“Why don’t you leave the place the way it is, and I’ll tidy up in the morning?” Hewitt said. “I’m too tired to do it now.”
“It’s tension that’s making you tired,” Liz told him. “You shouldn’t let Carl get under your skin.”
“I can’t help it. If he’s such a hell-raiser why doesn’t he go out and do it instead of spending all his time around here?”
“I should have thought that was obvious. Anywhere else he’d have to meet people on equal terms, and he doesn’t feel adequate for that. With us, he knows his seniority in the Company gives him the edge he needs, especially with a transfer coming up. He can say anything he wants in our house.”
“It doesn’t seem to bother you,” Hewitt retorted.
Liz gave him a level stare. “It bothers me, but we’re dealing with your career, aren’t we? After giving up everything we had on Earth, and travelling forty light years, are we going to risk your getting a bad assessment because I couldn’t jolly your boss along? It’s up to you, Sam – if you want, I’ll pour a pot of coffee into his lap the next time he comes near me.”
“I’m sorry, Liz.”
“It’s all right.” Liz, graceful in her natural generosity, came to him and kissed his forehead. She knelt down beside his chair and began stroking the dog. It licked her hand.
“Why are you doing that?” Hewitt said in genuine bafflement.
“Dogs like to be stroked.”
“But he’s only a machine.”
Liz looked at him with womanly scorn. “He doesn’t know he’s only a machine.”
The following four weeks passed more quickly than Hewitt had anticipated. Mesonia was still in an early stage of its development, and therefore was using a nine-day week in which there was only one rest day. The long stints of concentrated effort usually made Hewitt very tired, but Carl Mendip had taken to remaining in the office as much as possible – waiting for a decision about the transfer to Nimrod – and this freed Hewitt to do a number of field trips to outlying communities. He enjoyed the long silent drives through the Earth-like but unspoiled landscapes.
These pleasures were a bonus posthumously conferred on him by Eugenio Ferrari, whose transfer system enabled men to travel forty light years in exactly the same time that it would take to cover four or four hundred. The near-magic of Ferrari’s physics meant that mankind could be highly selective about the location of colonies, only establishing them on green and friendly worlds. The colonists were faced with hard work, but little danger or discomfort.
Liz’s job as a dental assistant meant she was unable to accompany him on the field trips, but Billy was able to go on days when he was free from classes. He always insisted on bringing the dog, which sat upright on the seat beside him, its brown eyes shining in a semblance of life. Hewitt found himself wishing he understood more about the molecular-circuit electronics of its brain so that he could appreciate what was going on inside the neat, sharp-eared head. All he knew was that the robotics engineers had done their work well, because Bramble had a canine personality all of his own, an individuality which – to Hewitt’s surprise – was not entirely tailored to the convenience of his owners. The little rodog liked chewing shoes, for example, and objected noisily when they were forcibly removed from its jaws. It did not eat, but every day lapped some water which was used to keep its eyes, nose and tongue moist, and it frequently overturned its dish, necessitating mopping-up jobs. When accidentally locked in a room it would whine continuously and scratch at the door until permitted to rejoin its owners.
On one occasion, when the dog had been with them about two weeks, it caused a minor commotion in the Hewitt household by disappearing for several hours. Hewitt thought it was stolen and was angry about the loss of a valuable piece of property, but he was even more concerned about Billy’s reaction. The boy wept inconsolably and ran around the house, pulling open cupboard doors and calling the dog’s name. Later that evening, when Billy was reduced to an occasional exhausted sob, Bramble had been spotted trotting down the avenue towards the house with his head held high, like an animal character in one of the historic Walt Disney cartoons. It transpired that the dog had wandered beyond the area which was properly imprinted on its memory and had spent a long time carrying out a random search for a landmark it knew. Liz had scolded it and slapped its flanks exactly as she would have done with a real pet, and it had responded by scuttling off into Billy’s room with its stubby tail between its legs. Billy had been overjoyed at the reunion with Bramble, and it was then that Hewitt felt the first stirrings of unease at the extent of his son’s preoccupation with what was, after all, only an assemblage of electronic and mechanical components.
In general, however, Hewitt did not pay much attention to the dog. It was providing companionship for his son in a satisfactory manner, and to that extent it had been a worthwhile investment.
And he forgot about it entirely when the news came through that he – and not Carl Mendip – had been selected for transfer to Nimrod.
Mendip came to Hewitt’s desk and watched him for a while with pale, reproachful eyes. “I expect you’re feeling proud of yourself, Sammy boy,” he said eventually.
Hewitt looked up from a site plan he had been pretending to study. “Not especially. It was all in the luck of the draw – and your recommendation must have helped.”
“Don’t you forget it.” Mendip brooded for a moment, unsatisfied. “You’ve put on some weight, you know. You’re going to have a hard time getting rid of it.”
“Only a couple of standard kilos – I can shed that in a week, easily.”
“Liz has put it on, too.”
“Liz is good at dieting.” Hewitt grew wary, sensing that his boss wanted to mar the occasion for him by whipping up antagonism. “She can trim down in time for the medical.”
“That’s going to spoil things a bit for you – women always lose it in the wrong place.” Mendip cupped his hands in front of his own chest, holding imaginary breasts.
“Secondary sexual characteristics aren’t too important to me,” Hewitt said easily, his defences intact. He could swap banter of the most bawdy kind with other men in the office and think nothing of it, but Mendip had a way of particularizing every sexual reference to make it offensive.
“The Company ought to relax the weight rules a little for women,” Mendip continued. “After all, if they’re placing so much emphasis on their role as breeding animals that they’re handing out transfers on the strength of it, they should let them keep their tits. What do you say, Sammy?”
“It’s a point of view.” Hewitt toyed with a heavy scale rule. One part of his mind admired the craftsmanship with which – in one sentence – Mendip had degraded Liz and denigrated Hewitt’s professional standing. Another part of his mind weighed the consequences of flicking the scale rule sideways and shattering Mendip’s front teeth. Such an action would result in his transfer orders being cancelled, which was too great a price to pay, but the temptation was considerable.
“Two points of view,” Mendip said.
“If you don’t mind, Carl, I’d better get on with this.” Hewitt tapped the site plan. “I want to leave a clear desk.”
He lowered his head and stared determinedly at the plastic sheet until the other man had moved away and the moment of danger had passed. The tachygram from Earth had come in only ten minutes earlier, and there had been no time to contact Liz with the news. Hewitt decided against calling her from the office because, with Carl Mendip near, it would have been impossible for him to speak in a natural manner. He worked until the middle of the afternoon before acknowledging that his lack of concentration was rendering the exercise meaningless, then he left the office and walked home, pacing himself to arrive at the house soon after the time when Liz would bring Billy home from school. It was a warm day, and he found Billy sitting on the back lawn with a glass of yeastmilk in one hand and a book in the other, while contriving to have one arm around the rodog. Bramble came running to meet Hewitt, wagging his tail in the hope of being stroked. Hewitt, as always, was unable to bring himself to show affection for a machine – regardless of how lifelike it might be – and Bramble, looking mildly dejected, returned to his prime owner.