“Yeah,” said Morey, wetting his lips. “Say, Dad—”
“Um?”
Morey cleared his throat. “Uh—I wonder—I mean what’s the penalty, for instance, for things like—well, misusing rations or anything like that?”
Elon’s eyebrows went high. “Misusing rations?”
“Say you had a liquor ration, it might be, and instead of drinking it, you—well, flushed it down the drain or something…”
His voice trailed off. Elon was frowning. He said, “Funny thing, seems I’m not as broadminded as I thought I was. For some reason, I don’t find that amusing.”
“Sorry,” Morey croaked.
And he certainly was.
It might be dishonest, but it was doing him a lot of good, for days went by and no one seemed to have penetrated his secret. Cherry was happy. Wainwright found occasion after occasion to pat Morey’s back. The wages of sin were turning out to be prosperity and happiness.
There was a bad moment when Morey came home to find Cherry in the middle of supervising a team of packing-robots; the new house, suitable to his higher grade, was ready, and they were expected to move in the next day. But Cherry hadn’t been belowstairs, and Morey had his household robots clean up the evidences of what they had been doing before the packers got that far.