The Tatja Grimm's World Read Online Free

imagined that Cor or the publicity people would be looking after Tatja all the time. In fact, no matter how incompetent she was, there simply were not enough people to baby-sit her. The girl must have many hours to herself; no doubt she wandered all over the barge. By the Light, the trouble she could get into!
    They stared at each other for a moment. The girl seemed so attentive, almost in awe of him. He realized she wouldn’t leave unless he explicitly told her to get lost. He tried to think of an appropriate dismissal, but nothing came. Damn. Finally he said, “Well, how do you like my new telescope?”
    “Good. Good.” The girl stepped almost close enough to touch the scope, and Rey went through the usual explanations: He showed her how the wheels could be fastened to the deck. The oil
bath in the cart’s base damped the sea motion and kept the optics steady. The cart itself was an old drafting rig from the art deck. Rey had removed the drawing table and substituted clamps that attached to the base of his twelve-inch scope.
    Tatja Grimm didn’t say much, but her enthusiasm was obvious. She leaned close to the equipment to see the details Rey pointed out. When he explained something, she would pause for an instant and then bob her head and say, “Yes. So nice.”
    Guille wondered if he could have been wrong about her. In some ways, she seemed a more thoughtful and enthusiastic audience than crew people he had shown the gear to. But then he noticed the uniformity of her responses. Everything seemed to impress her equally. She took the same brief moment to absorb every explanation. Guille had a retarded cousin, mental age around five years, physical age thirty: after so much living, a retarded person learns to mimic the head movements and nonsense sounds that normal people make in conversation. Rey could imagine the blank look he would get if he asked Tatja something related to his explanations.
    He didn’t try such an experiment. What point was there in hurting the girl’s feelings? Besides, she seemed to enjoy the conversation as much as a normal person. He aimed the scope at Seraph as he continued his spiel. The planet was in quarter phase, and the mountains of its southern continent stood in stark relief near the terminator. Wind and ship vibration jostled the image a bit. On the other hand, the line of sight was straight up, without lots of dirty air to smudge things. This was the clearest day-view he’d ever had. “ … so my telescope makes objects seem
much closer. Would you like to look?” Even a retard should be thrilled by the sight.
    “Yes.” She stepped forward, and he showed her how to use the eyepiece. She bent to it … and gave a squeal, a wonderful mixture of pleasure and surprise. Her head jerked back from the eyepiece. She stared upwards at the twin planet, as if to assure herself that it hadn’t moved. Just as quickly she took another look through the lense, and then backed off again. “So big. So big! ” Her smile all but split her face. “How can te-le-scope —” she reached up, as if to jerk the tube’s end down to eye level.
    Guille caught her hands. “Oops. Be gentle. Turn it around this pivot.” She wasn’t listening, but she let him rotate the tube so she could look in. Her eyes went wide as she saw the expanded image of her face in the main mirror. Rey found himself explaining about “curved mirrors” and how the diagonal directed the image from the 12-inch through the eyepiece. The girl hesitated the same fraction of a second she had after his other explanations. Then, just as before, her head bobbed with an enthusiastic imitation of total understanding. “Yes. Yes. So nice.”
    Abruptly, she grabbed Rey’s hand. “And you think this thing? You make it?”
    Tatja’s grip was almost painful; her hands were slender but as outsized as the rest of her. “You mean, did I invent the telescope?” He chuckled. “No, Miss Grimm,. The basic idea is two hundred years old.