the guests, were from a planet of a neighbor to Barnard’s Star. At the far end of the lawn, facing the Aviation School building, a pair of Beech twin-prop trainers stood garlanded in flowers and bunting — Metterlin’s surprise bonus gift, named Julian and Esther after his two children.
Jerri Perlok was not there as a result of owning a line of perfumery with a Paris label that had become famous, or landing a husband from Jimmy’z club in Monaco. In fact, she didn’t have a husband, spending too much of her life in wild corners of the world that few beyond regular readers of National Geographic would be likely to know much about; in any case, even at twenty-nine she had still to experience a relationship that she could have felt enough confidence in it to want to make permanent. Despite being accused by many of being irreverent and rebellious, at heart she was still one of those old-fashioned few for whom “lifelong commitment” meant what it said.
She sat on her own at one of the sunshaded tables on the lawn, sipping a glass of Meursault Chardonnay over an unfinished plate of smorgasbord salad, and noting the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle signaling through body language and preening displays taking place on the dance boards and around and about of who ranked where in the status stakes, who was bidding, and who was available. As an anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist with a secondary interest in mythology, Jerri was more accustomed to observing the mating rituals of South American birds and Namibian antelopes, and more familiar with the rewards and punishments meted out by ancient Greek and Hindu deities than the emerging subspecies of Homo sapiens plutocratus — but it was all very educational and interesting.
Her invitation had been procured by a friend called Ivor, whom she had met a little over a year previously on the Hawaiian island of Maui. She had been staying in a trailer on the lower slopes of a volcano, which she and a colleague had rented as a base for studying migratory bird habits. Ivor was in a $2,000-per-night suite at the Four Seasons hotel, functioning in his role as household manager for the Metterlins and their company of select guests enjoying a week of mid-Pacific getaway. It was a truism among household managers, or “personal assistants,” employed by the superlatively rich that they slept with the phone left on and a notepad and pen by the bed to be always prepared for sudden demands from their charges, so Jerri and Ivor had not actually seen much of each other in the event. Even principals who were not third-generation hereditary beneficiaries but who had made it to where they were through their own drive and initiative seemed to acquire a sudden learned incompetence in even the simplest of mundane tasks. It was as if having others perform them were a badge that denoted status — much like the women of Imperial China whose crippling by foot-binding advertised that they could afford servants to carry them. But Ivor’s anecdotes of life in the top tenth of a percentile had been too intriguing for an anthropologist not to be interested in. She found him personable in himself in any case. His permanently unpredictable schedule suited her own tendency to get stuck into things that interested her for days at a time, and to disappear suddenly from her apartment in the Sierra foothills across the Central Valley for spells in unusual places, and in their own unconventional way they had continued an erratic form of friendship ever since. And so here she was.
The other reason Jerri had wanted to attend the event was that her life had recently taken on a change of direction that she’d known was a possibility but not really taken seriously. Some months before, more by way of a whimsical dare to herself than from a belief that it would lead to anything, she had applied to Interworld Restructuring for a position as an exo-anthropologist (purists in the profession were still
Jerri Perlok was not there as a result of owning a line of perfumery with a Paris label that had become famous, or landing a husband from Jimmy’z club in Monaco. In fact, she didn’t have a husband, spending too much of her life in wild corners of the world that few beyond regular readers of National Geographic would be likely to know much about; in any case, even at twenty-nine she had still to experience a relationship that she could have felt enough confidence in it to want to make permanent. Despite being accused by many of being irreverent and rebellious, at heart she was still one of those old-fashioned few for whom “lifelong commitment” meant what it said.
She sat on her own at one of the sunshaded tables on the lawn, sipping a glass of Meursault Chardonnay over an unfinished plate of smorgasbord salad, and noting the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle signaling through body language and preening displays taking place on the dance boards and around and about of who ranked where in the status stakes, who was bidding, and who was available. As an anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist with a secondary interest in mythology, Jerri was more accustomed to observing the mating rituals of South American birds and Namibian antelopes, and more familiar with the rewards and punishments meted out by ancient Greek and Hindu deities than the emerging subspecies of Homo sapiens plutocratus — but it was all very educational and interesting.
Her invitation had been procured by a friend called Ivor, whom she had met a little over a year previously on the Hawaiian island of Maui. She had been staying in a trailer on the lower slopes of a volcano, which she and a colleague had rented as a base for studying migratory bird habits. Ivor was in a $2,000-per-night suite at the Four Seasons hotel, functioning in his role as household manager for the Metterlins and their company of select guests enjoying a week of mid-Pacific getaway. It was a truism among household managers, or “personal assistants,” employed by the superlatively rich that they slept with the phone left on and a notepad and pen by the bed to be always prepared for sudden demands from their charges, so Jerri and Ivor had not actually seen much of each other in the event. Even principals who were not third-generation hereditary beneficiaries but who had made it to where they were through their own drive and initiative seemed to acquire a sudden learned incompetence in even the simplest of mundane tasks. It was as if having others perform them were a badge that denoted status — much like the women of Imperial China whose crippling by foot-binding advertised that they could afford servants to carry them. But Ivor’s anecdotes of life in the top tenth of a percentile had been too intriguing for an anthropologist not to be interested in. She found him personable in himself in any case. His permanently unpredictable schedule suited her own tendency to get stuck into things that interested her for days at a time, and to disappear suddenly from her apartment in the Sierra foothills across the Central Valley for spells in unusual places, and in their own unconventional way they had continued an erratic form of friendship ever since. And so here she was.
The other reason Jerri had wanted to attend the event was that her life had recently taken on a change of direction that she’d known was a possibility but not really taken seriously. Some months before, more by way of a whimsical dare to herself than from a belief that it would lead to anything, she had applied to Interworld Restructuring for a position as an exo-anthropologist (purists in the profession were still
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