Thinner Than Thou by Kit Reed

Author:Kit Reed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2012-08-06T04:00:00+00:00

17

“Excuse me. I’m Marg Abercrombie and—”

“Sorry, Ma’am, you can’t be here.”

“Sister Dolores Farina sent me.”

“Who?”

Confronted by a lanky guard in orange coveralls, Marg draws herself up. The result is more impressive than it used to be. Her time on the road has hardened her jawline and made her thinner. Her last, best lead has brought her to an adobe guardhouse set in the middle of a wasteland; the old Marg would be in tears by now but hardship has made her tough. “I said, I’m Marg Abercrombie, and—”

The guard raises his hand to stop her. There is no badge on his pocket but his manner is forbidding and official. “Do you have a pass?”

“A pass?” The desert sun is blinding. Squinting, she surveys the landscape, the miles of razor wire separating her from whatever lies inside the gates, the long, tin-roofed building in the middle distance, the only other sign of civilization that she can see. From here it looks like a tobacco shed.

“Your pass.”

“What pass?”

“You need a pass to be here.”

This is nothing like what she expected. There are no signs of the Dedicated Sisters here, no craggy Gothic heaps, no staggering monoliths like their Chicago headquarters. Still, her sources have sent her here. What is this place? She isn’t sure. It’s nothing like the Dedicateds’ other convents. It looks like the last outpost on the remote fringes of something she can’t even guess at. If this isn’t a Dedicated site, what’s behind the razor wire, just over the ridge that obscures the approach? Retirement community? Desert spa? Convicts’ camp where people in orange coveralls break rocks? “What is this place?”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am, I can’t answer that. I can’t answer that and you can’t be here.”

Then why did the tremulous girl who showed her out of the Oklahoma Ded convent send her here? The young Dedicated couldn’t have been more than eighteen; she wore the calipers uneasily, like a child putting on a makeshift nun’s habit for a school play back in the days before the Reverend Earl. Where the others strode around confidently in their brown tunics, Marg’s young contact was new to the discipline. “heir desert place,” she’d whispered, slipping a crude map into Marg’s hand as she opened the door. “If there’s any trouble, tell them I sent you.”

The guard takes a step forward. “Now, if you don’t mind …”

Marg holds her ground. Be confident and act entitled and they’ll have to take you in. Smiling, she advances. “You don’t understand. I’m Marg Abercrombie, Annie Abercrombie’s mother? Sister Dolores Farina told me you were expecting me. Perhaps you have my authorization in the booth.”

“There’s nothing in the booth, Ma’am.”

It isn’t much of a booth. “I’m sure my name’s on the list,” she says.

“There isn’t any list.”

“Look again, you’ll probably find my pass there.”

“No, Ma’am, there aren’t any passes there.”

“That’s OK, just step aside. I’ll explain to your superiors.”

He shows her the palm of his hand like a cop on a poster: STOP.

Marg says in her nicest tones, “Oh, please.

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