Mark got the twenty-five thousand. The owner of the sidewalk was finally convinced that Mark's broken back was worth a lot. From then on there was no holding Mark. Pretending to act for the little man who had originally knocked him down, he located the woman who had made a raspberry in the little man's face and collected another two thousand; the woman didn't recognize Mark, because Mark's features were changed a little.
Then Mark spotted two others who had made threatening noises and collected five hundred from each, and from another who expressed doubt that he was really hurt, Mark got a thousand points. There was nothing to it, really. Most people had regular beats, and all Mark had to do was sit at one side in Penelope's wheel-chair and wait for them to come by. He would have collected more if he could have remembered more faces. He saw Conley go by once a day but now he wasn't afraid. He thought Conley looked at him disappointedly.
A couple of weeks later he got his card back from the Machine at Central and looked at it with great satisfaction. He had a hundred and thirteen thousand points to his credit. He met Penelope and they went to her apartment for dinner. Jubilantly Mark got all the fancy food—even some synthetic meat—that he could get on his card, and they prepared for a feast.
"The only thing is," Penelope said as she punched the dishes on the table, "I'm scared. I have a feeling you shouldn't have gone over a hundred thousand."
"Is that why you never cashed my slip for thirty-five thousand?"
She nodded. "That's mostly the reason. My balance is over eighty thousand and I was afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"I don't know. Just afraid."
"Well," said Mark, "I'm not. I don't see what Central can do to a person for getting points. There's no rule against it."
"It's dangerous," Penelope insisted.