"Oh, now, dear," soothed Mrs. Screed, a mousey, chronically anxious little woman with five years experience as secretary and ten as wife in learning to soothe her husband. "Prinot is such a nice man. Don't worry so about things. Just put them out of your mind; they'll be all right."
"What?" Fifteen years experience she had soothing him, but she never did seem to get the knack of it. Or, perhaps, it was a matter of Screed's conscientiously refusing to be soothed, as a matter of discipline. A wife should know her place. Women being what they were, light minded, he felt it only fair that he should regularly point it out to her. He didn't want to spoil her. And he didn't either—unless it was in the matter of favoring her with his personal attentions weekly, at 11:30 p.m., each Friday.
This was big of him. She was lucky. Secad Screed was a big man, Administrative Officer in full command of a major sun system at only 56, wedded to his work and dedicated to becoming more and more important. Mrs. Screed's position was, in a way, almost bigamous. She had a rich, full fifteen minutes every Friday, and what more could any woman want of life?
At the moment, this one imagined she wanted to take a vacation trip to some nonsensical, little known, semi-mythical dream planet that Garten—the fool!—had been telling her about. "Garten—"
"You are so right, J.G., so right. Give Prinot and those boys an inch and they'll be measuring you out for a grave with it, while they sharpen their knives. Half a chance and they'd foul up your whole Sector Administration. But—you know, sir, after five straight years on the job for both you and me, a five-week vacation is compulsory. We do have our orders."
"Mf-f-f!" That was true and that was the rub. "But we don't have to chase off so far we can't keep an eye on things!"
"Of course, sir. Or—an idea you gave me just the other day, sir—with the recent Truad activity over in Sector Y, we could put this whole system into an emergency invasion alert drill, sir. For the duration—of our vacation. Then every move Prinot makes will have to follow the book—or a court-martial when we get back. With you presiding, eh?"
Secad Screed smiled a thin smile. "I thought of that, of course, Garten. Clever of you to see it. Given time, I may be able to make a passably capable assistant of you after all."
Garten was necessarily more skilled at soothing Screed than was Mrs. S., whose somewhat special status brought her very limited privileges but considerable job security. Garten had hung on, sometimes narrowly, for some five years now.