The Engines of Dawn by Paul Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

thumb over his shoulder. "There must be twenty or thirty students in that ward we passed."
    Dr. Larsen began probing Ben's ears, flashing lights in his eyes. "Let's don't talk about them. Let's talk about us."
    "'Us'?"
    "Why you're here tonight. With me."
    "Actually, I don't know if-"
    "Sure you do. Tell me."
    He swallowed and told the beautiful doctor his problem. Dr. Larsen listened patiently. She scribbled a few notes on Ben's file sheet.
    "I'm almost twenty-eight years old," he said at the end of his pitiable disquisition. "This isn't supposed to be happening to me."
    "You'd be surprised how often it does happen," Dr. Larsen said.
    "You mean this is normal?"
    Dr. Larsen nodded. "College students display a wide range of reactions to stress, particularly when exam time approaches."
    "But, I'm not a student anymore," Ben insisted. "I finished my dissertation program two semesters ago and I'm just teaching now. That's it."
    "Well, have you been depressed lately? Are you homesick at all?" the doctor asked.
    "No," Ben said.
    "To which?"
    "Both."
    "Hmm." The doctor scribbled more notes into Ben's file. She was nodding slightly as well.
    "Listen, Doctor," Ben then asked. "I have to know about those people in that ward back there."
    "If you must know," she said, lowering her clipboard. "Many of them are here with the same stress-related symptoms you have."
    "No kidding?"
    "Except for the one who just had her baby."
    "A baby?" Ben said. "I guess that's normal. There are a lot of married students traveling with Eos University."
    He then saw the empty look on Dr. Larsen's face. "Isn't it?"
    The doctor hugged Ben's file. She seemed momentarily sad. "It might be normal if there were five or six births a year on Eos. But it isn't."
    Now that he thought about it, Ben couldn't remember seeing any infants, even among the students who lived in married housing one floor above Cowden Hall.
    "Then they are putting saltpeter in the food," Ben said with a startled whisper. "Those evil motherfuckers!"
    "Dr. Roden-Rob Roden, our director-would never allow such a policy on the ship," Dr. Larsen said. "But, historically, our birth rate has always been low."
    There were children on Eos. Many staff and faculty were traveling with their families, children included. But Ben couldn't recall the last time he had seen a pregnant woman anywhere on the ship, let alone a baby in a stroller.
    "Then it's the Ennui," Ben said. "It is real!"
    "I would bank on saltpeter before I accepted the Ennui," Dr. Larsen said. "That myth has been studied for a hundred years and no one has proven a thing. It's just an old wives' tale."
    Ben knew from newscasts that the general human population in the Alley was not advancing the way most growth specialists had anticipated. Despite its three Earth-like worlds-Earth, Tau Ceti 4, and Ross 244 3-the H.C. had a population of around ten billion persons, eight billion of whom were on Earth. The population should have been three times that and rapidly expanding, but it wasn't. Perhaps more ships than they knew were being blown up in trans-space.
    "But let's get back to you. Now, when was the last time you were 'successful' with a woman-or a man. Whichever."
    "Woman," Ben said quickly. "Or women. Definitely no men."
    "Then when was the last time you had normal sex with a woman? And use your own definition of 'normal.'"
    "The last time?" Now Ben felt truly humiliated. "Last year. The university stopped at Kaikkivallan 5. A bunch of us had gone down to a ski lodge for a week."
    "And?"
    Ben wondered how he could say it. "It, uh, took me longer than usual to, uh-"
    "Reach a climax?"
    "That's it."
    He had been with Page Stauffer, whose breasts were speckled with very delightful freckles, and had to work for three hours to achieve an orgasm. When they were finished, he fell asleep, exhausted; Ms. Stauffer put on a tiara and went StratoCasting with Prince Namor and the SubMariners. He had gotten his rocks off, but she hadn't. He never did see