Quinlan looked at me, with a gentle smile. He's a great absorber, Quinlan. He said, "You'd like to thaw, Burke, wouldn't you? Knock down the wall?"
"I didn't know I was doing that," I said. "I thought I was just trying to hold myself together." But it's true; I'd caught glimpses of myself, here and there in her description.
He went on smiling, and said, "You didn't buy the computer to insult Marjorie, did you?"
"No, of course not," I said. "That never even occurred to me." That had been part of the description where I had not caught sight of myself, and I was grateful to Quinlan for calling attention to it.
His smile now moved over to include Marjorie, who was sitting there looking exhausted. No, not exhausted, not like somebody who's just run a long time, but drained, like somebody who's just had an operation. He said to her, "We're all of us paranoid, Marjorie, you know," and shrugged. "Like right now," he said, "I'm wondering how you feel about taking advice from a black man. Are you just humoring me? Do you laugh behind my back, in your car together?"
"We don't laugh about anything," Marjorie said, which I thought an overstatement, but kept my mouth shut.
Quinlan smiled more broadly; he has a very broad smile, when he wants. "Paranoia is not a good guide," he suggested, then looked back at me and said, "But Marjorie was right about the cryogenics, wasn't she? You're frozen, waiting to be thawed when there's a cure."
"That sounds right," I admitted, "though I'm not sure what to do about it. I mean, it'll be hard to retrain myself." Retrain; retraining. The sick joke of downsizing, and now I've volunteered to try it in my home.
"We're in no hurry," Quinlan told me, and looked at Marjorie again, to say, "Isn't that right? As long as we know the problem's out in the air, and progress is being made, we're in no hurry, are we?"
"I feel much better," Marjorie said. "Just being here, just talking about it."
I couldn't tell them, of course, that the situation is going to change for the better, the much better, pretty soon now, no matter what we do in the counseling. Two resumes and Upton "Ralph" Fallon, that's all that's left. I'm a short-timer now, in cyrogenics.
But I'm glad Marjorie got to say all that, and I'm very glad I got to hear it. I don't want to lose her, any more than I want Billy in jail. I don't want any of the extra bad things that happen to people in our situation, I don't want the fringe banes.
We're at sea, that's my image, not cryogenics. We're lost at sea on a raft, and it's up to me to keep the raft together, ration the supplies, keep us afloat until we find shore. That's my task, my position. If it's made me cold to Marjorie, then I'm wrong, I'm trying too hard. Hurting her can't help me, or anything else. I've been too focused, that's what it is. I have to try to relax, even though all I really want to do is keep my guard up twenty-four hours a day.