Chapter 5: - Answering Questions

I rang the doorbell and waited, hat in hand. I heard footsteps inside and the door opened to show me the face of the Hispanic housekeeper. She looked at me, puzzled by an almost-recognition of my face. “Yes?”

“Is Frank home? I’d like to see him.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Who shall I say has come to call?” she asked.

I smiled my most ingratiating smile. “An old high-school friend. I’d like it to be a surprise.”

She frowned as only a long-term domestic help that has become part of family can frown. “I’m not sure that the Doctor can come to the door right now. He’s a very busy man.”

I sighed. I had hoped to avoid this. “Please tell him that Bubba has his history report written.”

She faintly scowled. She ran a neat house, and she didn’t need untidy thoughts or messages causing disorder. But this was something for the Doctor to deal with. “Please wait. I’ll see if he’s free.” She didn’t quite slam the door, but she closed the door firmly, making sure the latch caught with a click.

I heard her footsteps fade and after a minute, a man’s footsteps grow louder. The door was opened with a yank and there stood Doctor Francis Henderson. He peered at me, trying to believe the evidence of his eyes.

“My God!” He exclaimed, “My God, you’ve got a lot of nerve showing up at my door in the middle of the day! What are you doing here? Where have you been? What do you mean by this ... this... “ He only stopped babbling when I pulled him into a bear hug.

“My God ... My God...” He hugged back fiercely. “What’s happened to you? Did you dye your hair? You look like the kid I used to beat up on, not the old man teaching at the college.”

“So, are you going to invite me inside? It’s cold and windy out here and exposed in other ways.” I looked up and down the pecan tree-lined street. Several cars were parked a half-block away.

“I’m sorry Richard, come on in.” He led me through the entry hall and into a study filled with books, both medical and religious. “Connie!” he called to the housekeeper, “Put on some fresh coffee and bring out that coffee cake you baked this morning.”

“But Doctor,” the housekeeper protested, “that’s cake is for Mrs. Anne’s women’s group!”

“Let them eat store-bought.” He looked me up and down. “The prodigal has returned. He deserves the best.”

When the housekeeper had left the room, he turned to me and asked in a lower voice, “Have you returned?”

I met his eyes. “Not to stay. What’s been happening since I’ve been gone? The news reports I get don’t include the organizational hoo-ha of a tiny evangelical sect.”

We sat. “Well, your departure whacked the hornet’s nest,” Frank admitted, “The Brotherhood was headed for a crisis, and your little stunt provided the kick-off. By the way, what really happened? All we had to go on was that girl’s, Ivy Wilkins’ story, and there was so much emotion, you know, anger, jealousy, and envy that I couldn’t pick out the true from the false.”

“Frank,” I said, “remember when we were in the tenth grade, and you told me about the ‘Singularity?’ About how mankind was one day going to change so much that reports couldn’t be sent back because they wouldn’t make sense?” Frank nodded. “Well, it’s almost like that. There is a cultural divide happening and reports that come back don’t make much sense because you don’t have the cultural context to understand.”

The housekeeper returned with a coffee service and that kind of coffee cake with crumbles on the top. We held our talk while she served us and thanked her as she left. I took a bite of the cake. It was delicious. I wanted to scan it. I was thinking that a lot lately.

Frank turned and looked at me from under his bushy eyebrows. “Sounds like a dodge to keep from answering a simple question.”

“I’m not trying to squirm out,” I said, “I just want you to know that what I say has to be understood in a different cultural context.”

“So, out with it. What happened?”

“So, you know that, when the President announced the aliens and the Sa’arm threat, veterans all had to get CAP tested?” Frank nodded and I went on, “Well, I scored rather high. I think it was my former combat service that gave me a boost. I went back to classes and didn’t give it another five minutes of thought for the next year, until that day in the coffee shop.”

“When the shield fell, there was a table full of students in the restaurant. One of them, Ben Dunn, apparently had an agreement with his girlfriend Tiffi-something-or-other...”

“That would be Tiffany White, Greg and Susie White’s daughter.” Frank said, “They knew that she and the Dunn boy were serious, but they frankly thought it would be, at worst, a rushed wedding with a baby six months later.”

“Well, Dunn and White’s plans also included Ruth McKinsey, as an addition to Dunn’s harem.”

“My God!”

“You know, you’re saying that a lot today. Anyway, at the last minute, Ruth had second thoughts and backed out. She came to me, and I took her back to her friends. As I did, I made the cultural leap. I realized that if the Brotherhood was going to survive what was to come, the Brotherhood had to make the cultural leap, too.”

“So, you are saying that standing in front of a group of beautiful, innocent teenage girls didn’t sway your decision?”

“Well, to be honest, it didn’t make it harder, er..., more difficult. You know what I mean.”

A glint of amusement twinkled in his eye. “I know. Slip forgiven. So, they just dropped their clothes and started humping you right there?”

“Is that what Ivy Wilkins said?” Frank nodded. “No. Did. Not. Happen. I’m a pretty private guy about such things, though I’m not representative of the majority of Confederation culture. The girls did drop their togs, that’s Confederacy policy, and we all marched through the transport.”

“And then what happened?”

“Huh?”

“What happened to the girls, one of whom was under-aged?”

“Well, first, Don Claudie’s daughter, Kellie was fourteen and was an adult under U.S. and Confederacy law.”

“You know that earthly legality was not the Brotherhood’s concern.”

“I know, I know. The second thing is that I didn’t know who she was. I thought that she was another college student.”

“It sounds like the plea of every molester ever caught, ‘Your Honor, I swear she LOOKED like she was eighteen.’”

I looked up at Frank. “Is that what you think? That I’m a molester?”

He gave me a hard look back. “No, Richard, I don’t. But I’m not certain. And you asked what the fallout of your actions was back here. I’m just trying to let you know what the talk is, and to clear the decks for answering all of your other questions.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. I’m trying to answer your questions, but I want you to do more than hear the answers. I want you to understand the answers.”

I took a deep breath. “So, each of the girls declared, aloud, that she wished to be my concubine. That is a binding legal declaration in Confederacy law. Then they stepped through the transport and what else is there to tell?”

Frank just looked at me. In the room’s silence I heard the home’s gas furnace kick on.

“Okay, I’ve had physical congress with each of them. Each of them has had or is now carrying my child. Ruth McKinsey and Lizbeth Kim have had their CAP scores reevaluated and are no longer my concubines, but rather are citizens and sponsors themselves. I have become the patriarch of a clan. I have seen and fought the Sa’arm. That’s about as clearly as I can communicate to you what has happened to everybody on that side of the divide. What’s happened here?”

Frank looked as if he had another several hundred questions, but he put a lid on them and answered, “Lots. After you left, the board of Reagents nuked your academic career, and the Brotherhood offered you the ‘left foot of disfellowship.’ A few weeks later Don Claudie let it be known, quietly, that he could get some letters from the families of the girls to you all. Some in the Brotherhood felt that that contact violated the spirit of the disfellowshipping, so Don was reprimanded and his contract with the college wasn’t renewed.”

I winced. Don and I weren’t the closest of friends, but he didn’t deserve that.

“To make it worse, Don and his wife, Sally, had a falling out; over what, they won’t say. She kicked him out of their home, only to have the College kick her out of what was the Dean’s Residence when his contract ended. She’s become the poster girl for the consequences of dealing with the Confederacy.”

“Whaaaa?” I asked.

“I know, it doesn’t make rational sense, but it makes emotional sense to these people. They want a villain, the Confederacy has been a reliable one for the last few years, and you’re now the face of the Confederacy to them.”

“I’m be getting in touch with Don,” I said. “I had no idea that it turned out so badly for him.”

Frank nodded. “I’ll put you in touch. Though he might not be so happy to see you.”

“If he wants to blow his stack at me, he’s earned it.”

Frank picked up the coffee pot and refilled our cups. He gave the pot a small shake. It was empty.

“So, what with your dramatic exit with the flower of our youth, and the Brotherhood meeting in congregations all over the US and foreign lands to pass resolutions condemning you, the people that were pushing for association with the Reverend Powers’ outfit down in Denton just walked in and took advantage of the momentum. We are now formally associated with the “Temple of the Trinity.”