"Good. Gives you a good background without much labor. Now, when you land on Terra, you'll not bother posting your ship for a job because you have already contracted for a job. Carolyn will be there on a business trip for me and will have chartered your ship for a hauling job back to Mercury. During this trip you will get some more details on how you are to operate. This much I can tell you now, Farradyne: you will be an inbetweener, in fact almost the operator you set yourself up to be. But with one difference, we'll inform you just who is and who is not to be trusted. In other words, you'll have your regular customers and you will sell to no one else. They'll take your entire supply, pay for it and you will take your profit. The remainder you will use to purchase your supply from the upper source. Advancement may come slow or fast, depending on you. You'll get the details later, as for now—" Niles leaned back in his chair and smiled. "Farradyne, you met my daughter in a cocktail lounge and several people heard the two of you planning an evening together. So you will go dancing and dining and have a drink or two and maybe a bit of lovemaking, which is an entirely natural performance. And from this moment you will be Charles and I shall be Mr. Niles and we'll have no nonsense. Understand?"
"I do."
"Good. Now have another martini while Carolyn dresses for dinner."
Niles poured. Carolyn disappeared. Mrs. Niles leaned forward and asked, "Charles, why did you become a spaceman?" Her tone of voice and attitude made her seem like all the other fathers and mothers who have asked the same question. For the moment he forgot about her position in this odd scheme of things just because she looked precisely fitted to the role she played for public consumption. Almost mechanically, Farradyne began to explain. He knew the story by rote because he had told it so often in the same manner and to the same sort of person. This gave his mind a chance to consider them, partly.
Mr. and Mrs. Niles appeared to be the successful businessman and his wife. The aura of respectability extended to include the house and its spacious grounds, so that Farradyne burned with resentment at any proposition whereby he, who had not committed anything more than a few misdemeanors and some rather normal fun and games which are listed on the books but are likely to be overlooked, should be less cultured, less successful and less poised than this family of low-grade vultures. If anything, the attitude of Mrs. Niles shocked him more than the acts of her husband. Men were the part of the race that play the rough games and run up the score, according to Farradyne. Women occupied one of two positions: they were patterned after Farradyne's mother who had been a poised, mature woman of education and breeding, if a trifle puritanical; or they were slatterns and sluts and they looked as well as acted the part. So instead of Mrs. Niles presiding over the mansion as a gracious lady, she should be loud and cheap. That she was poised and gracious offended Farradyne's sense of fitness.
As for Carolyn, who was equally engaged in this loathsome game, Farradyne felt annoyed because there was nothing about her outward appearance that would permit him to scorn her. Like her parents, she gave the impression of success, as though the business they were all engaged in were both honorable and beneficial. Farradyne yearned for the moment when he could pull the pedestal out from under them and dump them into the mud where they damned well belonged.
Farradyne became, in those few moments, a more mature man. He understood Clevis' attitude. Always before, he wondered why a clever man would work for peanuts at a thankless job which included anonymity when he could have put his efforts into some sort of business and emerge wealthy and famous. Now Farradyne was beginning to understand the personal satisfaction that could be gained by following in the footsteps of a man like Clevis. In Niles' own words, some men like money, others like power and still others build model railroads. Well, some achieve their personal gain by rooting out the lice that undermine the moral fiber of the race, and this gives them the same satisfaction that amassing a billion dollars gives a man whose ambition is wealth.
Money had never been Farradyne's god. He had not wanted more than enough to exchange for the fun and games he preferred, and these did not come high. He found himself elated to have discovered a new outlet for his nervous energy and his urge to do something. Performing a thankless job in anonymity could provide for Farradyne a deep satisfaction in proving that he was smarter than people like Niles and family.
He smiled as his mouth got to the point in his story where he was telling about the time he had landed the training ship perfectly—but nine feet above ground, so that the ship dropped the nine feet and nearly flunked him out of spaceman's school. He knew that his smile was hypocritical and he enjoyed this sort of thing. If Niles could play the hypocritical game, so could Farradyne. But Farradyne could play it better because his own kind of hypocrisy was—he hated to call it righteous but could not find a better word to describe it. He could play Niles' game, and he could even go along with Mrs. Niles, although he wondered how a woman that looked as honorable as Mrs. Niles could justify her willingness to have a daughter engaged in the vile game of hellflower running. He could play their game because he would have little contact with them.
But he wondered whether he could play the game Carolyn expected. He did not know exactly what she expected but his guess was that anybody amoral enough to run dope would hardly cavil at anything else. He knew that many a man could lie in his teeth and play the role of spy convincingly, but when the role included making love to a woman whose background was distasteful to a man, Farradyne believed that this distaste would show through anything he did.