36

Birdie

I told Birdie about the Chtorran calls I'd heard in the night and she went gray. "Okay," she said. "We'll talk about it at Council on Sunday."

"We ought to do something now," I insisted.

Birdie lowered the specimen slide she was peering at. "Like what, for instance." She picked up another one and squinted at it. "We already have the worm charms. By the way, where's yours?"

"Oh, I took it off when I showered this morning."

"Don't bother. The artificial leather is waterproof."

"I really doubt that a Chtorran is going to catch me in the bathtub."

Birdie went on to the next slide. "Oh'?" she asked. "When did they start making appointments?"

"Anyway," I said. "The worm charms aren't going to be enough, and frankly, I'd rather have an earlier line of defense."

"You're right, of course. Worm charms don't do the wearer much good. Do you have something in mind?"

"A worm fence."

She grunted. "The subject was discussed nine months ago and tabled."

"Nine months ago there weren't Chtorrans foraging in the hills."

"Hand me that frame, will you?" She slid the last slide under the microscope. I waited for her to return to the subject, but she concentrated on adjusting the contrast on her screen instead. She switched to ultraviolet, then back to pseudo-white laser source. "Normal, dammit. Thought I had something."

"Well, what about a fence?"

"Fences are expensive. And we don't have the manpower."

"Three lines of razor-ribbon and punji-barriers would buy a lot of security, Birdie. You've been lucky here. This is a regular Chtorran smorgasbord, without a cover charge."

"Winter's coming on soon, Jim."

"All the more reason why we have to do something."

"I thought worms hibernated. "

"Sorry, it's summer when they're torpid. And not so's you'd notice. They lay low in the heat and come out at night. But they still eat the same amount."

Birdie was placing another slide under the lens, adjusting the focus. She dialed a greater magnification and nodded to herself. "That's not what I read in the papers."

"The papers are wrong. I was in Special Forces for nearly two years. We burned worms in their igloos. January was the most dangerous month. I don't know why the government continues to listen to that international collection of bunglers who're living so high in Denver, but their analysis of the habits and life styles of the Chtorr is ninety degrees off axis."

Birdie tapped at her keyboard, storing the image on the screen in memory, and switched off the microscope. As the room lights came up, she looked at me, wiping her hands on a towel. "Jim, I understand your . . . ah, concern about the worms, but-"

"You mean psychosis, don't you?"

"If you wish. The point is, Betty-John and I think it's more important that you concern yourself with your kids." She eyed me carefully. "By the way, how are you getting along with them?" It was not a casual question.

"We're still making adjustments," I said guardedly.

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing."

She searched my face. "I doubt that. You're so transparent, Jim, I can read fine print through you. Tell me the truth."

"Tommy's got a . . . problem."

"Obviously. And you're not content to let him have it by himself, are you?"

"Huh?"

"You have to have a problem about it too." She asked, "What's the problem?"

I took a breath. What was the best way to say it? "Spit it out, Jim."

"I love that kid. But he's-I don't want him to be a queer."

"So? What's the problem."

"Birdie!"

"What?"

"He climbs into bed with me, and I hate pushing him away."

"So don't."

"I'm not a faggot!"

She flinched. "Please, Jim-nobody around here has ever called you 'nigger,' have they?"

"I'm only one-fourth black, and it doesn't show," I said.

"No, it doesn't," she agreed.

"You can't even tell from my gene charts," I added.

"Or from your mentality," she finished. "That's probably what saved your life during the plagues. Statistically, Caucasians have the least resistance to the Chtorran bacteriology. Negroes have the highest. You ought to be grateful your grandfather wasn't a racist."

"Thanks for the sermon. But we were talking about Tommy."

"We still are. The point is, around here, we don't use negative indices."

"Huh?"

"Epithets. Bad names. For one thing, some of our local faggots have short tempers. " She indicated a chair and I sat. "For another, language determines thought. You channelize your thinking with the words you use. Negative indices are a barrier. They keep you from experiencing the complete picture."

I made an impatient waving gesture with one hand. "I know all that, Birdie. Let's just cut to the chase, all right?"

She turned her chair to face me, pulled it close and leaned in close. She said, "What I'm getting at is this: for someone who has seen as much and done as much in the past two years as you have, you are one of the most pompous, arrogant, and unlikable bigots it has ever been my misfortune to deal with. I like you, but it doesn't change the fact that you have the very bad habit of not really listening to people. You're not really listening now. You're more concerned with boogey-men up in the hills than in dealing with the children you've supposedly accepted responsibility for. At the first sign of trouble, you're ready to disown the kid. So what if he's homo? That's when he needs your love twice as much because he'll have to deal with all the other uncured bigots running loose."

"All right, all right-I don't need the sermon."

"No, you don't," she admitted. "You need the same kind of hugging Tommy does. You need to know that it's all right to love."

"Not that way!" I realized how loud I was and lowered my voice.

She cocked an eyebrow at me. "Who hurt you?"

"Huh?"

"You heard me. Who hurt you? Sometime in the past, you made a decision about something. What was it? Didn't your father ever hug you?"

"What does that have to do with it?"

"Nothing at all-except he's the only one you might have learned fathering from. Did your father ever hug you?"

I thought about it. I tried to remember. I wanted to say yes, but I couldn't find any memories of him hugging me. Not ever.

I remembered one time . . . I had been leaving on a trip. It was my first real time away from home on my own. I felt proud that my parents trusted me. I hugged my Mom and she hugged me back, but when I hugged my Dad, he had just stiffened.

He hadn't hugged me back.

Birdie was looking at me. "What's that about'?" she asked.

"What?"

"That expression on your face. What were you remembering?"

"Nothing. "

"Uh-huh. He didn't hug you very much, did he?"

I said, "Not ever. Not that I can remember." I added, "He loved me. I know that. It's just that he wasn't a hugger."

"Uh-huh." She nodded. "So, don't you think that has something to do with how you're handling Tommy?"

I felt angry. "Are you telling me I can't raise my own kid?"

She grinned. "Yeah. I am. And you know something? I could say the same thing to ninety-nine percent of the people I meet. Anyone can make a baby, it doesn't take a hell of a lot of skill. Little Ivy made two of them. Does that qualify her as a skilled parent? You tell me."

I shook my head.

"Very perceptive. But she thinks she's doing okay, because she doesn't know any better. The truth is, she's doing the absolute very best she can. So are all the other parents in the world. That's the joke. The commitment of a parent is so total, so absolute that they give one hundred percent of themselves, one hundred percent of the time. I've seen whole families mortgage themselves into bankruptcy to buy an extra year of time for a child with an incurable disease. This is it, Jim: you do everything you know how to do, because you can't do anything more. My job is to let you know that there's more to know. There's always more. When you know what it is, you do it."