A Handful of Time (16 page)

“Give
me that Freeze Gun,” Mrs. Jrob said with tight lips.

“Aw, Mama…”

“Give
it to me or I’ll leave you here.”

“Aw…” He handed it over.

“The question is,” Professor Blake blazed,
“what
did he do to my wife?”

“Froze her.”

“Is she… is she… ?” He had a horrible thought.

“Not literally. You people are so hairy. She’ll be immobilized for twenty-four hours.”

“I’ll sue,” Professor Blake shouted as he stormed out.

“You needn’t bother. We won’t be here. I’m taking Omicron back.”

“Not a bad idea,” several people remarked. And so, in the end, Mr. Jrob resigned from the Future Chair because of cultural lag, and everybody was reasonably happy.

Except me. Because I found something out just as the Jrobs were leaving.

“Well, I guess I won’t be seeing you again,” I remarked happily as they stood on their pile of synthetic boards waiting for Translation.

“Not exactly,” Mrs. Jrob answered.

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

“You died when I was a baby, Grandma.”

Which is why I am so interested in the electric zither.

“H
APPY BIRTHDAY
to
you,”
we all sang, except Gail, of course, who was still screaming, though not as loud.

“Well, now,” I said jovially, glancing nervously about at the other air traffic, “what else can we all sing?” The singing seemed to be working nicely. They had stopped swatting each other with their lunch boxes and my experienced ear told me Gail was by this time forcing herself to scream. This should be the prelude to giving up and enjoying herself.

“Boing
down in Texas in eighteen-ninety,” Billy began, “Davy,
Davy
Eisenhower…”

“A-B-C-D-Er-” sang Jacob.

“Dere was a little ’elicopter red and blue,” Meli chirped, “flew along de airways‌—‌”

The rest came through unidentifiably.

“Ba-ba-ba,” said a faint voice. Gail had given up. I longed for ears in the back of my head because victory was mine and all I needed to do was reinforce it with a little friendly conversation…

“Yes, dear?” I asked her encouragingly.

“Ba-ba-ba,” was all I could make out.

“Yes, indeed. That Gail
likes
to go to Playplace.”

“Ba-ba-ba!” A little irritable. She was trying to say something important.
“Ba-barba!”

I signaled for an emergency hover, turned around and presented my ear.

“Me eat de ems’ of de toas’,” Gail said. She beamed.

I beamed.

We managed to reach Playplace without incident, except for a man who called me an obscenity. The children and
I
however, called him a great, big alligator head and on the whole, I think, we won. After all, how can a man possibly be right when faced with a woman and eight tiny children?

I herded the children through the Germ Detection Booth and Gail was returned to me with an incipient streptococcus infection.

“Couldn’t you give her the shot here?” I asked. “I’ve
just
got her in a good mood, and if I have to turn around and take her back home… and besides, her mother works. There won’t be anyone there.”

“Verne, dear, we can’t risk giving the shot until the child is perfectly adjusted to Playplace. You see, she’d connect the pain of the shot with coming to school and then she might never adjust.” Mrs. Baden managed to give me her entire attention and hold a two-and-a-half-year-old child on one shoulder and greet each entering child and break up a fight between two ill-matched four-year-olds, all at the same time.

“Me stay at school,” Gail said resolutely.

There was a scream from the other side of the booth. That was Billy’s best friend. I waited for the other scream. That was Billy.

“Normal aggression,” Mrs. Baden said with a smile.

I picked up Gail. Act first, talk later.

“Oh,
there
she is,” Mrs. Baden said, taking my elbow with what could only be a third hand.

Having heard we’d have a Hiserean child in Billy’s group, I managed not to look surprised.

“Mrs. His-tara, this is Verne Barrat. Her Billy will be in Hi-nin’s group.”

I was immediately frozen with indecision. Should I shake hands? Merely smile? Nod? Her hands looked wavery and boneless. I might injure them inadvertently.

I settled on a really good smile, all the way back to my bridge. “I am so delighted to meet you,” I said. I felt as though the good will of the entire World Conference rested on my shoulders.

Her face lighted up with the most sincere look of pleasure I’ve ever seen. “I am glad to furnish you this delight,” she said, with a good deal of lisping over the dentals, because Hisereans have fore-shortened teeth. She embraced me wholeheartedly and gave me a scaly kiss on the cheek.

My first thought was that I was a success and my second thought was, Oh, God, what’ll happen when Billy gets hold of little Hi-nin? Hisereans, as I understood it, simply didn’t have this “normal aggression.” Indeed, I sometimes have trouble believing it’s really normal.

“I was thinking,” Mrs. Baden said, putting down the two-and-a-half-year-old and plucking a venturesome little girl in Human Fly Shoes from the side of the building, “that you all might enjoy having Hi-nin in your car pool.”

“Oh, we’d love to,” I said eagerly. “We’ve got five mamas and eight children already, of course, but I’m sure everyone‌—‌”

“It would trouble you!” Mrs. His-tara exclaimed. Her eye stalks retracted and tears poured down her cheeks. “I do not want to be of difficulty,” she said.

Since she had no apparent handkerchief and wore some sort of permanent-looking native dress, I tore a square out of my paper morning dress for her.

“You are too good!” she sobbed, fresh tears pouring out.

“No, no. I already tore out two for the children. I always get my skirts longer in cold weather because children are so careless about carrying‌—‌”

“Then we’ll consider the car pool settled?” Mrs. Baden asked, coming in tactfully.

“Naturally,” I said, mentally shredding my previous sentence. “We would feel so honored to have Hi-nin‌—‌”

“Do not
think
of putting yourself out. We do not have a helicopter, of course, but Hi-nin and I can so easily walk.”

I was rapidly becoming unable to think of anything at all because Gail was trying to use me for a merry-go-round and I kept switching her from hand to hand and I could hear her beginning to build up the ba-bas.

“My car pool,” I said, “would be terribly sad to think of Hi-nin walking.”

“You would?”

“
Terribly.
”

“In such a case‌—‌if it will give you pleasure for me to accept?”

“It would,” I said fervently, holding Gail under one arm as she was beginning to kick.

And on the way home all the second thoughts began.

I would be glad to have Hi-nin in the car pool. Four of the other mamas were like me, amazed that anyone was willing to put up with her child all the way to and from Playplace. I could count on them to cooperate. But Gail’s mama… I’d gone to Western State Preparation for Living with Regina Raymond, Crowley.

I landed on the Crowley home and tooted for five minutes before I remembered that Regina was at work.

“Ma-ma!” Gail began.

“Wouldn’t you like to come to Verne’s house,” I asked,. “and we can call up your mama?”

“No.” Well, I asked, didn’t I?

I was carrying Gail down the steps from my roof when I bumped unexpectedly into Clay.

“What is that!” he exclaimed, and Gail became again flying blonde hair and kicking feet.

“Regina’s child,” I said. “What are you doing home?”

“Accountant sent me back. Twenty-five and a half hours is the maximum this week. Good thing, too. I’ve got a headache.” He eyed Gail meaningfully. She was obviously not the sort of thing the doctor orders for a headache.

“I can’t help it, honey,” I said, sitting down on a step to tear another handkerchief square from my skirt. “I’m going to call Regina at work now.”

“Don’t you have a chairman to take care of things like that?”

“I am the chairman,” I said proudly.

“Why in heaven’s name did you let yourself get roped into something like that?”

“I was
selected
by Mrs. Baden!”

“Obscenity,” said Clay. It is his privilege, of course, to use this word.

The arty little store where Regina works has a telephane as well as a telephone, and in color, at that. So I could see Regina in full color, taking her own good time about switching on the sound. She switched on as a sort of afterthought and tilted her nose at me. I don’t suppose she can really tilt her nose up and down, but she always gives that impression.

“Gail has an incipient streptococcus infection,” I said. “They sent her home.”

“Ma-ma!” Gail cried.

“Why didn’t they give her a shot there? That’s what they did with my niece last year.”

I explained why not.

Regina sighed resignedly. “Verne, people can talk you into anything. There are times when you have to be firm. I work, girl. That’s why I put Gail in Playplace. I can’t leave here until twelve o’clock.”

“But what’ll I do with Gail?”

“Take her back. Or you keep her until I get home. Sorry, Verne, but you got yourself into this.”

I switched off, furious.

Then I remembered Hi-nin. I couldn’t be furious. I was going to have to get Regina’s cooperation.

I picked up Gail and went into the bedroom. “I do not dislike Regina Crowley,” I wrote with black crayola on a piece of note paper. I stuck it into a crevice of my mirror and gave Gail my bare-shoulder decorations to play with while I concentrated on thinking up reasons why I should not dislike Regina Crowley.

“I do,” Clay said, sneaking up so quietly I jumped two feet.

“So do I,” I said, gazing wearily at my note. “But I have to have her in a good mood. You see, there’s this Hiserean child and since I’m chairman of the car pool, I have to‌—‌”

“Don’t
tell me about it,” Clay said. “My advice to you is get elephantiasis of your steering foot and give the whole thing up now.” He glanced meaningfully at Gail, who couldn’t possibly be homering him. She was playing quietly on the floor, pulling the suction disks off my jewelry and sticking them on her legs.

When I finally got Gail home, she sped into her mother’s arms and I couldn’t help being a little irritated because I had been practically swinging from the ceiling dust controls to ingratiate myself, and her mama just said, “Oh, hi,” and Gail was satisfied.

“By the way,” I said, watching Regina hang up her dark blue hand-woven jacket, “you wouldn’t mind picking up an extra child tomorrow, would you?”

“Mind! Certainly I mind. I’ve got as much as I can do with my job and Gail and eight children in the heli already.”

“It’s a Hiserean child,” I said. “The mother is so lovely, Regina. She didn’t want us to go to any trouble.”

“That’s fine. Because I’m not going to go to any trouble.”

I put my fists behind my back. “Of course I understand, Regina. I think it’s remarkable that you manage to do so much. And keep up with your art things as you do. But don’t you think it would be an interesting experience to have a Hiserean child in the pool?”

Regina pulled off her hand-woven wrap-skirt and I was shocked to see she wore a real boudoir slip to work.

“Everybody to their own interesting experiences,” she said, laughing at me. This was obviously one of her triple-level remarks.

“De gustibus,” I said, to show I know a few arty things myself, “non disputandum est.”

“You have such moments, Verne! Have you ever seen a Hiserean child?”

“I saw one today.”

“Well.”

“Well?”

“De gustibus, as you said. You know the other children will eat it alive, don’t you?
Your
child will. Now Gail…”

It’s true that Gail never kicks anyone small enough to kick back. It’s also true that Billy bites.

I unclenched my fists and stretched up with a deep breath so as to relax my stomach and improve my posture.

“Hiserean children,” I pointed out, “are going to have to be adjusted to our society. As I understand it, they’re here to stay. Their sun blew up behind them and personally I think we’re lucky they happened to drift here.”

“I don’t see why it’s so lucky. I wish we’d gotten one of the ships full of scientific information. Or their top scientists. Or artists, for that matter. All
we
got were plain people. If you like to call them people.”

“They’re at least educated people with good sense. And we’ve got their ship to take apart and learn things from. And their books and, after all, some music and their gestural art I should think you artists would find that real avant garde.”

“Just hearing you say it like that is enough to kill Hiserean art.”

“Regina, I know you think I’m a prig, but that isn’t the point. And if it matters to you, I’m
not
a prig.”

“Do you wear boudoir slips?” Regina was biting a real smile.

“No, I don’t. But I’d like to.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because I put one on once and I thought I looked absolutely devastating and you know what my husband said?”

“I won’t try to guess Clay’s bon mot.”

“He said, ‘What did you put that on for?’
 
”

Regina laughed until she popped a snap on her paper house dress. “But seriously,” she said finally, “if he didn’t know, why didn’t you tell him?”

“That’s not the point. The point is I am not the boudoir-slip type. My unmentionables are unmentionable for esthetic reasons only.”

Regina laughed again. “Really, Verne, you’re not half bad when you try.”

“If you honestly think I’m not half bad, could you do it just as a favor to me? Pick up Hi-nin when you have the car pool?”

“The Hiserean child? No.”

“Please, Regina. I’d do it
for
you except that the children would notice and it would get back to Mrs. His-tara. If there’s anything I could do for you in return‌—‌”