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"She could do a lot better than waste herself with those bums. She's the kind
that prefers the easy road. . . for as long as it lasts, anyhow."
"That's a shame," Kath said.
Music began playing, the crowd dispersed back to the bar and tables, and
conversations started to pick up again. Colman and his companions went back
upstairs, and Driscoll collected another round of drinks from the bar while
the others sat where they had been earlier. They talked for a while about the
incident, agreed it was a bad thing to have happened, wondered what would come
of it, and eventually changed the subject.
"I guess you have to learn moderation in this place," Stanislau remarked,
studying his half-emptied glass of dark, frothy Chironian beer. He shook his
head slowly. "You know, this sounds crazy but sometimes I wish they would make
us pay for it."
"I know exactly what you mean," Carson said. Driscoll nodded his mute assent
also.
"I'm not so sure I agree," Swyley said, which meant that he did.
Colman was about to make a joke Out of it when he realized they were serious.
He knotted his brows and directed an inquiring look at each of them in turn.
"It's this whole business of not paying for anything," Stanislau said at last.
"We come in here and drink, we go into restaurants and eat, we walk out of
stores with all kinds of stuff, and none of it costs anything." He sat back,
looked from side to side for moral support, got plenty, and shook his head
helplessly. "It seemed too good to be true at first, but that soon wears off.
It's not funny anymore, chief. It's getting to all of u~'
"We feel we owe something, and we want to pay our way," Driscoll confirmed.
"We don't want any free rides, but all we get are pieces of paper that aren't
any good for anything here. What can you do?'
"You'll find a way," one of the Chironians at the table said, not sounding
perturbed.
"Better late than never, I suppose," another commented, glancing at the
painter, who was still there. The painter nodded but didn't reply.
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"What does that mean?" Driscoll asked, looking at the Chironian who had
spoken.
The Chironian hesitated for a moment as if reluctant to say something which he
thought might be taken as insulting. Kath caught his eye and nodded
reassuringly. "Well," the Chironian began, then paused again. "Most people
here start to feel that way by the time they're about ten.
Fm not trying to offend anyone-but that's the way it is."
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Carson frowned and thought about the implications, then shook his head. "It's
impossible,"
he said. "No system could work like that."
An intrigued and thoughtful look came over Swyley's face as he listened. He
said nothing, which meant that he didn't agree.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
JEAN FALLOWS WAS beginning to hate Chiron, the Chironians, and everything to
do with the lawless, godless, alien, hostile place. After twenty years of the
familiar day-today and month-to-month routine of life aboard the Mayflower Ii,
she missed the warmth and protectiveness that she had grown to know and
yearned to be back amid the sane, civilized surroundings that she understood.
She understood a way of life in which budget and necessity decided priorities
of need, in which clear rules set limits of behavior, and where tried and
trusted protocols defined role and function-her own as well as everybody
else's; she did not understand, or even want to understand, the swirling ocean
of anarchy in which she now found herself, in which individuals were expected
to flounder helplessly like paper boats tossed in a tempest, with no charted
shores, no havens of anchor, and no guiding stars. She had no place in it, and
she desired no place in it. Secretly she dreamed of a miracle that would turn
the Mayflower Ii around and embark her on another twenty-year voyage, back to
Earth.
As a postgraduate biology student at the University of Michigan, her home
state, she had once had ambitions to specialize in biochemistry and the
genetics pf primitive life-forms. She had hoped that such studies would bring
her closer to comprehending how inanimate matter had organized itself to a
complexity capable of manifesting life, and she rationalized it outwardly by
telling herself that her knowledge would contribute to feeding the exploding
population of the new
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