Seu said, "Basically, he is afraid of Rack. He cooperates with him—they use each other—but you know that it's not a marriage of minds. He knows that Rack is stronger than he is, because he is only an amoral egotist, and Rack is a fanatic. I think he believes this business may be Rack's downfall, and he would like that."
He stood up. "I have to go. Will you do it?"
"Yes."
"Good. Let me know." Seu walked out, as hastily as he had entered.
Nick Pappageorge had roused himself and was polishing a tall, fluted silver vase. Cudyk said, "Nick, go and find out where Mr. Harkway is. If he isn't busy, ask him if he'll do me the favor of dropping around to see me. Otherwise, just come back and tell me where he is; I'll go to him."
Nick said, "Sure, Mr. Cudyk," and went out.
Cudyk stared at the tray of unsorted gems on the desk before him. He stirred them with his forefinger, separating out an emerald, two aquamarines, a large turquoise and a star sapphire. That was all he had had to begin with—his dead wife's jewels, carried half across Europe when a loaf of bread was worth more than all the gem stones in the world. The sapphire had bought his passage on the alien ship; the others had been his original stock-in-trade, first at the refugee center on Alfhal, then here on Palumbar. Now he was a prosperous importer, with a business that netted him the equivalent of ten thousand pounds a year.
But the wealth was ashes; he would have traded all of it for one loaf of bread, eaten in peace, on an Earth that had not sunk back to barbarism.
Momentum, he told himself. Momentum, and a remnant of curiosity. Those are the only reasons I can think of why I do not blow out my brains. I wonder what keeps the others from it? Seu? Chong Yin? I don't know. Burgess has his fantasy, though it cracks now and then. Ferguson has the sensibility of a jackal. Rack, as Seu said, is a fanatic. But why do the rest of them keep on? For what?