The trouble with a serious, intense discussion, I find, is that it ultimately becomes a little awkward to continue when the people doing the talking don’t know each other too well. In an earnest way we made a stab at talking about Dad’s hostility to my going into archaeology, and likesuch topics, but the atmosphere of earnestness started depressing us. I had to do something. Either make a pass at Jan, which somehow seemed less appropriate than ever after all this solemn palaver, or else get out and pretend I could do something about starting the engine. I got out.

Jan said, “Why try to look chivalrous? You know there’s absolutely nothing you can do to fix it. Unless you can rub your fingers together and spurt some wattage into the battery.”

I grinned sickly at her as I stood in the rain. “We might sit here all week,” I said.

“So? They’ll send out a rescue party. Come back inside.”

I did, and a minute later a military truck appeared. Three soldiers were in it; they stopped when they saw we were stalled, became very attentive indeed when they got a good look at Jan (girls of her contours are extremely rare on this miserable outpost of the Terran Empire), and lewdly suggested that she ride to town with them while I stayed behind to guard the runabout. They looked hurt when Jan vetoed the idea. I drew sour looks of undisguised envy from them; I guess they figured Jan and I had been making feverish love while awaiting help. Let them stew.

They gave us a ride to town, finally.

Sour looks were in style there, too. The first place we went was the communications office, and naturally the TP on duty was Marge Hotchkiss Herself, that radio-actively charming seductress. She slouched over to the counter and said, “Yeah? What now?”

“We have a press release to send out. For relay to the nearest Galactic News Service TP pickup.”

“Well, okay.” She consulted a ratebook. “Five hundred credits, thumb to the plate.”

I stared at the computer input on her desk. “I’m not authorized to make charges here.”

“You are a feeb, aren’t you? Why didn’t they send someone whose thumbprint is registered?”

“GNS will accept a collect call from us,” I explained. “It’s already been arranged.”

Hotchkiss grew more sullen. “How do I know?”

“But—”

“You want me to go to the trouble of setting up a hookup just to find out if they’ll take a collect from you. Only what if they say no? I’ve wasted a shot of TP energy. I’m no goddam machine, sonny. You want to make a call, you pay for it.”

And she sneered. Like something out of medieval melodrama. I’ve never been sneered at before. She was an expert sneerer, too. Must have had lots of practice.

Jan was standing to one side during this exchange, obviously sizzling, but unwilling to cut in. This was my show. I’d look pretty spinless if I couldn’t even get the local TP operator to accept a collect call. I wanted to do something virile and forceful, like throw Marge Hotchkiss through the wall. I began to rage and bluster. I told her that my sister was a TP supervisor and would have her fired, a lie for which I hope to be forgiven. I demanded to see her superior. I threatened to report her to the network coordinator. The louder I yelled, the more curdled the Hotchkiss expression became, and the more defiant she got. “You can take your collect call,” she said, “and—”

“Wait a moment,” Jan said sweetly, at last. “According to the section of the Public Utilities Act of 2322 that governs the operations of the TP network, it’s illegal for any representative of the communications net to refuse to accept a collect call. The TP operative is not permitted to exercise independent judgment as to whether such a call will be ultimately accepted, but must undertake to inquire of the party called as to whether the call will be received.”

Marge Hotchkiss looked sick.

“What are you, a company spy?” she snapped. “All right, I’ll see if GNS will accept the call.”

Hotchkiss slipped into the TP trance and reached out toward the nearest pickup point of the news service, which I guess was about twenty light-years away. (You’d know that better than I, Lorie.) After a moment she returned her attention to us and said, still sullen, “Let’s have that blenking message of yours.”

I handed it over. Hotchkiss scanned it and began to relay it to the GNS operator. I began to wonder whether she might just garble it out of general bitchiness, and, if so, what protection we had against such sabotage. Jan must have thought the same thing, because when Hotchkiss was finished, Jan said, “Thank you very much. We’d like a confirming playback, of course.”

Why didn’t I think of that?

Hotchkiss glared demonically, but — half afraid that Jan really was a company spy checking up on her efficiency — she dutifully requested a playback of the message from her TP counterpart out yonder, wrote it down as it came in, and handed it to us for comparison. It checked out with the original down to the last comma.

“Very good,” Jan said. “Thank you so much!”

Outside the TP office I asked her how she had known that stuff about the Public Utilities Act of 2322, and so forth. “Don’t tell me you’re a refugee from the TP network,” I said.

“Oh, no! I don’t have a TP molecule in me, Tom. But I once watched my father get into a similar mess with a network girl, and I remembered how he got out of it.”

“Clever.”

“Why are all these TP people so slicy, though? Especially the females. They seem to be doing you a tremendous favor just to put your calls through. I guess they must really have contempt for us poor zoobs who don’t have their powers, and are forced to use mere words to communicate.”

“They aren’t all slicy,” I said. “My sister isn’t. Lorie’s very patient with everybody. Lorie’s a saint, in fact.”

“If she is, she’s the first TP girl I’ve ever heard of who shows any civility. How come I never draw someone like that when I have to make a call?”

“Lorie doesn’t take calls from the public,” I said. “On account of she’s confined to her hospital room all the time. She’s strictly pickup and relay.”

“It figures. They’ve probably got all the decent human beings working relay, and all the slicy howlers manning the public offices. I’d like to meet your sister some day.”

“Maybe you will.”

“Does she look much like you?”

“Not really. She’s shorter and softer and rounder in some places. Also she doesn’t need to shave.”

“Dodo! I mean, aside from her being a girl!”

“They say we look a lot alike, especially for fraternal twins,” I said. “It’s hard for me to judge that. She’s quieter than I am, and has a different kind of sense of humor. I mean, she’s likely not to say anything for half an hour or so, just listening to the other people in her room, and then she’ll come out with something in a very soft voice, so that you have to strain your ears to hear it, and it’ll be something absolutely devastating, something that manages to be funny and true all at once. She can really fuse a person sometimes, with two or three well-chosen words.”

“You must miss her very much.”

“This is the longest I’ve ever gone without speaking with her. I’ve always tried to share all my experiences with her — whatever I do, wherever I go. But here — this far away—”

“You could call her.”

“Via Smiling Marge?” I shook my head. “I don’t want to contaminate Lorie’s mind by unnecessary contact with that species of microorganism. Besides, it takes mucho stash.”

“Isn’t your father rich?”

“My father is. I’m not. He keeps his thumb in his own pocket.”

“Oh.”

“I’m piling up message cubes for Lorie, telling her the whole story. When I get back to Earth I’ll let her play them back in sequence, two years of letters all at once.”

“So that’s who you’ve been writing to!”

“You’ve noticed?”

“Half the time lately when I’ve gone looking for you, you’ve been off by yourself talking into a message cube,” Jan said.