“‘The waste?’
“She was up on her feet in a moment; one pace of those long legs took her to her bookshelf…there’s not too much room in a grav-ship’s bunks. And: ‘See,’ she said again, ‘when I got to know I was assigned to the Starspike Explorer’—she got down a book, one of her several antique volumes, and came and sat down again—‘I decided to take at least an interest in every aspect of the expedition, which included ecology: planet Earth’s ecology; or, as you might say, “when it had one.” So I picked up a couple of old books on the subject. And this is one of them.’
“‘Ah!’ I said, nodding however reluctantly.
“‘Even in those days there were people like me who deplored the waste,’ she went on. ‘And when you look at this you can see why. It’s perfectly horrible!’ Opening the book to a bookmarked page, she handed it to me. I knew at once what it was that Laurilu found so disturbing, and said:
“‘Buying this was probably a mistake. An aunt of mine moved into an old house and explored the attic. She found a five-hundred-year-old book on human diseases—the Compendium of Common Ailments & Household Cures, or some such. And from that time on she had every disease you can name! If they were in the book my aunt got them, one at a time and often, or so it seemed, by the half-dozen! It was all in the mind. And you know what, Laurilu? She’s still going strong at eighty-two! Still thinks she’s sick, too.’
“She shook her head. ‘But this isn’t imagination. It really happened. Go on, look at it.’ As she leaned to look at the book with me her zipper slipped an inch or two more. But like a fool I didn’t look, except at the book. Well, mainly at the book.
“It was a picture of the bloody deck of a fishing boat. One of the fishermen had driven a long knife or machete through the head of a shark, almost nailing it to the deck, and another was slicing off its dorsal fin. There was a big basket full of fins to one side of the picture….
“And Laurilu said, ‘It was the fins, Mike. They only wanted the fins…to make soup! The rest of the fish got tossed back in the ocean, and as often as not alive! Before that it was the whales, those huge great beasts, cut up alive for their livers, their oils. And those beautiful jungle cats—skinned for their furs. Ecology? On planet Earth? It was us, we murdered the home world, Mike! And we did it despite the warnings of real ecologists, like the man who wrote this book.’
“‘Laurilu—’ I began, without knowing how to continue. But as her arms crept round my neck it appeared that as suddenly as that her entire attitude had changed, and cutting me off before I could find any soothing or conciliatory words she went on:
“‘Yet now—now like some kind of fantastic psychoanalyst or layer-on-of-hands—it seems that you’ve solved my problem, Mike! In giving me hope, you may even have cured me. It was the waste that was becoming my obsession, but now I see that it was just a part of everything that the human race does. Moreover, I think I know how to handle it now.’
“‘And can you also see,’ I said, taking her zipper all the way down, ‘that we’ve simply got to make the best of what we’ve got? Get as much out of our short little lives as we can, while our hearts are still hammering and our blood still coursing? We—and now I mean you and me—we have to live our lives to the full, Laurilu, snatching at every opportunity we’re given just as often and, er, as naturally as possible.’
“‘Yes, I see that,’ she answered, shrugging out of her uniform and assisting me with mine. ‘And now maybe I’ll be able to sleep without dreaming those dreams.’ She began to bite my ear.
“‘Dreams?’ I repeated her, purely for the sake of something to say as we got down to business. ‘About sharks, you mean?’
“‘Well, that’s one of them,’ she answered between bites. ‘I see them in my dream: unable to swim, dying and rotting away in their own environment, and not knowing how or why it happened.’
“‘Exactly!’ I told her. ‘Not knowing how or why: non-sentient. And the reason the fishermen threw them back was so they’d go toward feeding other fishes, and them to feeding us. The sea was like—I don’t know—like a big compost heap. The fishermen couldn’t take those carcasses back to land where they’d rot and stink the place up, so they simply returned them to the sea where they had caught them, toppled them overboard into the big watery compost heap.’ Our bodies were working in perfect unison now, becoming slippery as the temperature rose.
“‘But there are other dreams,’ she said, clawing at me spastically.
“‘Oh, really? And what are they about, Laurilu?’
“‘Well, there’s one that’s been bothering me quite a lot.’
“‘And which one’s that?’ Actually, at that point in time, I couldn’t have cared less.
“‘The one where I look at the stars flickering by, and then look at the ship’s engines, and find myself thinking that if we had never discovered the grav-drive, worlds like Ophiuchus VIII would be safe forever. But no, we’ll soon be taking all of this knowledge, everything we’ve learned, back home with us. And me, I myself—Laurilu Nagula, Second Engineer—I’ll be in large part responsible for bringing the Starspike Explorer home again in one…one piece.’ She had gone quiet and thoughtful again, and had almost stopped moving under me.
“‘But of course you will!’ I groaned. ‘And I’ll be responsible for what I do, and likewise the rest of the crew: everyone responsible for the things they do.’ Utter gibberish!
“‘But now—’ she came alive again, her hips powering, ‘why, now I know my duty to…to everything! I know what I must do, Mike! You’ve helped me to realize that. But Mike?’
“‘Yes?’ I panted.
“‘Please don’t impregnate me.’
“‘Don’t worry about it,’ I told her. ‘Low sperm count. And anyway the radiation in your engine room will take care of what few tadpoles might manage to squirm through.’
“‘My engine room, yes,’ she whispered. ‘It would seem to be the answer to everything.’
“‘I’m glad I’ve been able to help you,’ I told her. ‘As for my feasibility report: well, you’ve also helped me. I can probably write it up from our conversation alone—without all the gloomy bits, of course.’
“‘Do you think we can do this more often?’ she said, sounding as sexy as anything I ever heard before, her need as strong as mine.
“‘Often as you like,’ I answered, my head beginning to buzz.
“‘And on the way home, too?’
“‘Absolutely!’ (But wait a minute! Wasn’t she beginning to sound just a little too serious?) ‘Er, before we’ve been reassigned, split up, sent in our different directions, do you mean? Which of course we’re almost certain to be.’
“‘Something like that,’ she said, her nails digging in just one last time. ‘Before we…before we’re split up and sent in our many different directions, yes.’ But it was all babble now, meaningless babble as the sugar boiled over and began its melt-down onto our singing, soaring brains.
“Then, in a little while and after we had recovered, we did it again. Only this time without speaking. And I was especially satisfied because I’d not only had it out with Laurilu but off with her, too….”