He punched the automated dispenser for a cup of hot cocoa. The machine seemed to take longer now to make the brew than it did during the busy hours of the day.
“Can’t sleep, hey?”
Startled, Grant spun around to see Red Devlin standing beside him. The Red Devil’s bristling hair and mustache stood out even in the shadows of the dimly lit cafeteria. His white jacket was limp, sweaty, unbuttoned all the way down, revealing Devlin’s olive-drab undershirt.
“You’re up pretty late yourself,” Grant replied.
“It’s a lot o’ work, runnin’ this joint.”
“I guess it is.” The dispenser beeped at last. Grant slid up the plastic guard and reached for his steaming cup of cocoa.
“Need somethin’ to put in it?” Devlin asked.
Grant shook his head. “It’s got enough sugar already, I’m sure.”
“I meant somethin’ stronger.”
Grant blinked at him.
“I know you’re a straight arrow an’ all that,” Devlin said, “but a man can’t go without some stimulation now an’ then, can he?”
“I don’t drink,” Grant said.
“I know.” Devlin patted Grant’s shoulder. “An’ you don’t even take sleepin’ pills, do ya?”
“I’ve never needed them.”
“Until now, huh?”
“I don’t want any. Thanks.”
“Maybe some entertainment?”
“Entertainment?”
“VR, y’know. I could fix you up with some very good stuff. Just like the real thing. Make a new man o’ you.”
“No thanks!”
“Now wait, don’t get all huffy on me. You’re a married man, aren’t you?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“I can work up a VR sim for you, special. Just gimme some videos of your wife and I’ll put together a sim that’ll be just like she was with you, just about.”
Grant’s jaw dropped open.
“Sure, I can do it!” Devlin encouraged, mistaking Grant’s shocked silence. “I did it for ’Gon, y’know. Fixed him up with Lainie … in virtual reality.”
My God in heaven, Grant thought. So Egon’s fantasies about Lane aren’t just wet dreams, after all. He’s got a VR session with her in it. Maybe more than one.
“How about it, Grant?” Devlin urged.
But Grant was thinking, If Lane knew about this she’d kill the two of them.
“Well?”
“No thanks,” Grant said firmly. “Not for me.”
He turned and strode away, splashing hot cocoa from the mug onto his hand, thinking that he’d never let that filthy devil get his paws on videos of Marjorie. Never.
Days later, Grant was in the biochemistry lab, checking the delicate glassware he was taking out of the dishwasher, to make certain nothing had been broken or chipped. The glass tubes and retorts were still warm in his hands. He’d been thinking that it would be much more efficient if they made the lab apparatus out of lunar glassteel, which was unbreakable, but then figured it would cost too much. Cheaper to gather up the broken bits and recast them. Just as graduate students were an economic advantage over robots, old-fashioned chippable lab glassware was used instead of glassteel.
“I haven’t seen you for a while.”
The voice startled Grant so badly he nearly dropped the hand-blown tubing he was holding.
Looking up, he saw it was Zareb Muzorawa.
“Oh … I’ve been around,” said Grant. “I’ve … uh, been pretty busy, you know.”
Muzorawa hiked one leg on a lab stool and perched casually on it. Still in those metal-studded leggings, Grant saw.
Very seriously he said, “What happened between Lane and Egon was not your fault, my friend”
“Yeah, sure. I know that” Grant turned back to emptying the dishwasher.
“Lane told me about your conversation with her.”
Grant said nothing, kept busy unloading the glassware.
“You can’t hide all the time, Grant,” Muzorawa said. “The station isn’t that big.”
Straightening and facing the man, Grant said, “I guess I’m embarrassed, pretty much. I feel really rotten about it.”
“It was not your fault. No one is angry at you. Lane and Egon aren’t even angry at each other, not anymore.”
“I don’t see how that could be.”
Muzorawa laughed gently. “They had a peace conference. He agreed to stop telling tales about her and she agreed not to decorate him with food anymore.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Grant felt better than he had in days. “And they’re not boiled at me?”
“Why should they be?”
Before Grant could think of a reply, Muzorawa abruptly changed the subject. “Are you enjoying your work?”
Grant’s heart sank again. “That’s not a joking matter.”
“I was not joking.”
Unloading the dishwasher and putting the gleaming glassware in their proper cabinets as he spoke, Grant confessed, “I don’t mind the labor; it’s the time I’m losing that hurts.”
“Ah, yes,” said Muzorawa, shifting slightly on the stool, stretching his legs as if they pained him.
“I’m supposed to be working toward my doctorate in astrophysics,” Grant went on, growing angrier with each word. “How in the name of the Living God can I do that when there isn’t even another blast-dratted astrophysicist on the station?”
Muzorawa nodded solemnly. “Yes, I see. I understand.”
“I could spend my entire four years here without making a nanometer of progress toward my doctorate.”
“That would be a shame.”
“A shame? It’s a tragedy! This is wrecking my whole life!”
“I put in many hours of dog work,” Muzorawa said, “back when I was a grad student in Cairo.”
“You’re Egyptian?” Grant assumed Egyptians were tobacco-hued Arabs, not deeply black Africans.
Muzorawa shook his head. “I am Sudanese. Sudan is south of Egypt, the land that was called Nubia in ancient times.”
“Oh.”
“I received my degrees at the University of Cairo.”
“I see.”
“It’s easier for a black man there than at most European universities.”
“We have laws against racial prejudice in the States.”
Muzorawa grunted. “Yes, I know of your laws. And the realities behind them.”
“The New Morality sees to it that there’s no racial bias in the schools,” Grant said.
“I’m sure.”
“They do!”
With a shrug of his broad shoulders, Muzorawa asked, “Tell me, did you take any undergraduate courses in fluid dynamics?”
Caught off-guard again by another sudden change of subject, Grant answered hesitantly, “Uh, one. You need to know some fluid dynamics to understand how stellar interiors work.”
“Condensed matter.”
Grant nodded. “And degenerate matter.”
Muzorawa nodded back and the two of them quickly slipped into a discussion of fluid dynamics, safe and clean, a subject where mathematics reigned instead of messy, painful human relationships.
Within a few minutes Muzorawa was using one of the chem lab’s computers to show Grant the problems of the planet-girdling Jovian ocean he was working on. Grant understood the basics, and listened avidly as the Sudanese fluid dynamicist explained the details. In the back of his mind he felt warmly grateful that Muzorawa was taking the time to bring some spark of interesting ideas into his dull routine of drudgery.
It ended all too soon. Glancing at the clock display in the lower corner of the computer’s screen, Muzorawa said, “I’m afraid I must go. Wo has called a big meeting with the department heads. Budget proposals.”