Suddenly, his father began to chuckle, first deep in his stomach, then high up in his throat, a ratchety, rasping laugh.
"What's the matter?" Larry asked angrily. "What's so funny?"
"You say you don't know how to worry? Why, you're practically an expert at it!"
"What do you mean by that?"
"Suppose you tell me what you've been thinking of, the past two days. Everything."
Larry stood up, walked to the door. The robonurse was waiting in the next room, patient, unmoving. After a moment, he turned to his father. "Well—I've been thinking that I don't like the City. That I'm afraid I wasn't properly prepared for it. That I think raising me on the unworry drug robbed me of any chance I'd have to learn to stand the strains of City life. That even so I don't like the Playground either, and I'm caught between." He checked each item off on his fingers. "That—"
"That's enough, Larry. You've analyzed it nicely."
Slowly, the truth opened out before him and an embarrassed grin widened on his face. Resistance to strain could be acquired overnight—by nine out of ten. Nine out of ten didn't need a long, grueling childhood to prepare them for adulthood; the tenth would never grow up anyway.
"I've been worrying," he said. "I'm the worrying kind. I've been worrying since yesterday, and I didn't even know it!"
His father nodded. Larry took the capsule-box from its shelf, opened it, stared at the three different kinds of capsule inside. "There never really was any choice after all, was there?"