In loose, unmilitary formation they filed past the Arch, perhaps to picket some visiting delegation; more likely to stage another hot-headed rally of their own Society for the Settlement of Space.
Exasperated at their persistence (and the persistence of all human hope) Justin watched as they lost themselves in the wretched pedestrian hordes of Fifth Avenue. A little uneasily, he wondered how they would take the President's announcement. Or, for that matter, his own.
"Hon, I'm gasping. Roll me one, huh?"
Justin returned to the table and lifted the porcelain top of the room's only antique, a 19th Century apothecary's jar deceptively labeled "Opium." There was but little tobacco left. Careful to spill not a single grain, he rolled a cigarette, inserted it between Doris' lips and held a match. When she'd inhaled, hungrily, she asked:
"Aren't you having one?"
"Joe's not sure when he can get some more," he said thoughtlessly, and at once regretted subtracting from her pleasure.
"I feel like a heel. Have a drag on this."
"No. No, thanks, I'm trying to quit," he lied lamely.
Crazy, this young girl latching onto the habit forty-odd years after they'd switched the last Burley field to essential food grains. Only dimly could he himself remember when the Tobacco Prohibition Amendment was enacted. Could there be something in Doris' metabolism to demand nicotine? The thought startled him; would it make a difference in his calculations?