Cherry blinked. “About—about two weeks’ quota,” she said faintly. “Was that wrong, dear?”
Morey closed his eyes dizzily. “A couple of weeks’ stamps,” he repeated. “Four for one—you didn’t even get the regular rate.”
Cherry wailed, “How was I supposed to know? I never had anything like this when I was home! We didn’t have food riots and slums and all these horrible robots and filthy little revolting men coming to the door!”
Morey stared at her woodenly. She was crying again, but it made no impression on the case-hardened armor that was suddenly thrown around his heart.
Henry made a tentative sound that, in a human, would have been a preparatory cough, but Morey froze him with a white-eyed look.
Morey said in a dreary monotone that barely penetrated the sound of Cherry’s tears, “Let me tell you just what it was you did. Assuming, at best, that these stamps you got are at least average good counterfeits, and not so bad that the best thing to do with them is throw them away before we get caught with them in our possession, you have approximately a two-month supply of funny stamps. In case you didn’t know it, those ration books are not merely ornamental. They have to be turned in every month to prove that we have completed our consuming quota for the month.
“When they are turned in, they are spot-checked. Every book is at least glanced at. A big chunk of them are gone over very carefully by the inspectors, and a certain percentage are tested by ultra-violet, infra-red, X-ray, radioisotopes, bleaches, fumes, paper chromatography and every other damned test known to Man.” His voice was rising to an uneven crescendo. “ If we are lucky enough to get away with using any of these stamps at all, we daren’t—we simply dare not—use more than one or two counterfeits to every dozen or more real stamps.
“That means, Cherry, that what you bought is not a two-month supply, but maybe a two-year supply—and since, as you no doubt have never noticed, the things have expiration dates on them, there is probably no chance in the world that we can ever hope to use more than half of them.” He was bellowing by the time he pushed back his chair and towered over her. “Moreover,” he went on, “right now, right as of this minute, we have to make up the stamps you gave away, which means that at the very best we are going to be on double rations for two weeks or so.
“And that says nothing about the one feature of this whole grisly mess that you seem to have thought of least, namely that counterfeit stamps are against the law! I’m poor, Cherry; I live in a slum, and I know it; I’ve got a long way to go before I’m as rich or respected or powerful as your father, about whom I am beginning to get considerably tired of hearing. But poor as I may be, I can tell you this for sure: Up until now, at any rate, I have been honest.”
Cherry’s tears had stopped entirely and she was bowed white-faced and dry-eyed by the time Morey had finished. He had spent himself; there was no violence left in him.