Calvin Gray, Junior Extrapolator, stood nude before his bathroom mirror and played a no-beard light over his chin and thin cheeks. That should take care of the beard problem for the next six months or so. He leaned forward and examined the fine lines beginning to appear at the corners of his eyes. Well, that was one of the signs he'd reached the thirty mark. One couldn't stay forever at the peak of youth--not yet, anyway. Perhaps he should think about that sometime.
Trouble was, there was always something more urgent....
He became conscious that Linda was standing in the bathroom door watching him. He hadn't heard her get out of bed.
"You used the no-beard just last month, Cal," she said. There was a questioning note in her voice.
"Want to keep handsome," he said lightly. "Never know when I might have to run out to some other world. Wouldn't want one of my other wives to catch me with stubble on my face."
It was a stale joke, a childish one, but it served to introduce the topic foremost in his mind.
"This Eden problem. I can't plan on it, but I hope it's my solo to qualify me for my big E. I'm due, you know."
Linda chose to avoid coming directly to grips with it.
"Yehudi is already at the door," she said, and made a face of exasperation. "Someday I'm going to turn off the gadget that signals the orderly room the minute you get out of bed, so I can have you all to myself."
"It's better if you get used to him," Cal cautioned. "Turn off the signal and that turns on an alarm. Instead of one Yehudi, you'd have twenty rushing in to see what was wrong."
"Well, it seems to me a grown man ought to be able to take his morning shower without an observer standing by to see that he doesn't drown himself or swallow the soap," she commented with a touch of acid.
"Get used to it, woman," he commanded. "There's only one observer now. When--if I get my Senior rating, there'll be three."
She didn't say anything. Instead she stepped over to him, pressed her nude body against his, and tenderly nuzzled his arm.
"Maybe if we go back to bed, he'll go away," she said, and glittered her eyes at him wickedly.
"He won't, but it's a good idea," Cal grinned at her.
"You could tell him to go away," she whispered with a little pout.
She was fighting. She was fighting with the only weapon she had to hold him, to keep him from going away, to face an unknown. He knew it, and the bitterness in her eyes, back of her teasing, showed she knew he knew it.
He took her tenderly in his arms, held her close to him, stroked her hair, kissed her mouth. She pulled her face away, buried it in his chest. He felt her sobbing.
He picked her up, lightly, carried her back into the bedroom, laid her gently on the bed, and, oblivious to the attendant who stood expressionless inside the door, knelt down beside the bed and held her head in his arms.
"Don't fight it," he said softly. "It isn't the first time a man has had to go."
"It's the first time it ever happened to me," she sobbed.
"You knew when you married me.... You agreed...."
"It was easy to agree, then. There was the glamor of being known as the wife of an E. Now that doesn't matter. There's just you, and the thought of losing you, never seeing you again."
"I haven't gone yet," he reminded her. "I don't know that I'll get the job. There are three Seniors at base right now. One of them might want it. Even if I do get the problem, who says I won't be back? You take old McGinnis. He's eighty if he's a day. He's been an E for nigh on to fifty years. He's still around, you'll notice."
She was quieter now. She lay, looking at him, drinking in his dark hair, blue eyes, handsome face, the shape of his intelligent head, the slope of his neck and shoulders, the tapering waist, all the masculine grace and beauty. She pressed her closed fist into her mouth. All the beauty she might never see again, feel enfolded around her, enfold with herself.
"I'm a little fool," she said through clenched teeth. "Of course you'll be back. And you'd better make it quick, or I'll come after you."
He kissed her, rumpled her short hair, straightened her crumpled body on the bed, pulled the sheet over her.
"Why don't you go back to sleep," he suggested. "Rest. I'll have breakfast in the E club room. That's where we'll be watching the Eden briefing. Sleep. Sleep all morning."
Gently he closed her eyes with the tip of his forefinger. Gently he kissed her once more. This time she didn't cling to him, try to hold him.
He tucked the sheet in around her throat. Dutifully, she kept her eyes closed. He stood up then, and signaled the orderly.
"I'll take my shower now," he said.
The orderly didn't speak, just followed him into the bathroom to stand in the doorway and watch him through the shower glass. He was rigidly obeying the cardinal rule of E.H.Q.
Unless his life is in danger, never interrupt the thinking of an E. The whole course of man's destiny in the universe may depend on it.
How much of the future of the universe depended upon his not interrupting the scene he had just witnessed wasn't for him to say. He sighed. He thought of his own wife--shrewish, fat, coarse, always complaining. He wondered what she would do if he picked her up, carried her to bed, closed her eyes with his fingers. For once, he'd bet, she'd be speechless.
He must try it sometime. But first, she'd have to lose about fifty pounds.
When Cal got to the E club room two Seniors were already there--McGinnis and Wong. He thought their greeting was a shade more cordial, a shade more interested than usual. They seemed, this time, to be looking at him as if he were a person, not merely a Junior E. When he turned away from them to greet the three Juniors, who, along with himself, ranked the club-room privileges, he became certain of his impressions. Their faces were frankly envious.
Eden was to be his problem!
He'd hoped for it. Even half expected it. Yet all the way through his shower, dressing, coming down the elevator from his apartment, he'd been nagged with the fear he might not be considered; that the grief of Linda and her rise above it would lead only to anticlimax. By the time he'd got to the club-room door, followed by his orderly, he had already conditioned himself to disappointment.
Now he subdued his elation while he told his orderly what he wanted for breakfast.
"You fellows join me in something?" he asked both Juniors and Seniors.
"A second cup of coffee," Wong agreed.
"A second bourbon," old McGinnis said drily.
The Juniors shook their heads negatively. Yesterday they had been his constant companions, only a few degrees below him in accomplishment, pushing rapidly to become his equal competitors for the next solo. Today, this morning, there was already a gap between them and him, a chasm they would make no move to bridge until they had earned the right. They seated themselves at another table, apart.
"Of course we haven't asked you if you want this Eden problem," McGinnis commented while orderlies placed food and drink in front of them. "We ought to ask him, hadn't we, Wong?"
"First I should ask if either of you want it?" Cal said quickly. "Or perhaps Malinkoff, if he shows up."
"Malinkoff is too deep in something to come to the briefing," Wong said.
"Wong and I came only to help on your first solo, if we can," McGinnis said. "Always think a young fellow needs a little send-off. I remember, about fifty years ago, more or less ..."
"Worst thing to guard against," Wong interrupted, "is disappointment. This whole thing might add up to nothing. Might not turn out to be a genuine solo at all, just something any errand boy could do. In that case it wouldn't qualify you. You know that."
"Sure," Cal said. Naturally the problem would have to give real challenge. You didn't just go out and knock a home run to become an E. You tackled something outside the normal frame of reference, something that required original thinking, the E kind of thinking. You brought it off successfully. A given number of Seniors reviewed what you'd done. If they thought it was worth something, you got your big E. If they didn't, you tried again. And you didn't get it by default, just because somebody thought there should be a given quota of Seniors on the list.
"Little or big," he added, "I'd like the problem."
They said no more. He knew the score. He'd had twelve years of the most intensive training the E's themselves could devise. He knew that sometimes a Junior spent another ten or twelve years chasing down jobs which anybody on the spot could have solved if they'd used their heads a little before they ran on to something that challenged that training. He'd be lucky if this was big enough--but not too big.
