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the embraces of a burbling citizen or a barking dog before he got where he was
going. The half-century old fad for household pets had arisen after the
landing, and after his
effectual abdication^. What time-wasting quirk had moved so many pioneers'
descendants to adopt the damnable svengalis as pets was beyond Amalfi.
He made it home fjom the Hazletons' without any such encounter; instead,!
it'rained. He wrapped his cloak more tightly around him and hastened,
muttering, for his own square uncompromising box of a dwelling before the full
force of the storm should be let loose; his house and grounds were sheltered
by a 0.02 per cent spindizzy field- the New Earthmen called the household
device a "spindil-ly," a name which Amalfi loathed but put up with for the
sake of,,as Dee had once put it, "not knowing enough to come out of the rain."
He had growled at her so convincingly for that that she had never brought up
the subject again, but she had put her finger on it all the same.
Amalfi reached his entrance lane and laid his palm on the induction switch
which softened the spindilly field iust enough to let him through in a spatter
of glistening drops, and noted with the grim dissatisfaction that was becoming
natural to him that the storm had slacked off and would be over in minutes.
Inside, he made a drink and stood, rubbing his hands, looking about him. If
his house was an anachronism, well, he liked it that way, insofar as he liked
anything on New Earth.
"What's wrong with me?" he thought suddenly. "People's pets are their own
business, after all. If practically everybody else likes weather, what
difference does it make if I don't? If Jake doesn't even take an interest, nor
Mark either for that matter-"
He heard the distant, endlessly comforting murmur of the modified spindizzy
under his feet alter momentarily; someone else had chosen to come in out of
the rain. His visitor had never been there at that hour before, and had indeed
never been there before alone, but he knew without a moment's doubt who had
followed him home.
CHAPTER TWO: Nova Magellanis
"You'll have to make me more welcome than that, John," Dee said.
Amalfi said nothing. He lowered his head like a bull contemplating a charge,
spread his feet slightly, and clasped his hands behind him.
"Well, John?" Dee insisted gently.
"You don't want me to go," he said baldly. "Or, you suspect that if I do go;
Mark just may throw up the managership and New Earth along with it and take
off with me."
Dee walked slowly all the way across the room and stood, hesitating, beside
the great deep cushion. "Wrong, John, on both counts. I had something else
altogether in mind. I thought-well, I'll tell you later what I thought. Right
now, may I have a drink?"
Amalfi was forced to abandon his position, which by being so firm had imparted
a certain strength to his desire to oppose her, in order to play host. "Did
Mark send you, then?"
She laughed. "King Mark sends me on a good many errands, but this wouldn't be
a very likely one for him." She added bitterly, "Besides, he's so wrapped up
in Gifford Bonner's group that he ignores me for months on end."
Amalfi knew what she meant: Dr. Bonner was the teacher-leader of an informal
philosophical group called the Stochastics; Amalfi hadn't bothered to inform
himself in detail on Bonner's tenets, but he knew in general that
Stochasticism was the most recent of many attempts to construct a complete
philosophy, from esthetics to ethics, using modern physics as the metaphysical
base. Logical positivism had been only the first of those; Stochasticism,
Amalfi strongly suspected, would be far from the last.
"I could see something had been keeping his mind off the job lately," he said
grimly. "He might do better to study the doctrines of Jorn the Apostle. The
Warriors of God control no less than fifteen of the border planets right now,
and the faith doesn't lack for adherents right here on New Earth. It appeals
to the bumpkin type-and I'm afraid we've been turning out a lot of those
lately."
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