Mr. Howard asked us to come back at the usual time tomorrow, when Foundation representatives would explain details. He invited us to bring our lawyers, or (those of us who were under age, which was more than half) our parents and their lawyers.
Pat was bubbling over as we left, but I had lost my enthusiasm. In the middle of Mr. Howard’s speech I had had a great light dawn: one of us was going to have to stay behind and I knew as certainly as bread falls butter side down which one it would be. A possible thirty more years on my life was no inducement to me. What use is thirty extra years wrapped in cottonwool? There would be no spacing for the twin left behind, not even inside the Solar System … and I had never even been to the Moon.
I tried to butt in on Pat’s enthusiasm and put it to him fair and square, for I was darned if I was going to take the small piece of cake this time without argument.
“Look, Pat, I’ll draw straws with you for it. Or match coins.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about!”
He just brushed it aside and grinned. “You worry too much, Tom. They’ll pick the teams the way they want to. It won’t be up to us.”
I know he was determined to go and I knew I would lose.
IV HALF A LOAF
Our parents made the predictable uproar. A conference in the Bartlett family always sounded like a zoo at feeding time but this one set a new high. In addition to Pat and myself, Faith, Hope, and Charity, and our parents, there was Faith’s fairly new husband, Frank Dubois, and Hope’s brand- new fiancé, Lothar Sembrich. The last two did not count and both of them seemed to me to be examples of what lengths a girl will go to in order to get married, but they used up space and occasionally contributed remarks to confuse the issue. But Mother’s brother, Uncle Steve, was there, too, having popped up on Earthside furlough.
It was Uncle Steve’s presence that decided Pat to bring it out in the open instead of waiting to tackle Dad and Mum one at a time. Both of them considered Uncle Steve a disturbing influence but they were proud of him; one of his rare visits was always a holiday.
Mr. Howard had given us a sample contract to take home and look over. After dinner Pat said, “By the way, Dad, the Foundation offered us a new contract today, a long-term one.” He took it out of his pocket but did not offer it to Dad.
“I trust you told them that you were about to start school again?”
“Sure, we told them that, but they insisted that we take the contract home to show our parents. Okay, we knew what your answer would be.” Pat started to put the contract into his pocket.
I said to Pat privately, (“What’s the silly idea? You’ve made him say ‘no’ and now he can’t back down.”)
“Not yet he hasn’t,” Pat answered on our private circuit. “Don’t joggle my elbow.”
Dad was already reaching out a hand. “Let me see it, You should never make up your mind without knowing the facts.”
Pat was not quick about passing it over. “Well, there is a scholarship clause,” he admitted, “but Tom and I wouldn’t be able to go to school together the way we always have.”
“That’s not necessarily bad. You two are too dependent on each other. Some day you will have to face the cold, cruel world alone … and going to different schools might be a good place to start.”
Pat stuck out the contract, folded to the second page, “It’s paragraph ten.”
Dad read paragraph ten first, just as Pat meant him to do, and his eyebrows went up. Paragraph ten agreed that the party of the first part, the LRF, would keep the party of the second part in any school of his choice, all expenses, for the duration of the contract, or a shorter time at his option, and agreed to do the same for the party of the third part after the completion of the active period of the contract, plus tutoring during the active period-all of which was a long-winded way of saying that the Foundation would put the one who stayed home through school now and the one who went starside through school when he got back… all this in addition to our salaries; see paragraph seven.