They’re forcing themselves to forget the blackout, he realized. To bury it, pretend it never happened, or at least pretend it’ll never happen again.
Karlstad started making cynical jokes about someone in the biology department whom Grant actually knew, a fussy little neurophysiologist who was counting the days until his time was up and he could head back to Earth. O’Hara added to the moment with a story of how she had slipped data from the neurophysiologist’s own brain scan into the file for Sheena.
“That was after the gorilla’s brain-boost?” Hideshi asked.
“It was,” said O’Hara, grinning broadly. “Just a few days after he’d injected Sheena with the neuronal growth hormones.”
“But he was looking at data from his own brain?” asked Karlstad.
“That he was. He took one look at the neuronal activity and thought he was going to get the Nobel Prize!”
They all roared with laughter.
“Didn’t Sheena break his arm later on?”
“No, that was Ferguson.”
“Oh, right. The surgeon.”
Abruptly the overhead speakers blared, “GRANT ARCHER, REPORT TO THE DIRECTORS OFFICE.”
Suddenly fearful, Grant look up toward the ceiling. “What does he want me for?”
“It won’t be good news,” Karlstad muttered. “It never is when he calls you to his office.”
“You’d better get going,” Muzorawa said.
“Now? In the middle of dinner?”
Karlstad pointed a finger at him. “When our peerless leader calls, you answer. Without hesitation.”
“And without dessert,” O’Hara added.
Grant pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “Doesn’t he care at all about us?”
Karlstad shook his head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think he cares about anything anymore. Since the accident he’s been—”
Muzorawa laid a heavy hand on his wrist and Karlstad snapped his mouth shut with an audible click of his teeth.
“You’d better get to the director’s office,” the fluid dynamicist said softly. “Dr. Wo doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Grant nodded and headed out of the cafeteria.
There was a dinner tray on Dr. Wo’s desk, but Grant saw that the director had hardly picked at his food. The office was uncomfortably warm, as before. Is it part of his dominance technique? Grant wondered. Does he enjoy watching me sweat?
Finally he looked up at Grant, scowling. “You have been in this station long enough to know your way from the Cafeteria to this office,” Wo rasped as Grant sat before his desk.
“Yessir, I do.”
“Then why did it take you so long to get here?” Wo demanded in his grating voice. “Did you go the long way around?”
Grant felt like getting up and storming out of the office, but he held his temper and said nothing.
After a long, silent moment, the director announced grudgingly, “Your duties as a lab assistant are finished. You will report to Dr. Muzorawa tomorrow morning to begin training with the fluid dynamics group.”
Grant felt an electric current of surprise race through him.
“That is all. You may go.”
“I’ll be working with Dr. Muzorawa?” he heard himself say, his voice high with wonder and disbelief.
“That is what I told you, isn’t it? Now stop wasting my time. The working day begins at eight hundred hours. Sharp! Understand me?”
“Yessir,” Grant said, scrambling to his feet, trying to keep his face impassive and hide the ecstatic grin that wanted to break out. “Thank you, sir.”
Wo waved one hand as if brushing away an annoyance.
Grant stepped out into the corridor, slid Dr. Wo’s door shut, and leaned against it, his legs rubbery. I’ll be doing real work! he rejoiced. Not astrophysics, but real, actual scientific research!
Then his surge of joy drained out of him. I’ll be learning more about what they’re doing, he thought. I’ll be finding out things I should report to the New Morality.
BOOK II
Make me know Thy ways, O Lord; Teach me Thy paths.
COMING-OUT PARTY
When Grant got back to the cafeteria and broke the news of his promotion to his friends, Muzorawa smiled as if he’d known it all along. Grant realized that this was so; the Sudanese must have asked Wo to allow Grant to join his team.
“Zeb, you did this for me!” he gushed. “I don’t know how to thank you!”
Muzorawa said, “I did it for me, my friend. I need as much help as I can get Wo to give me. Just do a good job, that’s all the thanks you need to give.”
“This calls for a celebration,” said Karlstad. “It’s not every day that a grad student is elevated to the ranks of we scooters.”
“I’m a scooter now!” Grant realized.
They all nodded, laughing. Ukara actually thumped him on the back.
“What kind of celebration, ’Gon?” asked O’Hara.
“We could go to the staff lounge, I suppose,” Muzorawa suggested.
“And drink fruit juice while Wo records every word we say?” Karlstad sneered.
“The lounge is dull,” Ukara agreed.
“And bugged,” added O’Hara.
Gesturing to the remains of their dinners, littered across the round table, Karlstad replied, “Back in my quarters I’ve got something a little more celebratory than this glorified pond scum.”
“Soymeat isn’t pond scum,” Hideshi said, feigning indignation. “It’s a staple for half the world’s population.”
“He’s talking about the algal salad,” Ukara said, almost growling. “And I agree with him.”
“Come on,” said Karlstad, getting up from the table. “You’re all invited to Grant’s coming-out party.”
“Coming out?”
“Out of slavery,” Karlstad said. “Out of the bondage of lab assistantship—”
“And into the indentured servitude of scooterdom,” O’Hara finished for him.
As they went down the hall, Grant asked, “Where did that term ‘scooter’ come from?”
“It means scientist,” Ukara answered. “It’s a derogatory term invented by the administrators.”
“You mean the beancounters,” Hideshi said.
“But why ‘scooters’?” Grant persisted. “How’d that word get chosen to mean ‘scientist’?”
“It’s likely a corruption of the word ‘scholar,’ I should think,” said O’Hara.
“Which was in and of itself a derogatory term created by the beancounters,” Karlstad added.
