So that was it! Merrick’s blue-eyed boy had let him down, and he needed a replacement. Merrick didn’t give a damn about Bernard’s qualities as an engineer; he was interested only in extricating himself from what was no ‘doubt an embarrassing predicament, As Bernard thought back over the deviousness that he had listened to since he sat down, his memory of Kath’s frankness and openness, even to a stranger, came back like a breath of fresh air. “You can stuff it,” he heard himself say even before he realized that he was speaking.
“What?’ Merrick sat up rigidly in his chair, “What did you say, Fallows?”
“I said you can stuff it.” Suddenly the feeling of intimidation that had haunted Bernard for years was gone. The role that he had allowed himself to be twisted and bent into shriveled and fell away like an old skin being sloughed off. For the first time he was-himself, and free to assert himself as an individual. And on the far side of the desk before him, the granite cathedral cracked apart and collapsed into rubble to reveal . . . nothing inside. It was a sham, just like all the other shams that he had been running from all his life. He had just stopped running.
Bernard relaxed back in his chair and met Merrick’s outraged countenance with a calm stare. “Nobody’s going to shut that complex down, and you know it,” he said. “Save the propaganda. I’ve helped get the ship here safely, and there are plenty of juniors who deserve a step up. I’ve done my job. I’m quitting.”
“But you can’t!” Merrick sputtered.
“I just did.”
“You have a contractual agreement.”
“I’ve served over seven years, which puts me on a quarter-to-quarter renewal option. Therefore I owe you a maximum of three months. Okay, I’m giving it. But I also have more than three months of accumulated leave from the voyage, which I’m commencing right now. You’ll have that confirmed in writing within five minutes.” He stood up and walked to the door. “And you can tell Accounting not to worry too much about the back pay,” be said, looking back over his shoulder. “I won’t be needing it.”
Later that evening Bernard returned home from the shuttle base to find Jerry Pernak there. Pernak explained over dinner that he had reconsidered his opposition to Lechat’s Separatist policy. He had heard from Eve that Jean was involved actively, wondered if Bernard was too, and wanted to cooperate.
Bernard couldn’t see why Pernak had changed his mind. “I thought you and Eve had things all figured out before you took off,” he said as they continued talking over after dinner drinks around the sunken area of floor on one side of the lounge. “Look what’s happening-you’ve left, other people are leaving all over. You were right. Just leave the situation alone and let it straighten itself out.”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it,” Jean said with a hint of accusation in her voice. “You’d like us to be the way they are. But have you really thought about what that would mean? No standards, no order to anything, no morality. . . I mean, what kind of a way would that be for Jay and Marie to grow up?’
Jay and Marie were her latest weapons. Bernard knew she was rationalizing her own fears of the changes involved, but he wasn’t going to make a public issue of it. “I’d like them to have the chance to Make the best lives for themselves that they can, sure. They’ve got that chance right here. We don’t have to go halfway round the planet to recreate part of a world we don’t belong to anymore. It couldn’t last. That’s all over now. You have to bring yourself to face up to it, hon.”
“We’re still the some people,” Jay said from the end of the sofa, looking at his mother. “That’s not going to change. If you’re going to act dumb, you can do that anywhere.” To Bernard’s mild surprise Jay had shown a lively interest in the conversation all through dinner and had elected to sit in afterward. About time too, Bernard thought to himself.