ng. Yet it reminded him too
well of her superior attitude towards rubes from the stellar sticks.
Here he might be the director, but on ancient Earth he would be only
one more gaping, lead-footed yokel.

"How do you feel?" he asked, realizing and hating the triteness of
the words, even as he said them.

"Terrible. I'll be dead by morning. Reach me a piece of fruit from
that bowl, will you? My mouth tastes like an old boot heel. I wonder
how fresh fruit ever got here. Probably a gift to the working
classes from the smiling planetary murderers on Nyjord."

She took the apple Brion gave her and bit into it. "Did you ever
think of going to Earth?"

Brion was startled. This was too close to his own thoughts about
planetary backgrounds. There couldn't possibly be a connection
though. "Never," he told her. "Up until a few months ago I never
even considered leaving Anvhar. The Twenties are such a big thing at
home that it is hard to imagine that anything else exists while you
are still taking part in them."

"Spare me the Twenties," she pleaded. "After listening to you and
Ihjel, I know far more about them than I shall ever care to know.
But what about Anvhar itself? Do you have big city-states as Earth
does?"

"Nothing like that. For its size, it has a very small population.
No big cities at all. I guess the largest centers of population
are around the schools, packing plants, things like that."

"Any exobiologists there?" Lea asked, with a woman's eternal ability
to make any general topic personal.

"At the universities, I suppose, though I wouldn't know for sure.
And you must realize that when I say no big cities, I also mean no
little cities. We aren't organized that way at all. I imagine the
basic physical unit is the family and the circle of friends. Friends
get important quickly, since the family breaks up when children are
still relatively young. Something in the genes, I suppose--we all
enjoy being alone. I suppose you might call it an inbred survival
trait."

"Up to a point," she said, biting delicately into the apple. "Carry
that sort of thing too far and you end up with no population at all.
A certain amount of proximity is necessary for that."

"Of course it is. And there must be some form of recognized
relationship or control--that or complete promiscuity. On Anvhar
the emphasis is on personal responsibility, and that seems to take care
of the problem. If we didn't have an adult way of looking at ...