He strapped the ship bag shut on the stun-pistols his pockets would not hold. He made a minor adjustment to the space communicator. It was not ruined, but nobody else could use it without much labor finding out what he'd done. This was the sort of thing his grandfather on Zan would have advised. His grandfather's views were explicit.
"Helping one's neighbor," he'd said frequently in Hoddan's hearing while Hoddan was a youth, "is all right as a two-way job. But maybe he's laying for you. You get a chance to fix him so he can't do you no harm and you're a lot better off and he's a hell of a lot better neighbor!"
This was definitely true of the men from Walden. Hoddan guessed that Derec was one of them. The other would represent the police or the planetary government. It was probably just as true of Don Loris and others.
Hoddan found himself disapproving of the way the cosmos was designed. Even though presently he sat at breakfast high up on the battlements, and Fani looked at him with interesting anxiety, he was filled with forebodings. The future looked dark. Yet what he asked of fate and chance was so simple! He asked only a career and riches and a delightful girl to marry and the admiration of his fellow-citizens. Trivial things! But it looked like he'd have to do battle for even such minor gifts of destiny!
Fani watched him breakfast.
"I don't understand you," she complained. "Anybody else would be proud of what he'd done and angry with my father. Or don't you think he'll act ungratefully?"
"Of course I do!" said Hoddan.
"Then why aren't you angry?"
"I'm hungry," said Hoddan.
"And you take it for granted that I want to be properly grateful," said Fani in one breath, "and yet you haven't shown the least appreciation of my getting two horses over in that patch of woodland yonder"—she pointed and Hoddan nodded—"and having Thal there with orders to serve you faithfully—"