But before Quat had time to repeat his query, Trudi had taken the initiative. Her smile was hard as beryllium steel alloy as she looked directly across the table at Piet and said: "My dear Phunim, there's no point in asking Lieutenant Huygen's opinion on such matters. Hell merely prescribe a course of pills, and I'm sure you'd rather not take that way out of your dilemma."
Piet smiled weakly in response to the general laughter and got up out of his chair. As he hurried out of the mess he was aware of the steady gaze of Trudi's pale-blue eyes and the threat that lay behind them.
Petty Officer Herbert Dockridge was an anomaly. Officially classified as unfit for active space service because of his badly repaired leg, he had been included in the crew of
Venturer Twelve
only on the personal request of Commander Bruce. Dockridge had been his personal orderly and occasional confidant for over five
years and as such Bruce apparently found him indispensable. Dockridge's official position would have been difficult to define, strictly according to regulations; he worked as Lindstrom's orderly as well as Brace's, but over and above such duties, he kept his finger on the pulse of what was being felt aboard ship, as opposed to what was being said and being ordered. Such a position would have been an ideal one for a first-class fink, but Dockridge was nothing of that sort. He was capable of keeping his mouth shut, and he had enormous tact. In ratifying his appointment, Psyche Department had given some consideration to the fact that Doc was one of those rare and valuable people who have a natural gift for easing frictions between personalities. If officers like Bruce and Lindstrom were the controlling gears of the organization that was the crew of
Venturer Twelve,
then Dockridge was, by the same analogy, the oil that smoothed the operation of that organization. The men of the crew respected his experience and tact, and to the women, particularly the younger ones, he functioned as something of an uncle/ father-confessor figure. Everyone knew him with his gorblimey voice, his terrier face and his slight limp.
He came up behind Mia as she was checking a junction box near the main elevator at eighth level. "Hello, Far Eastern. What yer doing GD electrics job for? You're radar, ain't you? Laborer's job, this."
Mia turned her head and smiled at him. "Just obliging a friend. She wanted to finish a little early."
Dockridge nodded thoughtfully. "Yes. . . . This is about the time..."
"Time, Doc?"
"When he starts to need she a bit more than they thought they would."
"Why's that, Doc?"
Dockridge leaned against a bulkhead and gently massaged his left leg, a characteristic gesture. "Obvious, innit? The physicists will tell you that in a ship like this, equipped with anti-grav and inertialess drive it don't matter to the crew if she's traveling at point ten zeros five light, or full out They say the crew can't tell, and that there is no physical effect on the body. Maybe that's so—but there's something more to a human being than a collection of flesh, bone and internal plumbing. Travel fast enough and far enough and people begin to fed it, deep down in the psychological gut Call it the old terror of the unknown, the jungle feeling, if you like, but that's the way human beings are made. And they react to it I know. I seen it, and I've experienced it a hundred times. So, like I said, this is the time when she and he got off-duty periods coincidental that they need each other a special kind of hunger. Back to the womb, if you like. The old fundamentals that we're all built on. Of course, the young 'uns feel it especially." He scanned her pretty face with a sharp, friendly glance. "Don't you reckon so?"
"How should I know?"
"Stone me! What a question." Dockridge shook his head. "Warm little donah like you. Smart as paint, you are, Mia—don't tell
me
you don't know."
"Well, yes, I suppose I do. But I've never heard it put like that before."
"Well, there you are, the Dockridge Diagnosis. Strictly amateur stuff, of course, but between you and me the professionals can't do much better."
She clipped back the junction box and packed her tool kit.
"We got three good medics," he went on, "but they don't know everything. George Maseba, who knows the most, admits how little he really knows, sometimes ..."
Now Mia was ready to go, but she listened to Dockridge. She found that she was listening quite hard.
"Know what Maseba said to me, once? He said 'I wish I had the skill to rebuild myself.' I asked him what he meant. He said that one of the troubles of his job was that you spent so much time playing God that you began to ignore your own failings, and that because you were a doctor, other people preferred to ignore them too." He smiled at her, kindly. "You ever think that?"
Now Mia was quite intent. "You mean me, particularly?"
"Yes . . . you. You're just a little girl; at the age— and the time of voyage—to chuck down all you've got in one grand slam. I should be careful, Mia, I should, really."
"But what do you mean?"
"I wouldn't carry tales," he assured her. "Not this sort, gel, not this sort."
"But, Doc—" Now she was troubled. Clearly, he either knew, or he had guessed something.
"All right, chick. Don't upset yourself. Just think about it."
She looked into his face, and somehow, despite its strange, Western features, he reminded her of her father.
"Just remember what I said about the big dark outside. You think it
stays
outside, but it don't. It creeps into your mind, gel, because there's room for it there, still, no matter how civilized you are." He patted her cheek, and limped away.
One table in the senior officers' recreation room was permanently reserved for the chess board on which lieutenants Maseba and Helen Lindstrom played a never-ending series of games during their off-duty periods. As they walked into the room together, they saw a white card in the middle of the board.
Lindstrom picked up and read aloud from Magnus' impeccable script "White to mate in five, I think— and have you been teaching your bishops to
waltz?
C.M." She showed it to Maseba.
"Damn him," muttered the senior medical officer. "That's the second game he's screwed up for us." He sat down.
Lindstrom followed suit "Shall we do as he says?" she asked.
Maseba nodded. "I guess I'm just about up to it" He put his chin on his hand and stared hard at the board. "He won't find Kepler III any chess game, I think."
"How's that?"
"Just that I've been doing a bit of homework," Maseba said. "Did you know that the population of Kepler is approximately seventy-five percent Japanese?"
Lindstrom frowned. "So?"
"Just a hunch, but there seems to be a tendency on colonial planets for racial and cultural characteristics to become more pronounced, a kind of defense mechanism, a clinging to the known patterns."
u
Fm still not quite with you," admitted Lindstrom.
"No? Well, just take a look in the historical section of the library next time you've an hour or two to spare. You might start with the landing of Commodore Perry in Japan, back in the nineteenth century."
"Over three hundred years ago... but surely..."
"I'm only speculating on the lines of a general tendency," Maseba said. "But look at it this way. Kepler ID has been pretty well isolated, with a majority population of Japanese for almost a hundred years, and it seems reasonable to suppose that during the time the 'Japaneseness' of the colony's culture will have become more and more pronounced."
"All right, supposing that is the case, surely it can't be a bad thing," said Lindstrom. "After all, the Japanese are a very civilized race."
"Yes, indeed, to the extent of looking upon Westerners as barbarians; an outlook with which I, as an African, must have some sympathy," Maseba replied.
"Then how will this make Magnus' task more difficult?"
"Because our friend Magnus, as we both know, is a man completely devoted to Western pragmatism, an apostle of the God of Logic," said Maseba. "The Japanese, on the other hand, despise logjc and logical thinking; they prefer to rely on the intuitions of what has been called the 'Kimono Mind.'"
Lindstrom smiled. "You're exaggerating, George— you must be."
Maseba shrugged. "Maybe ... we shall see. Now— do we play chess?"
She slipped in from the dimly lit corridor and thrust herself into his arms, kissing and receiving kisses, change and exchange until they were both slightly - breathless.
At last, pulling her face away from his, she looked up at him, smiling. "Piet, love, you look cleaner than when I last saw you."
"Last? Oh, the butcher's shop. Yes." He ran a hand down the front of her zipsuit. He needed the comfort of her body much more than any talk.
She stayed his hand with gentle firmness, and stepped back from him.
"What . . . ?" He stared his bewilderment, painfully aware of his throbbing need, as she unrolled the left sleeve of her suit, right up to and past the elbow joint.
"First—this," she said, placing a finger on the slight bulge beneath the skin that indicated the presence of the contracapsule.
"Now?"
"But of course, now," she said calmly. "You have your instruments?"
"Well, yes . . ." he replied awkwardly. Desire drained out of him like air out of a pricked balloon.
"Piet, you're not having doubts at this stage, are you?" she regarded him with a sudden keenness.
He wanted to turn away, but her eyes held him. He felt as though a scalpel were being screwed into his stomach.
"Piet, love, what is it? Piet!" She moved towards
him.
He looked down at her, doubt and anguish grinding in his mind, even as they had when, as a boy of eleven, he had listened in trembling alarm to the acidulous, refined arguments that took place between his mother and father when they thought he was asleep. He said: "Nobody has ever done this before, you know."
"But it has to go, Piet. You must see that. How do we get our baby, unless you remove it?"
He felt anger rise within him, and he strove to contain it. The whole thing seemed to be so easy for her, but for him it was just not that simple. "Look, this is ... it's against all regulations, you understand?"
But she didn't She looked at him wonderingly. "We've been over all that We're checking out at Kepler III, aren't we? I thought it was all settled."
"Now listen, Mia..."
"No, you listen to me! I'm no pleasure girl, Piet. I'm not from the Ginza. I'm a worker from Haneda. I'm old enough to have had two children at least already, and another coming soon. But I didn't have them, because I hadn't met my children's father. Now I have. Isn't that right?"
He sighed, exasperated. "Oh, stop talking like an ingenuous kid! As a doctor . . . I've made certain promises..."
"When you didn't know the value of those promises. We said all that And as for your doctor's promises, once upon a time they'd have said that in taking this capsule out you were doing the right thing."
"Shut up for God's sake!" he cried. "There's so much to this—the Corps point of view, the medical point of view... and you go on chattering as though we were the only two human beings in the entire universe, as though..."
"As though you loved me in the way I love you?" There were tears in her eyes, but a sudden bitter sharpness in her voice. "Love sees its own reflection, but maybe you just broke the mirror for me. Perhaps all you needed was a new bedmate with just that hint of extra piquancy because of the danger of crossing ranks, Officer Pig! In the past month I could have comforted a dozen good Eastern-born crewmen, and have been glad to do it, but no—I was a fool I fell in love with the cold European, so much in love that I thought I could teach him what he lacked in feeling. Now I see that I can't! Well, go to your big lanky European women, then! Go and mount one or two of them— they look like horses, anyway!"
He grabbed her before she got to the door, and held her by the wrists as she struggled, avoiding an upthrust knee which would have put him out in a flash. He had never imagined her capable of such burning anger, and yet he knew that surely he himself was to blame, because he was such a stranger in the country of love.
He wanted to tell her so much, to explain, but instead he remained mute, holding onto her, keeping his eyes closed for some reason he barely understood. And soon she stopped struggling, and she spoke to him as she used to speak. "Piet... Piet, love.... Open your eyes."
He obeyed.
"Oh, Piet—you're crying. Oh love, love, were you crying because I hurt you?" Her deep affection welled up again in a warm flood, drowning anger. She made him sit down, and held him like a child, stroking his hair, letting him sob until he had no more tears.
Then she said: "Forgive me—I said such bitter things. I know you love me."
"There's nothing to forgive. I deserved it, Mia. I'm a coward; I've always been a coward. . . ." He watched as she rose, took his instrument case, and sat down beside him again. She unzipped the case, and gazed with childish wonder at the array of gleaming equipment. Then she clapped her hands.