here, but she’s shaking down as we travel. A nice kid, I t@nk-shy but nice.”
“It’s their lives,” he agreed, shrugging.
She gave him a long look. “You know, Ilaloa wa@t so
far off about you. You’re too damned-what’s the word?Olympian.’
“Solar civilization is based on the individual as a unit, not the familv or clan or state or anything else,” he said. “Our psychodevelopment produces a certain attitude whichDever mind, it’s not important now. I’m not tv
pical, an@ way.
She thrust the work aside and ran a hand through her tangled hair. “@vou have it all figured out, haven’t you?” she asked resentfully. “You know bow the bidden machinery in you runs and how to push the right buttons in yourself -yes, I can see where you’d get to be lonefarers, all of you, and the Cordys more than everyone.”
“Any individualist is isolated,” he said, “but in. our society
he’s not at odds with others, or with himself. Solitude comes natural.”
She winced. “You’ve got me charted already, haven’t you?”
“Not at all. Nor would I want to if I could.”
“Let’s have some music,” she said, and strode across the room to the tapes. His vision followed her and ran along titles. There was a lot of old Terrestrial music.
Nicki took one our. “You know the 1812 Overture?”
“Oil course,” he replied.
The first strains drifted through the room, loneliness and immensity of the winter steppe, Nicki returned to her work, gripping the clay with tigbt-sinewed force. “Tell me about Earth. “What’s it like?”
“That’s a contract job,” he smiled. Within him, his mind wondered what to say. Could he tell her that Earth was less a -I)Iaii@ and -1 population than it was a cireai-n?
“We’re not titopiar,,” be said cautiously. “We have our
troubles, even it’ they aren’t the same as yours.”
“What do you do?’ she asked. stepping b,, at the tentative molding of a dragon head wrenched it back into shapelessness. ‘What
want out of lif e?” “And that is@t a paradox. “Life itself,” he told her.
Experience, understanding, adjustment and harmony-but struggle, too, making physical reality over toward a pattern.” a,, from abstractions, speaking He went on, keeping aw f everyday life, of people and mostly of the little details o
eld them. After a while, Nicki events and the land that h over the table to listen, ahnost forgot her work ancl leaned
unspeaking.