Finished, they left the three uproariously drunk in the waiting room and went to wash up. Dr. Kalmar went along bewilderedly. The old man was as unconcerned as if he did this sort of thing daily.
"I was as arrogant and belligerent as this squirt was?"
"Worse," Dr. Lowell said. "He was willing to finish out his internship. You weren't. Still worried about the ethics?"
"Yes. Naturally."
"All right, apply some logic, then. Are you happier on Deneb than you'd have been on Earth?"
"Well, certainly. I'd have been lucky to get a job doctoring in a summer camp. I wouldn't trade a roomy planet like this for the jammed cubicles of Earth. And I like our methods better than terrestrial dogma. But those are my preferences. I can't inflict them on anybody else."
"The hell they were your preferences. You bickered more about our methods and longed more loudly for the tenements of Earth than this lad ever did. All it took was a slight Ego Alter and you have a happier life than you would have had. Right?"
Dr. Kalmar felt his tension ease. If the old man said it was right, it was. He became momentarily resentful when he realized that that reaction had been installed by Dr. Lowell, but then he smiled. It really was right. A bit arbitrary, perhaps, but for the good of Dr. Hoyt and Deneb in the long run, just as it had been for himself.
"Look," he said, drying his arms. "I've been wanting my wife to go through a slight rephysical."
"Why don't you ask her?"