Grant could see the glow from the screen reflected on Karlstad’s pale features. It made him look even more ethereal than usual.
Without looking up from the screen, Karlstad said, “Grant Armstrong Archer the Third, eh? Illustrious family, I imagine.”
“Hardly,” Grant replied, feeling a bit annoyed.
“First in your class at Harvard?” Karlstad whistled. “No wonder Wo wanted you here.”
“I don’t think he picked me personally,” Grant said.
“Don’t be so sure, Grant A. the Third. Zeb might be right; our wily Dr. Wo can stretch out his tentacles and —Hey! You’re married?”
He’s got my complete file there, Grant realized. My whole life is on that screen.
Karlstad turned his pallid, watery eyes to Grant. “Did you think being married would get you out of Public Service?”
“Of course not!” Grant snapped. “I love my wife!”
“Really?”
“Besides, Public Service isn’t something to be avoided. It’s a responsibility. A privilege that goes with adulthood and citizenship, like voting.”
“Really?” Karlstad repeated, dripping acid.
“Aren’t you doing your Public Service?” Grant demanded.
Karlstad made a derisive snort. “I’m serving out a prison sentence,” he said.
“I mean really—”
“It’s the truth,” Karlstad insisted. “Ask anybody. I’m serving my time here instead of languishing in jail. The Powers That Be decided they’d spent too much money on my education to have me rot in prison for five years.”
“Five years!” Grant was shocked. “What did you do?”
“I helped a young married couple to obtain fertility treatments. They had been denied treatment by the government. Population restrictions, you know. I was in the biology department at the University of Copenhagen and I knew a lot of the physicians at the research hospital. So they came to me and begged me to help them.”
“But it was illegal?”
“According to the laws of the European Union, which take precedence over the laws of Denmark.”
“And the authorities found out about it?”
Karlstad’s face twitched into a bitter scowl. “The two little bastards worked for the Holy Disciples—our version of your New Morality.”
“It was a sting,” Grant realized.
“I was stung, all right. Sentenced to five years. When they offered me a post here, doing research instead of jail, I leaped at it.”
“I guess so.”
Karlstad huffed. “One should always look before one leaps.”
Grant nodded sympathetically. “Even so … this is better than jail, isn’t it?”
“Marginally,” Karlstad conceded.
“I never realized …” Grant let the idea go unexpressed.
“Realized what?”
“Oh … that the New Morality, or whatever you call it in Europe, I never realized they would entrap people and sentence them to jail.”
“They don’t like scientists,” Karlstad said, his voice going sharp as steel. “They’re afraid of new ideas, new discoveries.”
“They’re trying to maintain social balance,” Grant argued. “There’s more than ten billion people on Earth now. We’ve got to have stability! We’ve got to control population growth. Otherwise we won’t be able to feed all those people, or educate them.”
“Educate them?” Karlstad’s thin eyebrows rose. “They’re not being educated. They’re being trained to obey.”
“I—” Grant saw the pain in the man’s pale eyes and clamped his mouth shut. No sense arguing with him about this. One of the first lessons his father had taught him was never to argue over religion. Or politics. And this was both.
Karlstad apparently felt the same way. He forced a smile and said, “So now you know my life story and I know yours.”
Grant conceded the point with a nod.
“Let’s get on with it.”
“Okay.”
Turning back to the desktop screen, Karlstad called out, “Computer, display work assignment for Archer, Grant A.”
Immediately the synthesized voice responded, “Grant A. Archer is assigned as assistant laboratory technician for the biology department.”
Grant jumped out of his chair. “Biology department? That can’t be right! I’m not a biologist!”
Karlstad waved him gently back into his seat “The details are on my screen, Grant. The assignment is correct.”
“But I’m not a biologist,” Grant repeated.
“I’m afraid that’s got nothing to do with it. The operative term is ‘assistant laboratory technician.’ It doesn’t matter which lab you’re assigned to; they just “Okay.”
Turning back to the desktop screen, Karlstad called out, “Computer, display work assignment for Archer, Grant A.”
Immediately the synthesized voice responded, “Grant A. Archer is assigned as assistant laboratory technician for the biology department.”
Grant jumped out of his chair. “Biology department? That can’t be right! I’m not a biologist!”
Karlstad waved him gently back into his seat “The details are on my screen, Grant. The assignment is correct.”
“But I’m not a biologist,” Grant repeated.
“I’m afraid that’s got nothing to do with it. The operative term is ‘assistant laboratory technician.’ It doesn’t matter which lab you’re assigned to; they just need a warm body to do the scutwork.”
“But—”
“You’re a grad student, brightboy. Slave labor. Cheaper than a robot and a lot easier to train.”
“But I don’t know anything about biology.”
“You don’t have to. You can push a broom and clean a fish tank; that’s what you’re needed for.”
“I’m an astrophysicist!”
Karlstad shook his head sadly. “Look, Grant, maybe someday you’ll be an astrophysicist. But right now you’re just a graduate student. Slave labor, just like the rest of us.”
“But how can I work toward my degree cleaning fish tanks?”
With a wry grin, Karlstad replied, “Why do you think nobody’s developed real robots? You know, a real mechanical man with a computer for a brain?”
“Too expensive?”
“That’s right. Too expensive—when compared to human labor. Grad students are cheap labor, Grant. I’ve always thought that if anybody does invent a practical robot, it’ll be a grad student who does it. They’re the only ones with the real motivation for it.”
“The biology department.” Grant groaned.
“Cheer up,” said Karlstad. “Biology department includes the aquarium. You’ll get to work with Lainie. Maybe she’ll show you how to do it like dolphins.”
SOLACE
Grant stumbled back to his quarters, stunned and hurt and angry. Assistant lab technician, he grumbled to himself. Slave labor. I might as well be in jail. This is ruining my life.
He tried praying in the privacy of his quarters, but it was like speaking to a statue, cold, unhealing, unmoved. He remembered that when he’d been a child, back home, he could always bring his tearful problems to his father. It wasn’t so much that Dad was a minister of the Lord; he was a wise and gentle father who loved his son and always tried to make things right for him. Later, in school, Grant found that even the most pious spiritual advisors didn’t have the warmth and understanding of his father. How could they?
Yet, alone and miserable on this research station half a billion kilometers from home—so distant that he couldn’t really talk with his father or wife or anyone else who loved him—Grant sought counsel.
Research Station Gold had a chapel, Grant knew from his studies of the station’s schematics. A chapel meant there must be a chaplain. Sure enough, Grant found half a dozen names in the phone computer’s listing for chaplains. To his surprise, Zareb Muzorawa was one of them, listed under Islam.