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going in or out. "Jesus," Stan said. "What do you think happened?"
"I wish I knew," Estrella said, and then changed her mind. "No, maybe I'm better off if I don't know.
Let's do something else. How about another look at the kid?"
That, at least, was always rewarding. Every day the tiny creature in Estrella's belly showed new things to
marvel at. Those eye things that had seemed to be growing out of the baby's temples were slowly
migrating toward the front of her head, where they belonged. Her skin had become so thin that Estrella
swore she could see the blood vessels beneath it. (Stan was less sure.) And then one day, while Estrella
was back at her lookplates while Stan was studying Stork's display, she jumped. Stan was yelling at her.
"Strell! Guess what the hell what! She's sucking her thumb!"
And so, Estrella agreed, she was. Not only that. Day by day the baby's head turned from side to side,
her legs flexed and extended, the little arms and hands experimenting with new positions folded over
the little chest, clasped prayer-like before the face, stretched almost straight at the sides. It was a magical
slide show, always changing.
When they took time from the contemplation of their unborn, there was plenty to interest them in the
lookplates mostly incomprehensible, yes, but provocative. When they saw a procession of hooded
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children marching steadfastly into the shallows, and then the deeps, of some ocean, somewhere in the
outside galaxy, they could only wonder what was going on. When the lookplate flared with appalling light
as some star, also some unknown where, seemed to destroy itself in an eruption of flame they could only
admire the spectacle, with no clue of what it meant.
Not counting the food, Stan and Estrella were almost content to be ignored by their friends. Sex was
great sport again, now practiced in private. The food, they told each other, really wasn't much worse than
they had had in their old Five. The lanai was as lush as ever....
All the same, when their door growled for the first time in days, they both hurried to open it.
The caller wasn't any of their first choices. It was Achiever. Without preamble he asked, "Have asked
on earlier occasion if you had been asked. Now I ask again. Well? What is your answer?"
"Oh, hell," Stan said. "I don't have any idea what you're talking about. Answer to what?"
The muscles under Achiever's cheekbones were twitching madly. "How can you ask me answer to
what? Have recently experienced significant event, somewhat pleasurable but very tiring, have retained
little patience. Is it possible you have not yet been asked?"
"Asked what?" Stan demanded, now well on the way to becoming belligerent. But so was Achiever. He
stomped a few steps away from the door, the fur at the back of his neck erect with anger, then stepped
back. "This is not to any degree acceptable!" he shouted. "I am greatly enraged. Therefore I shut you off
without customary convention of good-bye!" And he turned on his narrow heel and stomped away.
Estrella and Stan were in their bedroom, no longer fully dressed and no more than half-heartedly picking
at their latest consignment of the marginally edible, not talking much, really, about Achiever because what
was there still to say about that volatile and unlikeable Heechee? when the door growled and the visitor
turned out to be Salt, looking somehow radiant and in no respect purple. "Possibly can come in?" she
asked, and took their silence as affirmative.
"Oh, absolutely," Stan assured her, a little tardily she was already perched in their living room and
looking expectantly from one to the other of them. "You have been speaking with Achiever," she told
them. "I know this because he so informed me. It is partly relevant to him that I come to see you."
Stan pulled the robe he had grabbed up tighter around him. "Is anything wrong?"
"Nothing is in the least wrong of any description," Salt said, the tone of her voice sounding as though that
were true. If she had been human, Stan would have said she was beaming. "Quite in actuality
contrariwise. First must apologize to you for did not invite you to ceremony. Reason for this: other party
and I well aware of your cultural modesty tabus."
"What ceremony?" Stan asked, baffled.
Estrella was quicker on the uptake. "What are you saying? Are you actually have you been "
"Have exactly been, yes," Salt confirmed delightedly. "And also have exactly done, with use of Achiever
as fertilizing person. Am therefore quite knocked up, I say in particular to Estrella, just like you!"
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15
Happiness
I
For Stan, one pregnant woman had been interesting, even (since it was his own baby she was pregnant
with) absorbing. Two weren't twice as good. They weren't even half as good. Suddenly it was Salt, not [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]