“If you’ll just come along with me now, and take your places,” Reverend Fleischer said. “Then I’ll give the organist a nod, and we shall commence.”
When Jonathan got to the door that led to the aisle down which he’d walk, he looked at the backs of the guests’ heads. His friends, his parents’ friends-Ullhass and Ristin were there; Shiplord Straha, for obvious reasons, wasn’t-and a few relatives, and those of Karen and her folks. He gulped. It was real. It was about to happen.
Karen and her mother came out of the other waiting room. She waved to him and smiled through her veil. He took a deep breath and smiled back. Reverend Fleischer bustled up to the altar and gave the organist the signal. The first couple of notes of the Wedding March rang out before Jonathan realized they had something to do with him. His best man hissed. He jumped, then started walking.
Afterwards, he remembered only bits and pieces of the ceremony. He remembered his own parents coming up the aisle after him, and Karen on her father’s arm, and her maid of honor-she’d known Vicki Yamagata even longer than he’d known Greg. After that, it was all a blur till he heard Reverend Fleischer saying, “Do you, Jonathan, take this woman to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, till death do you part?”
“I do,” he said, loud enough for the minister and Karen to hear him, but probably not for anybody else.
It seemed to satisfy Reverend Fleischer. He turned to the bride. “Do you, Karen, take this man to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, till death do you part?”
“I do,” she answered, a little louder than Jonathan had.
Beaming, the minister said, “Then by the authority vested in me by the church and by the state of California, I now pronounce you man and wife.” He nodded to Jonathan. “You may kiss the bride.”
That, Jonathan knew how to do. He swept the veil aside, took Karen in his arms, and delivered a kiss about a quarter as enthusiastic as he really wanted to give her. That still made it pretty lively for a kiss in church. When he let her go, he saw almost all the men and what was to him a surprising number of women looking as if they knew exactly what he had in mind.
“We’re really married,” he said: not exactly brilliant repartee from a new bridegroom.
“How about that?” Karen answered. That was commonplace enough to make him feel a bit better.
They went up the aisle this time, and over to the hall next to the church for the reception after the wedding. Jonathan drank champagne, fed wedding cake to Karen and got fed by her, and shook hands with everybody he didn’t know and most of the people he did.
“Congratulations,” Ristin told him in hissing English.
“I thank you, superior sir,” Jonathan answered in the language of the Race.
As his red-white-and-blue body paint showed, Ristin was an ex-POW who’d made himself thoroughly at home in the USA. He kept right on speaking English: “This is an enjoyable celebration. I almost begin to understand why those two of my kind who fled to this country would desire it.”
“Weddings are supposed to be fun,” Jonathan agreed, now sticking to English himself. “From everything I’ve heard, though, it’s the settling-down part later on that makes a marriage work.”
Ristin shrugged. “I would not know. Most of us have no interest in such unions. But I know your kind does, and I wish you every success.”
“Thanks,” Jonathan said again.
People pelted Karen and him with rice when they went out to his elderly Ford. He hoped it would start. It did. He was glad to be out of the tux and in ordinary clothes again. Karen ran a comb through her hair, getting the rice out of it. “How about that?” she said again.
“Yeah. How about that, Mrs. Yeager?” Jonathan said. “You’re going to have to get used to signing your name a new way.”
Karen looked startled. “You’re right. I will. And I’ll have to get used to being at the end of the alphabet, too, instead of near the front. Culpepper was good for that.”
The hotel they’d picked for their wedding night was close to the airport. When they got up to their room, he picked her up and carried her over the threshold. Inside, they discovered a bottle of champagne waiting in a bucket of ice. Karen read the little card tied to the bottle. “It’s from your folks,” she said, and sighed. “My mom and dad wouldn’t have thought of anything like that.”
“Your parents are nice people,” Jonathan said loyally.
But he didn’t want to think about his new in-laws-or his own parents, for that matter. That wasn’t what a wedding night was for. He wasn’t very interested in more champagne at the moment, either. It might make him sleepy. He didn’t want to be sleepy, not tonight.
Karen might have been reading his mind. “We don’t have to hurry,” she said, glancing toward the bed that dominated the hotel room. “We don’t have to worry about getting caught, either. I like that.” Her eye went to the ring with the very little diamond Jonathan had set on her finger. “I like this, too.”
“Good.” Jonathan had a slim gold band on his own finger. He wasn’t used to wearing rings; it felt funny. “That’s the idea.” He walked over to her. Their arms went around each other. Who kissed whom was a matter of opinion. This time, in privacy, they didn’t have to hold back any enthusiasm.
Not very much later, they lay side by side on the bed. Jonathan’s hands wandered. So did Karen’s. She said, “This is a lot better than parking in a drive-in, you know?”
“Yeah!” Jonathan couldn’t take his eyes off his bride. They’d never had the chance to be fully naked together before. “You’re beautiful. I already knew that-but even more so.”
She pulled him to her. “You say the sweetest things.” After they’d kissed for quite a while, Karen pulled back perhaps half an inch and said, “I’ll bet you tell that to all the girls.” She poked him in the ribs.
He squeaked-she’d found a ticklish spot. And, just for half a second, the corny old joke put him off his stride. He had told Kassquit something pretty much like that, or as close to it as he could come in the language of the Race, which wasn’t really made for such sentiments. He wondered how Kassquit was doing, and hoped she was doing well.
But then his mouth found its way to the tip of Karen’s breast again. She sighed and pressed his head against her. He stopped thinking about Kassquit. He stopped thinking about everything. A moment later, the marriage became official in a way that had nothing to do with either the church or the state of California, but that was as old as mankind nonetheless.
“Oh, Jonathan,” Karen said softly.
“I love you,” he answered.
They made love a couple of times, fell asleep in each other’s arms, and woke up to make love again. Over the course of the night, the champagne did disappear. It wasn’t enough to make them drunk; it was enough to make them happy, not that they weren’t pretty happy already.
The wakeup call at eight the next morning interrupted something that wasn’t sleep. Afterwards, Jonathan said, “I don’t know why we’re flying up to San Francisco for our honeymoon.”
“It’ll be fun,” Karen said. “We’ll see all sorts of things we haven’t seen before.”
“If we ever get out of the hotel room, we will,” he said. “I don’t know about that.”
“Braggart.” She wrinkled her nose at him. They both laughed. Jonathan squeezed her. They went downstairs for breakfast, and then back up to the room to find something to do in the couple of hours before the plane took off. To Jonathan’s considerable pride, they did. On the basis of a bit more than half a day, he liked being married just fine.
Kassquit stooped slightly to look in the mirror in her cubicle. That she had to stoop reminded her she wasn’t biologically part of the Race: the mirror was at the perfect height for a male or female from Home. She’d had to start stooping even before she reached her full growth. Either she’d tried not to think about it or she’d let it mortify her, as did every difference between herself as she was and the female of the Race she wished she were.