"Is this a survey?"
Lee grinned. "I'm the lobbyist for the Guggenheim Foundation. Asking that kind of question is a reflex."
The girl walked around the room. She looked out the window and stretched. Sordman bellowed lust at her flanks and the long curve of her hips.
"Why do men do anything?" Raven yawned. "When he was in Voc school some kid took him in the back room and showed him some tricks. Maybe that did it. Is there a psycher in the house?"
"There is," George said. "Is Citizen Smith an astronautical engineer?"
"You could say so. He works on instruments for space labs."
"That's funny." George stared at the sun flashing on the far-off ocean. "I remember I felt bitter once because I couldn't be a space engineer. I wanted to build rockets and ride to the planets. But the Voc people told me I was too weak in math. So I became a healer of the psyche and I learned my love for rockets was a hunger for power. But still I love the brutes and now I'm an old man I still sometimes wish I'd been an engineer."
"That's too bad," the girl said politely.
"Yes. I suppose your husband feels that way about art?"
"He gets drunk about it sometimes."