Gust looked at his fists, clenched on the desk before him. "I wanted to, I suppose."
"You wanted to!" Leatha shrieked the words. "That's the kind of a man you are, you wanted to, so you just went there. I suppose I don't have to bother asking you what happened — my imagination is good enough for that."
"Lea, this isn't the time or place to talk about this."
"Oh, isn't it? It doesn't take any special place for me to tell you what I think of you, you. . traitor!"
His fixed and silent face only angered her more, beyond words. On the table close by was a cutaway model of New Town, prepared when it was still in the design stage. She seized it in both hands, raised it over her head, and hurled it at him. But it was too light, and it spun end over end in the air, striking him harmlessly on the arm and falling to the floor where it broke, shedding small chunks of plastic.
"You shouldn't have done that," Gust said, bending to retrieve the model. "Here you've broken it and it costs money. I'm responsible for it." The only response was a slam, and he looked up to see that Leatha was gone.
Anger filled her, stronger than anything she had ever experienced before in her life. Her chest hurt and she had trouble breathing. How could he have done this to her? She walked fast, until she had to gasp for breath, through the corridors of New Town. Aimlessly, she thought, until she looked at the entrance to the nearby offices and realized that she had had a goal all the time. CENTENGCOM, the sign read, an unattractive acronym for the Central Engineering Commission. Could she enter here, and if she did, what could she say? A man came out and held the door for her; she couldn't begin to explain why she was standing there, so she went in. There was a floor plan on the facing wall, and she pressed the button labeled SECRETARIAL POOL, then turned in the indicated direction.
It really proved quite easy to do. A number of girls worked in the large room surrounded by the hum of office machines and typers. People were going in and out, and she stood for a minute until a young man carrying a sheaf of papers emerged. He stopped when she spoke to him.
"Could you help me? I'm looking for a… Miss Georgette Booker. I understand she works here."
"Georgy, sure. Over there at that desk against the far wall, wearing the white shirt or whatever you call it. Want me to tell her you're here?" '
"No, that's fine, thank you very much. I'll talk to her myself."
Leatha waited until he had gone, then looked over the bent heads to the desk against the far wall and gasped. Yes, it had to be that girl, white blouse and dark hair, rich chocolate-colored skin. Leatha pushed on into the office and took a roundabout path through the aisles between the desks that would enable her to pass by the girl, slowing as she came close.
She was pretty, no denying that, she was pretty. A nicely sculptured face, thin-bridged nose, but too heavily made up with the purple lipstick that was in now. And tiny silver stars dusted across one cheek and onto her chesW There was enough of that, and most of it showing, too, in the new peekie-look thin fabric almost completely transparent.
Feeling the eyes on her, Georgette looked up and smiled warmly at Leatha, who turned away and walked past her, faster and faster.
By the middle of the afternoon Dr. Livermore was very tired. He had had little sleep the previous night, and the FBI man's visit had disturbed him. Then he had to put the technicians to work clearing up the mess in the bottle room, and while they could be trusted to do a good job, he nevertheless wanted to check it out for himself when they were done. He would do that and then perhaps take a nap. He pushed the elaborate scrawled codes of the gene charts away from him and rose stiffly. He was beginning to feel his years. Perhaps it was time to consider joining his patients in the warm comfort of the geriatric levels. He smiled at the thought and started for the labs.
There was little formality among his staff, and he never thought to knock on the door of Leatha's private office when he found it closed. His thoughts were on the bottles. He pushed the door open and found her bent over the desk her face in her hands, crying.
"What's wrong?" he called out before he realized that it might have been wiser to leave quietly. He had a sudden insight as to what the trouble might be.
She raised a tear-dampened and reddened face, and he closed the door behind him.
"I'm sorry to walk in like this. I should have knocked."
"No, Dr. Livermore, that's all right." She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. 'Tm sorry you have to see me like this."
''Perfectly normal. I think I understand."
"No, it has nothing to do with bottles."
"I know. It's that girl, isn't it? I had hoped you wouldn't find out."
Leatha was too distraught to ask him how he knew but began sobbing again at this reminder. Livermore wanted to leave but could think of no way to do it gracefully. At the present moment he just could not be interested in this domestic tragedy.
"I saw her," Leatha said. "I went there, God knows why, driven, I suppose. To see just what he preferred to me was so humiliating. A blowsy thing, vulgar, the obvious kind of thing a man might like. And she's colored. How could he have done this. .?"
The sobbing began again and Livermore stopped, his hand on the knob. He had wanted to leave before he became involved himself. Now he was involved.
"I remember your talking to me about it once," he said. "Where you come from. Somewhere in the South, isn't it?"
The complete irrelevancy of the question stopped Leatha, even slowed her tears. "Yes, Mississippi. A little fishing town named, Biloxi."
"I thought so. And you grew up with a good jolt of racial bias. The worst thing you have against this girl is the fact that she is black."
"I never said that. But there are things…"
"No, there are not things, if you mean races or colors or religions or anything like that. I am shocked to hear you, a geneticist, even suggest that race can have any relevancy to your problems. Deeply shocked. Though, unhappily, I'm not surprised."
"I don't care about her. It's him — Gust — what he did to me."
"He did nothing at all. My God, woman, you want equality and equal pay and freedom from childbearing — and you have all these things. So you can't very well complain if you throw a man out of your bed and he goes to someone else."
"What do you mean?" she gasped, shocked.
"I'm sorry. It's not my place to talk like this. I became angry. You're an adult; you'll have to make your own decisions about your marriage."
"No. You can't leave it like that. You said something, and you're going to tell me exactly what you meant."
Livermore was still angry. He dropped into a chair and ordered his thoughts before he spoke again.
"I'm. an old-fashioned M.D., so perhaps I had better talk from a doctor's point of view. You're a young woman in good health in the prime of your life. If you came to me for marriage counseling I would tell you that your marriage appears to be in trouble and you are probably the cause — the original cause, that is. Though it has gone far enough now so that you both have a good deal to be responsible for. It appears that in your involvement in your work, your major interests outside your marriage, you have lost your sexuality. You have no time for it. And I am not talking about sex now but all the things that make a woman feminine. The way you dress, apply makeup, carry yourself, think about yourself. Your work has come to occupy the central portion of your life, and your husband has to take second-best. You must realize that some of the freedom women gained deprived the men of certain things. A married man now has no children or a mother for his children. He has no one who is primarily interested in him and his needs. I don't insist that all marriages must exist on a master-and-slave relationship, but there should be a deal more give-and-take in a marriage than yours appears to offer. Just ask yourself — what does your husband get out of this marriage other than sexual frustration? If it's just a sometime companion, he would be far better off with a male roommate, an engineer he could talk shop with."