Because they’re never going anyplace. Eh?”
This grey little fidget of a man, Arlan … appearance, manner, everything about him reeked of the conventional, cubed types of which Lomar had had overmuch back home. But at least the man made a kind of sense, provided a sort of raft to cling to for the little while before he would strike out and swim for himself. He accepted the invitation.
“May I ask, Ran,” the Second Aide, at home, smiled with the formal informality of his class, “if you are familiar with the Coulter System by any chance?”
“Heigh-ho,” sighed his wife, with a studiedly patient shrug of her comfortable shoulders. “Here comes the Tocky with the tray — goody. Take something, cute. You, too, Arlan. Let us eat, drink, and be regulation, for in five years we retire….” She and her husband began to talk to him, more or less at once, and he paid little attention to either and so caught only snatches of talk.
Husband: “… retirement colony … Coulter
kappa
… wonderful climate … our kind of people … Academy classmates … like old times….”
Wife: “… Old Earth … you’ll just die here … terrible and colonial and remote … terrible long days … some Station girl, and before long you won’t be able to stand her … young enough to interest you means that she grew up here and won’t know anything … fly the fence … Tocky girl … tear the shirt off your back….”
Husband: “… cheap … special prices for pensioned Guildsmen … hunting preserves … get-togethers … lots of fun … old times….”
Wife: “… read every book on the place … want to build a raft and go explore North Cold … won’t … drinking and playing … wonder what you did to wind up here … women wearing Outside these days? …”
The drinks weren’t bad. (“Dead rorks,” said the Arlan wife, cheerfully, lifting hers.) The food wasn’t bad. In his mind Ran was making plans. Get out on a look-see trip as fast as he could. Locate the source of the salt-smelling air…. Wasn’t Guild Station situated not far from the Northern Sea? Get far,
far
away from all these niddering voices, crowding bodies…. There was an Arlan child present, too — a plain, quiet girl who said nothing. The house was a copy of something thirty years old. He stopped looking, listening awhile. When his mind began registering once again the conversation had shifted to something somewhat more interesting.
The wife: “Of course, our Tocks have been well-trained, but the others … well, you’ll be visiting Tockytown, of course. You’ll see for yourself. Dirty, filthy, im-
mor
-al, and, oh! bone-lazy.”
The husband (comfortably noncensorious): “Well, Linny, they’re happy the way they are. I don’t blame them. No responsibilities. Umm … you don’t mind if I tell Ran the old joke?” A titter. “You know what a well-bred Tock is? One who pisses only in the corner of his housey. ‘Housey,’ that’s what they call their huts, you know.”
Lomar nodded. There were other groups like that elsewhere in the Hundred Worlds. There were the Two Tribes on Burnside
beta.
And, off in the Semi-Circle, the Redhaired People of Hercules, the Chickers of New Australia (an ostentatious command of Chicker Cant was a mark of the well-traveled spacer), and the Poor Greens of Humboldt Six.
“The Tocks,” he said. “Tockies. Natives of here? Refugees from somewhere else? The old books don’t mention them. And there are hardly any new books about here … unless you count Captain Conybear.” He laughed, Linny Arlan laughing with him. Captain Conybear, the Munchausen of the Third Age of Space.
“Oh, yes, Captain Conybear,” she said, appreciatively. “How I Fought Off The Wild Tocks. How I Slew The Man-Eating Rork Single-Hand. How I Met The Hermit Of Hollow Rock.”
The SA, evidently not approving of the very nonregulation Captain Conybear, made a noise which might have been agreement, disagreement, a chuckle, or
This grey little fidget of a man, Arlan … appearance, manner, everything about him reeked of the conventional, cubed types of which Lomar had had overmuch back home. But at least the man made a kind of sense, provided a sort of raft to cling to for the little while before he would strike out and swim for himself. He accepted the invitation.
“May I ask, Ran,” the Second Aide, at home, smiled with the formal informality of his class, “if you are familiar with the Coulter System by any chance?”
“Heigh-ho,” sighed his wife, with a studiedly patient shrug of her comfortable shoulders. “Here comes the Tocky with the tray — goody. Take something, cute. You, too, Arlan. Let us eat, drink, and be regulation, for in five years we retire….” She and her husband began to talk to him, more or less at once, and he paid little attention to either and so caught only snatches of talk.
Husband: “… retirement colony … Coulter
kappa
… wonderful climate … our kind of people … Academy classmates … like old times….”
Wife: “… Old Earth … you’ll just die here … terrible and colonial and remote … terrible long days … some Station girl, and before long you won’t be able to stand her … young enough to interest you means that she grew up here and won’t know anything … fly the fence … Tocky girl … tear the shirt off your back….”
Husband: “… cheap … special prices for pensioned Guildsmen … hunting preserves … get-togethers … lots of fun … old times….”
Wife: “… read every book on the place … want to build a raft and go explore North Cold … won’t … drinking and playing … wonder what you did to wind up here … women wearing Outside these days? …”
The drinks weren’t bad. (“Dead rorks,” said the Arlan wife, cheerfully, lifting hers.) The food wasn’t bad. In his mind Ran was making plans. Get out on a look-see trip as fast as he could. Locate the source of the salt-smelling air…. Wasn’t Guild Station situated not far from the Northern Sea? Get far,
far
away from all these niddering voices, crowding bodies…. There was an Arlan child present, too — a plain, quiet girl who said nothing. The house was a copy of something thirty years old. He stopped looking, listening awhile. When his mind began registering once again the conversation had shifted to something somewhat more interesting.
The wife: “Of course, our Tocks have been well-trained, but the others … well, you’ll be visiting Tockytown, of course. You’ll see for yourself. Dirty, filthy, im-
mor
-al, and, oh! bone-lazy.”
The husband (comfortably noncensorious): “Well, Linny, they’re happy the way they are. I don’t blame them. No responsibilities. Umm … you don’t mind if I tell Ran the old joke?” A titter. “You know what a well-bred Tock is? One who pisses only in the corner of his housey. ‘Housey,’ that’s what they call their huts, you know.”
Lomar nodded. There were other groups like that elsewhere in the Hundred Worlds. There were the Two Tribes on Burnside
beta.
And, off in the Semi-Circle, the Redhaired People of Hercules, the Chickers of New Australia (an ostentatious command of Chicker Cant was a mark of the well-traveled spacer), and the Poor Greens of Humboldt Six.
“The Tocks,” he said. “Tockies. Natives of here? Refugees from somewhere else? The old books don’t mention them. And there are hardly any new books about here … unless you count Captain Conybear.” He laughed, Linny Arlan laughing with him. Captain Conybear, the Munchausen of the Third Age of Space.
“Oh, yes, Captain Conybear,” she said, appreciatively. “How I Fought Off The Wild Tocks. How I Slew The Man-Eating Rork Single-Hand. How I Met The Hermit Of Hollow Rock.”
The SA, evidently not approving of the very nonregulation Captain Conybear, made a noise which might have been agreement, disagreement, a chuckle, or
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