So what Shef wound up with was one of those marvels of technological sophistication from the space program we used to hear about all the time. Only this one wasn't a frying pan. It was a way of frying Dieter von Knefhausen. Shefs miracle of better living through science gifted him with a whole new litter of feisty little nuclear particles that just loved fat atoms. When any one of them came near a big one it screwed right into it, and all that superheavy fission energy just oozed out as great gooey glops of heat.
I'm not sure why. Or how. After I cooled down I kept after them until they explained it to me, but there were gaps. Jim gave it a good try but, whatever he was saying, what I heard was:
"All he had to do was , modulate a of for baryon-baryon interactions with Then he just , and and every heavy actinide on Earth had to ." And that's when I began to scream, but they'd done it anyway.
On the next morning, which was the morning of Day 3841, I woke up not really wanting to wake up at all, because it was so nice to be dreaming of home and Mom and Dad and all the heads I used to hang out with in Southern California.
Of course, the home I had now wasn't so bad. The architect for our little world was a fellow named Tsiolkowsky, or maybe O'Neill; my nearly eidetic memory tosses up both names and I've long since tired of arguing which. I didn't have a personal room anymore. I had a personal house. Or maybe you would call it a hut, because it surely wasn't fancy, but at least it had a kitchen and a bathroom and a plot of herbs and flowering plants around it. And a lock on the door. And when I opened the door to go out and see if this day, finally, was going to be worth living, I found something tucked under my door-knocker. It was a vegetable. Or a fruit, or a flower; I couldn't really tell what, so I reached out and caught the arm of one of Flo's two-year-olds as she bounded past. "Modany, do you know who put this here?"
Her eyes widened politely. "Wower, Aunt Evel Doesn't that smell sweet!" But she didn't know. I patted her bottom and let her run on to the cookies and milk and took the thing out of the knocker.
It was something like a large carrot, heart-shaped in cross section, the color of honey. It was not anything I had grown, or even seen growing. Since I was the woman of all work in the hydroponics department, that meant somebody had been deliberately keeping it secret. When I bit a piece off, it tasted the way it smelled, chocolaty-mint. I didn't observe until I lifted it for a second bite that inside, on the fracture surface, it bore a message:
Happy Birthday Dear Aunt Eve Barstow
The lettering went all the way through the length of the stalk, like a stick of Brighton rock. It was unsigned. But who needed a signature to recognize the work of her first-born and maybe best-born son?
Jeron's personal room was only two north and four east of mine, but he wasn't in it to be thanked. Or scolded, if that was what I was going to decide to do. As I was breakfasting I decided that it would be thanked because, although in my simple old-fashioned heart I did not approve of his courting his own mother, he had at least taken my mind off Uncle Shefs villainy. I was able to make myself go to work. No matter what, someone has to till the cotton and someone has to hoe the corn, and that's me.
While I was stewing up the morning's protoplasts Molomy came flying back through the fruit vines, giggling and shrieking, along with half a dozen others of her cohort. They raced like bunnies being chased by a friendly fox, and the fox was the very son I was looking for, Jeron. As they came in sight he paused, yelled something after the prey good-naturedly, and let them escape. "Hello, Aunt Mommy," he said in his sweet, pure soprano.
I decanted the bright green soup and handed him the flask. "Hold this while I get some filter paper. What are you doing to those kids?"
He grinned. "Uncle Ski told me to struggle them while he works on the fifth cohort, but they're okay. Happy birthing day."
Jeron's simple English was pretty good, like most of the kids, but not perfect. "That's birthday, dear." I counted up. "My God. I'm thirty-nine years old today. And feel like ninety."
He steadied the flask while I repoured the decoction through the filter. "Don't be upset on your birthing day— birthday," he wheedled. "It's all over."
Jeron is a very handsome boy, not tall, complexion darker than either his father's or mine, a little portly for a seven- year-old. When he scowled he looked much older, and he was scowling now. "I know, Jeron. Thanks."
He rubbed his downy chin, nodding, then helped me put away the filtrate and knelt gracefully with me to snip shoot tips for the next enzyme stew. He was watching me out of the corner of his eye, and I knew I was in for some cheering up. "Aunt Mommy? If you were home on your birthday now, what would you be doing?"
"Oh, Jeron, you don't want to hear all that stuff again." But I could feel myself cheering. He persisted.
"Please, Aunt Mom. You would have a cake with candles?"
"Most likely, uh-huh. Of course, that kind of a party is really for children. If your father and I were still in our old apartment in Houston we'd probably ask a few friends over, maybe for dinner. You remember how we used to eat our meals, getting together in kinship or friend groups, all at about the same time? I told you about it."
"Parents and children, yes. And everybody eating the same thing."
"Well, that's because preparing meals was a lot harder, and it was pretty inefficient, yes. But it made a meal a kind of ceremonial. Especially if there was a real occasion, like Christmas or a birthday, or everybody getting together after the family had been all over."
"So that's what you would do for your birthday?"
"Oh, maybe more than that. After dinner perhaps we would all go to a play, or out dancing—to a public place, with a bar and a live band. Ther.e might be four or five hundred people all together in a place like that."
"Will you teach me how to dance, Aunt Eve?" "Why, Jeron! Of course I will. If you're sure you really want to learn. I don't want you just being kind to me."
He frowned to look older. "Aunt Mom? I hate your logical inconsistencies. You praise me for being kind, and now you tell me you don't want to do it."
I said humbly, "You're right, Jeron, and of course I'll teach you how to dance and it doesn't matter what your reasons are."
"Now?"
"Well. I should be getting the crops in right now—"
"Not now," he decided. "Not because of your crops, though. Because I want to show you something."
There was no arguing with Jeron when he had his mind made up. He took my hand and tugged me through the quarter-acre I was supposed to be tending, and would not say why.
That didn't surprise. What would have surprised about Jeron would have been an occasion when he didn't go out of his way to be surprising. I tried to slow him down when I saw that he was dragging me into the unfinished sections of the shell. I didn't like going there. Outside of the microclimate of my little garden patch the air was too thin and too dry and generally too uncomfortable still, though not nearly as bad as it had been. But he wouldn't stop, not until he clattered across a bare strip of structural steel, nothing between us and the vacuum outside but a fingernail's width of asteroidal iron, and jerked me to a stop. "There!" he cried.
I looked.
It was Ann Becklund. Not one of my favorite sights. "She's meditating again," I said. "Now I'm going back—"
"Look!" He darted over and touched her; she didn't move. "Full padmasana! She's been there all day!"
"She does that all the time, Jeron," I said scornfully.
"Touch her!" he said angrily. "Stupid!"
The time for teaching manners to my son was unfortunately long past, so I decided to ignore his rudeness. I touched her.