Cubs of the Wolf

It may be that there is a weapon that, from the viewpoint of the one it's used on, is worse than lethal. You might say that death multiplies you by zero; what would multiplication by minus one do?
Illustrated by Rogers
In the spring the cherry blossoms are heavy in the air over the campus of Solarian Institute of Science and Humanities. On a small slope that rims the park area, Cameron Wilder lay on his back squinting through the cloud of pink-white petals to the sky beyond. Beside him, Joyce Farquhar drew her jacket closer with an irritated gesture. It was still too cold to be sitting on the grass, but Cameron didn't seem to notice it—or anything else, Joyce thought.
If you don't submit a subject for your thesis now, she said, you'll take another full six months getting your doctorate. Sometimes I think you don't really want it!
Cameron stirred. He shifted his squinting gaze from the sky to Joyce and finally sat up. But he was staring ahead through the trees again as he took his pipe from his pocket and began filling it slowly.
I don't want it if it's not going to mean anything after I get it, he said belligerently. I'm not going to do an investigation of some silly subject like The Transience of Venusian Immigrants in Relation to the Martian Polar Ice Cap Cycle. Solarian sociologists are the butt of enough ridicule now. Do something like that and for the rest of your life you get knocking of the knees whenever anybody inquires about the specialty you worked in and threatens to read your thesis.
Nobody's asking you to do anything you don't want to. But you picked the field of sociology to work in. Now I don't see why you have to act such a purist that it takes months to find a research project for your degree. Pick something—anything!—I don't care what it is. But if you don't get a degree and an appointment out of the next session I don't think we'll ever get married—not ever.
Cameron removed his pipe from his mouth with a precise grip and considered it intently as it cupped in his hands. I'm glad you mentioned marriage, he said. I was just about to speak of it myself.