Jem

“Thanks a lot, captain,” said the designer stiffly. “How can you be so sure about the tissue?”

“I ate some three days ago,” she said. She had their full attention now and swept on. “I should point out that the grant naturally includes whatever you need to insure safe handling. Now, this group contains plant samples. They’re photosynthetic, and their principal response is in the infrared range. Interesting for you agronomists? Right. And these over here are supposed to be art objects. They come from the Krinpit, the ones that look like squashed cockroaches. The things are supposed to ‘sing.’ That is, if you’re a Krinpit and you rub them on your shell, they make some interesting sounds. If you don’t have a chitinous shell, you can use a credit card.”

The woman from design picked up one of them gingerly, peering at it through the transparent plastic. “You said you wanted us to develop some kind of trading goods?”

“I sure do.” The last thing Margie pulled out of her dispatch case was a red-covered mimeographed document. The words MOST SECRET were dazzle-printed on the jacket. “As you can see, this is classified, but that’s just military hang-ups. It will be turned over to the UN in about ten days anyway, or most of it will. It’s the most comprehensive report we’ve been able to prepare on the three principal races of Klong.”

All six of the faculty members at the table reached for it at once, but the design woman was fastest. “Um,” she said, flipping through it. “I’ve got a graduate student who would eat this up. Can I show it to him?”

“Better than that. Let’s leave this copy and the samples with our friends, and let’s you and I go talk to him.”

Fifteen minutes later Margie had succeeded in getting rid of the department head, and she and a slim, excitable young man named Walter Pinson were head to head. “Think you can handle it?” asked Margie.

“Yes! I mean, well, it’s a big job—”

Margie put her hand on his arm. “I’m sure you can. I’d really appreciate it if you’d tell me how you plan to go about it, though.”

Pinson thought for a moment. “Well, the first thing is to figure out what their needs are,” he offered.

“That’s fascinating! It must be pretty difficult. I would hardly know where to start. Offhand, I’d say their biggest need, all of them, is just staying alive. As you’ll see, everything on the planet spends a lot of its time trying to eat everything else, including the other intelligent races.”

“Ca

“Well, I don’t think you can call it that. They’re different species. And there are a lot of other species that are trying to eat the intelligent ones.”

“Predators,” said Pinson, nodding. “Well, there’s a starting point right there. Let’s see. For the predators like the balloonists, for instance, anything that would set them on fire would help protect the sentients. Of course,” he added, frowning, “we’d have to make sure that these were used only to defend the sentients against lower forms of life.”

“Of course!” said Margie, shocked. “We wouldn’t want to give them weapons to start a war with!” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got an idea, Walter. I didn’t have much of a breakfast, and it’s getting on toward lunch. Why don’t you and I get something to eat? There’s a place I used to know when I was a graduate student. In a pretty frowsty old motel, but the food was good — if you have the time, I mean?”

“Oh, I have the time,” said Pinson, looking at her appreciatively.

“It’s up past Harvard Square, but we ought to be able to get a cab. And please let me — I have an expense account, and it’s all your tax money anyway.” As they walked toward the elevator, a mob of undergraduates flocked toward a lecture hall. Looking toward them, Margie asked, “Do you by any chance know a student named Lloyd Wensley? I think he’s a freshman.”

“No, I don’t think so. Friend of yours?”

“Not really — or anyway, not since he was a little kid. I used to know his family. Now, about these, ah, implements for self-protection—”

Several quite pleasant hours later, Margie got into a cab outside the old motel. If the food had not been really as good as she remembered it, the rooms still came up to standard. As they approached Harvard Square she had an impulse. “Go down Mass Ave,” she ordered the driver. “I want to make a little detour.” After a few blocks she directed him into a side street, and looked about.

She recognized the neighborhood. There was the supermarket. There was Giordan’s Spa, and there, over the barbershop, only now it was over a hardware store, was the three-room corner apartment where she had lived with Lloyd and Lloyd Junior through the ten months that measured both her graduate year and her marriage. It was the closest Marge had ever come to motherhood, fill-in to a six-year-old for the real mother who had died when he was three. It was the closest she had ever come to wifehood, too, and closer than she would ever come again. Old Lloyd! Thirty years old when she was nineteen, and so fucking courtly in the Officers’ Club that you’d never guess what he was like in bed. Not even if you’d tried him out a time or two, as Margie had been careful to do. Just looking up at the window of their bedroom made Marge’s neck ache with the memory of being head-jammed into a corner of the bed, half choked with pillows, so Lloyd could pump himself dry as quickly as convenient. As often as convenient. When he thought convenient. You didn’t ask a cuspidor for permission to spit in it, or a wife for sex. The cuspidor couldn’t struggle, not if you had it jammed into position just right, and it wouldn’t cry out. Neither would the wife, especially with the six-year-old stepson only marginally asleep just outside the door.

She ordered the driver on.

It would have been nice to see Lloyd Junior, all grown up.

But better not. Better the way it was. She hadn’t seen either of the Lloyds since the a

When she got back to her hotel there was a taped message from her father: “To hear is to obey. Catch a news broadcast.”

She turned on the bedside TV while she packed, hunting for an all-news station. She was rewarded with five minutes about the latest Boston political corruption scandals, and then an in-depth interview with the Red Sox’s new designated hitter. But at last there was a recap of the top international story of the day.

“In a surprise move at the United Nations this morning, the top Polish delegate, Wladislas Prczensky, a