Masters Of Everon by Gordon R. Dickson

Author:Gordon R. Dickson [Dickson, Gordon R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780441521791
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Published: 1980-02-14T06:00:00+00:00

"Now wait a minute," he said. "Just a second. I told you I appreciated all you'd done for me; but this goes beyond neighborliness. I've got the mapcase. You don't have to go along with me the rest of the way."

"That's my choice," she said.

"Why?" he said. "You don't need to. And it isn't as if you seem to think a lot of me."

"I don't have to give anybody reasons," she said. "And that includes you."

"But," he said, "you really don't think much of me, do you? In fact, you don't even like me."

"I didn't say that." She looked stubborn. "All right, you're from Earth. You don't understand Everon, even as well as the wisent ranchers and the down-city people—and they don't understand it at all. You people from Earth come in here for the Ecolog Corps or on a job for some outfit like that; and you sit in your office down by the spaceport and think you've been on Everon. Far as I'm concerned, you could all stay home. No, I don't particularly like you, Robini!"

"My brother," said Jef, "had an office down by the spaceport. But he knew Everon and loved it just as much as you do. I know, because I've heard him talk about his work here, when he was home on leave. He was as close to this world as anyone on it."

"Might be," she said. "But I didn't know him. If he felt that way, he was the first off-Everon job import I've ever seen who did."

"You know what the matter is with you?" Jef said. He had not intended to say this much, but now he found himself committed. "You're a colonist on a new world, just beginning to make a living under primitive conditions; and you've got an inferiority complex where people from Earth are concerned. So you turn it around and try to pretend that I'm the one who doesn't know anything, and don't feel anything."

"That's pretty," she said. "Where'd you read that?"

"I didn't read it-"

"You," she said, getting to her feet and slinging her crossbow over her back, "better quit right now. I can talk rings around you. I can walk rings around you. I can run rings around you. I can shoot you full of holes. I know these woods and you don't. If I want to go along with you to meet Beau, there's not one damn thing you can do about it."

Jef opened his mouth to retort, and then shut it again. Unfortunately, she was right.

"On the other hand," she said after a pause, "I'll give you something; and that's your maolot. It was seeing him with you that made me take a second thought about you in the first place. You like him and he likes you. So, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt because he does. Figure yourself lucky you've got a friend like him to vouch for you, that's all. Now toss me the mapcase the way I told you and go find us some dry wood for a fire.

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