He hardly heard Muzorawa telling him, 'Now you are to go to the personnel office, where you will receive your work assignment.'
'What assignment could they possibly have for an astrophysicist?' Grant complained.
Muzorawa grinned at him. 'I'm sure Dr Wo has something in mind for you.'
That sounded ominous to Grant.
The personnel office was little more than a closet-sized compartment in the station's executive area. It was only a few doors from the director's more spacious and imposing office.
To his surprise, when he slid open the door marked PERSONNEL, Egon Karlstad was sitting behind the tiny metal desk.
'You're the personnel officer?' Grant blurted out.
'This week,' Karlstad replied smoothly. 'I told you that Wo likes to rotate us through the administrative jobs.'
'No, you said—'
'It lets him keep the bean-counters down to a minimum, so he can bring more scooters out here,' Karlstad continued. 'Of course, that means we scooters have to pull double duty all the time, but that doesn't bother our peerless leader. Not at all.'
Karlstad seemed too large for the desk. His knees poked up and it looked as if he could touch the opposite walls of the compartment merely by stretching out his arms. The desk itself was scuffed and battered from long use; someone had even kicked a dent into its side.
'Have a seat,' Karlstad said.
Grant took the only other chair: it was molded plastic, solid yet comfortably yielding.
'Okay,' Karlstad said, turning to the screen built into the desktop. 'Archer, Grant A.'
Grant could see the glow from the screen reflected on Karlstad's pale features. It made him look even more ethereal than usual.
Without looking up from the screen, Karlstad said, 'Grant Armstrong Archer the Third, eh? Illustrious family, I imagine.'
'Hardly,' Grant replied, feeling a bit annoyed.
'First in your class at Harvard?' Karlstad whistled. 'No wonder Wo wanted you here.'
'I don't think he picked me personally,' Grant said.
'Don't be so sure, Grant A. the Third. Zeb might be right; our wily Dr Wo can stretch out his tentacles and—Hey! You're married?'
He's got my complete file there, Grant realized. My whole life is on that screen.
Karlstad turned his pallid, watery eyes to Grant. 'Did you think being married would get you out of Public Service?'
'Of course not!' Grant snapped. 'I love my wife!'
'Really?'
'Besides, Public Service isn't something to be avoided. It's a responsibility. A privilege that goes with adulthood and citizenship, like voting.'
'Really?' Karlstad repeated, dripping acid.
'Aren't you doing your Public Service?' Grant demanded.
Karlstad made a derisive snort. 'I'm serving out a prison sentence,' he said.
'I mean really—'
'It's the truth,' Karlstad insisted. 'Ask anybody. I'm serving my time here instead of languishing in jail. The Powers That Be decided they'd spent too much money on my education to have me rot in prison for five years.'
'Five years!' Grant was shocked. 'What did you do?'
'I helped a young married couple to obtain fertility treatments. They had been denied treatment by the government. Population restrictions, you know. I was in the biology department at the University of Copenhagen and I knew a lot of the physicians at the research hospital. So they came to me and begged me to help them.'
'But it was illegal?'
'According to the laws of the European Union, which take precedence over the laws of Denmark.'
'And the authorities found out about it?'
Karlstad's face twitched into a bitter scowl. 'The two little bastards worked for the Holy Disciples - our version of your New Morality.'
'It was a sting,' Grant realized.
'I was stung, all right. Sentenced to five years. When they offered me a post here, doing research instead of jail, I leaped at it.'
'I guess so.'
Karlstad huffed. 'One should always look before one leaps.'
Grant nodded sympathetically. 'Even so… this is better than jail, isn't it?'
'Marginally,' Karlstad conceded.
'I never realized…' Grant let the idea go unexpressed.
'Realized what?'
'Oh… that the New Morality, or whatever you call it in Europe, I never realized they would entrap people and sentence them to jail.'
'They don't like scientists,' Karlstad said, his voice becoming as sharp as steel. 'They're afraid of new ideas, new discoveries.'
'They're trying to maintain social balance,' Grant argued. 'There's more than ten billion people on Earth now. We've got to have stability! We've got to control population growth. Otherwise we won't be able to feed all those people, or educate them.'
'Educate them?' Karlstad's thin eyebrows rose. 'They're not being educated. They're being trained to obey.'
'I…' Grant saw the pain in the man's pale eyes and clamped his mouth shut. No sense arguing with him about this. One of the first lessons his father had taught him was never to argue over religion. Or politics. And this was both.
Karlstad apparently felt the same way. He forced a smile and said, 'So now you know my life story and I know yours.'
Grant conceded the point with a nod.
'Let's get on with it.'
'Okay.'
Turning back to the desktop screen, Karlstad called out, 'Computer, display work assignment for Archer, Grant A.'
Immediately the synthesized voice responded, 'Grant A.
Archer is assigned as assistant laboratory technician for the biology department.'
Grant jumped out of his chair. 'Biology department? That can't be right! I'm not a biologist!'
Karlstad waved him gently back into his seat. 'The details are on my screen, Grant. The assignment is correct.'
'But I'm not a biologist,' Grant repeated.
'I'm afraid that's got nothing to do with it. The operative term is "assistant laboratory technician." It doesn't matter which lab you're assigned to; they just need a warm body to do the scutwork.'
'But—'
'You're a grad student, brightboy. Slave labor. Cheaper than a robot and a lot easier to train.'
'But I don't know anything about biology.'
'You don't have to. You can push a broom and clean a fish tank; that's what you're needed for.'
'I'm an astrophysicist!'
Karlstad shook his head sadly. 'Look, Grant, maybe someday you'll be an astrophysicist. But right now you're just a graduate student. Slave labor, just like the rest of us.'
'But how can I work toward my degree cleaning fish tanks?'
With a wry grin, Karlstad replied, 'Why do you think nobody's developed real robots? You know, a real mechanical man with a computer for a brain?'
'Too expensive?'
'That's right. Too expensive — when compared to human labor. Grad students are cheap labor, Grant. I've always thought that if anybody does invent a practical robot, it'll be a grad student who does it. They're the only ones with the real motivation for it.'
'The biology department,' Grant groaned.
'Cheer up,' said Karlstad. 'Biology department includes the aquarium. You'll get to work with Laynie. Maybe she'll show you how to do it like dolphins.'
Grant stumbled back to his quarters, stunned and hurt and angry. Assistant lab technician, he grumbled to himself. Slave labor. I might as well be in jail. This is ruining my life.
He tried praying in the privacy of his quarters, but it was like speaking to a statue, cold, unhearing, unmoved. He remembered that when he'd been a child, back home, he could always bring his tearful problems to his father. It wasn't so much that Dad was a minister of the Lord; he was a wise and gentle father who loved his son and always tried to make things right for him. Later, in school, Grant found that even the most pious spiritual advisor didn't have the warmth and understanding of his father. How could they?
Yet, alone and miserable on this research station half a billion kilometers from home - so distant that he couldn't really talk with his father or wife or anyone else who loved him - Grant sought counsel.
Research Station
Gold
had a chapel, Grant knew from his studies of the station's schematics. A chapel meant there must be a chaplain. Sure enough, Grant found a half dozen names in the phone computer's listing for chaplains. To his surprise, Zareb Muzorawa was one of them, listed under Islam.
There were three Protestant ministers listed: a Baptist, a Presbyterian, and a Methodist. He tried the Methodist first, but was told that Rev. Stanton was on a tour of duty on Europa.
In Grant's phone screen the Presbyterian minister, Rev. Arnold Caldwell, looked like a jolly, red-cheeked character from a Dickens novel. Grant's heart sank; Caldwell did not appear to be the kind of strong spiritual guide he needed. But he was available.
'I'll be finished my shift here in the life support center in less than thirty minutes,' he said cheerfully. 'Why don't you meet me in the chapel a few minutes after the hour.'
Grant agreed, fidgeted in his room for half an hour, then walked briskly to the chapel.
It was an austere compartment, about the size of three sets of living quarters put together. A bare altar stood on a two-step-high platform. There were no decorations of any kind on the walls, not even a crucifix. Two files of empty benches could hold perhaps fifty people, at most, Grant thought.
'Ah, there you are.'
Grant turned to see Rev. Caldwell striding up the central aisle toward him. Round in face and portly in stature, his shoulder-length hair was graying, but his eyes were bright sapphire blue and his ruddy lips were curled into a smile. He looked like a clean-shaven Santa Glaus, wearing a technician's olive green coveralls.
'Reverend Caldwell?' Grant asked, knowing it was an inane question.
'Yes,' said Caldwell. 'And you must be the young man who phoned me a bit ago.'
'Grant Archer.'
As they shook hands, Grant said, 'You're on the technical staff?'
Caldwell bobbed his head up and down enthusiastically. 'Yes indeed. Station policy. There's no room here for full-time clergy, so we all have to work at some secular job and do our ministering on our own time.'
'I see,' said Grant, thinking that explained Zeb's listing as the Moslem minister.
'I'm with the life support group, actually. Rather a neat combination, don't you think? By day I worry about people's bodies, by night I care for their souls.'
He laughed at his own joke. Grant forced a smile.
Still chuckling, Caldwell murmured, 'It seems rather cold in here, doesn't it.' Before Grant could answer Caldwell skipped up the dais to the altar and clicked open a small door built into its side.
The chapel suddenly bloomed into a mini-cathedral, with stained glass -windows lining the walls, a crucifixion scene from the high Renaissance behind the altar, and rows of candles burning. Grant even thought he smelled incense.
'Oh dear, wrong key,' Caldwell muttered. 'That's the Catholic scheme.'
He tried again and the elaborate decorations faded, replaced by slim windows along the side walls streaming sunlight and a gorgeous rosette of deep blues and reds on the rear wall above the entry.
'Ah, that's better.'
'Holograms,' Grant realized. 'They're holograms.' 'Yes, of course,' said Caldwell. 'Many faiths share this chamber, and no two of them agree on the proper kind of interior decoration. The Moslems allow no icons whatsoever, while the Buddhists want to see their revered one. And so on.'
Grant nodded his understanding. Caldwell gestured to the first row of benches and they sat side by side. Fearing that a worshipper might come in and interrupt him, Grant spilled out his story as quickly as he could, leaving out only the fact that the New Morality wanted him to spy on Dr Wo. Rev. Caldwell listened sympathetically, nodding, his trace of a smile ebbing slowly.
At last Grant finished with, 'They're taking four years of my life. Four years away from home, away from my wife. At least I thought I could accomplish something, earn my doctorate, but now…' He ran out of-words.
'I see,' said Caldwell. 'I understand.'
'What can I do?' Grant asked.
Caldwell was silent for several moments. He seemed lost in thought. His smile had faded away completely.
He heaved a mighty sigh, then said, 'My son, the Lord chooses our paths for us. He has obviously sent you here for a reason.'
'But—'
'Neither you nor I can see the Lord's purpose in all of this, but I assure you He has a design for you.'
'To be an assistant lab technician?'
'Whatever it is, you must accept it with all humility. We are all in God's hands.'
'But my life is being ruined!'
'It may seem that way to you, but who can fathom the purposes of the Lord?'
'You're telling me I should accept this assignment and let it go at that? I should be content to be a virtual slave?'
'You should pray for guidance, my son. And accept what cannot be altered.'
Grant shot to his feet. 'That's no help at all, Reverend.'
I'm sorry, my son,' Caldwell said, pushing his rotund bulk up from the bench. 'It's the best advice I can offer you.'
It took an effort to bite back the angry reply that Grant wanted to make. He held his breath for a moment, then said between gritted teeth, 'Well… thanks for your time, Reverend.'
Caldwell nodded, and his little smile returned. 'Come to service on Sunday. We have the ten o'clock hour. You'll meet others of the faithful.'
'Yes,' Grant temporized. 'Of course.'
'Perhaps if you meet others of your own age it will help you to adjust to your new life.'
'Perhaps,' Grant said.
He shook hands with the minister and turned to walk up the aisle and out of the chapel, thinking, The Lord helps those who help themselves. But what can I do to help myself? What can I do when Dr Wo is against me?
For weeks Grant toiled away in menial drudgery, cleaning glassware in the bio labs, looking up references for the biologists, running their tedious and often incomprehensible reports through computer spellcheck and editing programs, and even scrubbing out the fish tanks in the station's extensive aquarium.