Then she got the job she wanted. A position came open in the utilities section. It was Murra’s kind of work-checking employment records for the people who did the physical work of keeping the solar-power plants running at maximum efficiency. She stayed away from the actual physical labor, of course. That kind of work was at least dirty, since you couldn’t stay neat when you were digging down to a leaking pipe in the underground clay beds that stored the summer’s heat to feed back to the city all winter long. Some of it was actively dangerous-maintaining the high-pressure storage tanks where the hydrogen fuel was kept after being electrolyzed out of glacier meltwater by the solar energy; there weren’t many accidents with the hydrogen, but when there was one people generally died. And all of it was hard-or at least, all of it but Murra’s own part, which was spent in the air-conditioned accounting office, with a pot of tea always beside her, safely away from the nastiness of the actual digging and repairing.
She even had a little vid screen of her own on her desk, and when Blundy gave his speech she naturally stopped work to watch. No one objected. Everyone she worked with knew very well how important she was to Blundy. Now and then some of her colleagues would even take time from their own work to drift to her desk and look over her shoulder at the screen. They were careful not to disturb her concentration, of course. If they spoke to her at all, it was only to say things like. “He’s in good form tonight,” or, “Blundy really ought to be on the council.” She didn’t even really hear such remarks. They were completely expected, and she acknowledged them only with an automatic nod or smile.
The burden of the speech, she heard, was a challenge to the council to make better plans for the future.
It was a pity that he hadn’t discussed it with her ahead of time, she thought regretfully; it wasn’t a very forceful issue. Still, he made it sound serious enough as he demanded that the pipes be laid farther underground, so that they might not freeze in the next cold, to find safer places for the fishing fleet-“to think ahead,” he cried, “so we don’t have to start from scratch every spring, so we can make things better each year instead of working as hard as we can just to stay even!”
Unfortunately, the audience seemed to share her opinions of the themes. Oh, they cheered him, all right, and he’d been given a really satisfactory turnout-the cameras showed that there had to be at least a couple of thousand people in the audience, with no doubt twenty or thirty times as many watching at home on their screens. But the same cameras showed that they weren’t all staying. All through his talk a few were getting up and leaving. Not many. Just a handful, now and then, and they were quite polite and quiet about it . . . but he was losing them.
And if the cameras saw that, Blundy would be seeing it too.
Murra sighed and resigned herself. He would not be in a good mood when he got home. So her primary job then would have to be reassurance. She would be supportive and complimentary rather than critical. The little notes she had made to pass on to him-his distracting little habit of scratching his nose every few minutes, her suggestion that he look directly into the camera more often, to allow for closeups-they would have to wait for another time.
All those burdens were easily borne. They were exactly the things that made her indispensable to Blundy. What was harder to bear was that, when the speech was over, not a single one of her office colleagues came over to congratulate her. It almost seemed as though they had been disappointed.
Blundy himself was, though. That was apparent from the fact that he wasn’t home when Murra got there. When he did show up, hours late, he shook his head at the dinner she had rushed to prepare for him. She smiled to show she didn’t mind. “I suppose you’ve been ruining your digestion with hawkerfood,” she said, her tone gently humorous to show that it wasn’t meant as a reproach, although it was.
He shrugged. “I was discussing the meeting with some people, it got late, I was hungry. Murra? Do you think I ought to hold off on any more meetings for a while?”
“Oh, no, my dear! Look at the way they applauded you!”
“But there wasn’t a single question about anything I said!” he complained, flinging himself onto a chair. “All they wanted to talk about was the ship-how I thought we should receive the people, how much we should tell them, what I thought we’d gain from their visit.”
She knelt beside him and said apologetically, “I’m afraid I didn’t hear any of the discussion period. They cut away right after your speech.”
“I wish I had!” He was silent for a moment. Then his hand reached out absently to stroke her head. “Well, what about it? Shouldn’t I give it up until this ship thing has come and gone? Some of my friends think so.”
Murra, who was quite sure which of his “friends” the advice was coming from, said only, “I think that must be your decision to make, my dear. Would you like to come to bed?”
He shook his head. She got up and kissed him good night, not failing to notice the faint echo of her own perfume on him.
That wasn’t unexpected. Murra didn’t comment. It was a fact, though, that although she had no intention of quarreling over Petoyne’s attempts to replace her in Blundy’s bed, she came very close to complaint when she discovered the girl had switched to wearing her own perfume.
This part of spring was a joyous time. Murra did her best to make it joyous for Blundy. As the days went on, though, it began to trouble her to observe how little time he chose to spend with her. He was always busy. Yes, she understood, Blundy needed to get away by himself from time to time-that was why she had not objected, or at least had not objected much, when he signed up to escort the flocks of pregnant ewes off to the grazing lands. (But how incongrous that Irakaho Blundy Spenotex should be a shepherd!) But that was then. This was now. She did her best to understand what it was that kept him away from her so much of the time (doing such strange and inferior things as helping inseminate the ewes and sod the bare lawns of the new houses-anybody could do them!)
It was not, of course, simply that she longed for his company. She wasn’t sure she did long for it very much, really. The certainty that he would always return to her was almost as good as his physical presence, and a lot less trouble. No, what Murra jealously wanted was the privilege of making sure that Blundy’s needs were met.
When she realized that what he needed most was simple-minded recreation, nothing that made demands on him, nothing that required thought, her task became simple.
She would arrange a dinner party.
Yes, a dinner party would please him. Her dinner parties always had. As soon as she had thought of it she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before, and immediately began to plan.
The guest list was the most important part, of course. No more than six people: Blundy mustn’t be tired by the company. For the same reason, nobody serious. The party was to relax Blundy and give him pleasure, not to be work. The first couple she chose were Delyle and Kondi, a natural selection because they had appeared as young marrieds in Winter Wife. Although they hadn’t actually been married then, they’d got along with each other so well that now they were. More important, they’d got along with Blundy, too. And he liked Vennit and Ginga, too, who had the additional advantage that Ginga-Macklin Ginga Spenotex-was some sort of distant relative of Blundy’s. Besides, they both were outspokenly loyal to Blundy’s political ideals, though Murra doubted either of them knew just what they were. Finally she decided on her sister and her husband, though only if they were willing to leave the kids at home; she didn’t want Blundy to have to share his guests’ attention with children.
When she had finished her list she regarded it with satisfaction. All the guests she chose were young, attractive and as close as possible to brainless; and the list did not, of course, include Petoyne.
On the day of the party she sent Blundy about his business, without asking what that business was, and set off on an exhaustive study of the marketplace. The salad had to be the crispest, the yams the sweetest, the butter for her sauces the richest. She circled the stalls critically, looking for inspiration. She had already decided that the main dish would not be scoggers, because she had served them to Blundy too many times already in the recent past. Nor would it be anything that came from sheep, of which he had had plenty while out with the herd. She settled finally on a handsome, meter-long “fish”-they called it a salmon, though it did not resemble anything on Earth-which she steamed to a golden yellow, chilled and, that night, served with a rich sauce on a bed of greens, and was satisfied.