The man next to him was still staring. "Hey, fella, where you from? Don't they know about the Sixty in your home town?"
"We call it the 'Time,' " said Arvardan feebly. "I'm from back there." He jerked his thumb hard over his shoulder, and after an additional quarter minute the other withdrew that hard, questioning stare.
Arvardan's lips quirked. These people were suspicious. That facet of the caricature, at least, was authentic.
The elderly man was talking again. "She's coming with me," he said, nodding toward his genial wife. "She's not due for about three months after that, but there's no point in her waiting, she thinks, and we might as well go together. Isn't that it, Chubby?"
"Oh yes," she said, and giggled rosily. "Our children are all married and have homes of their own. I'd just be a bother to them. Besides, I couldn't enjoy the time anyway without the old fellow-so we'll just leave off together."
Whereupon the entire list of passengers seemed to engage themselves in a simultaneous arithmetical calculation of the time remaining to each-a process involving conversion factors from months to days that occasioned several disputes among the married couples involved.
One small fellow with tight clothes and a determined expression said fiercely, "I've got exactly twelve years, three months, and four days left. Twelve years, three months, and four days. Not a day more, not a day less."
Which someone qualified by saying, reasonably, "Unless you die first, of course."
"Nonsense," was the immediate reply. "I have no intention of dying first. Do I look like the sort of man who would die first? I'm living twelve years, three months, and four days, and there's not a man here with the hardihood to deny it." And he looked very fierce indeed.
A slim young man took a long, dandyish cigarette from between his lips to say darkly, "It's well for them that can calculate it out to a day. There's many a man living past his time."
"Ah, surely," said another, and there was a general nod and a rather inchoate air of indignation arose.
"Not," continued the young man, interspersing his cigarette puffs with a complicated flourish intended to remove the ash, "that I see any objection to a man-or woman-wishing, to continue on past their birthday to the next Council day, particularly if they have some business to clean up. It's these sneaks and parasites that try to go past to the next Census, eating the food of the next generation-" He seemed to have a personal grievance there.
Arvardan interposed gently, "But aren't the ages of everyone registered? They can't very well pass their birthday too far, can they?"
A general silence followed, admixtured not a little with contempt at the foolish idealism expressed. Someone said at last, in diplomatic fashion, as though attempting to conclude the subject, "Well, there isn't much point living past the Sixty, I suppose."
"Not if you're a farmer," shot back another vigorously. " After you've been working in the fields for half a century, you'd be crazy not to be glad to call it off. How about the administrators, though, and the businessmen?"
Finally the elderly man, whose fortieth wedding anniversary had begun the conversation, ventured his own opinion, emboldened perhaps by the fact that, as a current victim of the Sixty, he had nothing to lose.
"As to that," he said, "it depends on who you know." And he winked with a sly innuendo. "I knew a man once who was sixty the year after the 810 Census and lived till the 820 Census caught him. He was sixty-nine before he left off. Sixty-nine! Think of that!"
"How did he manage that?"
"He had a little money, and his brother was one of the Society of Ancients. There's nothing you can't do if you've got that combination."
There was general approval of that sentiment.
"Listen," said the young man with the cigarette emphatically, "I had an uncle who lived a year past-just a year. He was just one of these selfish guys who don't feel like going, you know. A lot he cared for the rest of us…And I didn't know about it, you see, or I would have reported him, believe me, because a guy should go when it's his time. It's only fair to the next generation. Anyway, he got caught all right, and the first thing I knew, the Brotherhood calls on me and my brother and wants to know how come we didn't report him. I said, hell, I didn't know anything about it; nobody in my family knew anything about it. I said we hadn't seen him in ten years. My old man backed us up. But we got fined five hundred credits just the same. That's when you don't have any pull."
The look of discomposure on Arvardan's face was growing. Were these people madmen to accept death so-to resent their friends and relatives who tried to escape death? Could he, by accident, be on a ship carrying a cargo of lunatics to asylum-or euthanasia? Or were these simply Earthmen?
His neighbor was scowling at him again, and his voice broke in on Arvardan's thoughts. "Hey fella, where's 'back there?'"
"Pardon me?"
"I said-where are you from? You said 'back there.' What's 'back there'? Hey?"
Arvardan found the eyes of all upon him now, each with its own sudden spark of suspicion in it. Did they think him a member of this Society of Ancients of theirs? Had his questioning seemed the cajolery of an agent provocateur?
So he met that by saying, in a burst of frankness, "I'm not from anywhere on Earth. I'm Bel Arvardan from Baronn, Sirius Sector. What's your name?" And he held out his hand.
He might as well have dropped an atomic explosive capsule into the middle of the plane.
The first silent horror on every face turned rapidly into angry, bitter hostility that flamed at him. The man who had shared his seat rose stiffly and crowded into another, where the pair of occupants squeezed closely together to make room for him.
Faces turned away. Shoulders surrounded him, hemmed him in. For a moment Arvardan burned with indignation. Earthmen to treat him so. Earthmen! He had held out the hand of friendship to them. He, a Sirian, had condescended to treat with them and they had rebuffed him.
And then, with an effort, he relaxed. It was obvious that bigotry was never a one-way operation, that hatred bred hatred!
He was conscious of a presence beside him, and he turned toward it resentfully. "Yes?"
It was the young man with the cigarette. He was lighting a new one as he spoke. "Hello," he said. "My name's Creen… Don't let those jerks get you."
"No one's getting me," said Arvardan shortly. He was not too pleased with the company, nor was he in the mood for patronizing advice from an Earthman.
But Creen was not trained to the detection of the more delicate nuances. He puffed his cigarette to life in man-sized drags and tapped its ashes over the arm of the seat into the middle aisle.
"Provincials!" he whispered with contempt. "Just a bunch of farmers…They lack the Galactic view. Don't bother with them…Now you take me. I got a different philosophy. Live and let live, I say. I got nothing against Outsiders. If they want to be friendly with me, I'll be friendly with them. What the hell-They can't help being an Outsider just like I can't help being an Earthman. Don't you think I'm right?" And he tapped Arvardan familiarly on the wrist.
Arvardan nodded and felt a crawling sensation at the other's touch. Social contact with a man who felt resentful over losing a chance to bring about his uncle's death was not pleasant, quite regardless of planetary origin.
Creen leaned back. "Heading for Chica? What did you say your name was? Albadan?"
"Arvardan. Yes, I'm going to Chica."
"That's my home town. Best damned city on Earth. Going to stay there long?"
"Maybe. I haven't made any plans."
"Umm…Say, I hope you don't object to my saying that I've been noticing your shirt. Mind if I take a close look? Made in Sirius, huh?"
"Yes, it is."
"It's very good material. Can't get anything like that on Earth…Say, bud, you wouldn't have a spare shirt like that in your luggage, would you? I'd pay for it if you wanted to sell it. It's a snappy number."