Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov [69]
Until then, her notice of Juddee, the plain, snub-nosed, indifferent blonde at the dining unit diagonally across had been the superficial one of the nonacquaintance. And now Juddee was crying, biting woefully at a moist handkerchief, and choking back sobs until her complexion was blotched with turgid red. Her shapeless radiation-proof costume was thrown back upon her shoulders, and her transparent face shield had tumbled forward into her dessert, and there remained.
Bayta joined the three girls who were taking turns at the eternally applied and eternally inefficacious remedies of shoulder-patting, hair-smoothing, and incoherent murmuring.
“What’s the matter?” she whispered.
One turned to her and shrugged a discreet, “I don’t know.” Then, feeling the inadequacy of the gesture, she pulled Bayta aside.
“She’s had a hard day, I guess. And she’s worrying about her husband.”
“Is he on space patrol?”
“Yes.”
Bayta reached a friendly hand out to Juddee.
“Why don’t you go home, Juddee?” Her voice was a cheerfully businesslike intrusion on the soft, flabby inanities that had preceded.
Juddee looked up half in resentment. “I’ve been out once this week already—”
“Then you’ll be out twice. If you try to stay on, you know, you’ll just be out three days next week—so going home now amounts to patriotism. Any of you girls work in her department? Well, then, suppose you take care of her card. Better go to the washroom first, Juddee, and get the peaches and cream back where it belongs. Go ahead! Shoo!”
Bayta returned to her seat and took up the menu again with a dismal relief. These moods were contagious. One weeping girl would have her entire department in a frenzy these nerve-torn days.
She made a distasteful decision, pressed the correct buttons at her elbow, and put the menu back into its niche.
The tall, dark girl opposite her was saying, “Isn’t much any of us can do except cry, is there?”
Her amazingly full lips scarcely moved, and Bayta noticed that their ends were carefully touched to exhibit that artificial, just-so half-smile that was the current last word in sophistication.
Bayta investigated the insinuating thrust contained in the words with lashed eyes and welcomed the diversion of the arrival of her lunch, as the tile-top of her unit moved inward and the food lifted. She tore the wrappings carefully off her cutlery and handled them gingerly till they cooled.
She said, “Can’t you think of anything else to do, Hella?”
“Oh, yes,” said Hella. “I can!” She flicked her cigarette with a casual and expert finger-motion into the little recess provided and the tiny flash caught it before it hit shallow bottom.
“For instance,” and Hella clasped slender, well-kept hands under her chin, “I think we could make a very nice arrangement with the Mule and stop all this nonsense. But then I don’t have the . . . uh . . . facilities to manage to get out of places quickly when the Mule takes over.”
Bayta’s clear forehead remained clear. Her voice was light and indifferent. “You don’t happen to have a brother or husband in the fighting ships, do you?”
“No. All the more credit that I see no reason for the sacrifice of the brothers and husbands of others.”
“The sacrifice will come the more surely for surrender.”
“The Foundation surrendered and is at peace. Our men are away and the Galaxy is against us.”
Bayta shrugged, and said sweetly, “I’m afraid it is the first of the pair that bothers you.” She returned to her vegetable platter and ate it with the clammy realization of the silence about her. No one in earshot had cared to answer Hella’s cynicism.
She left quickly, after stabbing at the button which cleared her dining unit for the next shift’s occupant.
A new girl, three seats away, stage-whispered to Hella, “Who was she?”
Hella’s mobile lips curled in indifference. “She’s our co-ordinator’s niece. Didn’t you know that?”
“Yes?” Her eyes sought out the last glimpse of disappearing back.