"Okay, Grace," Lloyd said gratefully, missing her inflection. He proceeded to tell her the story, from the time he'd gone to the Temple up until the present moment, eliding only the fact that Andra had spent the night in his room. He used the phrase "up at my Unit" and hoped it wouldn't be proved any deeper than that. When he'd finished, Grace looked dazed.
"You mean—You believe all that, Lloyd?" she said. "I used to have great respect for your sanity, but—This thing about no hospitals, about bumping off the Kinsmen to keep the population level down—It's crazy, Lloyd. Look, your father's one jump from the Presidency. Has he ever, in all the years of your life, even hinted such a thing to you?"
"No, of course not, but—"
"Yet you take the word of a fugitive, an obvious mental case who doesn't know what's good for her—!"
"May I say something in my defense?!" Andra protested.
"You may not," said Grace, then turned back to Lloyd as though Andra had ceased to exist anymore. "How could a man with your intelligence—"
"Hold it!" Lloyd snapped. "Hold it right there. I'm not a complete fool, Grace. Sure I had doubts. But there are some things Andra said that bother me. And I thought up a few puzzlers myself. Like war. Casualties in battle account for a high rate of the deaths reported in the Hive, right? So it occurred to me—How come we're not using the Goons to fight in the war? They're indestructible, they're armed with our most potent weapons—Yet we let men and boys be shipped out of here to fight. It doesn't make sense."
"Of course it does!" Grace retorted. "You think that question never occurred to anyone but you, Lloyd Bodger? We don't use Goons in war for the same reason they didn't use atomic weapons after the Second World War of last century: The other side has them, and might fight back with them."
"But—So what?!" Lloyd exploded. "What's the difference if our people are killed by other soldier's bullets or by enemy Goons?"
"There's—There's less slaughter this way," Grace said, with an intensity that sounded lame even to her.