"Linna is a good nurse's aid," responded Hansen. "Mind if we keep her on a bit?"
"Not if she minds staying."
"I want to, Keg," she said quietly. "With Marie wearing a platinum-mounted diamond tiara to dust the house, and Briggs coming to work in a limousine—imagine the idea of a butler's chauffeur!—and as you said, people eating from gold plates and using iridium tableware, there's nothing to get long-nosed about but one's inventiveness, talent, or uniqueness."
"Linna, you're an ace," grinned Keg. He smiled up at her and said, while waving the sheet of Identium before their faces, "do me a job, Linna. Go out and buy me back the spaceline."
"Huh?" blurted Channing, Franks and Hansen. "What for?"
"When the tumult and the shouting dies, fellers, we'll all be back in business again. Identium! The only thing you can write a contract on and not have it fouled or duplicated. The only thing you can write a check on, or use for credit. Identium—the first page of the new era—and when we get the mess cleared up Keg Johnson and Company will be carrying the mail! Linna, go out and buy me back my spaceline!"
Interlude:
An era of absolutely no want may give rise to concern about the ambitions of the race. Those who may wonder why the Period of Duplication did not weed all ambition out and leave the race decadent are missing one vital point.
They should ask themselves to consider the many reasons why men work, Keg Johnson himself can supply one line of reasoning—as follows: