"Press the blue button, Burns."
Burns wasn't even listening.
"Burns," I repeated.
"Hell, Morry, who cares about these damned specimens? How would you
like to be expelled? No classification, no chance of a job, spend the
rest of your life in a compulsory Holiday Reservation."
"How does he get away with it," muttered Lee, looking around at the
open desert and the bare hills on the skyline. "Tomorrow we'll be
back in a ten-to-a-room bachelor unit in the Nebraska suburbs, with
a fine view of continuous rooftops to the Gulf, the Atlantic and the
Great Lakes, and the nearest geological specimen at the bottom of the
community hydroponic tanks. And here he is--the only David Adam Smith,
the one original--with a desert of his own. It makes me sick."
John Thay shook his head.
"That's just emotional reaction, Lee. We were all busting ourselves to
be admitted, to be one of the select three hundred. Just because we're
being slung out doesn't mean the whole Desert Institute is no good. You
know perfectly well why he has the place reserved."
"I know his excuse. I can just see him, flapping his cloak at the
Salvagers and croaking, 'I don't care what you want to do with the
ground, gentlemen. I must have open spaces to live in. Am I or am
I not the only leading scientist of importance who has retained
his sanity and continued to produce discoveries of unique value?
Where is Firnivale, Williams, Hutk, Marrpole, and so on and so on?
Lost. Missing. Probably in a sodden stupor in one of the South
American City-States. I tell you, science cannot produce anything in
laboratories. Science must have room to breathe!'"
It was a stock student's speech.