79

Colgara ended up with “So you see, I couldn’t possibly go to medical school and have babies.”

“I see your point,” said Lunzie, wondering how to escape. The Lieutenant Governor had disappeared into a sea of tall heavy shoulders and broad backs. She saw no one she knew and no one she could claim a need to speak to.

“I’ve bored you, haven’t I?” Colgara’s voice was mourn-fiil; her lower lip stuck out in a pout.

Lunzie struggled for tact, and came up short. “Not really, I just ...” She could not say, just want to get away from you.

“I thought since you were a doctor you’d be interested in all the medical problems ...”

“Well, I am, but . . .” Inspiration came. “You see, obstetrics is really not my field. I don’t have the background to appreciate a lot of what you told me.” That seemed to work; Colgara’s pouting lower lip went back in place. “Most of my work is in occupational rehab. That’s why I focus on making it possible to do the work you want to do. People always have reasons why they can’t. We look for ways to make it possible.”

Colgara nodded slowly, smiling now. Lunzie wasn’t sure which of the things she’d said had done the trick, but at least the girl wasn’t glowering at her. Colgara leaned closer.

“This is my first formal reception—I begged and begged Uncle, and he finally let me come because his wife’s sick.” Lunzie braced herself for another detailed medical recitation but fortunately Colgara was now on a different tack. “He insisted that I had to wear oflworld styles. This is really my cousin Jayce’s dress. I think it’s awful but I suppose you’re used to it.”

“Not really.” Lunzie didn’t want to explain to this innocent that she’d been forty-three years in one suit of workclothes, coldsleeping longer than Colgara had been alive. “I have few formal clothes. Doctors generally don’t have time to be social.”

She could not resist looking around, hoping to find something—someone, anything—in that mass of shoulders and backs, to give her an excuse to move away.

80