“Are you feeling elation?” demanded Bao in an arrogantly angry tone. “Are you liking to go so far for doing Questioner knows what?”
At this interruption of her hard-won calm, she felt a flare of fury, as though she had received an injection of some energizing drug.
“Don’t speak to me as though addressing a nus. I am not a nus. I have useful skills. Though I am a quota-clone, I retain my rights of reproduction and am as honorable as yourself. I, too, have disappointments. This rotation I was to dance in one of the Morris ballets of the late twentieth century. Your arrogance is not acceptable. You will treat me with courtesy, or I shall report you for status harassment!”
“Oh, gracious,” cried the door. “Let us not speak of reportings. Feelings are strained. Emotions are liberated in unattractive ways. This is understood. Being nominated is stressful. Suddenness is resented by all organisms. Please. Sit down and let yourselves be comforted.”
Again hysteria threatened to erupt. Ellin’s jaw clenched tight as she sank back into the chair. One did not achieve pleasantness by greeting incivility with incivility. She knew that as well as she knew … anything.
A six-legged server came scuttling across the floor, eager to be of help. “Something to drink?” it whispered in a husky little voice. “A massage of feet? Of neck? Some food? Milky nutriment often soothes. Nordic types are lacto-tolerant. Please?”
“Tea,” she said in her Charlotte Perkins voice. “Hot tea. In a real cup. With lemon flavor and sweetness. And a cookie.” Long ago, the infant Ellin had been comforted with cookies by Mama One. She had not had a cookie for many years.
The server scuttled off.
“Apologies,” Bao said wearily. “I am being frangled.” He sighed and sank into the chair across from her, looking around himself at the luxurious setting. There were real carpets. There were real fabrics at the sides of the view screens. The chairs were large and cushiony. The small table at his side had the appearance of real wood, though that was, of course, unlikely. Still, going to the trouble to make it look like that was an indication of … something. “They are believing us to be important,” he said.
“They want us to believe they think we’re important,” she snarled, unwilling to forgive him. “Sending us off for years and years, disrupting our lives! All this is like offering a child candy if he will be good.” She had seen a good deal of that in Perkins Store, where so-called penny candies were provided for children as souvenirs of Old Earth.
He nodded, his eyes fixed on her face as though he had just noticed her. “There is being high probability we must be good regardless, so candy is being offered for making us more happy about inevitables. A bonus, perhaps?”
“Bribe, not bonus!” She snorted. Newholme. She had no idea where Newholme was. They spoke together:
“Are you knowing where … “
“I have no idea where … “
He laughed. After a moment, unable to help herself, she smiled waveringly.
He made an expansive, almost girlish gesture. “We are being angry at situation, not at one another. Maybe we are being angry with Questioner, but Questioner is not knowing and is not caring, so we waste anger on nothing. It is clear we are being together for some time. Let us be easy together.”
“Is the Questioner a she?”
“So I am understanding. Of a sort.”
The server brought the tea and several cookies, real cookies that smelled of vanilla and lemon. Ellin smiled at this and allowed herself to be soothed. Gandro Bao was right, of course. There was no point getting frangled with one another.
“Do you have family?” she asked.
“I was natural born,” he said. “I have mother, father, one sister.”
“Do you look anything like your sister?” Ellin asked curiously. Full siblings were rare except for clones. The genetic agencies usually required donor insemination for second births, to keep the gene pool as widely spread as possible within types.
He nodded, raising a hand to the server, which came buzzing over, stopping at his elbow. “I am desiring a ham sandwich,” he said. “With mustard and a pickle.”