There was this silence. I held my breath ‘cause everything would be totally cool if they believed me, but I’d have to start fighting for my life again if they didn’t. Five seconds passed, then ten. Then all at once they all went “ Ahhhh. “
Sor goes, “It’s the divine truth!” I saw tears running down his face.
“Look!” goes Segol. “Beta! It’s coming back!”
Sor waved his arms around and got their attention. “Let’s hurry back to Saro City,” he goes. “We can spread the news and keep our brothers and sisters from burning our homes. The other suns will rise in a few hours, and then life must go on as before. We must tell the others what we’ve learned, and broadcast the information to everyone on Lagash.” Then they turned and marched away, without so much as a thank-you.
When we were alone again on the road, Segol came over to me. He had this big, spazzy grin on his face. “That was really something, my dear,” he goes.
“My name’s Maureen, and this is the last time I’m going to remind you. If you have trouble remembering that, you can call me Princess.” Well, Bitsy, I know I was sort of stretching the truth, but sometimes I liked to think of myself as sort of almost engaged to Prince Van of the Angry Red Planet. I mean” a woman’s reach should exceed her grasp, or what’s a mixer at Yale for?
“Then congratulations, Maureen. You were outstanding. You have saved us from centuries of Dark Ages. I think you’ll always be remembered in the history books of Lagash.”
I shrugged. “What can I say?” I go. “It’s like a gift.”
Segol nodded, then hung his head in shame. “I guess I owe you an apology, too. I wasn’t much help to you during the battle.”
“‘S all right,” I go. “You weren’t really ready for all those stars.” I was just being gracious, you know? I’d been a little zoned out, too, when I saw how many there were, but I got over it.
He looked back up at me, as grateful as that awful Akita puppy Daddy brought home for Pammy’s birthday. “Perhaps you’d permit me the honor,” he goes, “of asking for your hand in marriage.”
I was like too stunned to say anything for a moment. I wiped Old Betsy off on this dead guy’s shirt and slid her slowly back into the scabbard. Then I go, “No, I won’t permit you the honor of having my hand in anything. Nothing personal, okay?”
He was disappointed, of course, but he’d live. “I understand. Would you answer a question, then?”
“Sure, as long as it’s not like way lewd or demeaning to all women. “
He took a deep breath and he goes, “Is it true? What you told the Cultists? Is it true that Lagash is in the center of a gigantic ball of ice?”
I laughed. I mean, how megadumb could he be? I wasn’t surprised that Sor 5 and his crowd swallowed that story, but I didn’t think a real astronomer would buy it. Then I realized that this was not the World of Superscience, after all, and that Segol was just a poor guy trying to understand like the laws of nature and everything. I couldn’t bring myself to weird him out any more than he already was. “Right, like totally,” I go. “Maybe someday your own Observatory will figure out the distance from Lagash to the ice wall. I used to know, but I forgot.”
“Thank you, Maureen,” he goes. Suddenly he’d gotten so humble it was ill. “I think we’d better hurry back to tell Aton and the others the news. Beenay and the rest of the photographers should have captured the Stars with their imaging equipment. They were all prepared, of course, but even so they may have given way to panic.” He looked down at the ground again, probably remembering how he’d bugged out of there in panic even before the stars came out.
“I’m sorry, Segol,” I go. “I can’t go back to the Observatory with you. I’m needed elsewhere. I’ve got to flash on back to Earth. If I wait much longer the eclipse will be over, the sky will get light, the stars will go out for another two thousand years, and I’ll never see my dear, dear friend Bitsy ever again. “ Sure, sweetie, even in this moment of awful tension, I thought of you. You believe me, don’t you?
Segol sighed. “I suppose you must go, then. I’ll never forget you, little la-I mean, Maureen.”
I gave him this sort of noblesse oblige smile, but I stopped short of getting all emotional and everything. “Farewell, Segol 154,” I go.”Tell the others that someday, when you’ve proved yourselves worthy, my people will welcome yours into the Federation of Planets. Until then, one last word of advice: try to discourage anyone who starts fiddling around with radio astronomy. I think it will make you all very, very unhappy.”
“Radio astronomy?” he goes. “How can you look at space with a radio?”
“Never mind, just remember what I said.” I raised one hand in the universal sign of “That’s all, folks.” Then I raised my supplicating arms to the stars, went eeny meeny miney mo, and whushed myself on out of there.
I’m sorry I had to listen to the whole story. By the time Maureen finished it, we had finished off all the strawberries, and a quiche with nothing in it is like tortellini salad without the tortellini. In the months that Josh and I had been together, he’d taught me a lot about food and everything. We didn‘t have supper any more, we dined. And then like I did the dishes.
Anyway, it was getting late, and you know I had to rush her out of there, and I tried to explain to her but she just didn’t want to listen, so then I put my back against her and shoved her toward the door, and I guess she got annoyed or something ‘cause then I shoved some more but she wasn‘t there and I fell on the kitchen floor and she was standing over me with her sword in her hand and she had on what she called her warrior-woman expression, and I could just see the headlines in the Post: QUEENS WOMAN DIES IN SHISH KABOB TRAGEDY. Josh would never be able to face our folks again. So I go. “Back off, Muffy. “ Wrong thing to say.
“You’re as bad as those ape-things in the center of the Earth!” She was screeching now.
I go, “Just bag your face, will you? Some roommate you are. Where’s that old Greenberg School bond we used to have?”
That got to her. She sheathed her jeweled sword and calmed down. She helped me get up and dusted me off a little. “I’m sorry, Bitsy, “ she goes. I noticed she was blushing.
“All right, I guess, “ I go. We looked at each other a little longer, then I started to cry for some reason, and then she trickled a couple, and we started hugging each other and bawling, and the front door opened and I heard Josh coming in, and all he needed was another unexplained visit from his favorite Savage Amazon, so I go, “Maureen, quick, you’ve got to hide!” And then I felt like we were all on I Love Lucy or something, and I started to laugh.
She laughed, too. Josh didn’t laugh, though. Sometimes it’s like we only see his friends, and why can’t I ever have my friends over? Josh goes, “Because my friends don’t wave broadswords around on the subway. “ I suppose he has a point there.
Balance
by Mike Resnick
Susan Calvin stepped up to the podium and surveyed her audience: the stockholders of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation.
“I want to thank you for your attendance,” she said in her brisk, businesslike way, “and to update you on our latest developments.”
What a fearsome face she has, thought August Geller, seated in the fourth row of the audience. She reminds me of my seventh-grade English teacher, the one I was always afraid of
Calvin launched into a detailed explanation of the advanced new circuitry she had introduced into the positronic brain, breaking it down into terms a layman-even a stockholder-could understand.
Brilliant mind, thought Geller. Absolutely brilliant. It’s probably just as well. Imagine a countenance like that without a mind to offset it.
“Are there any questions at this point?” asked Calvin, her cold blue eyes scanning the audience.
“I have one,” said a pretty young woman, rising to her feet.
“Yes?”
The woman voiced her question.
“I thought I had covered that point,” said Calvin, doing her best to hide her irritation. “However…”
She launched into an even more simplistic explanation.