The trouble was, Alice wasn’t at all sure a man could make her happy. Not judging by the ones she had met, and the few she had dated. She supposed she was just too plain to attract the really good men—and she wasn’t about to settle for anything less.
Sure enough, they’d scarcely sat down before Clothilde started in. “Jerry introduced me to this wonderful friend of his last night, Alice! His old sergeant, who was injured and pushed out before Jerry was.”
Clothilde’s husband was out with an honorable discharge, of course—too badly wounded to be patched up and sent back. Those were the only men around—except for soldiers on leave. Inwardly, Alice sighed and braced herself. She managed a tired smile. “Really? I thought men didn’t like their sergeants.”
“They do after the sergeant’s saved their lives a few times. He thought Lieutenant Stuart was an angel, or maybe a devil.”
“Or both.” Alice smiled. “But I thought you said he was a sergeant.”
“Well, he’s a lieutenant, now. They kept him in, at a desk job—he made too much of a fuss when they tried to discharge him.”
Alice stared. “He was that badly wounded, and he wanted to stay in?”
Clothilde nodded. “Crazy, huh? That’s why I figured you wouldn’t want to date him.”
“No,” Alice said slowly, thrown off balance almost as much by the denial as by the strangeness of the man Clothilde described. “No, I think I might like to meet him.” Then, quickly, “But not a date, of course.”
Clothilde’s eyes lit with the joy of the huntress who had bagged her prey. “Not a date,” she agreed.
Papa frowned. The tank looked right, drove right, and fired right—but felt wrong. Somehow, he just knew there was something bad about it. “Let me keep it around for a couple of days.”
“Heaven’s seven’s, Lieutenant!” the salesman snapped, exasperated. “If your corps accepted it, you have to accept it.”
Papa’s hackles went up, and his head went down. “Not if I don’t think it will do everything I need, Mr. Snell. No.”
“Oh, come off your high horse! What difference could it make? Who the hell is gonna use a tank in a space war, for crying out loud?”
Papa turned a very unfriendly gaze on the salesman. “Then why is your company making them?”
“Why . . .” the salesman floundered. “Because the Force is buying them!”
“Does that give you the right to make junk?”
“Look, Lieutenant.” Snell drew a deep breath and fought for calm. “I don’t make them. I just sell them.”
“Not to me, you don’t.” Papa turned back and scowled at the tank.
“Quit stalling, Lieutenant!” Snell decided to let the whip show. “There’s a contract! If we deliver them, you have to take what we give you!”
Papa shook his head slowly. “If I had to, they wouldn’t have sent you down here to talk to me into it.”
“Just because you won’t accept perfectly good material . . .”
“The first one shattered its barrel on the third shot,” Papa reminded him, “and the second one lost its left tread in two hours.”
“But they’ll never be used!”
“They might,” Papa said. “We might have to use them. We hope we won’t, because we’ll only need them if the Hothri smash through our defenses and land an invason force. But if we do need them, they have to kill Hothri, not us.”
“They couldn’t possibly kill . . .”
“That one over in Company D, that blew up its breech, killed its whole crew.”
Snell reddened. But he bit his tongue and swallowed, then smiled and said, “We can’t let you keep it if you don’t accept it, Lieutenant.”
“Fine!” Papa waved a hand. “Take it back.” Snell stared. “What?”
“I said, take it back.”
“But if you don’t accept any of our tanks, we’ll lose the contract!”
Papa shrugged. “Not my job.”
Snell clamped his jaw shut and waited till the wave of anger passed, then said, “Two days, Lieutenant. I’ll see you in two days.”
Alice had never been in Clothilde’s apartment before—but then, Clothilde hadn’t been in it that long, herself. She’d only moved in when she had married Jerry, a few months earlier. Until then, she’d only qualified for a cubicle in the unmarried women’s dorm. Now they qualified for two rooms and a kitchenette, and Clothilde was working toward three.
For the time being, though, the single front room was arranged as both a parlor and a dining room. Jerry was sitting in one armchair, laughing and talking with a man in uniform. They broke off and looked up as Alice came inand the eyes of the man in uniform widened. Then he was out of the chair and helping her off with her coat, all smiles. “Hi. I‘m Pepe Stuart.”
“Lieutenant, this is Alice Biedermann.” Clothilde seemed irritated.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Clothilde! I should have waited to be introduced.” The lieutenant turned toward the closet, but Jerry had caught up with him, chuckling. He took the coat, saying, “No way, Papa. You let the host do his own job, huh? Watch out for him, Miss—he eats pretty girls for breakfast.”
“Lunch,” Papa corrected. “It’s privates I eat for breakfast. Only I’m on a diet, since they kicked me upstairs.” But his eyes were on Alice the whole time. “Pay attention to him, Little Red Riding Hood. I‘m the wolf.”
Alice couldn’t help it; she laughed, and her shyness evaporated. For the first time in her life, she felt pretty.
They had a wonderful evening, talking and laughing well past midnight, and Papa even managed to make his war stories seem funny. When he offered to take her home at the end of the evening, and Jerry started to object, Clothilde caught her husband under the short ribs with an elbow. He said, “Wuff!” and forced a smile as Clothilde said, “Yes, that would be very nice, Lieutenant. Do make sure she gets home safely, now.”
He might not have—but on the way, Alice suddenly realized she was right next to a man who could tell her she was being silly. “All those stories about your job, Lieutenant—l owe you a few about mine.”
“Oh?” No amusement, no belittling—he was instantly interested.
She suspected most of that was politeness, but she tried anyway. “I’m a cyborg, see, and . . . ”
“Uh, problem with definitions.” Papa took her hand. “You’re delightfully organic.”
She glanced at him, almost gratefully, and blushed. “That’s the one that was shot off, Lieutenant.”
Papa stared at it, then squeezed the fingers gently. “Doesn’t feel any different.”
“But it does to me—it’s much more sensitive.”
Papa dropped her hand like a hot rock. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Not at all; I liked it. So what kind of job do you give a girl with a super right arm, Lieutenant?”
He frowned up at her, not understanding. “I give. What kind?”
“Super in a weapons factory. I get to make sure the incoming steel bars feed into the production line properly.”
Suddenly, she knew she had his complete and total attention, but not as a woman. “Do you really!”
“Yes.” She forced a smile. “Every now and then, I have to pick up a pig that drops out, and throw it back in.”
“Noisy but absorbing work.”
“Yes.” She fought to keep the smile. “But since this arm is so much more sensitive, I get a surprise now and then.”
His gaze bored into hers. “Nice surprise?”
Alice shivered. “I don’t know. Just odd, I guess. But every third bar seems to be . . . foam, if that makes sense. Steel foam.”
“Full of bubbles,” Papa grated. “Perfect sense—for the company.”