Sandy proposed, “We could go see some of the things they’re making us to take to Earth.”
“No, wait a minute!” Obie cried. “Listen, we can do that later, but maybe they’ve got some funny new freaks in Genetics! Let’s go see!”
It wasn’t what Sandy had had in mind. Genetics was a place of stews and stinks, and he didn’t usually like to go there for personal reasons. But when he tried to explain that to Obie they were already on the way there, and anyway Obie was puzzled. “Tell me again what you don’t like, Sandy?”
“I told you. They’ve got my mother there.”
“Oh, Sandy,” Obie said sorrowfully, twitching his thumbs in disagreement. “It isn’t really your mother, you know.” And actually Sandy did know. What the Hakh’hli had taken from his mother’s body after her death was no more than a few microorganisms and cell samples. If they kept them alive as cultures, that was just science.
But Sandy couldn’t see it that way. To him they weren’t cultures, they were his mother—not alive, but not exactly dead, either. “Really, Sandy. The samples they’ve got in there aren’t her. They’re just cultures. All the rest of her fed the titch’hik long ago.”
Sandy flinched. He disliked the thought of his mother’s body being eaten even more than the thought of parts of it being preserved. It wasn’t that Hakh’hli burial customs bothered him particularly. All his life he had been aware that the ultimate fate of every living being on the ship was to be tossed into the tank of the things, more like a limbless starfish than anything else on Earth, called titch’hik; the titch’hik swiftly consumed all the flesh from the bones; then the titch’hik were harvested and fed to the food animals, the hoo’hik, as a valuable protein source; the bones themselves, ground up, went into the nutrients for the plants and to the hoo’hik as a calcium supplement—nothing was wasted. But when it was your own mother you were talking about it was different. Especially when you knew quite well that somewhere in Genetics there were flasks of cultures from her very own maternal body, kept on hand for experiments in gene-splicing.
Obie stopped halfway up the spiral ramp to the Genetics level. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” he said.
“Yes. I’m serious.”
“But it’s silly! They’ve got a lot of my own ancestors in there, too, you know.”
“They can’t have, or you wouldn’t be here,” Sandy pointed out sullenly.
“Well, I mean, at least from the same batch of eggs in the freezers. And I’ve certainly got children there, you know. Not even counting the ones with the Fourth Major Senior,” he finished with a touch of offhanded pride.
“It’s not the same.”
“It is the same,” said Obie, getting irritated. “Are you coming or not?”
Sandy shrugged and followed, still reluctant. But as it turned out he was spared. They were met at the Genetics doorway by a Senior who told them severely, first, that certainly there were no new organisms created by Genetics at that time—didn’t they know that all of Genetics was preparing for the influx of new creatures from Earth to study and add to their gene pools? So how could they manage to breed funnier-looking or more efficient plants and hoo’hik and titch’hik at such a time? And, second, he pointed out, they had no business there in any case, did they?
They retreated hastily. “Ah, well,” Obie sighed. “You didn’t really want to anyway. I know! Let’s go see what they’re making for us!”
The laboratory rooms were hot, and not just because they had been in the part of the ship that had been allowed to heat up in the solar passage. Things were being made here, and there were furnaces and ovens to make them in.
Sandy was entranced. In the first chamber two old Hakh’hli were tending a plastics blender, out of which fabrics were being extruded in a dozen colors and textures. “For you,” the boss said proudly. “These will be socks, these will be underwear, this is a ‘necktie.’ But if you want to see something really interesting, go next door.”
Next door was really interesting, as promised, and even hotter than the fabric room. Part of the heat came from a furnace. An elderly Senior was standing over a couple of technicians who were carefully maneuvering a crucible. They tipped the crucible, and tiny, shiny, orange-glowing droplets fell into a tall vat. Sandy couldn’t see inside it, but he heard a sudden violent sputtering from within.
Then the senior reached inside—Sandy blinked, but evidently the water inside was still cool in spite of the molten droplets it had quenched—and pulled out a couple of fingernail-sized, irregular lumps of yellow metal. He tossed them back and forth, hissing in amused discomfort, then handed one to Sandy. “Gold,” he said proudly, using the English words. “Ith for you. Ith to give tho can buy thingth.”
“Yes, to buy things,” Sandy nodded eagerly. How many lessons they had had in “buying” and “shopping” and “paying”! The little golden nugget almost burned Sandy’s palm, but he held it with reverence because it was an Earth kind of thing.
“I think buying things is silly,” Obie put in, curiously fondling one of the little chunks of metal. He glanced up, and his eyes sprang a quick tear of surprise. “Theseus!” he cried. “I didn’t expect to see you here!”
It was obvious that the other young Hakh’hli hadn’t expected to see them either. Theseus was one of the three or four twelves of young Hakh’hli who had trained with them through all their childhood and growth, then suddenly been taken away from them when the final half-twelve had been selected for the Earth mission.
The other thing that was obvious was that the goldsmith hadn’t expected them to meet and didn’t like the fact that they had. He excused himself and huddled over a communications screen as Theseus said suspiciously, “You two aren’t supposed to be here.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s orders not, that’s why!”
“That’s not a reason,” Obie said stubbornly, sticking to their story. “We were ordered to stay in our quarters, that’s all. Then we were ordered to go—somewhere—and nobody said we couldn’t look around. What are you doing here?”
“I’m picking some things up,” said the reject. “You’ll be swallowing your own spit if they catch you here.”
“Why? What’s the big secret?”
“We’re not supposed to discuss it,” Theseus said firmly, and he and Obie inched nose to nose, glaring at each other.
It was never a good idea for Lysander to get between any two Hakh’hli who were about to get physical, but these two were his friends—well, Obie was definitely his friend, no doubt of that, and Theseus had at least been a comrade, before the group had been split up. He opened his mouth to try reason.
It wasn’t necessary. A voice from the communicator squawked at them. “John William Washington! HoCeth’ik ti’Koli-kak!” It was MyThara’s voice, and the fact that she called them by their formal names told them how much trouble they were in. Sandy darted a furious glance at the goldsmith for turning them in, but there was no time to argue. “I did not believe the Thenior when he called, but it’th true,” MyThara went on. “You are both where you have no buthiness being! Meet me at onthe in your quarterth, Lythander! And you, Oberon, get back to the thimulator chamber where you belong!”
When MyThara got to the cohort’s quarters, slower than Lysander because she was limping more than ever, she found him at his carrel, gazing at the picture of his mother. It wasn’t entirely guile on his part. When he was in trouble he had always found solace in gazing at the only memento he had of the woman who had given him birth. But it wasn’t entirely without guile, either, because he had learned early on that MyThara’s wrath at any transgression could often be muted if he played on her sympathy.