved the stress of hard work better than making music with your friends. Josh, from the farm they had visited, had even written a silly, wonderful song about Kayla’s father and how happy he was up in heaven to see Kayla and Patrick together.

Kayla cried and cried, and it felt so very good. All she felt she really needed, there in her standard-issue Draconian rayon wedding gown, was Mr. Fuzzy. She had Patrick, though, and truly that was even better.

After the reception, she changed into his favorite green dress, got into his car, and they set out for wherever he intended to take her. The goodbyes had been lengthy despite the fact that they would be seeing all their friends in a few days at most, even if Patrick had found some way to use the entirety of the whole week of vacation he’d been granted for a honeymoon to keep Kayla in bed, working on the birthrate. Draco colony just wasn’t big enough to make tearful goodbyes very meaningful.

“Where are we going?” Kayla asked, unable to contain her curiosity.

“Wait and see,” Patrick replied. They drove on through the hot Draconian night, with the windows of Patrick’s little blue electric car open. The air smelled like Draco: Kayla realized for the first time that she now knew what Draco smelled like. It smelled like the beach. She laughed.