It was delicious beyond belief.
After lunch, they returned to the living room with coffee and a local dessert wine and had at it again. It wasn’t necessary for Ronny and Dorn to consult with each other to realize that both were coming to the same conclusion. Ross Metaxa’s fears were meaningless. There was no reason at all why Einstein should not be admitted into United Planets. Indeed, it was fast becoming increasingly obvious that she was the most advanced world ever settled by humanity. Einstein was exactly the kind of member planet that they needed most. Undoubtedly, she had made thousands of scientific and technological discoveries that could be assimilated by other worlds.
Arrangements were made for Dorn Horsten to meet some of the scientists in his particular field the following day, and arrangements for Ronny to visit the Einstein version of a university. It would seem schools on this world were unlike any elsewhere. They had revolutionized education as much as they had any other field.
During one break, Dorn had drifted over to Rosemary’s bar to refresh his glass.
Barbara, the gorgeous redhead, came over, her own glass in hand and smiled into his eyes. She said. “I was wondering if you would like a bed companion tonight. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a man as large as you before. It rather excites me.”
Dorn Horsten kept himself from gaping at her, and then swallowed. He adjusted his pince-nez glasses on his nose. It was one of the reasons he wore the antiquated things. It gave you a chance to do something for a moment, while your mind raced to accommodate the unexpected.
He said gallantly, “I was just in the process of screwing up my courage to the point of asking you.” He made a slight bow.
“Good,” she smiled. “I’ll spend the night here with you, then. The others have been invited to stay at Fredric’s place. He lives quite near.”
The day sped by under the impetus of fascinating discoveries and, before they knew it, they were at table again.
It was a yawning Ronny Bronston by the time they split up, and all of the committee save Barbara took off for Fredric’s home. Nobody seemed to think twice about Barbara remaining. As Dorn had thought the night before, they had no sexual taboos whatsoever. He suspected that had he asked one or more of the other women to stay as well, they most likely would have taken him up.
Boy followed Ronny to his suite and looked about it while his new master began wearily shedding his clothes.
The dog said, “Not bad, as human tastes go. What bed do you sleep in?”
“This one,” Ronny said, sitting down on it to remove his shoes.
“Then I’ll take this one,” Boy told him and jumped up on it and stretched out.
Ronny looked over at the dog and shook his head in continued amazement. He said, “Boy, how old are you?”
“I’ll be five in a few weeks. That’s Einstein calendar, of course. I don’t know what it’d be Earth-calendar.”
“A human child of five wouldn’t have your vocabulary. Not on Earth, at least.”
“Not on Einstein, either,” Boy said, then let his tongue hang out long enough for three quick pants. “We mature more quickly. A human isn’t even sexually mature until he reaches up to fifteen. Hell, I had my first bitch when I was only one. A cute poodle.”
Ronny shook his head again and returned to his shoes.
There came a knock at the door and, without waiting for his response, Rosemary entered, her smile bright as always. She carried a bottle and two champagne glasses.
“Nightcap,” she announced.
“Wizard,” Ronny said. Inwardly, he was hoping that she wouldn’t be quite so much of a barracuda tonight. He had done nothing but talk all day, but he was tired. Come to think of it, he was still sexually tired from the night before.
She put the two glasses down on the room’s center table and began expertly to draw the cork. She popped it and, just as expertly, poured before the effervescent wine could overflow the bottle.
Boy said, accusingly, “You didn’t bring a bowl for me. I’ve got a taste for bubbly wine.”
She looked over at him, as though seeing him for the first time. She said, apologetically, “Oh, Ronny, I couldn’t possibly… well, I couldn’t do anything with a dog watching us.”
“Who wants to watch?” Boy growled. “What do you think I am, some sort of voyeur?”
She said, “I’m sorry, Boy.”
“All right, all right,” he said, getting up and jumping off the bed. “I’ll go sleep in the living room.” He looked at Ronny and it was absolutely possible to see disgust in his expression. “This is a hell of a way to start our relationship, Boss.” And with that, he trotted out.
“Sorry, Boy,” Ronny said apologetically after him.
After the dog was gone, Rosemary said, “It’s just a thing I have. I can’t bear to have intelligent animals watching me when I make love.” She handed Ronny one of the two glasses and began to undress.
He sipped appreciatively, then finished the sparkling wine in two gulps and rolled over into the bed. The whole group of them had been drinking, off and on, since lunch and he didn’t need any more—especially if he was going to perform with the beauteous Rosemary. Alcohol had a tendency to slow him down in bed.
She said, “I was fascinated by what you said about those Dawnman planets. Are they very far away?”
He said, his mind as weary as his body, “Yes. And in a direction that’s such that I doubt if man, at his current rate of expansion, would ordinarily touch into the area for another millenium.”
“Why would that be?” she said, slipping out of her kilt.
“Different spiral,” he yawned. “You know, Earth is rather far out, you might say on the outskirts of the galaxy, in an area rather sparsely occupied by sun systems, compared to closer in to the center. With billions of sun systems involved, even with the underspace drive, our race could take an almost unbelievable time to expand to the point where we ran into the Dawnworld culture, or other intelligent life, for that matter.” He thought about it. “But it’s only a matter of time, of course. Sooner or later we will—unless we lose our drive to expand.”
She kicked off her Etruscan revival slippers. “So the Dawnworlds are closer in toward the center?”
“That’s right,” he told her, “but I shouldn’t even be talking about it.”
She said, “What’s all this about their being so advanced but that they’re not really intelligent? That doesn’t sound very reasonable.”
“It’s that same discussion we had earlier. About intelligence and accumulated knowledge. If you had an intelligence half, or even a quarter, of the average on Earth, not to speak of Einstein, in a few megayears you’d have one hell of a lot of accumulated knowledge. You wouldn’t have to be smart. In a few million years you would have figured out one hell of a lot of things, assuming, obviously, that you had enough wit to develop a written language as well as a spoken one, so you could pass your accumulated material on to the next generation.”
She climbed into bed next to him but didn’t immediately act as frankly as she had the night before. She simply stretched out, there, and put her hands behind her head. “In what direction, toward the center of the galaxy, are they?” she said idly.
And alarm bells rang in his head.
But it was then that the knockout drops hit Ronny Bronston.
Chapter Thirteen
Dorn Horsten was awakened in the morning by Boy licking his face.
He sat up abruptly, sputtering.
“What… what… ”
Boy said, “The Boss is gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?” Dorn blurted, still half asleep.