Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 26

"Good lord!" she said to herself in a voice of wonderment: "Am I jealous?"

Danielle prided herself on being the only woman who could tame the beast. It was in her presence that Hendrik acted most like a normal human being. Now it seemed that the girls from Samothea could tame him as well. Or did she resent not being his only favourite?

"No," she said. "That's silly. Rosa's his favourite, too."

It was something to think about, though, and to discuss with her friends at the next girly lunch.

******

Before the next girly lunch occurred, Danielle discovered more changes to Professor Jakovs. The first was something she predicted and completely understood. The second was unpredictable and a little bit unsettling.

She noticed the first change when she brought Hendrik a physics paper he asked her to annotate. She entered his warm office as he was giving another lesson to the girls from Samothea. On the projector board, the professor had diagrams and equations from cutting-edge astrophysics, not the basic physics he was supposed to be teaching, to bring the girls up to speed on their undergraduate course.

Danielle smiled. She completely understood the temptation to skip ahead when teaching pupils so eager and quick. It was what she had done herself, engaging the girls in the problems of hyperspace engineering when she should have been showing them the fundamentals of gravitation, mechanics, thermodynamics and the quantum theory of action. Exposing students to cutting-edge physics was a good way to teach advanced students but bad for beginners because it left gaps in their education.

When she looked into Hendrik's cold grey eyes, she saw he understood her amusement. Hendrik never smiled with his mouth but he had a way of smiling with his eyes that most people missed. He did so now, as an admission of guilt and a request. Danielle nodded, silently agreeing to take up the slack in the girls' education herself, letting him have the pleasure of giving them advanced lessons.

Now the girls had their normal undergraduate lectures at the institute, advanced lessons from Professor Jakovs and remedial lessons from Danielle or Rosa. They also taught themselves from textbooks borrowed from the library. Wildchild took extra lessons in pure mathematics, number theory and topology from Herman or from Professor Dorothy Martlebury. Yael spent three nights a week with Kelly Mayfield, sharing her homework, filling in more holes in her education. She shared what she learned with Wildchild at the weekends, but only in short snatches because Hazel and Wildchild devoted most of the weekend to having sex with their boyfriends.

The unsettling change in Hendrik Jakovs occurred at the end of an administrative meeting, when he asked Danielle:

"Do you know if Doctor Welwyn is returning to Celetaris?"

"She's back already, Hendrik."

As someone who never watched the news programs, nor listened to academic gossip, but talked only about physics and cosmology, Professor Jakovs knew nothing about the reception of Eva's sociology paper on female astrophysics graduates, its controversy, the debacle of her videocast and her expulsion from the feminist sisterhood.

After Danielle told him the story, Hendrik said:

"Please ask Doctor Welwyn to visit me at her convenience."

Danielle accepted that he had mellowed so much that he made exceptions for Wildchild and Yael, but the idea that he was impressed by Eva Welwyn, the radical feminist, and wanted to meet her again was unsettling. One of the fixed points of her life was out of place. Hendrik avoided women in general. Why would he want to talk to Eva?

Danielle relayed the summons to Eva, who was just as surprised.

"Do you know why he wants to see me?" she asked.

"No idea," Danielle said truthfully.

Eva was not easily intimidated. When she and Robyn interviewed the professor for their paper, 'Something to push against: the benefits of raising standards for women scientists,' she steeled herself for his famous misogyny, prepared to ignore his offensive remarks about women.

He made none. Hendrik had been cold but polite. He gave short answers to their questions and volunteered no information; yet Eva and Robyn did their research unimpeded. The contempt he showed was for sociology, not for women.

Much as Eva disapproved of Hendrik's misogyny, bitter experience with the feminist movement had taught her that there was a difference between feelings and actions. It was possible, she learned, to dislike women (as she believed Hendrik did) without treating them objectively any worse than men. It was also possible to have all the right feelings (as she thought feminists did) but act in the most irrational or unkind way.

So it was with only a slight nervous anticipation that Eva knocked on the door to Hendrik's office and (wearing a thick woollen jumper) went inside.

Hendrik Jakovs stood to greet her.

"I'm impressed by your paper, Doctor Welwyn," he said, "and I'm willing to be interviewed for a follow-up paper."

"Thank you, Professor, but Robyn and I have no plans for a follow-up paper."

"I hope you'll change your mind. I'm happy to ask my staff to give you the data you need and to encourage my students to take part in your study, so you can have a larger sample-size to follow through their educational careers."

Eva was tempted by the offer. Despite Danielle's teasing, that sociology was a pseudo-science and feminist theory was pure mythology, Eva had the instincts of a genuine scholar and was willing to have her theory tested by further investigation.

"Why do you want me to continue my research, Professor?"

"I need to understand something Doctor Mayfield said."

"What did she say?"

"That the Celetaris Institute for Science will soon have the largest proportion of female astrophysics undergraduates in the Anglosphere. She seemed to be proud of it."

Eva smiled.

"She's right to be proud. Most astrophysics departments in the Anglosphere have only about 5% women, with a higher dropout rate and lower average grades for women than for men. By the spring semester, your department will have 15 female undergraduates. That's nearly 30%. Your results for female students are already the best in the galaxy."

"I'm not interested in female students, Doctor Welwyn."

Eva held her breath and counted to ten before responding.

"Then why do you want me to continue my research?"

"I'm worried that, with such a high intake of women students, the dropout rate may increase or we'll award fewer first class honours degrees."

Eva felt the steam rising inside and counted to twenty this time. She spoke carefully.

"May I suggest, Professor Jakovs, that if female students are more likely to dropout or get lower grades than male students, then it might be due to the teaching method rather than an inherent weakness in female students?"

"I agree. That's why I want you to advise me."

"You want my advice? On what?"

"I don't know how to make a department attractive to one sex or the other, only to physicists. When there were only one or two female students per class, it was possible to treat all students exactly the same. Your paper shows that some female students thrive under those circumstances. But when there are 15 female students in the year, the situation may be different. I can't countenance special treatment for women students, but I don't want to fail them nor allow them to fail. I need to know that no student is being disadvantaged because there are too many female students."

"Too many?" Eva was astounded by the professor's request. She tried to understand it. "Surely if there are more female students, the environment will be better for them?"

"But your principle of 'Something to push against' says the opposite. If things are made too easy for female students, then they don't try so hard and they even use sexual prejudice as an excuse for giving up."

Eva paused, with mixed feelings at the professor's statement.

"I agree that you can read my paper that way," she said, cautiously, "as if I'm saying that women students who pass your exceptionally difficult entrance exam and can cope with your exceptionally large work-load must have such strong inner resources that they can thrive in an environment heavily weighted toward male students."

"Exactly. My aim is to recruit the brightest and keenest students. Their sexes and emotional lives have nothing to do with physics. But in a changed environment, with more women students, will women feel the same compulsion to work hard and prove themselves?"

"Are you worried about your department's results or the well-being of your students, Professor?"

"The well-being of the students, of course, which includes giving them the best education I can, helping them to achieve their academic potentials, enhancing their intellectual lives and enjoying good careers as professional scientists. That way I also do the best for my department."

Eva began to understand.

"According to my paper, the women who study astrophysics here do so for the quality of the education and the prestige of the research the department pursues. Some of those virtues come from Danielle, Rosa and the other staff-members, but the overall environment, which is so conducive to women students, is one you're responsible for."

"Not deliberately, I assure you."

"No, I wouldn't accuse you of deliberately helping women," Eva said with a smile. "Professor, when I first asked to interview you about your female students, you replied that you did not allow women in the department because they're a damned nuisance."

"I did."

"You weren't completely joking were you?"

"I never joke."

"But you don't really think women are a damned nuisance?"

"All students - maybe all young people - are irritants at times. A parent can think his children are annoying but still want them around."

"But you have a personal preference for male students?"

"My personal preferences are not part of science. I'm primarily interested in physics and it's my experience that most people who want to study physics at the advanced level are men."

Eva swallowed back the argument she was about to make that having a preponderance of men in physics could be a self-fulfilling prophesy, pushing women away from the subject. Instead she smiled again and asked:

"How can my continued research help you?"

"You can formulate an algorithm for how to treat women students."

"An algorithm? A set of instructions, like a computer program or a flowchart? I'm not sure one can exist. There are too many variables where human behaviour and psychology are involved. Why would you need such a thing?"

"I know how to teach but I don't know what it is I do that makes this department suitable for female physicists. If there's something I do, then it's entirely inadvertent."

"You know, Professor Jakovs, inadvertence might well be your secret. ... Robyn and I will follow your female students through their careers to research a follow-up paper on the subject. I think it'll be very interesting."

******

Freya made impressive progress in her infant school, though her teacher at first thought her education was stunted because she was a slow reader and her vocabulary was small. This was only a side effect of the paucity of literature in the Forest Camp on Samothea. After she began normal schooling, Freya picked up new words at an astounding rate: twenty or more a day. Soon she overtook her peers, seeming to suck in knowledge, filling in the gaps of her education.

She loved her new school at first. There were interesting posters on the walls, with numbers, shapes, countries, buildings, animals and plants. There was a bookcase with a hundred books that Freya began to work her way through. She enjoyed making friends. Boys fascinated her. But when the learning curve began to flatten, she was less impressed. Ultimately, she was disappointed.

The abundant books contained more pictures than words. The videobooks were entertaining rather than instructional. They made you feel you were in a spaceship or on a farm. But Freya had jumped through hyperspace three times and stayed on a farm in Australia. She even saw sharks close-up from a glass-bottomed boat, visited a great city with skyscrapers and flew in a stratoliner over a desert.

Other videobooks were fantasy cartoons, with talking animals and fairy princesses. She frowned at the talking animals and though she loved the princesses at first, she soon frowned at them as well because their stories were all the same.

Her main complaint was playtime. She did not mind stopping lessons for a short time to run around. She loved running and was one of the fastest in her class; but half the day was playtime, including most of the lessons. And there were no chores to do at all, unless you counted putting away your own books, crayons and toys, which she thought everyone should do anyway, without being told.

After starting so enthusiastically, Freya found she did not fit in so well. On Samothea, girls learned to entertain themselves and took an early interest in adult activities, keen to do chores as soon as they were old enough to perform them. But here there was far too much playtime. After she rejected most of the toys, and judged the picture-books to be too childish, Freya was bored.

Whenever the dreaded playtime came around again, as it did with relentless monotony many times a day, she took a book with actual words in it, or a logic-puzzle type of game, and sat in the corner by herself.

When Annela realised that Freya was bored at school, she asked Ezra what to do. He suggested she talk to the headmistress.

The school was in a leafy western suburb of Arts City, on the edge of Fanshaw Park. It was a large white wooden building with green shutters and grey roof-tiles. There were wide steps up to a veranda and a big yard with a half-height picket fence. A gate opened into an orchard, with apple, pear, plum and damson trees. A giant horse chestnut, its leaves turning golden brown, stood in the opposite corner of the yard, and cast an embracing shadow over the house in the late afternoon.

When Annela arrived, the headmistress, Carol Landscome, was tidying up after the day's lessons, straightening the chairs and putting away toys and books. Freya was helping her.

Annela sat in Carol's office with Freya quietly beside her. She explained the problem.

"Why is your school teaching Freya how to play?" she asked. "That's something every child knows instinctively. When we first applied to send her here, we were told there would be lessons most of the day but Freya says half the lessons are just playtime."

Carol was silent a minute, thinking how to reply. She had never heard such a complaint before. It was not what she expected.

"Freya's a good student and a quick learner," Carol said. "I didn't know she wanted more lessons and less playtime. I sympathise completely and I wish my other parents had your old-fashioned attitude to education."

"We're very old-fashioned on Samothea."

"The problem is that we're a community school. Many of our staff are mothers whose children come to the school. They insist that childhood is for enjoyment. It's hard for me to swim against the current, especially when there are other schools to choose from."

"Is that why none of the children do chores?" Annela asked. "If children do no chores, then how will they learn good habits? Freya loves to do chores. It gives her a taste of adult work."

"I know. I think it's admirable. The problem is that we on Celetaris have become too rich and comfortable. Teaching was not always like this. It's only since the planet has begun to prosper that we've put emphasis on 'learning by playing', as educationists from Earth call it."

"The children of the first few generations of pioneers had no such leisure during school time. They had to study hard and mature quickly, so they could go to work and make something of the planet. This was reflected even in infant school, which taught the three Rs very thoroughly but little else."

"The wealthy later generations, who are in charge now, remember their own austere upbringing or know the stories of their parents. They want their children to have all the luxury they missed out on. They spoil their children and expect us to do so too. I once tried to teach them that work is more fun than play. The lesson was not well received."

"Is there anything we can do?" Annela asked. "I want Freya to stay here."

Carol thought for a minute.

"We sometimes have themed weeks, when we teach a subject every day. We could make one of our themes the culture of Samothea. Freya could show the other children how she lives at home. The children will be expected to emulate her."

"A week of lessons and chores?"

"Yes. Many parents take part in our themed weeks. You can speak to them. Tell them how Freya loves to do chores. We'll say they should let their children do chores as well, and maybe they'll learn to enjoy them."

"Can I tell them that Freya prefers to have lessons than playtime?"

"Definitely do so. It will remind us older parents about the more fulfilling upbringing we enjoyed before we all got to be so middle-class and sybaritic. I remember how it was when children were eager for education and the very idea of a pastime made no sense to us. Time was to be used productively, not idled away as if it were a nuisance or a burden."

Carol noticed the look Annela gave her and laughed in self-amusement.

"You've inspired me with hope, which is a cruel thing for a teacher. We all treasure the fantasy of attentive children soaking up knowledge. Our greatest joy is to impart wisdom to eager young minds, to be a catalyst for a child to discover the pleasure of learning. We hold fast to the dream for as long as we possibly can."

Annela's eyes were also shining.

"I see you've been touched by that dream yourself," Carol said. "Let's see what Samothea week at school achieves."

******

Samothea week was such a success that Carol Landscome invited Annela to become a part-time teacher. The job would suit her very well. Some time ago, Annela told Danielle and Ezra about wanting a job. She had thought to volunteer as a trainee nurse because she was taking informal lessons on medicine at the medical centre.

Though it was impossible for Annela to take a job while her sexual heat was so powerful, she had recently begun to feel a slight reduction in her sex-drive. When she reported this to her doctors, they ran extra tests. Cassie Leighton gave her the verdict.

"It's good news," she said. "It means the new nanobots are working properly."

"Show me, please."

Cassie projected a graph with a set of numbers onto her office wall.

"This curve on the graph means that the new nanobots are eating up the human growth hormone. This set of blips shows them reconstructing your DNA. The general trend is downward, which means the nanobots are finding fewer depleted telomeres to mend. The genetic protection against the x-rays (the 'scarring' which the DNA self-repair mechanism causes) seems also to have been replaced. Do you still feel horny?"

"Not as much as before."

"Good. The results indicate that your hormone levels will gradually balance and your normal sex-drive will return."

"Oh!" Annela said, with an element of regret in her voice.

"But as that is the normal sex-drive of an over-sexed pregnant woman from Samothea," Cassie said with a smile, "I expect poor Ezra won't get any more rest."

Annela smiled.

"Yes, poor Ezra. What do I need to do?"

"Exactly what you've been doing. Have as much sex or as little as you feel you need (or as Ezra can supply)."

Annela happily took on the role of part-time teacher's assistant, working in the afternoons so she could collect Freya from school.