Glasshouse - Charles Stross [51]
But let me get back to Cass, the subject of my hopes and worries . . .
I’m standing beside Sam as usual, holding the hymnbook and moving my lips, letting my eyes rove around the other side of the aisle. A new cohort arrived last week and the Church is packed—they’ll have to extend it soon. I’m trying to pick out the newcomers because I don’t want to get them mixed up with the older cohorts. Maybe it’s a bit of Jen’s calculated cynicism rubbing off on me, but I’m learning to guess someone’s degree of alienation by how long they’ve been around. I have a feeling I might be able to make some allies among the new intake as long as I look for them early in the conditioning cycle, before the score whores get their claws in.
For some reason Mick is sitting with—standing among—the new folks this week, and I automatically glance at the woman to his left. I do a double take. She’s wearing a long-sleeved blue dress with a high collar, and a hat with a black veil that covers her face. She’s got lots of makeup smeared around her eyes. Her mouth is a red slash, and her cheeks are colorless. But it’s definitely Cass, and she’s holding the hymnbook as if she’s never seen one before.
Is that you, Kay? I wonder, tantalized by her presence. I’ve been holding on to that promise Kay extracted from me—“You’ll look for me inside, won’t you?” And Cass . . . she knows ice ghoul society. If Mick wasn’t so crazy with jealousy that he doesn’t want her out in public, if—
Sam nudges me discreetly in the ribs. People are closing their hymnbooks and sitting down. I hastily follow suit. (Don’t want anyone to notice me, don’t want to attract unwanted attention.)
“Dearly beloved,” drones Fiore, “we are a loving congregation, and today we welcome to our bosom the new cohort of Eddie, Pat, Jon”—and he names seven other fresh victims—“who I am sure you will take under your wings and strive to befriend in due course. We also offer a belated welcome to sleepyhead Cass, who has finally deigned to grace us with her fragrant presence . . .” He twitters on in like vein for some time, preaching a sermon of saccharine subordination illustrated periodically with some anecdote of misdoing. Vern, it seems, got falling-down drunk and vomited in Main Street two nights ago, while Erica and Kate had a stand-up fight so violent that it put Erica in hospital, along with Greg and Brook, who tried to pull Kate off her. Kate is now in prison, paying the price for her outburst in days on bread and nights on water, and by the time Fiore gets through excoriating her, there’s an angry undercurrent of disapproval in the congregation. I glance sidelong at Cass, trying not to be too obtrusive about it. I can’t make out her face—the veil shadows her expression effectively—but I’m pretty sure that if I could see her, she’d look frightened. Her shoulders are set, defensive, and she’s hunched slightly away from Mick.
Once we go outside into the open air, I grab a glass of wine and down it rapidly, keeping close to Sam. Sam watches me, worried. “Something wrong?”
“Yes. No. I’m not sure.” There are butterflies in my stomach. Cass is the most isolated of the wives in Cohort Four, the one who hasn’t been allowed out anywhere—and could Sam stop me doing anything if I felt like it? Mick is poison, not the subtle social toxin of a Jen, but the forthright venom of a stinging insect, brutal and direct. “There’s something I want to check out. I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”
“Reeve—take care?”
I meet his eyes. He’s concerned! I realize. Abashed, I nod, then slide away toward the front of the Church and the main entrance.
Mick is talking to a little knot of hard-looking men, wiry muscles and close-cropped hair—guys I see digging or operating incredibly noisy machinery, chewing up the roads then