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know."
"Why not?" Joat asked, turning to her with a milk mustache on her upper lip.
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The girl licked it away with satisfaction as Channa searched for a reply, gave
up, and turned her attention back to Amos.
"Hiding away all that stuff was smart of Channa,"
she said thoughtfully. "Always gotta have supplies in your bolt-hole unless
you're fardlin stupid."
"Sound strategy," Amos said seriously.
He certainly seems to be good with children, Channa thought, stirring her food
around with her fork. Girls don't bother him. Not pre-pubescent ones, at
least.
In her inner ear, Simeon began to croon an ancient song: 'Across a croooowded
room..."
"Shut up," she subvocalized.
"This place has got more back-alleys than you'd believe," Joat was saying.
"Not like a ship at all, really.
You can get anywhere from anywhere and ain't nobody can stop you, if you know
where you're goin'. Some of the places pinch grudly, but they're in-able if
you're sveltsome."
"I would have thought it much like a ship of space,"
Amos replied courteously. Channa could see his lips move silently for an
instant as he puzzled out Joat's slang. That was no wonder. Half of it was her
own invention.
"A whole other order of magnitude," Simeon said.
"No mass limits on a station N the SSS-900-C wasn't expected to go anywhere.
The outer shell was fixed, as
250
Amu McCaffny 6? SM. Stating well as some of the major facilities, but the rest
was intended to allow organic growth up to a couple of hundred thousand
people, max. We've found natural expansion is the best way to stabilize a real
community, as opposed to a transient community, like a passenger vessel."
"That is good sense," Amos said meditatively. "On my family's estate, planning
towns was similar. If you set down every detail, the place has no life. When
Uncle Habib decides to put his tobacco store next to
Aunti Scala's pastry shoppr Brother Falken's saddlery, and that brings an
ice-cream parlor, it then follows that the town becomes a living and efficient
entity."
"Why do you talk so funny?" Joat asked.
"Why doyou talk so funny?" Amos parried, and they both laughed. "Because
Bethel was cut off for so long. We did not even screen or broadcast data from
other worlds, so our people's way of speech changed litde, and those changes
differed from those in the Central Worlds, which had dealings with many other
worlds and cultures."
"Central Worlds?" Joat asked. "Oh, you're fardlin' N
'cuse me N way off there. This is the hikstik, frontier, you know."
"To you, not me." He paused. "I think, Joat, that someone besides yourself
should know of these hidden ways of yours."
"You should see it," she said enthusiastically. "You wouldn't believe what's
back there!"
"I would very much like to see it,1 he told her grave-
ly. "But, I have not much time left for my studies." Her face fell. "Still,"
he said," I think that it is important that trusted people, other than just
you and Simeon, should know these back ways of yours. Would you be willing to
show my friend, Joseph?"
"He's your head honcho, hey?"
"My brother and my right hand," Amos said seriously.
"Okay, if he's nanna grudly."
THE Cnr WHO FOUGHT
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Amos gave up trying to interpret that remark and glanced over at Simeon's
image in the screen.
"Grudly," the brain said in his most professorial. "An all purpose negative.
In this context N 'not too grudly1 N
stniight-laced, conventional, boring, unimaginative.
"No, no. To tel^the truth and shame the devil, Joseph was, in feet, a
Joat lit up, her urchin smile taking a year or two off the extra time life had
dealt her, so that she looked twelve. "Sure! I'll be glad to show Joseph
around.
Whenever you like."
"Thank you. And now I must return to my studies."
He sighed theatrically and rose.
"I know how you feel," Joat said, shaking her head in resignation.
"He's made a conquest there," Channa subvocalized.
"Wonder how he did it?"
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