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Perhaps you should reinforce the impression of mental instability, Ryll
suggested. Your brother appears hostile to you. Perhaps I was a bit
impetuous insisting you reveal my presence.
Right! Let's have some fun.
Abruptly, Lutt shouted: "Graaar!" He waved his arms wildly and leaned toward
his mother and brother with a look of menace. "You think I'm nuts, eh?"
Phoenicia and Morey recoiled.
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Her voice cracking, Phoenicia said: "Of course not, dear."
Lutt found he still could read her emotions as well as ever. So like his
father. Poor dear. An uneven personality. Lutt had once heard her describe
him to someone on the vidcom: "He looks rather bookish. It's partly his
glasses. His hair is still reddish-brown but beginning to thin prematurely."
Yes, Lutt agreed. I'm the sort of person you might find in the dusty stacks
of a library. But that's not where you'll often see me. My lessons come from
life.
He knew it was bragging but he liked to tell people he was a newspaperman who
rarely read anything except headlines.
Morey studied him with fearful expectation.
Lutt wished he were elsewhere. The brief flash of enjoyment over Morey's
discomfiture vanished.
Mother, he noted, had a brown leather case by her feet. Prepared for a stay?
He settled into the seat, legs extended.
I'm slouching, Mother.
He knew what she would say next.
"Don't slouch, dear," Phoenicia said.
Right on cue every time. Dear this, dear that. It's always dear.
"I'm Lutt!" he shouted, and this time there was no pretense. "Don't call me
'dear'! Don't call me 'Lutt Junior.' Don't call me 'Lout'! You know my
name. Use it!"
Phoenicia looked hurt. "I've never called you Lout. I call both of my sons
'dear' out of love."
Lutt felt anger pulsing in the serpentine blood vessel at his temple and put a
finger on it.
Phoenicia shook her head, causing the golden circles of her earrings to bounce
against her smooth neck. "Your father worries about you, Lutt. I do, too.
And you really should not slouch. It's ruinous to your posture."
"I'm thirty-five," Lutt said. "If I want to slouch, that's my business. I
don't have to ask permission of you or Father when I want to do something."
"But, dear, your attempts at invention are becoming quite dangerous. Someone
has been killed."
"An accident! Father wants to stop me because he's afraid I'll invent
something better than he ever did. And I already have!"
"Your father knows what's best to invent, dear. If he says something's wrong,
you should listen to him. After all, you are using his money."
Lutt stared past her out the rear window and muttered: "I've earned that
money with all the crap
I've taken from him." He saw Morey's involuntary nod of agreement and felt a
resonant chord -- a shared but mostly unspoken suffering -- two neglected sons
of a man consumed by his business empire.
Phoenicia's silence hinted that she shared this resentment. How much emotion
had she invested trying to make up for L.H.'s neglect of his family? Was that
what had driven her to her high-
society friends? Perhaps. But as usual she went too far.
She'll do anything for those fawning sycophants!
Morey chose this moment to make his contribution.
"I've noticed something about you, Lout."
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Phoenicia, quick to smell trouble, snapped, "You must not call your brother
that!"
Morey shrugged, then: "You know, he always slouches like that when he's in
trouble or wishes he were somewhere else."
"We all have our little idiosyncrasies, dear."
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"Sure we do," Lutt growled. "And Morey's is to play fast and loose with money
trusted to him."
Morey paled but Lutt's satisfaction was cooled by his own involuntary
reaction: sitting up straight. I'm still in trouble, Lutt thought.
Lutt touched a panel button to his left. An oval vidcom dropped from the
ceiling on the end of a flexible tube. The tiny robot eye on the microphone
positioned it in front of Lutt and blinked green to show it was ready.
"Shop Two," Lutt said and he imagined the crystal bell sounding in the shop
near Seattle where he had built his ship. The area was wooded and mostly
uninhabited now. Once it had been a prime residential area but the senior
Hanson had razed the homes after acquiring the property. It was a pattern
repeated on all eleven family plots around Seattle.
"The Hansons want privacy and hunting preserves," commentators said.
A high-pitched computer ditty signaled engagement of the scrambler system to
ensure privacy on this call.
Presently, a bearded face appeared on the tiny screen and a deep voice said:
"Hi, Lutt. Good to see you're okay."
"Yeah, Sam. You heard, huh?"
"Is Drich really dead?"
"And the ship is shot to shit."
Phoenicia rolled her eyes heavenward. Lutt, dear boy that he was, could be so
gross. And he kept such low-class company! This assistant, Sam R. Kand, was
every bit as improper as the friends
L.H. chose. Unsuitable, all of them.
"Can we salvage anything?" Sam asked.
"I'll let you know later. Meanwhile, start building a new core. And I want
you to make these modifications . . ."
Lutt noted Phoenicia's eyes glaze over. She never liked technical details.
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