The nameplate on the desk said:
GEKALD A. HOSKINS, Ph.D.
Chief Executive Officer
Miss Fellowes was more amused than impressed by that. Was the company really so large that the C.E.O. had to remind people of the identity of the man in charge by putting a nameplate in front of himself in his own office? And why did he think it was necessary to brag of having a Ph.D.? Didn't everybody here have an advanced degree or two? Was this his way of announcing that he wasn't simply a mere corporate executive, that he was really a scientist himself? She would have assumed that the head of a highly specialized company like Stasis Technologies, Ltd. would be a scientist, without having to have it jammed in her face this way.
But that was all right. It was possible for a man to have worse foibles than a little self-importance.
Hoskins had a sheaf of printouts in front of him. Her resume, she supposed, and the report on her preliminary interview, and things like that. He looked from the printouts to her, and back to the printouts, and to her again. His appraisal was frank and a little too direct. Miss Fel-lowes automatically stiffened. She felt her cheeks coloring and a muscle twitched briefly in her cheek.
He thinks my eyebrows are too heavy and my nose is a little off center, she told herself.
And then she told herself crisply that she was being ridiculous, that this man had no more interest in evaluating the angle of her nose and the fullness of her eyebrows than he did in knowing what brand of shoes she might be wearing. But it was surprising and a little disturbing to be looked at so intently by a man at all. A nurse in uniform was generally invisible, so far as most men's interest went. She wasn't in uniform now, but over the years she had developed ways of making herself look invisible to men even in her street clodies, and, she supposed, she had been quite successful at that. Being studied this way now was something she found more unsettling than it should have been.
He said, "Your record is quite an outstanding one, Miss Fellowes."
She smiled but said nothing. What could she possibly say? Agree with him? Disagree?
"And you come with some very high recommendations from your superiors. They all praise you in almost identical words, do you know that? Unswerving dedication to your work-deep devotion to duty-great resourcefulness in moments of crisis-superb technical skills-"
"I'm a hard worker, Dr. Hoskins, and I generally know what I'm doing. I think those are just fancy ways of saying those two basic things."
"I suppose." His eyes fixed on hers and she felt, suddenly, the strength of the man, the singlemindedness of him, the dogged determination to carry his tasks through to completion. Those could be fine traits in an administrator. They could also lead him to make life maddening for those who worked with him. Time would tell, she thought. She met his gaze evenly and steadily. He said, finally, "I don't see any serious need to question you about your professional background. That's been very carefully gone over in your previous interviews and you came through with flying colors. I've got only two points to take up with you, really."
She waited.
"One," he said, "I need to know whether you've ever been involved in any matters that might be considered, well, politically sensitive. Politically controversial."
"I'm not political at all, Dr. Hoskins. I vote-when there's someone I think is worth voting for, which isn't very often. But I don't sign petitions and I don't march in demonstrations, if that's what you're asking."
"Not exactly. I'm talking about professional controversies rather than political ones, I guess. Issues having to do with the way children should or should not be treated."
"I only know one way children should be treated, which is to do your absolute best to meet the child's needs as you understand them. If that sounds simplistic, I'm sorry, but-"
He smiled. "That's not precisely what I mean, either. What I mean is-" He paused and moistened his lips. "The Bruce Mannheim sort of thing is what I mean. Heated debate over the methods by which certain children are handled in public institutions. Do you follow what I'm saying, Miss Fellowes?"
"I've been dealing mainly with weak or handicapped children, Dr. Hoskins. What I attempt to do is keep them alive and help them build up their strength. There isn't much to have a debate over in matters like that, is there?"
"So you've never had any kind of professional encounters with so-called child advocates of the Bruce Mannheim sort?"
"Never. I've read a little about Mr. Mannheim in the papers, I guess. But I haven't ever had any contact with him or anyone like him. I wouldn't know him if I bumped into him in the street. And I don't have any particular opinions about his ideas, pro or con."
Hoskins looked relieved.
He said, "I don't mean to imply that I'm opposed to Bruce Mannheim or the positions he represents, you understand. But it would be a serious complicating factor here if our work became the subject of hostile publicity."
"Of course. That would be the last thing I'd want also." "
"All right, then. We can move along. My other question has to do with the nature of the commitment to your work that we'll be demanding of you here. -Miss Fellowes, do you think you can love a difficult, strange, perhaps unruly and even highly disagreeable child?"
"Love? Not merely care for?"
"Love. To stand in loco parentis. To be its mother, more or less, Miss Fellowes. And rather more than less. This will be the most lonely child in the history of the world. It won't just need a nurse, it'll need a mother. Are you prepared to take on such a burden? Are you willing to take on such a burden?"
He was staring at her again, as though trying to stare through her. Once again she met the intensity of his gaze with unwavering strength.
"You say he'll be difficult and strange and- What was the word? -highly disagreeable. In what way, disagreeable?"
"We're talking about a prehistoric child. You know that. He-or she, we don't know which yet-may very well be savage in a way that goes beyond the most savage tribe on Earth today. This child's behavior may be more like that of an animal than a child. A ferocious animal, perhaps. That's what I mean by difficult, Miss Fellowes."
"I haven't only worked with premature infants, Dr. Hoskins. I've had experience with emotionally disturbed children. I've dealt with some pretty tough little customers."
"Not this tough, perhaps."
"We'll see, won't we?"
"Savage, very likely, and miserable and lonely, and furious. A stranger and afraid, in a world it never made. Ripped from everything that was familiar to it and put down in circumstances of almost complete isolation-a true Displaced Person. Do you know that term, 'Displaced Person,' Miss Fellowes? It goes back to the middle of the last century, to the time of the Second World War, when uprooted people were wandering all over the face of Europe, and-"
"The world is at peace now, Dr. Hoskins."
"Of course it is. But this child won't feel much peace. It'll be suffering from the total disruption of its life, a genuine Displaced Person of the most poignant kind. A very small one, at that."
"How small?"
"At present we can bring no more than forty kilograms of mass out of the past with each scoop. That includes not only the living subject but the surrounding inanimate insulation zone. So we're talking about a little child, a very little child."
"An infant, is that it?"
"We can't be sure. We hope to get a child of six or seven years. But it might be considerably younger."
"You don't know? You're just going to make a blind grab?"
Hoskins looked displeased. "Let's talk about love, Miss Fellowes. Loving this child. I guarantee you that it won't be easy. You really do love children, don't you? I don't mean in any trivial sense. And I'm not talking now about proper performance of professional duties. I want you to dig down and examine the assumptions of the word, what love really means, what motherhood really means, what the unconditional love that is motherhood really means."