Jan Darzek had entrusted her with the mission of notifying the gesardl of the death of one of its members and of requesting cooperation and assistance in a planned multigalactic sweep to insure that the Udef, if not deceased or disintegrated, at least was not lingering in the vicinity.
Maia and Brian greeted her overwhelmingly when she stepped off the shuttle rocket. A beaming Miss Schlupe stood looking on. The gesardl's delegation, on hand to accord Malina the status she was deemed entitled to, hovered sedately in the background. Malina took her greetings and honors in stride, controlled her pride in her offspring - both children seemed taller and more mature than when she'd left them - and plunged at once into the necessary conferences. The gesardl, too, had changed. There was no klo member, and Malina sadly missed having a politely hovering Arluklo waiting for instructions. Miss Schlupe served as her interpreter, and together they conveyed Gul Darr's reports and his request for assistance. The conferences were tedious and seemed interminable, but eventually they secured the gesardl's pledge of full cooperation.
In celebration, Malina took Brian and Maia for a romp in the park. Miss Schlupe had been taking them there daily, and they had made a tradition of their ceremonial presentation of gifts - to any natives they encountered. The children enjoyed this thoroughly, and Miss Schlupe suspected that the natives had appointed a special committee to receive gifts from the Darr children; they never failed to find at least one native in the park.
Much later, after the children had been put to bed, Malina settled down for a long talk with Miss Schlupe.
"As I understand it," Miss Schlupe said finally, "the kloatraz was sending out signals that started the Udef on a rampage, wrecking world after world because it wanted a mate and couldn't find one. And the Udef was sending out signals that made the kloatraz break out in boils. If that's sexual maturity, they can have it. I suppose they would have gone right on sending signals until they got together, even if they had to wreck a dozen galaxies to do it. Poets keep saying that love is grand, but you'll notice it isn't the poets that have to sweep things up afterward. Well - Mr. Darzek will see that it doesn't happen again."
Malina smiled. "I'm sure he will. What are you going to do now?" "I'm thinking maybe I'll stay here," Miss Schlupe said brightly.
"I've got this nice business, and I'd hate to walk off and leave it. And that store I had in Brooklyn was a drag from the day one. So I think I'll stay. I've got this idea for building up a franchise system. Some of the traders think my submarines and cider would do well on their worlds, so we're working out the details. If the thing's a success, I might expand to pizza and hamburgers."
"No fried chicken or tacos?" Malina asked, heroically keeping her face straight.
"Maybe tacos. But fried chicken requires chickens. I've thought about it, and I've done some experimenting, and all the substitutes come out fried-something-else. And where could I get enough chickens to feed a couple of galaxies? On the other hand, hamburger can be made out of anything."
"Just like on Earth," Malina suggested.
"Exactly like on Earth. Except that each franchise would develop its own special kind of hamburger out of the meat available locally, so my hamburgers would have a distinctively different taste everywhere you went - unlike those chains on Earth where the food's the same everywhere only more so. A Schlupe hamburger would be a gourmet surprise no matter what world you bought it on. Are you really going back?"
"My medical practice on Montura didn't flourish the way your refreshment stand did. There's nothing to keep me here."
"I thought maybe you and Mr. Darzek - you made a handsome couple, you know. Didn't you like him?"
"He's very attractive, especially when he's joking. Otherwise he's a bit overwhelmingly serious. I'm afraid he's not the kind of person I'd want to be a couple with. I've had a husband 1 loved, and who loved me, and I know what that means. I'm sure Mr. Darzek is warm and considerate, but every now and then he goes completely blank on you, as though he's put up a barrier in his mind to keep you from interrupting while he solves the problems of the universe, and that wouldn't be tolerable if you were a couple. Besides, I'd always be suspicious that he considered me one of the problems."
Miss Schlupe sighed. "Maybe the poets should be doing a better selling job."
"Look at the bright side," Malina said. "Here's one case that won't require any sweeping up." She added thoughtfully, "He does have a very nice laugh, though. It's too bad he's so overwhelmingly serious."
ROK WLLON
Because he sat alone in the official residence of the Eighth Councilor, there was no witness to his discomfiture, but this did not prevent his squirming with embarrassment.
He had indited the report with his usual diligence, but Supreme was having difficulty in understanding how a massive, rocklike life form was able to mate with an invisible force. Rok Wllon had not been able to explain the process even to his own satisfaction - he found it totally incomprehensible - but it was his solemn duty to attempt to elucidate whenever and whatever Supreme asked. So he had made the attempt.
And Supreme kept asking for more details, which were unavailable, and for further explanation, which Rok Wllon was unable to provide.
Grimly he began again, for the fifth time, to indite a description of the mating of the kloatraz with the Udef.
SUPREME
In its data storage banks were detailed descriptions of the reproductive processes of every known life form in its galaxy and of many life forms in the adjoining galaxies, but the process referred to by the Eighth Councilor differed in so many significant aspects that Supreme found it unclassifiable and therefore suspect. It digested the Eighth Councilor's latest attempt and again processed it through data storage.
And again it asked for more details and further explanation.
JAN DARZEK
He remembered Malina Darr's laughter long after he placed her on a ship for Montura. He could not recall the last time he had heard anything so joyously carefree. He had been entrapped in a nightmare of death. Everything he touched, every world he looked at, died.
Now he was awake. There was no sign of the Udef anywhere.
There was, there always would be, death, but it no longer surrounded and stifled him.
He even was able to joke with URSGworl about an error in a fleet maneuver plan. In large-talk script, a 9 was very similar to a 3 when written carelessly, and URSGworl had produced a carelessly written plan guaranteed to temporarily lose sixty ships.
"We would think the Udef now was devouring ships as well as crews," Darzek remarked, making the correction. "If the error wasn't discovered quickly, I'd be recalling Doctor Darr and preparing to start the investigation over again. Only this time it would be spots before your eyes she'd have to treat instead of spots on a kloatraz."
URSGworl thought it discreet to change the subject. "When does Doctor Darr return?"
"She doesn't," Darzek said. "She only came here as the kloatraz's doctor, and, as we now know, it didn't need one. Her assignment was on Montura, but she wasn't needed there either. She'll stop there briefly, to pick up her children, and then she'll go home to Earth."
URSGworl screwed up his unhandsome face perplexedly. "Among your kind, is she not thought attractive?"
"Highly attractive," Darzek agreed. "Especially when she laughs. Otherwise, she tends to be a bit on the serious side."
"We thought she had come as your mate. Seriousness is a defect?" Darzek grinned at him. "It depends on what one is serious about”.
Doctor Darr has children and a career, and she's extremely serious about both, which is proper. But I'm afraid she'd be equally serious about a mate, and I've already got too many people taking me seriously. "
URSGworl reflected. "Perhaps she is serious about the wrong things. I remember she was more concerned about spots on the kloatraz than about the worlds the Udef had destroyed."
"Well - they were her spots. She was medically responsible for doin
g something about them, and the worlds were my responsibility. Seriousness is all right in its place, but I don't think I'd want a mate looking at me the way she studied those spots." He added thoughtfully, "She does have a very nice laugh, though."
URSGworl departed with his corrected maneuver plan. Darzek turned to the pile of unfinished business on his desk. There was Udef research to continue, a seedling kloatraz to nourish and study, and the incredibly complex question of what should be done about, or for, or to the devastated worlds that littered more than half the Lesser Galaxy. So much knowledge to be gleaned; so much beauty to be preserved.
For the first time in a couple of years he had been sleeping well; and now that he was fully awake, there was work to do.
[Jan Darzek 03] - This Darkening Universe Page 27
