Harmony by Marjorie B. Kellogg Read Free Book Online Page B

the curve, the sprawling three-story brick and timber bulk of our dormitory appeared from among its surrounding oaks. The BardClyffe dorm was one of the smaller ones, housing only three hundred apprentices. The exterior was modeled on ancient university residence halls like the few surviving in the Oxford dome. Inside, it was a rabbit warren. I didn’t want Jane storming in there in one of her hysterias. I had to stop and grab her for a little shake. “No one’s going to throw you Out! You know Micah couldn’t do without you. You’re carrying your weight just fine!”
    But even as I said it, I wondered.
    We left Jane at the dining room door, while Crispin deciphered the menu. Most domers’d be content with nice, legible computer readout. In Harmony, it had to be hand-lettered, in calligraphic pen and ink. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d used a goose quill.
    “Too healthy,” Cris announced, groping me there in the hall like some dirty old man. Fool that I was, I loved it. I thought that’s what sex was all about. “Your palace or mine, princess?”
    “Mine.” It hardly mattered. All our rooms were the same. But I had sudden interest in searching up that piece of jewelry I’d stashed away three years ago and forgotten about, until now.
    * * *
    Bedtime with Crispin was athletic and speedy, as if pleasure was just another thing to be accomplished. For me, it rarely was. We never talked feelings afterward, we talked careers. His career, mostly, though occasionally we’d spend time trashing other people’s, those Crispin saw as his particular rivals.
    “You think Jane’s got reason to worry?” I mused between rounds. I’d found the braided necklace and fastened it around my neck. “That could have come from anywhere,” he’d said.
    Now he stretched as luxuriantly as he could in my narrow bed. I thought he looked very beautiful, all smooth and golden in the dusk light that squeezed through the single window, heating the beige walls to salmon. He ran his fingers negligently through his hair, letting the ends coil along his collarbone. “If Jane didn’t have stuff to worry about, she’d invent it. If she gets thrown Out, it’s not going to be because of Howie Marr’s politics. I mean, c’mon—this isn’t some proto-marxist enclave like Chicago.”
    I let that pass. “Micah does need her. That’s got to be some kind of insurance. She’s the ideal studio assistant. She’s earnest and diligent, she’s a skilled and experienced draftsman, and a total obsessive crazy when it comes to details. She has patience with stuff that drives me up the walls. She’s passed four reviews so far just fine. No reason why she shouldn’t make the next one.”
    Cris yawned. “Except that after nine years, she’s still not so hot when the shit hits the fan in the theatre or if Micah’s not around to make decisions, and the only show she’s ever done on her own was that little workshop Gitanne got her at Images.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “ ‘The applicant’s potential as an independent artist remains undeveloped’…”
    “They do say ten years is the cutoff point. If you’re not made journeyman by then…”
    Cris grinned and drew his forefinger across my throat.
    “Jane’s afraid Howie’s show might tip the balance against her.”
    “Do we have to talk about Jane?” Crispin did not feel responsible for Jane as I did, or had come to, upon my elevation to the position of her superior.
    “But it’s not fair! There should be a place for skilled technicians.”
    “Who do you think builds our scenery? You just got to make citizen first.”
    “Or be born here.”
    Cris shook his head impatiently. “If Jane can’t accept the risk, she shouldn’t have come to Harmony. Not everyone can make it here.” He sat up, dragging the sheet away. “What’ve you got to eat?”
    “You should have thought of that before you turned your nose up at dinner.”
    Jane’s worry had dampened my mood. Even