Read I Will Fear No Evil for Free Online

this work both ways?” She stopped to let down the leg rest, straightened up. “Do I quiz you the same way?”
    He chuckled. “Certainly. I may take the Fifth. Or lie.”
    “I could lie, too, sir. But I don’t need to. I’m twenty-eight and married once and still am. No children—no children yet; I’m licensed for three. As for my job—well, I won a beauty contest at eighteen, the sort that offers a one-year contract making appearances around your home state, plus a video test with an option for a seven-year contract—”
    “And they didn’t pick up your option. I’m astonished.”
    “Not that, sir. Instead I took stock of myself—and quit. Winning that state contest and then losing the national contest made me realize how many pretty girls there are. Too many. And some things I heard from them about what you have to go through to get into video and stay there. . . well, I didn’t want it that much. And went back to school and took an associate’s degree in secretarial electronics, with a minor in computer language and cybernetics, and went looking for a job.” (And I’m not going to tell you how I got through school!) “And eventually filled in as Mrs. Bierman’s secretary while her regular secretary had a baby . . . then she didn’t come back and I stayed on . . . and when Mrs. Bierman retired, Boss let me fill in. And kept me on. So here I am—a very lucky girl.”
    “A very smart girl. But I’m sure your looks had much to do with Johann’s decision to keep you on.”
    “I know they did,” she answered quietly. “But he would not have kept me had I not been able to do his work. I know how I look but I’m not conceited about it; appearance is a matter of heredity.”
    “So it is,” he agreed, “but there are impressive data to show that beautiful women are, on the average, more intelligent than homely ones.”
    “Oh, I don’t think so! Take Mrs. Bierman—downright homely. But she was terribly smart.”
    “I said ‘On the average,’” he repeated. “What is ‘Beauty’? A lady hippopotamus must look beautiful to her boy friend, or we would run out of hippopotamuses—potami—in one generation. What we think of as ‘Physical beauty’ is almost certainly a tag for a complex of useful survival characteristics. Smartness—intelligence—among them. Do you think that a male hippopotamus would regard you as beautiful?”
    She giggled. “Not likely!”
    “You see? In reality you’re no prettier than a female hippopotamus; you are simply an inherited complex of survival characteristics useful to your species.”
    “I suppose so.” (Humph! Give me one opening and I’ll show you what I am.)
    “But since Johann—and I—are of your species, what that means to us is ‘Beauty.’ Which Johann has always appreciated.”
    “I know he does,” she said quietly. She straightened her scarlet-covered leg in full extension and looked at it. “I dress this way to amuse Boss. When I first went to work for Smith Enterprises I wore as little as the other girls in the outer offices—you know, skin paint and not much else. Then when I went to work for Mrs. Bierman I started dressing quite modestly because she did—covered up all over, I mean, like Nurse MacIntosh—not even a see-through. Uncomfortable. I went on dressing that way when Mrs. Bierman left. Until one morning I had only one such outfit—I wore disposables, cheaper than having them cleaned—and spilled coffee down the front and was caught with nothing to wear.
    “And no time to buy anything for I was more afraid of being late—you know how impatient Mr. Smith is—than I was that he might disapprove of my dress. Or lack of it. So I gritted my teeth and got out an office-girl bikini and asked Joe to paint me and hurry it up! Joe’s an artist, did I say?”
    “I don’t believe so.”
    “He is. He does my skin painting, even styles my face. But I was late anyhow that morning as Joe really is an artist and refused to let it go