"I'm sure," Harvey said, "the gentleman never does anything as inelegant as that."
The clusters of buildings had looked close. It took fully an hour before the settlers reached them. By that time, they were hot and thirsty and dispirited. As they went up the village street, the guides pointed out the numbered houses, and the settlers assigned to them left the column and carried their luggage inside. Most of them were inside only a few minutes before they came to the doorways to stare unhappily at each other. They had found that the houses, made of wood and plaster, each consisted of three boxy rooms containing a few sticks of crudely made furniture. Nothing was painted. There was no glass in the windows. The beds consisted of four posts with mattresses of woven vines.
"What did you expect—innersprings?" Harvey said. "Remember—Colonel Baker never said you'd get innersprings on this planet. The man never told you a lie."
The toilets were tiny out-houses, a hundred yards away in the field. "Oh, dear," Ruth said.
"Well, you can't expect the man to transport sewer pipe to Paradise," Harvey said grimly.
He stood in the doorway and waited until the guides had deposited the last of the settlers and were started on their return trip. Harvey called to them as they came by. They glanced at him blankly, said something to each other, and kept on walking. Harvey leaped to the street, raced after them, grabbed them by the shoulders and spun them both around. "When I talk to somebody, I expect an answer," he said savagely.
The two guides looked at him with worn, emotionless eyes. They stood there, shoulders drooping slightly in a weirdly identical posture.
"What's this all about?" Harvey said, subduing his voice with difficulty. He waited. Nothing came out of them. "Do you work for Baker? Don't you have farms like the rest of us?"
The stocky one's mouth twisted slightly. Then he spoke. "We have farms," he said in a low, sullen voice. "We are also guides. We couldn't work our farms all the way. We had to do extra work to meet our payments."
Harvey stared at them. "Payments for what? Didn't you pay for the farms before you came here?"