But a nurse was what she was, fundamentally, even if that seemed a very modest designation for someone of her professional affiliations and accomplishments. Her resume was a knockout. Doctorates in heuristic pedagogy and rehabilitative technology. Assistant to the head of Special Services at Houston General's childrens* clinic. Consultant to the Katzin Commission, the Federal task force on remedial education. Six years' experience in advanced artificial-intelligence interfacing for autistic kids. Software bibliography a mile long.
Just what Stasis Technologies, Ltd. needed for this job?
So Sam Aickman seemed to think, at any rate.
Hoskins said, "You understand, don't you, diat we'll be asking you to give up all your outside projects, the Washington stuff, the Houston affiliation, any consulting work that might require travel. You'll basically be pinned down here on a full-time basis for a period of several years, dealing with a single highly specialized assignment."
She didn't flinch. "I understand that."
"I see that in the last eighteen months alone you've appeared at conferences in Sao Paulo, Winnipeg, Melbourne, San Diego, and Baltimore, and that you've had papers read on your behalf at five other scientific meetings that you weren't able to attend personally."
"That's correct."
"And yet you're quite sure that you'll be able to make the transition from the very active professional career outlined in your resume to the essentially isolated kind of existence you'll need to adopt here?"
There was a cold, determined glint in her eyes. "Not only do I think I'll be completely capable of making the transition, I'm quite ready and eager to do so."
Something sounded just a little wrong about that to Hoskins.
He said, "Would you care to expand on that a bit? Perhaps you don't fully grasp how-ah-monastic we tend to be at Stasis Technologies, Ltd. And how demanding your own area of responsibility in particular is likely to be."
"I think I do grasp that, Dr. Hoskins."
"And yet you're ready and eager?"
"Perhaps I'm a trifle less eager to run around from Winnipeg to Melbourne to Sao Paulo than I used to be."
"A little touch of burnout, maybe, is that what you're saying, Dr. Levien?"
A shadow of a smile appeared on her lips, the first sign of any human warmth that Hoskins had seen her display since she had entered his office. But it was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared.
"You might call it that, Dr. Hoskins."
"Yes, but would you?"
She looked startled at his unexpected sally. But then she drew a deep breath and reconstructed her all but imperturbable poise with hardly any show of effort.
"Burnout might be too extreme a term for my current attitudinal orientation. Let me just say that I'm interested in repositioning my energy expenditures-which as you see have been quite diffusely manifested-so that they're allocated to a single concentration of output."
"Ah-yes. Exactly so."
Hoskins regarded her with a mixture of awe and horror. Her voice was a perfectly pitched contralto; her eyebrows were flawlessly symmetrical; she sat splendidly upright with the finest posture imaginable. She was extraordinary in every way. But she didn't seem real.
He said, after a little pause, "And what is it, exactly, that led you to apply for this job, other than the aspect of allowing you a single concentration of energy expenditure?"
"The nature of the experiment fascinates me."
"Ah. Tell me."
"As every first-rate author of children's literature knows, the world of the child is very different from the world of adults-an alien world, in fact, whose values and assumptions and realities are entirely other. As we grow older, most of us make the transition from that world to this one so completely that we forget the nature of the world we've left behind. Throughout my work with children I've attempted to enter into dieir minds and comprehend the other-worldly nature of them as profoundly as my limitations as an adult will enable me to do."
Hoskins said, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice, "You think children are alien beings?"
"In a metaphorical way, yes. Obviously not literally."
"Obviously." He scanned her resume, frowning. "You've never been married?"
"No, never," she said coolly.
"And I assume you haven't gone in for single parenting, either?"
"It was an option I considered quite seriously some years ago. But my work has provided me with a sense of surrogate parenting that has been quite sufficient."
"Yes. I suppose that it has. -Now, you were saying a moment ago that you see the world of the child as a fundamentally alien place. How does that statement relate to my question about what led you to apply for this job?"
"If I can accept at face value the remarkable preliminary description of your experiment that I've been given, it would involve me in caring for a child who quite literally comes from an alien world. Not in space, but in time; nevertheless, the essence of the existential situation is equivalent. I'd welcome a chance to study such a child's fundamental differences from us, by way of obtaining some parallactic displacement that might provide additional insights for my own work."
Hoskins stared at her.
No, he thought. Not real at all. A cleverly made android of some sort. A robotic nursoid. Except they hadn't perfected robots of this level of quality yet-he was pertain of that. So she had to be a flesh-and-Wood human being. But she certainly didn't act like one.
He said, "That may not be so easy. There may be difficulties in communication. The child very likely will have a speech impediment, you know. As a matter of fact there's a good chance that it may be virtually incapable of speech at all."
"It?"
"He, she. We can't tell you which, just yet. You do realize that the child won't be arriving here for another three weeks, give or take a day or two, and until the moment it arrives we'll basically know nothing about its actual nature."
She seemed indifferent to that. "I'm aware of the risks. The child may be drastically handicapped vocally, physically, and perhaps intellectually."
"Yes, you may well have to deal with it the way you'd deal with a severely retarded child of our own era. We just don't know. We'll be handing you a complete unknown."
"I'm prepared to meet that challenge," she said. "Or any other. Challenge is what interests me, Dr. Hoskins."
He believed that. The conditional and even speculative nature of the job description had produced no reaction in her. She seemed ready to face anything and didn't seem concerned with the whys and wherefores.
It wasn't hard to see why Sam Aickman had been so impressed with her.
Hoskins was silent again for a moment, just long enough to give her an opening. Marianne Levien didn't hesitate to take advantage of it.
She reached into her attache case and drew forth a hand-held computer, no bigger than a large coin. "I've brought with me," she said, "a program that I've been working on since the word came across on the computer network that you were open for applications for this position. It's a variation on some work I did with braindamaged children seven yean ago in Peru: six algorithms defining and modifying communications flow. Essentially they bypass the normal verbal channels of the mind and-"
"Thank you," Hoskins said smoothly, staring at the tiny device in her outstretched hand as though she were offering him a bomb. "But there are all sorts of legal complexities preventing me from looking at your material until you're actually an employee of Stasis Technologies, Ltd. Once you're under contract, naturally, I'U be glad to discuss your prior research with you in detail, but until then-"