The man sat shaking his head in a puzzled fashion. ‘I guess I’m home again all right, because suddenly the world of logic ha
’
vanished. Suddenly, I can’t count on an agreement being lived up to. We settled all this last night - remember? I agreed to suspend judgement. I
have.’
'You haven’t. Not really,’
Her husband gazed at her with steady gray eyes. ‘Think, now. with me, to decide is to act. I haven’t acted.’ Pause. “Have I?’
For a long moment, the woman sat gazing off into some undetectable spaces above his head. Abruptly, she shook her head, and bit her lip. A smile broke through, crinkling her nose. ‘Oh, hell!’ she said. The smile broadened. ‘I keep forgetting, I’m married to a fleet commander. Every night from now on, Susan and I can look forward to you coming home and making exact statements with exact phraseology.’
Lane said, ‘I never leave people in any doubt as to where I stand.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not true,
’
she said. She broke off quickly, as the thunder clouds darkened his face, ‘I’ve seen you do devious scheming to get your own way. And you can be extremely secretive.’
‘Oh, that.’ His sudden anger faded, and he smiled grimly. ‘You’re talking about the tactics and strategy of winning.’
The blonde woman sighed. ‘Just don’t bring your warfare rules into this house,’ she said.
Her husband glanced at the wall clock beyond her, and stood up. ‘Time I was on my way.’ He bent over her. His lips came down to within inches of hers. ‘Do I get a goodbye kiss?’ he asked.
Her friendly eyes looked up into his questioning ones.
‘
1 married you for better or worse,’ she said.
‘
1 guess a kiss comes somewhere on the better side of the spectrum.’
It was acceptance. His head came all the way down. Simultaneously, his fingers grasped the wrist of her arm that was partly on the table. Without ceasing to kiss her, he drew her to her feet and into his arms. His lips sought, and hers received, the caress. She did not return the pressure of his lips, but she did not reject him.
She went with him, presently, to the door, and watched him go down the walk and along the street out of sight. Then she returned to the breakfast room, and stood for a while staring down at the outfit booklet where it lay beside his plate. Finally, silently, she picked it up, carried it to a cabinet with dishes in the glassed-in top and drawers below. Slowly, she drew open the top drawer, put the booklet on the silverware that lay there in neat rows, and then slowly closed the drawer again.
Whereupon, with a faraway look in her eyes she began to clean up the breakfast dishes.
When
Susan departed from her parents’ home, she walked rapidly along the street that led to the monorail. In daytime, the entrance of that fabulous transport system was a metal housing of rugged design half-hidden in heavy shrubbery. The girl went past it, straight on to a second street. And again without pausing to a third street. Abruptly, she was in a different world. The quiet, expensive homes had become less expensive in appearance with each block that she traversed. And now she found herself approaching a business street.
Unknown to Susan, a little drama was developing on the street ahead, A sullen-faced, good-looking brunette girl was coming along the business street, briskly at first, and then more slowly as she became aware of a boy across the street.
As she watched him from the comers of her narrowed, calculating eyes, she saw that he had spotted her. The instant she had his attention, she made a peremptory gesture, pointing ahead. The boy nodded, and began a slanting crossing of the street which would intercept the dark-haired girl a dozen or so feet from the intersection of the business street and the street along which Susan was coming.
The boy was sandy-haired, slim of build and of medium height. He wore the brown trousers and yellow coat of the Yellow Deer outfit; and, as he came up onto the sidewalk, where the sullen brunette was waiting for him, he was unmistakably nervous.
There was a faint, devil-may-care smile on the girl’s face. She motioned him with a toss of her head to follow her. And then she led the way into a shallow alcove. Guilt radiated from him as he walked after her. It was in the way he held his body, and in the dark, oozy sweatiness of his face.
It was about twenty seconds after they went into the alcove that Susan rounded the nearby corner. She was walking rapidly past the alcove when she grew aware of the couple. She stopped. She turned. What she saw was the sandy-haired boy and the dark-haired girl standing with arms around each other. They were lip-kissing.
Susan walked slowly into the alcove. Her face was troubled, but she clearly knew what she must do. As she came to a point about half a dozen feet from the two, &he said, ‘All right, jabbers.
That’s enough.
The dark-haired girl was amazing. She didn’t react. Her body did not make the convulsive involuntary start of the surprised person. In fact, when the boy literally
jumped,
her arms tightened instantly around him. Held him. Kept his face against hers.
But it was a pretty sad-type kiss that was now in process between them. And, after a long moment, she must have realised that she could not contain as much masculine emotion as was shuddering in her taut, capable but after all, only feminine arms. And, so, reluctantly, she released the highly charged young male, stepped back, and stood watching him with a certain amount of contempt in her face. But there was triumph also. Her expression said that she, at least, had achieved from the interchange what she expected.
The boy was by this time a lost soul. All the color had drained from his cheeks. His heart must have been pounding for he was breathing heavily. His fear was so obvious that Susan was embarrassed. ‘Joe,’ she said, ‘it isn’t that bad. All you have to do is report this to your outfit. And you’ll only get a third stage dashing.’
If Joe heard the reassurance, it did not show. He tried to speak, but it was only a noise and not a meaningful word that came from his lips. The dark-haired girl watched his dissolution, her lips curling. ‘Typical outfit material,’ she said with a sneer.
Nonetheless, she made her first attempt now to help him. ‘Joe,’ she said, and her voice dripped with cool assurance, ‘It’s only the word of a one-cheek-kisser against yours.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t count, of course.’
A pitying expression had come into Susan’s face. ‘Joe,’ she said, ^why don’t you just leave? And be sure to run. Running alters the adrenalin in your system when the pressure is this strong.’
This time he heard; for he started off, uncertainly at first. Then, as the two girls walked after him, he actually broke into a loping run. As they emerged from the alcove, Joe was twenty feet further along the street, running.
The dark girl called after him, ‘And don’t you ever come near me again, you coward.’ Her tone was vicious.
‘Ssshhh,
Dolores,’ said Susan. 'You know there is no such thing as a coward.’
Dolores was scathing. 'You outfitters have all kinds of weasel words for what people do. It didn’t stop the Red Cats from kicking me out.’
Susan said, ‘It’s not the same thing. You wouldn’t admit you were wrong. Joe will.’
Dolores stood there; the faint, angry smile that had been on her
face faded. Only the anger remained. ‘I wasn’t wrong. I was Lee’s moocher until your sweet phony little face got to him. Look at me now. Look what you did to me.’
Susan was suddenly uneasy. She had been in this conversation before, her expression said; and she didn’t want a repeat. ‘You know the rule,’ she said, slowly, ‘when such a shift happens. Join another outfit. They were willing. You weren’t.®
‘I couldn’t be that two-faced,’ Dolores snarled.
A change came into her expression. The words, the memory
3
seemed to break through to the turmoil underneath, to the jealousy and fury that was there, always close to the surface. Without warning, she struck at the blonde girl.
It was an awkward blow, and it landed on Susan’s arm. Susan winced, but it was obviously not too painful. She backed away, said in her steadiest voice, ‘Go to school, Dolores!’
But the dark-haired girl came forward, her face grim, her eyes narrowed. ‘I hate your guts!’ she said. Up came her arm. Once more she tried to strike. But Susan evaded the attempt, and said, ‘You know the rule for me on this I won’t fight. My job is to prevent you from doing something that will make it necessary for something to be done about you.’
The blonde girl was more relaxed, after an initial strong anxiety. A rescuer was coming. In the near distance on the street behind and beyond Dolores, a familiar boy’s figure had come into view. She recognised Mike Sutter. He had been sauntering, but as he saw the tableau ahead of him, he began to walk faster. And as Dolores, in a second impulse to violence, again ran at Susan and tried to hit her, Mike broke into a run.
He was wearing soft-soled shoes; and, besides, Dolores was totally absorbed with her own anger. Her attention was so completely channeled, her purpose so violent, that it was not until Mike’s strong lean arms caught her from behind, that she even became aware that anyone else was around.
Once more, as with her reaction when Susan interrupted her tryst with Joe, Dolores was instantly and fantastically able to meet a new situation. ‘Oh, it’s you, Mike, darling,’ she crooned. She pressed back against him, and, twisting her head far back and around, tried to lip-kiss him. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart Mike, lip-kissing is fun.’
Mike managed to twist his head, and her mascaraed lips smeared a red path across his cheek. ‘When I start to lip-kiss,’ he said, ‘it will be with lips of my own choice.’
‘You mean, with little Miss Nothing Marianne?’ said Dolores sweetly.
The words and her tone irritated Alike. He was a strong boy;
and he now spun the dark-haired girl around with an easy skill and power. Such strength and such a way of using it was felt by Dolores. Something of her self-confidence was knocked out of her. She gasped, and struck at him. But by this time he had her solidly held at arm’s length, his hands grasping both her shoulders.
‘There are no nothings in this world,’ he said.
“Then
!
, snapped Dolores, ‘how come little Miss Baker spins her web in a little house by the railroad track, and you live in a silkworm palace?’
‘The outfits are going to change all that,’ said Mike. As he spoke, in his eyes was a strange idealistic look so common to outfitters. It was obvious that his words seemed real to the youth.
But he was also a person with an exceedingly short span of interest in unnecessary problems. ‘Look, Miss Munroe, if I release you will you go quietly off to school with our blessing, and with another request that you behave yourself and rejoin an outfit?’ She was recovering from her rough handling. A faint smile quirked her lips. It was an alienated smile, infinitely contemptuous. ‘It’s a little late, Mike dear. I’ve discovered how much fun a jabber can have without the outfits and their holier-than-thou, do-your-duty riding herd on my morals.’ Her smile was infinitely superior. ‘Life is much more interesting now.’
Mike was not to be diverted. ‘But if I let you go, you will go quietly off to school?’
‘I plan to get an education,’ she said, loftily. ‘And I’m looking forward to college, with all those wonderful moonlit nights.’ ‘You’ll never make it through college,’ said Alike. He had removed his left hand from her right shoulder. And now, with a quick motion of his body, he caught her left arm and, putting the other arm around her body, walked her a dozen feet before she braced herself and stopped. ‘Think you’re smart, don’t you?’ Dolores snapped.
Mike stepped away from her, but he remained standing between her and Susan. It was evident that the situation was too much for the brunette girl. With a dismissing twist of her body, she whirled away and walked rapidly off in the same direction that Joe had gone many minutes earlier.
Susan also moved forward. Mike took her arm, and the two of them walked rapidly, though not as fast as Dolores, toward the school, the grounds of which began slightly over a block away. Mike was puzzled. ‘What happened? How did all that start?’ ‘Oh!’ It required an effort for Susan to put her thoughts back to the event. Her attention had gone forward to something else.
‘
Oh,’ she said, dismissingly, ‘she was lip-kissing Joe in there, and
they didn’t see me coming.’ She broke off, ‘Mike, what happens when people grow up?’
Mike did not immediately reply, He was watching a woman who was coming toward them along the street. The woman had her purse hanging open on her arm, and she was applying lipstick, all the while gazing intently at her face in the small hand mirror. She was not pretty, and so hers was essentially a wasted effort.
The woman passed them, with Mike half turning around to observe her as she went by. Susan, who had been involved with her own thoughts, became aware of Mike’s wandering interest as he dragged his feet a little, and so held her back also. She turned her head and looked briefly, and then said chidingly, ‘Mike, it isn’t polite to stare at people.’
Alike nodded; and they were quickly walking again at their former pace. ‘She reminded me,’ he said. ‘I see my mother every day looking into her mirror. She’s in her late thirties, but she acts as if it’s her late sixties. So’ - he shrugged - ‘part of the answer to your question is, they get scared of growing old and dying.’
Susan made a negating gesture with her body. ‘Mike,’ she said. ‘I’m not interested in what’s wrong with people when they grow up, but with what’s right. What do they get out of it?’
Alike frowned. ‘Growing up is inevitable, so what’s your problem?’
‘I’m just asking’ - with asperity -
‘
1 thought you might have some thoughts about, but if you don’t - sack!’
Once more, she had lost Mike. His gaze was on a man and a woman who were coming toward them along the street. The couple was oblivious of their surroundings. The man held the woman’s arm tightly; too tightly, for she kept tugging in an effort to pull away from him. But he was not about to let go. The woman’s expression, and her way of holding herself as she walked was reminiscent of Dolores Munroe at her most rebellious. The man’s face was dark with anger; the woman’s defiant.
As the two older people walked by the boy and the girl, the man was saying. ‘If I ever catch you talking to that fellow again - ’
His manner, and a gesture he made, indicated that mayhem would result. But the woman was not cowed. Her accusing words came: ‘And what about
you...
and that woman?’
They were past, and Alike, somewhat sobered, was facing about and walking strongly forward beside Susan. He shook his head. ‘I really don’t know what’s been good about growing up in the past, except you’re on you own. But’ - his lips tightened - ‘it’s going to have to be better in the future than it has been. The outfits are going to have to see to that.’
“Howl,
can they do that? They don’t exist anywhere but in Spaceport.’ Susan’s voice had a let’s-be-practical note in it.
‘Oh, we’re going to have to expand,’ said Mike. ‘There’s no question.’
His words had no audience. Susan’s attenion, this time, had jumped elsewhere. ‘Oh, there’s Bud Jaeger,’ she said. ‘Did we decide what we were going to do with him?’
‘No, but’ - Mike’s face indicated that the problem had diverted him from the future of the adult world - ‘we might just as well go the routine. Give him some young kids to look after, and just make sure that we keep an eye on what he does.’
The unseen watcher, moved a few feet behind Bud - as he came out of the side street and crossed over to the school grounds
was the first to see Mike and Susan.
Two of your outfit's members are coming
,
he telepathed to his child.
They’re no problem during school hours,
the boy replied. He changed the direction of his thought:
My father, do I really have to keep going to this school? Why can’t you just look over this city of Spaceport the way you’re doing?