It didn't keep grown-up Castor away, either, because he was convinced from his courses that the most dangerous radiation had had plenty of time to fade away. Besides, the deathglass was beautiful. Castor swam down through the fish and the kelps, circling and admiring the blobby glass objects that shimmered like jellies in the underwater light. There were tall, angled ones like prisms, bent-over ones that seemed to have been partly melted in the middle, and many, many that had softened themselves down into random roundnesses before they had hardened again. Castor knew that, really, they were garbage. They were vitrified radioactive wastes, hurriedly barged out to a disposal area in the middle of the Gulf in those frantic days of the war when everything went crazy at once. You could not blame the bargemen for strewing them over a hundred square kilometers in their haste. But he could not think of them as garbage, because they were too beautiful. He followed their trail to the sixty-meter depth and then, reluctantly, turned around and swam steadily back to the beach, still underwater. One tank was gone already; it was time to come out. He paid little attention to the fish or the sea on the homeward trip. He was thinking about the deathglass and how it had come to be there. He wondered what the world had been like, in those days just before the old United States and the old Soviet Union had thought about the unthinkable and reached the wrong conclusions. Suppose they hadn't? Suppose they had sometime said to each other, "Look here, there's no sense in stinging each other to death like scorpions in a bottle, let's toss these things away and think of something else to do with our hostilities." What would the world be like if the war had not happened and if the Han Chinese had not come? Would he have been allowed, then, to go to the university? To take some other job than working on the rice plantation? Would he have been spared such annoyances as that infuriatingly superior Renmin Police inspector, with her sarcasm and her authority?
He was still asking himself these questions when he emerged from the water and saw the inspector standing on the beach waiting for him.
The woman was standing with her back to him, smoking a little lacquered pipe and frowning at the distant lip of the radio-telescope. Castor was wearing no more than the face mask and the tanks—what was the use of swimming trunks when no one was there to see? He paused, uselessly knee-deep in the gentle waves, wondering whether to be embarrassed.
The policewoman had no such problem. When she turned, the frown gave way to a pleased grin. "Well, Pettyman Castor! You're looking very well today!"
He stood belligerently straight. "It's nice to see you again, Inspector Tsoong Delilah."
She laughed. "How did you know my name? No, never mind—the same way I knew yours, I suppose—by asking." She was walking toward the water and stopped with her glassy-bright boots in the wavelets, not a meter away. She bent to feel the temperature of the sea and rose slowly, her eyes studying every part of him on the way. "I almost think I ought to get out of my clothes and join you for a swim," she observed thoughtfully.
He pointed out, "I only have one set of gear."
She studied his expression, and this time her laugh was slightly soured. "Well, Scholar, you can get dressed then," she said, turning her back and marching to the bluff. She sat down, silhouetted against the huge arc of the telescope, refilling her pipe as she watched him pull up his shorts. "Have you ever been over there?" she asked suddenly, pointing at the radio-telescope. He shook his head. "Not even to visit?"
"No. They're almost all Han Chinese, and they come and go in their own aircraft. We never see them at the village, although—"
She filled in for him. "Although you would like to be assigned to work there, I understand?"
He was angry, but said nothing—if she had taken the trouble to study his records, of course she would know that.
She persisted. "But how can you hope to work in such a place without a degree?"
"It isn't my fault I don't have a degree! I was rejected. They said I was more useful growing rice."
"Quite right! Food is the foundation of socialism," she quoted approvingly. He didn't answer, not even a shrug, just stood swinging his scuba gear by the straps as he waited for her to get to whatever point had brought her here. She nodded as though satisfied, puffing on her pipe. The smoke was like heavy perfume. "We found your missing body, Scholar Pettyman Castor," she said suddenly. "At least, we found the bones. They were crushed along with hog bones at the slaughterhouse in the cattle collective, but not so crushed they couldn't be identified." She watched his face with sardonic amusement as she added, "We could not find any flesh, however. Apparently each part had been put through the mechanical deboner and all the meat taken off... tell me, did you enjoy your dinner last night?"
This time Tsoong Delilah's laugh was full-throated as Castor dropped his face mask in the sand and his mouth spasmed. "No, no, don't puke!" she chuckled. "I was only joking. This meat was fed to pigs, not people, we are quite sure."
"Thank you for telling me that," Castor said angrily, resolving not to eat pork for some time.
"Oh, you are quite welcome." She glanced again at the radio-telescope, then became businesslike. "I have enjoyed this conversation with you, Scholar, but my duties require attention elsewhere. This is for you."
"This" was a summons, red-sealed and Renmin-coded with magnetic inks. Castor took it dumbly in his hand. "It means you must come to testify at the inquest on this unfortunate person, young Pettyman Castor, since you made the mistake of finding the only part of the cadaver we can identify. You will be notified as to the time; meanwhile, you must not leave your village."
"Where would I go?" Castor growled.
She took no offense at either words or tone, but said cheerfully, "When you get to New Orleans you will report direct to me. Who knows? Perhaps I will then get diving gear for two and we can enjoy a nice, private swim."
Biking back, Castor went slowly to let the dust of the policewoman's car settle. But as he drove along the chain link fence that enclosed the area of the radio-telescope, two guards appeared and shouted at him for dawdling, so he speeded up again. That was curious; no one had ever been visible there before. When he had gone there himself to ask humbly if there was any chance of being taken on in some capacity, sweeper, student, anything at all, it had taken twenty minutes before anyone responded to the gate bell. And then he had only told Castor to go away and, all right, if he chose, submit a written application through channels. Out of sight he could hear the buzzing of several helicopters in the private landing field; if important officials were visiting, that might explain it, but what would explain what important officials were doing bothering with this out-of-the-way place?
By the time he was back in the village square his mind was full, mostly, of wanting to tell Maria about his curious conversation with the Renmin policewoman—to be sure, in a somewhat censored version. She would be interested, he was sure...
He was wrong. She was not interested at all. What she herself had to tell was far more important in her mind. When he found her in their apartment her expression told him what the words only confirmed: "Yes, Castor, it's definite. The ovum is lodged and dividing; I'm pregnant."