Well, they’d started out by not thinking much of the Terrans—and now their opinion would just be confirmed that Terrans weren’t to be trusted.
The day dragged by. The next day he went back to school, turning aside queries about his black eve with some offhand story of falling over a chair in the darkness. But the day after, as the hour approached when he had promised the Altons to visit them, his conflict grew and grew.
Damn it, he’d promised.
His father, looking into his glowering face at breakfast, had said briefly, “I’m sorry, Larry. This isn’t pleasant for me—to deny you something you want so much. Some day, when you’re older, perhaps you’ll understand why I have to do this. Until then, I’m afraid you’ll just have to accept my judgment.”
He thinks he’ll cut off my interest in Darkover just by forbidding me to go outside the Terran Zone, Larry thought resentfully. He doesn’t know anything about it, really—or about me!
The day wore away, slowly. He considered, and rejected, the idea of a final, appeal to his father. Wade Moutray seldom gave an order, but when he did, he never rescinded it, and Larry could tell his father’s mind was made up on this subject.
But it wasn’t fair—and it wasn’t right, or just! Painfully, Larry faced a decision that all youngsters face sooner or later: the knowledge that their parents are not always right—that sometimes they can be dead wrong!
Wrong or not, he thinks I ought to have to obey him anyhow! And that’s the bad thing. What else can I do?
He thought that would have to be the end of it, but the question somehow stuck, uncomfortably, with him: Well, what else can I do?
I can refuse to obey him, the thought came suddenly, as if he had never had it before.
He had never deliberately defied his father. The thought made him uncomfortable.
But this time, I’m right and he’s wrong, and if he can’t see it, I can. I made a commitment, and if I break my word, that in itself is going to make a couple of Darkovans—and important people—think that Terrans aren’t worth much.
This is one time where I’m going to have to disobey Dad. Afterward, I’ll take any punishment he wants to hand out to me. But I’m not going to break my word to Kennard and his father. I’ll explain to them why I may not be able to come again, but I won’t insult their hospitality by just disappearing and not even letting them know why I never came back.
Kennard saved me from a mauling—maybe from being killed. I promised him something he wants—some books—and I owe him that much.
He was uneasy about disobeying. But he still felt, deep down, that he was right.
If I’d been born on Darkover, he told himself, I’d be considered a man; old enough to do a man’s work, old enough to make my own decisions—and take the consequences. There comes a time in your life when you have to decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong, and stop accepting what older people say. Dad may be right as far as he knows, but he doesn’t know the whole story, and I do. And I’ve got to do what I think is right.
He wondered why he felt so sad about it. It hurt, suddenly, to realize that he’d made a decision he could never go back on. He might be punished like a child, when he got back; but suddenly he understood that he’d never feel like one again. It wasn’t just the act of disobeying his father—any kid could do that. It was that he had decided, once and for all, that he no longer was willing to let his father decide right and wrong for him. If he obeyed his father, after this, it would be because he had thought it over and decided, on a grown-up basis, that he wanted to obey him.
And it hurt. He felt a funny pain about it, but it never occurred to him to change his mind. He’d decided what he was going to do. Now he had to decide how he was going to do it.