I said, "Fine, go ahead. About your resignations—"
Mel said something indistinguishable—I'd caught him on a bite of steak.
Hazel, belligerent, demanded: "Are you asking us to resign?"
Apparently I wasn't. So they stuck, and another crisis was met. Unfortunately, by then, I'd forgotten the shock and warning I got from the cat.
Things moved swiftly, more easily. The GG took over, becoming, in effect, my staff. They'd become more: five different extensions of me, each capable of acting correctly. As a team, they meshed beautifully.
Too beautifully, at one point. Dex and Hazel were seeing eye-to-eye, even in the dark, and I worried about the effect on the others. I might as well have worried about the effect of a light bulb on the sun. They married or some such, refused time off, and the GG functioned, if anything, better. It was almost indecent the way the five got along together.
A new problem arose: temperature. We weren't reproducing actual temperatures, but the rooms needed a marked change, for reality's sake. I'd insisted on that, and having won the point, was stuck with it. It was after 2 A.M.; I was alone in the office.
The sound of the outer door closing startled me. Footsteps approached; I hurried to clean my desk, sweeping the bottle into the drawer.
"You're up too late. Go home." Frank had a nonarguable look in her eye. "You're supposed to be getting sleep."