As it turned out, she wasn’t. Not only that, she was welcomed with open arms. Not by Haron Gorka; that she really might have liked. Instead, someone she could only regard as a menial met her, and when he asked if she had come in response to the advertisement, she nodded eagerly. He told her that was fine and ushered her straight into a room that evidently was to be her living quarters. It contained a small, undersized bed, a table, and a chair, and, near a little slot in the wall, there was a button.
“You want any food or drink,” the servant told her, “and you just press that button. The results will surprise you.”
“What about Mr. Gorka?”
“When he wants you, he will send for you. Meanwhile, make yourself to home, lady, and I will tell him you are here.”
A little doubtful, now, Matilda thanked him and watched him leave. He closed the door softly behind his retreating feet, but Matilda’s ears had not missed the ominous click. She ran to the door and tried to open it, but it would not budge. It was locked—from the outside.
It must be said to Matilda’s credit that she sobbed only once. After that, she realized that what is done is done, and here, past thirty, she wasn’t going to be girlishly timid about it. Besides, it was not her fault if, in his unconcern, Haron Gorka had unwittingly hired a neurotic servant.
For a time Matilda paced back and forth in her room, and of what was going on outside she could hear nothing. In that case, she would pretend that there was nothing outside the little room, and presently she lay down on the bed to take a nap. This didn’t last long, however: she had a nightmare in which Haron Gorka appeared as a giant with two heads, but, upon awaking with a start, she immediately ascribed that to her overwrought nerves.
At that point she remembered what the servant had said about food, and she thought at once of the supreme justice she could do to a juicy beefsteak. Well, maybe they didn’t have a beefsteak. In that case, she would take what they had, and, accordingly, she walked to the little slot in the wall and pressed the button.
She heard the whir of machinery. A moment later there was a soft sliding sound. Through the slot first came a delicious aroma, followed almost instantly by a tray. On the tray were a bowl of turtle soup, mashed potatoes, green peas, bread, a strange cocktail, root beer, a parfait—and a thick tenderloin sizzling in hot butter sauce.
Matilda gasped once and felt about to gasp again—but by then her salivary glands were working overtime, and she ate her meal. The fact that it was precisely what she would have wanted could, of course, be attributed to coincidence, and the further fact that everything was extremely palatable made her forget all about Haron Gorka’s neurotic servant.
When she finished her meal a pleasant lethargy possessed her, and in a little while Matilda was asleep again. This time she did not dream at all. It was a deep sleep and a restful one, and when she awoke it was with the wonderful feeling that everything was all right.
The feeling did not last long. Standing over her was Haron Gorka’s servant, and he said, “Mr. Gorka will see you now.”
“Now?”
“Now. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”
He had a point there, but Matilda hardly had time even to fix her hair. She told the servant so.
“Miss,” he replied, “I assure you it will not matter in the least to Haron Gorka. You are here and he is ready to see you and that is all that matters.”
“You sure?” Matilda wanted to take no chances.
“Yes. Come.”
She followed him out of the little room and across what should have been a spacious dining area, except that everything seemed covered with dust. Of the other women Matilda could see nothing, and she suddenly realized that each of them probably had a cubicle of a room like her own, and that each, in turn, had already had her first visit with Haron Gorka. Well, then, she must see to it that she impressed him better than did all the rest; and later, when she returned to tell the old librarian of her adventures, she could perhaps draw her out and compare notes.
She would not admit even to herself that she was disappointed with Haron Gorka. It was not that he was homely and unimpressive; it was just that he was so ordinary-looking. She would almost have preferred the monster of her dreams.
He wore a white linen suit and had mousy hair, drab eyes, an almost Roman nose, a petulant mouth with the slight arch of the egotist at each corner.
He said, “Greetings. You have come—”
“In response to your ad. How do you do, Mr. Gorka?”
She hoped she wasn’t being too formal. But then, there was no sense assuming that he would like informality. She could only wait and see and adjust her own actions to suit him. Meanwhile, it would be best to keep in the middle of the road.
“I am fine. Are you ready?”
“Ready?”
“Certainly. You came in response to my ad. You want to hear me talk, do you not?”
“I—do.” Matilda had had visions of her Prince Charming sitting back and relaxing with her, telling her of the many things he had done and seen. But first she certainly would have liked to get to know the man. Well, Haron Gorka obviously had more experience along these lines than she did. He waited, however, as if wondering what to say, and Matilda, accustomed to social chatter, gave him a gambit.
“I must admit I was surprised when I got exactly what I wanted for dinner,” she told him brightly.
“Eh? What say? Oh, yes, naturally. A combination of telepathy and teleportation. The synthetic cookery is attuned to your mind when you press the buzzer, and the strength of your psychic impulses determines how closely the meal will adjust to your desires. The fact that the adjustment here was near perfect is commendable. It means either that you have a high psi quotient or that you were very hungry.”
“Yes,” said Matilda vaguely. Perhaps it might be better, after all, if Haron Gorka were to talk to her as he saw fit.
“Ready?”
“Uh—ready.”
“Well?”
“Well what, Mr. Gorka?”
“What would you like me to talk about?”
“Oh, anything.”
“Please. As the ad read, my universal experience—is universal. Literally. You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Well, why don’t you tell me about some of your far travels? Unfortunately, while I’ve done a lot of reading, I haven’t been to all the places I would have liked—”
“Good enough. You know, of course, how frigid Deneb VII is?”
Matilda said, “Beg pardon?”
“Well, there was the time our crew—before I had retired, of course—made a crash landing there. We could survive in the vac suits, of course, but the thiomots were after us almost at once. They go mad over plastic. They will eat absolutely any sort of plastic. Our vac suits—”
“—were made of plastic,” Matilda suggested. She did not understand a thing he was talking about, but she felt she should act bright.
“No, no. Must you interrupt? The air hose and the water feed, those were plastic. Not the rest of the suit. The point is that half of us were destroyed before the rescue ship could come, and the remainder were near death. I owe my life to the mimicry of a flaak from Capella III. It assumed the properties of plastic and led the thiomots a merry chase across the frozen surface of D VII. You travel in the Deneb system now, and Interstellar Ordinance makes it mandatory to carry flaaks with you. Excellent idea, really excellent.”