Ms. L’uboleng licked her teeth. “Mmm.” She glanced down at her desk. “Well I certainly can’t argue with your credentials. I—what can I say? From what I’ve seen you’ll be a terrific addition to our staff.” She put out a well-manicured hand, “The board will have to officially approve you, but that should only be a formality. Welcome aboard, Ms. Jiang.”
Lisa was dumbfounded at the sudden turn of events. But she took the hand without hesitation, happy to have some meaning in life again, even if it was under less than ideal circumstances. So, she had a job! After all she had been through, that had been far from a guaranteed thing.
She was happy. That became obvious enough the moment she emerged into the receptionist’s area again, and Ben turned his watchful eyes on her. “So, did you get the job?” he stopped her in mid-strut.
Lisa was so ecstatic, in fact, that the shimp’s forwardness did not make the immediate impression on her it ordinarily would have. “I start next week,” she chirped. “Of course, we still have to get all the legal stuff out of the way, but that won’t…” the incongruity of Ben’s behavior struck her then. His eyes were directly on her, in an almost flirtatious manner. Lisa had never, never, known a shimp to be so—so provocative, if that was the word for it. If he had been human, she would have actually thought he was making a pass at her.
Which was just too intriguing to walk away from without investigation. Specism might officially be dead and buried, but in the New York she grew up in, like just about everywhere else, shimps knew their places. A shimp who didn’t was a round peg in a square hole.
“Thank you for asking, Ben.”
“Ms. Jiang.”
“Please, if we’re going to be working together I insist you call me Lisa.”
Ben should have writhed in discomfort, if not outright horror, at such familiarity from a hom. Instead, it was his response that had her disoriented. A heavy, jet-black hand reached across the desk; a hand that was strong enough to crush her own to a pulp, or, for the matter, the life from her body if it got around her throat.
“Pleased to meet you, Lisa.”
When she accepted the hand she realized that she had never actually touched, even by accident, an adult shimp. The flesh, she noticed, and noticed she noticed, was warm and moist.
She felt foolish.
Ben grinned, as though he knew exactly what she had just gone through. “I had a feeling Julia would offer you the job. Most of the applicants that come in here, you can tell right away they’re unsuitable.”
At that moment, Ms. L’uboleng’s voice broke in over Lisa’s thoughts. “I’ll be out to lunch for the next hour,” it announced.
“Excuse me, that’s my cue,” Ben said, with a raised hand. He issued a terse macro to his desk. “It means I’m out to lunch too,” he explained, “for the next fifty minutes.” He stepped from around the barrier. “Care to join me? There’s this new loonie place I’ve been dying to try.”
Again, Lisa fought her disorientation. This was quite unbelievable. “Sounds wonderful. I haven’t had Lunarian in—ah—actually, I’ve never had it.”
“You’re joking. Really?”
“Really.”
The “loonie place” was a ten minute tube ride away. When they got there Ben ordered for both of them, partly because her knowledge of “green cheese” was as promised, but mostly because she couldn’t make herself think about food, any kind of food, at the moment anyway. And in fact, she hardly noticed what she was eating, except that it was largely green and cheese-like in texture, infused with artificial flavors, and was artfully arranged more than it was delicious. As though it really were made from algae and recycled wastes.
“All right,” she finally said it, “tell me why I wasn’t unsuitable.”
Ben looked at her as though she’d said something truly stupid. The look lasted only a moment before he broke into soft laughter. “Julia must have been even more impressed with you than I was. You mean she didn’t ask you how you felt about teaching shimps?”
Lisa almost jumped from her seat at the revelation. “As a matter of fact, the issue never came up. If it had, I would have told her… frankly, I would have told her it was an insulting question. I’ve taught many shimp children in my career.” She wanted to ask if that meant she would be teaching a classroom lull of shimps, but didn’t dare.
Ben narrowed his eyes. “You mean, up on the grange?”
“There are a number of shimp families on the colonies,” she insisted. The statement made a bitter echo in her mind: damn it, I’m not defending what happened up there! “Not as many as there should be, of course.”
Ben leaned back, and let his shoulders slump. “You know, you don’t have to try so hard, Lisa. Your body language screamed your feelings the moment you walked through the door and found yourself in a position to boss a shimp around. Most homs just take it for granted, even when they say with all the sincerity of their hearts that they’re against specism. That’s what I mean about being obviously unsuitable.”
Lisa took a few moments to absorb the words. “So, that’s your real job back there? Weeding out the bigots?”
Ben nodded. “There are some advantages to being a Pan Sapiens.” He shook his head. “By the way, I despise that term. There’s nothing wrong with shimp. These periodic language upgrades are just plain silly; can’t people see that no matter what term you use, the bigots will eventually give it an ugly connotation just by using it?
“OK,” he said, before she could probe the statement, “now that I’ve answered your question, you have to answer mine. What are you doing here, anyway? Nobody goes from a high profile job on a colony to wiping noses Earth-side. And don’t tell me it was for the challenge of teaching young minds, or that you just needed the change.”
Lisa reflexively stopped eating, and dropped her forksticks onto her dish. “You know,” she said, “I’m starting to think that you’re the one bullying me around.”
Ben chuckled through a broad, bigtoothed grin. “I am one hell of an uppity shimp, aren’t I?” The grin vanished, and he stared at her. “The way I figure it, you must have made a lot of people up there awfully mad.” Then he shrugged. “But I’ll drop the subject if you want. It’s completely up to you.”
It probably didn’t take as long to make the decision as it felt, sitting there and letting all the thoughts and emotions boil through her again. “Yes, well, holding up a mirror to people is not exactly a good way to make friends and influence people.” Well, why the hell not? What was the point of doing the right thing if you couldn’t spend the rest of your life being punished for it?
She realized Ben was handing her a napkin. “I don’t recommend crying in public,” he said, “but if you must, at least do it tastefully.”
Lisa declined the offering and pulled herself up straight. She had been close to tears, she realized. Angry tears. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I was thinking of a certain child. A student of mine…”
“A shimp?”
She sat up with a start. How did he—“I remember some net talk about a shimp child up on the grange getting beat up, about a year ago,” Ben explained. “There weren’t too many details though; everyone seemed to agree that it was just your run-of-the-mill kid fights.”
Lisa fought down her fury at the distortion. “Four against one is hardly one of your run-of-the-mill fights,” she revealed one of the details that conveniently hadn’t found its way into the net.
“Four against one? Oh well, that is about what it would take,” Ben said, with a small smile. “That’s the advantage of being the only shimp in school. On the other hand, you also learn very quickly not to abuse it; the shums won’t put up with a shimp who doesn’t know his place, and they’re very good at organizing. So: what did the kid do?”