Their shipwork job that morning was to help rig netting in the nurseries. When the ship reached its orbit around the planet called “Earth” it would turn off its motors. Then everything in it would immediately lose weight. At that time the nets the cohort was putting up would be essential, so the newborn Hakh’hli infants, happily springing about the nursery, would not bash their infant brains out against the unforgiving walls.
“Up top, Sandy,” Demetrius commanded when they had looked over the situation. “You’re the lightest.”
“You’ve given me the hardest part,” Sandy complained. Whoever was on the upper part of the walls would have to hang on with one or more limbs and, with whatever limbs were left over, catch the heavy balls of elastic fiber as they were tossed up to him.
“Serves you right,” Helen croaked malignly. “It’s about time you did some real work.” And then, because she was the next smallest to Sandy, though the margin was wide, she was sent to clamber up the far wall to catch his return throws.
So as not to waste the time the cohort organized one of their informal games—they just called this one “Questions”—and tossed hard ones back and forth. It was Helen’s idea, so she got to choose the category. “Middle names,” she decreed.
“Of American presidents?” Bottom ventured. He was always the most diffident one. He was the fattest and shortest, too. Everyone laughed at the clumsy way he hopped about, but when he made a suggestion, if anyone listened at all, they generally found it was a good one.
“That’s okay,” Sandy said eagerly, adjusting his hearing aid to make sure he didn’t miss anything. “Let me start. How about Herbert Hoover?”
“Clark,” Demmy said at once. “His middle name was Clark. Herbert Clark Hoover, 1929-1933. He was president during the stock market crash, 1929, which led to the Great Depression, apple sellers, breadlines, unemployment, miniature golf—”
Polly hurled the ball of cord at him. “Just say the name,” she snapped. “Go again.”
Demmy giggled as he caught the cord, his eyes weeping with pleased vanity. He tossed it to Sandy, who listened as he fastened a loop of it to the wall studs. “All right. How about Richard Nixon?”
“Milhous!” Polly cried at once, already ready with her next stumper. “Calvin Coolidge.” She licked her little tongue in and out in satisfaction, confident she had stumped them. But Bottom fooled her.
“It was Calvin!” he said triumphantly. “Calvin was his middle name; his first name was—was—”
“Was what?” Polly demanded. “You didn’t answer the question.”
“Yes, I did,” he bellowed.
“You didn’t!”
“You silly slabsided sapsucker,” Bottom hissed at her, vain of his Earth slang and the way he pronounced his s’s. “I did, too!”
“Not really, no. I said his name was Calvin. You have to say what his other name was, or else you’ve lost and I go again and—oof!” she gasped as Bottom leaped at her, butting his triangular head right into her belly.
That put a stop to rigging nets for a while. Helen leaped down to join the fray, but Sandy stayed where he was on the wall. These free-for-alls weren’t particularly dangerous for his friends. The young Hakh’hli weighed twice as much as he, and they were pretty evenly matched with each other. Sandy was a different case. He had neither the mass nor the elephant-hide skin to take that kind of brawling lightly. Nor did he have the muscle, for that matter. Any one of the Hakh’hli youths could have wrenched his limbs off as easily as a lover plucking petals off a daisy; and there had been times when they were all much younger when some had come close.
It wasn’t that Lysander Washington was a weakling. Nobody on Earth would have called him that, but the Hakh’hli were something else. They knew it. Even when one of them was mad at him, they didn’t let it get to the stage of physical violence. For one thing, they knew what would happen to all of them if anything bad happened to the one human member of their cohort. For another, they were not ungrateful to him. They were in his debt. They knew very well that if it hadn’t been for the fact that this Earth human, Lysander Washington, had needed some kind of companions to grow up with—not human companions, of course, because there weren’t any of those on the ship, but as close to human as a Hakh’hli could manage—all of them would very likely still be unhatched eggs, frozen in the ship’s vast cryogenic nursery.
While the others were roughhousing, Sandy slipped down from the wall and tucked himself into a corner, behind a squatting bench. He was protected from the combat by the rows of empty infants’ nests—none of the baby Hakh’hli who would occupy them were out of the incubators yet. Comfortable and glad to be off the perch on the wall, Sandy pulled a pad and stylus out of his pocket. He tucked his head down in case of flying objects and began writing a poem.
Writing poetry was not an unusual activity among the Hakh’hli—of course, not counting the nonintellectual oafs who were bred to perform heavy labor outside the ship, or for working in the poisonously radioactive conditions around its motors. All the six others in Sandy’s cohort did it often. It was a way of showing off. Sandy had already written his share of poems, but, like all the others the members of the cohort produced, his had been in the Hakh’hli language, which was written in ideographs rather than letters. In Hakh’hli usage the artistically designed appearance of the poem on paper meant as much as the sense of the words. Sandy’s intention was to do something that none of the others had done: to write a Hakh’hli-type poem, but in English.
He had roughed it out and was settling in to rearrange the individual words into their most artistic patterns when an adult voice cried from the doorway, in Hakh’hli, “O wicked! O persons-who-do-not-contribute-their-share! You are playing and not doing your work. Desist! Return to order! It is commanded!”
Sandy recognized the voice. MyThara was back, belching faintly in anger as she rose to the full height of her legs to tower over them. She switched to English to reprimand them, lisping and getting the words wrong in her exasperation: “What ith matter you? Why you act like hoo’hik? Infantth to be born mutht have thafety plathe!”
Snorting in embarrassment, the cohort froze where it was. They had indeed made a mess. Half the webbing that was already in place had been torn away, and now it sagged in useless strands across the baby nests. “Sorry, MyThara,” Demmy gasped abjectly. “Bottom started it. He jumped on—”
“Not care Bottom! Care people mine act badly and not well! Now, clear up meth and do job right in great hurry!”
Back in the cohort’s quarters when the three twelfth-days of shipwork were over, MyThara commandeered Sandy for a clothes fitting. He was getting really hungry—they all were—but MyThara was MyThara. For most of his life Sandy had thought MyThara was the wisest person in his little world, as well as the best. He still thought so, and out of a vagrant impulse he asked her a question that had often bothered him. “MyTharatok? Are you ever going to be a Senior?”
She was shocked. “Lythander! What an idea! I wathn’t born to be a Thenior, wath I?”
“Weren’t you?”
“No, I wathn’t. You thee, before the eggth hatch the thientithtth fiddle them a little. That’th how your cohort can pronounth all thothe terrible eththeth and everything—”
“I know that. Who doesn’t know that?” Sandy demanded.
“Well, and I jutht wathnn’t given the traitth to be a Thenior. Withdom, and intelligenth—”
“You have plenty of wisdom and intelligence!” Sandy said loyally.
“For me I do,” she said, touched. “You’re a good boy. But I don’t have the genetic equipment to be a Thenior, do I? And that ith the way it ought to be. I’m happy. I’m doing valuable work. That ith what true happineth ith, Thandy, doing the work you’re meant to do and doing it ath well ath you pothibly can.”
“What kind of valuable work?”
“What do you mean, Lythander?”
“You said you were doing valuable work. I thought you were just taking care of me.”
“Well, and ithn’t that valuable? You’re valuable, Thandy. You’re the only one like you on the whole ship, and that makth you very thpecial. Now let uth get on with your wardrobe, all right?” She leaned past him to put all four of her thumbs on the grips of the display control. The screen rapidly commenced flashing shots of human males in various costumes.
Deciding what Lysander should wear on his mission to Earth wasn’t easy, because human beings seemed to change their dress habits with time. Worse, the Earth television stations had the confusing habit of transmitting historical films, and, even worse, some of the films were golden oldies without any discernible clue to when they had been made. Togas, the Hakh’hli were sure, were out. So were plumed hats and swords. Business suits seemed safe enough, but—well, what kind? Single-breasted or double? Wide or narrow lapels? A tie? A stiff collar? Cuffs on the pants? A vest? And, if so, a vest that tamely matched the jacket, or one in red or yellow or plaid?