Ben Jones repeated the formula wonderingly.
“What does it mean?” Ross demanded. “I’ve been chasing the damned thing across the Galaxy.” He hastily filled Ben Jones in on its previous appearances.
“Well,” Ben Jones said, “it means what it says, of course. I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” He studied their faces and added uncertainly, “Isn’t it?”
“What does it mean to you, Ben?” Ross asked softly.
“Why, what it means to anybody, pal. Right’s right, wrong’s wrong, Jones is in his Heaven, conform or else—it means morality, man. What else could it mean?”
Ross then proceeded to make an unmannerly nuisance of himself. He grilled their involuntary host mercilessly, shrugging aside all attempted diversions of the talk into what they were going to do with the three visitors. He ignored protestations that Ben was no Jonesologist, Jones knew, and drilled in. By the time Ben Jones exploded, stamped out, and locked them in for the night, he had elicited the following:
Everybody knew the formula; they were taught it at their mother’s knee. It was recited antiphonally before and after Jones Meetings. Ben knew it was right, of course, and some day he was going to get right with Jones and live up to it, but not just yet, because if he didn’t make money in the prosthesis racket somebody else would. The formula was everywhere: on the lintels of public buildings, hanging in classrooms, and on the bedroom walls of the most Jones-fearing old ladies where they could see its comforting message last thing at night and first thing in the morning.
From a book? Well yes, he guessed so; sure it was in the Book of Joneses, but who could say whether that was where it started. Most people thought it was just Handed Down. Way back during the war—what war? The War of the Joneses, of course! Anyway, in the war the last of the holdouts against the formula had been destroyed. No, he didn’t know anything about the war. No, not his grandfather’s time or his grandfather’s grandfather’s time. Long ago, that war was. Maybe there were records in the old museum in Earth. The city, of course, not some damn planet he never heard of!
After Ben Jones slammed out and the room darkened Helena and Bernie exchanged comforting words from adjoining sleeping pads, to Ross’s intense displeasure. They fell asleep and at last he fell asleep still churning over the problem.
When he woke he found that evidently the doctor, Sam Jones, had stumbled in during the night and passed out on the pad next to him. The white frill was stiff and green with dried Jones Juice. Helena and Bernie still slept. He tried the door.