Leo flushed faintly, and shrugged. “It’s not so hard, when you have something interesting to talk about.”
“I would not have guessed welding engineering to be so entertaining a subject. You are a gifted enthusiast.”
“I hope your quaddies were equally impressed. It’s a great thing, when I can get somebody fired up. It’s the greatest work in the world.”
“I begin to think so. Your story…” she hesitated. “Your fraud story had great impact. They’ve never heard anything like it. Indeed, I never heard about that one.”
“It was years ago.”
“Really quite disturbing, all the same.” Her face bore a look of introspection. “I hope not overly so.”
“Well, I hope it’s very disturbing. It’s a true story. I was there.” He eyed her. “Someday, they may be there. Criminally negligent, if I fail to prepare them.”
“Ah.” She smiled shortly.
The last of his students had vanished up the corridor. “Well, I better catch up with them. Will you be sitting in on my whole course? Come on along, I’ll make a welder of you yet.”
She shook her head ruefully. “You actually make it sound attractive. But I’m afraid I have a full-time job. I have to turn you loose.” She gave him a short nod. “You’ll do all right, Mr. Graf.”
Chapter 3
Andy stuck out his tongue, extruding the blob of creamed rice Claire had just spooned into his mouth. “Beh,” he remarked. The blob, spurned as food, apparently exerted new fascination as a plaything, for he caught it between his upper right and lower left hands as it slowly rotated off. “Eh!” he protested as his new satellite was reduced to a mere smear.
“Oh, Andy,” Claire muttered in frustration, and removed the smear from his hands with a vigorous swipe from a rather soiled high-capillarity towel. “Come on, baby, you’ve got to try this. Dr. Yei says it’s good for you!”
“Maybe he’s full,” Tony offered helpfully.
The nutritional experiment was taking place in Claire’s private quarters, awarded her upon the birth of Andy and shared with the baby. She often missed her old dormitory mates, but reflected ruefully that the company had been right; her popularity and Andy’s fascination would probably not have survived too many night feedings, diaper changes, gas attacks, mysterious diarrheas and fevers, or other infant nocturnal miseries.
Of late she’d missed Tony, too. In the last six i weeks she’d hardly seen him, his new welding instructor was keeping him so busy. The pace of life seemed to be picking up all over the Habitat. There were days when there scarcely seemed to be time to draw breath.
“Maybe he doesn’t like it,” suggested Tony. “Have you tried mixing it with that other goo?”
“Everybody’s an expert,” sighed Claire. “Except me… He ate some yesterday, anyway.” “How does it taste?” “I don’t know, I never tried it.” “Hm.” Tony plucked the spoon from her hand and twirled it in the opened seal-a-cup, picked up a blob, and popped it in his mouth. “Hey—!” began Claire indignantly. “Ben!” Tony choked. “Give me that towel.” He rid himself of his sample. “No wonder he spits it out. It’s Gag Station.”
Claire grabbed the spoon back, muttered “Huh!”, and floated over to her kitchenette to push it through the hand-holes to the water dispenser and give it a steaming rinse. “Germs!” she snapped accusingly at Tony.
“You try it!”
She sniffed the food cup in renewed doubt. “I’ll take your word for it.”
Andy in the meantime had captured his lower right hand with his uppers and was gnawing on it.
“You’re not supposed to have meat yet,” Claire sighed, straightening him back out. Andy inhaled, preparing for complaint, but let it go in a mere “Aah,” as the door slid open revealing a new object of interest.
“How’s it going, Claire?” asked Dr. Yei. Her thick useless downsider legs trailed relaxed from her hips as she pulled herself into the cabin. Claire brightened. She liked Dr. Yei; things always seemed to calm down a bit when she was around. “Andy won’t eat the creamed rice. He liked the strained banana well enough.”
“Well, next feeding try introducing the oatmeal instead,” said Dr. Yei. She floated over to Andy, held out her hand; he captured it with his uppers. She peeled off his hands, held her hand down farther; he grasped at it with his lowers, and giggled. “His lower body coordination is coming along nicely. Bet it will nearly match the upper by his first birthday.”
“And that fourth tooth broke through day before yesterday,” said Claire, pointing it out.
“Nature’s way of telling you it’s time to eat creamed rice,” Dr. Yei lectured the baby with mock seriousness. He clamped to her arm, beady eyes intent upon her gold loop earrings, nutrition quite forgotten. “Don’t fret too much, Claire. There’s always this tendency to push things with the first child, just to reassure yourself it can all be done. It will be more relaxed with the second. I guarantee all babies master creamed rice before they’re twenty no matter what you do.”
Claire laughed, secretly relieved. “It’s just that Mr. Van Atta was asking about his progress.”
“Ah.” Dr. Yei’s lips twitched in a rather compressed smile. “I see.” She defended her earring from a determined assault by placing Andy in air just beyond reach. A frustrated paroxysm of swimming-motions gave him only an unwanted spin. He opened his mouth to howl protest; Dr. Yei surrendered instantly, but bought time by holding out just her fingertips.
Andy again headed earring-ward, hand over hand over hand. “Yeah, go for it, baby,” Tony cheered him on.
“Well,” Dr. Yei turned her attention to Claire. “I actually stopped by to pass on some good news. The company is so pleased with the way things have turned out with Andy, they’ve decided to move up the date for you to start your second pregnancy.”
Tony’s face split in a delighted grin, beyond Dr. Yei’s shoulder. His upper hands clasped in a gesture of victory. Claire made embarrassed-suppression motions at him, but couldn’t help grinning back.
“Wow,” said Claire, warm with pleasure. So, the company thought she was doing that well. There had been down days when she’d thought no one noticed how hard she’d been trying. “How much up?”
“Your monthly cycles are still being suppressed by the breast feeding, right? You have an appointment at the infirmary tomorrow morning. Dr. Minchenko will give you some medicine to start them up again. You can start trying on the second cycle.”
“Oh my goodness. That soon.” Claire paused, watching the wriggling Andy and remembering how the first pregnancy had drained her energy. “I guess I can handle it. But whatever happened to that two-and-a-quarter-year ideal spacing you were talking about?”
Dr. Yei bit her words off carefully. “There is a Project-wide push to increase productivity. In all areas.” Dr. Yei, always straightforward in Claire’s experience, smiled falsely. She glanced at Tony, hovering happily, and pursed her lips.
“I’m glad you’re here, Tony, because I have some good news for you too. Your welding instructor Mr. Graf has rated you tops in his class. So you’ve been picked as gang foreman to go out on the first Cay Project contract GalacTech has landed. You and your co-workers will be shipping out in about a month to a place called Kline Station. It’s on the far end of the wormhole nexus, beyond Earth, and it’s a long ride, so Mr. Graf will be going along to complete your training en route, and double as engineering supervisor.”
Tony surged across the room in excitement. “At last! Real work! But—” he paused, stricken. Claire, one thought ahead of him, felt her face becoming mask-like. “But how’s Claire supposed to start a baby next month if I’m on my way to where?”
“Dr. Minchenko will freeze a couple of sperm samples before you go,” suggested Claire. “Won’t he…?”
“Ah—hm,” said Dr. Yei. “Well, actually, that wasn’t in the plans. Your next baby is scheduled to be fathered by Rudy, in Microsystems Installation.”