Jean shook her head, still refusing to contemplate the prospect. “But why does it have to be over?” She looked imploringly at Bernard. “We were happy all those years in the ship, weren’t we? We had our friends, like Jerry and Eve, we had the children. There was your job. Why should this planet take it all away from us? They don’t have the right. We never wanted anything from them. It’s-it’s all wrong.”
Bernard felt the color rising at the back of his neck. The pathos that she was trying to project was touching a raw nerve. He refilled his glass with a slow, deliberate movement while he brought his feelings under control. “What makes you so sure I found it all that wonderful?” he asked. “Aren’t you assuming the same right to tell me what I ought to want?” He put the bottle down on the table with a thud and looked up. “Well, I didn’t think it was so wonderful, and I don’t want any more of it. Today I told Merrick to stuff his lob up his ass.”
“You what?” Jean gasped, horrified.
“I told him to stuff it. It’s over. We can be us now. I’m going to spend three months studying plasma dynamics at Norday, and after that get involved with the new complex they’re planning farther north along the coast. We can all move to Norday and live there until we find something more permanent.”
Jean shook her head in protest. “But you can’t . . I won’t go. I want to move to Iberia.”
“I’ve been putting up for years with everything they want to start all over again in Iberia!” Bernard thundered suddenly, slamming down his glass. His face turned crimson. “I hated every minute of it. Who ever asked me if that was what I wanted? Nobody. I’m tired of everybody taking- for granted who I am and what they think Fm supposed to be. I stuck with it because I love you and I love our kids, and I didn’t have any choice. Well, now I have a choice, and this time you owe me. I say we’re going to Norday, and goddamnit we’re going to Norday!”
Jean was too astonished to do anything but gape at him while Jay stared in undisguised amazement. Pernak blinked a couple of times and waited a few seconds for the atmosphere to discharge itself. “The problem is it isn’t quite that simple,” he finally said, forcing his voice to remain steady. “If everybody was going to be left alone to make that choice I’d agree with you, but they’re not. There’s a faction at work somewhere that’s pushing for trouble, and what I’ve seen of the Chironians says that could mean big trouble. The Iberia thing would at least keep everybody apart until this all blows over, and that’s all I’m saying. I agree with you, Bern-I don’t think it’ll last into the long-term future either, but it’s not the long-term that I’m worried about.” He glanced at Jean apologetically. “Sorry, but that’s how I think it’ll go.”
Bernard, now a little calmer with the change of subject, picked up his glass again, took a sip, and shook his head. “Aren’t you overreacting just a little bit, Jerry? Exactly what kind of trouble are you talking about? What have we seen?” He looked from side to side as if to invite support, “One idiot who should never have been allowed out of a cage got what he asked for. Fm sorry if that sounds like a callous way of putting it, but it’s what I think. And that’s all we’ve seen.”
“Have you seen the news this evening?” Jean asked. “Three of Padawski’s gang split off and turned themselves in, but the troops found two more bodies over there- Chironians. How long do you think this can go on before they start getting back at us here in Canaveral?”
Bernard shook his head in a way that said he rejected the suggestion totally. “They wont they’re not like that. They just don’t think that way.”
“But how can you be so sure?”
‘Tm getting to know them.”
“And I’m getting to know them better,” Pernak told both of them. Something in his tone made them turn their heads toward him curiously. He spread his hands above his knees. “It’s not exactly that kind of trouble Fm bothered about. But if this goes further than that . . . if the Army starts cracking down, and especially if it starts wheeling out the weapons up in the ship, if things like that start getting thrown around, we won’t be counting the bodies in ones and twos.”