"No, I don't," he said. "It seems to me like we'd be selling out if we did that. Maybe I'm being a purist about it, but damn it all...."
"But you can stop it easily," she said. "According to the charter, a vote of membership has to be unanimous. All you have to do is say no."
"Yeah—well, that's true," he said. "Only this is more than that. That rule is just about ordinary members, the idea being to keep feuds out. If somebody isn't going to be able to get along with a new member, why let's find it out at the start. And, since the old member is more important than the new one, let's block the new one.
"But this thing's different; this isn't just a case of whether she's compatible or not. I have nothing against Marcia, personally; I just don't like this way of doing business. But this ties up our whole future, economic and everything else. If I blackball her, I'm blackballing our contract with Eltron; and matters of contract, or economics, or whatall, are not supposed to be subject to veto. No ... I won't vote against her all by my lonesome. If the clan is pretty well split, maybe I will pull a technicality. But I won't just up and blackball her all by myself, just because I think I'm right."
Sandy was thoughtful. "What about this job at Eltron," she asked, finally. "Can we swing it? It's bigger than the job here at Midland, and bigger than the one at Universal. Is it too big?"
"No," Tom said. "We can handle it. Oh, we may have to hire a few private citizens, but we can do most of it ourselves. If we can average nine people a week, we'll be all right. And we can' do that if we leave two to take care of the kids, one to manage the house and cook and all, and one to fill in, taking care of other outside matters, having babies, and whatnot. But even if we can only average eight ourselves, it is still reasonable with a couple of private citizens. No, I'm not afraid of the job."
"It'll be funny working alongside of private citizens," Sandy said, musingly; "I hope we pick better ones than those guys at Sanford Radio."
TOM laughed. "We will," he said. "The trouble there was that we didn't hire them; the company did. And the guys were good enough—they just didn't like the clans."
"That's one way of putting it," Sandy said. "They just had some preconceived ideas as to what kind of woman would join a clan. Happens they were wrong, but it took a bit of jiujitsu to convince them."