"Oh, forget about that," Greta said. "Who cares about them?"
[6]
The party had meant nothing, nothing at all, and Albin told himself he could forget all about it.
If Haenlingen wanted to take any action, he insisted, she'd take it against her own division. The Psych people would get most of it. Why, she probably didn't even know who Albin Cendar was....
But the Psych division knew a lot they weren't supposed to know. Maybe she would even....
Forget about it, Albin told himself. He closed his eyes for a second and concentrated on his work. That, at least, was something to keep him from worrying: the whole process of training was something he could use in forgetting all about the party, and Haenlingen, and possible consequences.... He took a few breaths and forced his mind away from all of that, back to the training.
Training was a dreary waste of time, as a matter of fact—except that it happened to be necessary. There was no doubt of that: without sufficient manual labor, the metal would not be dug, the smelters would not run, the purifying stages and the cooling stages and even the shipping itself would simply stop. Automation would have solved everything, but automation was expensive. The Alberts were cheap—so Fruyling's World used Alberts instead of transistors and cryogenic relays.
And if you were going to use Alberts at all, Albin thought, you sure as hell had to train them. God alone knew what harm they could do, left alone in a wilderness of delicate machinery without any instructions.
All the same, "dreary" was the word for it. (An image of Dr. Haenlingen's frozen face floated into his mind. He pushed it away. It was morning. It was time for work.)