“What’s this terrible lie you’re telling about Willum?” she shrieked. “How could you, Genevieve!”
Breathlessly, Mrs. Blessingham came in behind her. “I’m so sorry, Genevieve. Glorieta, my dear . . .”
Glorieta spun around, thrusting out her jaw. “Don’t my dear me! I was in Poolwich when I heard what’s being said! As if it wasn’t bad enough, Father’s death, Willum’s father’s death, everything that’s happened . . .” She started for Genevieve, then stopped, her eyes filling with tears. “It isn’t true! It can’t be true!”
Genevieve had expected this to happen, someday, somewhere. She had decided that when it did, only the truth would do. “I saw him slit Barbara’s throat. I was there. I saw him leave her and her son, perhaps his son, on the desert to die. He did not slit your throat. He did not kill a child you and he had together. He chose to kill someone else instead because of his love for you.”
Seeing Mrs. Blessingham’s astonished face, Genevieve realized she had sung the words, as the spirit or the harbingers might have sung them, in a very large voice. Glorieta was staring, her mouth open, her face very white. Well, come to think of it, it had sounded impressive. Perhaps awkward truths needed to impress in order to be taken seriously.
“I can’t believe it,” sobbed Glorieta. “That he would do such a thing . . .”
“He will never do it again,” said Genevieve in her own, quiet young woman’s voice, not adding that there would be no advantage for him to do so. Glorieta would figure that out for herself.
Glorieta, sobbing uncontrollably, turned to leave, supported by Mrs. Blessingham, who threw a tragic glance over her shoulder at Genevieve. Genevieve did not see it. Instead she saw between herself and the retreating figures a cliff, high above the sea and the jagged rocks upon which the waves broke, and on the rim, Willum, leaping out . . . out . . . far out . . . This thing was happening now, not later, not in the past, but now. Well, then. Glorieta would not need to choose. Either Willum knew that Glorieta could not love him, knowing what he had done, or he had chosen not to wait for the mobs or the machines to find him.
After one more day during which nothing at all seemed changed, not even, Genevieve thought wryly, the dull menu offered by the school kitchens, all the schoolmistresses had gathered, and Mrs. Blessingham told them about P’naki in a session marked by equal parts of horror, grief, and disbelief. There was no hurrying the enlightenment. Everyone present had to express every doubt she was capable of feeling, not once but several times, in different words, antiphonally, like a chorus gone mad.
When they were all, more or less, worn out, Genevieve told them the rest of it. By the time she had finished, Genevieve was thoroughly sick of submerging herself in the school fishpond to illustrate what was meant by the coming change.
Several days’ constant chatter, like the wear of wind or water smoothed them into acceptance. They knew the waters were rising, but slowly. They knew the descendants of Tenopia and Stephanie were to inherit a sea-world. Genevieve had decided not to explain why it was philosophically preferable and had talked instead about prestige. The sea-lineage would be more prestigious. On a planet used to nobility, prestige did well enough. More troublesome were the discussions of how the schoolmistresses could find sensible and useful employment educating the future generations and, most important, arranging appropriate marriages for women who were no longer of the nobility.
Mrs. Blessingham had frowned at this, saying musingly, “Not necessarily marriages. Some marriages may still be made for reasons of pride, so we must concern ourselves with matings. The young women of Haven may marry who they will, but they should pick their children’s fathers very carefully. And vice versa. We’ll need to establish a … well, a stud book.”
As she had before, Genevieve blinked at Mrs. Blessingham’s pragmatic decisiveness in the face of utter confusion. The schoolmistresses, by now imperturbable, nodded to one another. A stud book, they agreed. And perhaps even some imported reproductive technology. Genevieve was able to assure them that the spirit of Haven did not desire to cause them pain. “There’ll be lots of time for our descendants to change.”