Worlds Apart Read Online Free PDF Page A

the center of attraction, as she had both hoped and feared she would be, she was noticed for a moment, and then forgotten, as usual. Abner Carliss wasn't there, so she didn't even have a chance to reject his attentions, or decide, after all, not to reject them.
    "Look, Rog," said Alice frankly, "you can pull some people around with strings, but not me. I'm not a pawn in your chess game."
    "No," Rog agreed. "You're my queen."
    He spoke so matter-of-factly, still looking past her, that he both compelled belief and knocked the confidence out of Alice.
    "Surely it's obvious?" he said. "Among the girls, you're the one who counts, Alice. We know it and the old folk know it, You're not the prettiest, or the cleverest, or the strongest, or the bravest. You're just the one who matters most. The one who's consulted, You're the Jessie Bendall of this generation. They can't afford to do anything to you."
    Alice was silent for a long time.
    June was pretty, and she must have brains. Rog had never thought of her before, and he suspected that neither had anyone else except Abner. She was just Dick's kid sister. Even Abner probably hada't thought of her as a girl to marry. Now that she had stepped into the spotlight, she would be noticed by more and more people until she began to be included in the register of cute chicks headed by Toni, Helen Hulton, and Bertha Doran (n�Mitchell). But so far, Rog suspected, only he had noticed her.
    She was rather small, and very slim. The word for June, everything about her, was dainty. Though she was sleek and firmly muscled, she gave the impression of fragility. She had one compelling attribute of real beauty. In looking at her one didn't look at any part of her, even her face; she was a surprisingly alluring whole, and it seemed silly to take notice of her arms or her waist or her legs. One looked at Toni's legs. June one noticed only as a girl.
    No, as a woman.
    Alice was saying: "I wish I knew whether we should follow you to the death, Rog, or bury you alive."
    Rog sighed. "We've talked about the Constitution for hours at a time, day in, day out, since we were old enough to have ideas of our own. It's wrong, isn't it?"
    "Yes, I think so. But it isn't bad -- it isn't evil Just silly and shortsighted. Mistaken, not criminal. Sincere, though wrong."
    "But wrong, nevertheless?"
    "Yes."
    "Then let's change it."
    "By refusing to obey it?"
    "By making a challenge, forcing a division, and winning it."
    Things were clicking into place smoothly. The fact that he had only just noticed June as a woman was of no importance. He had to marry; he wanted to make quite sure of Dick; June must have some sense, being Lionel Smith's daughter and Dick's sister; and if he were married it would be easier to persuade Toni to play her part in the plan.
    It would be an interim marriage, of course. He didn't want June as a permanent wife, and he didn't think it fair to ask her, at seventeen to make a decision at a moment's notice for the rest of her life.
    "We must do it now," Rog insisted, "because the longer you leave a thing like that the more difficult it is. People vote for a thing not because it's good or bad but because it's been going on for twenty years. They vote for the status quo just because it's the status quo."
    "True," Alice admitted. "That's one way of looking at it. There's another way. This way: you're power-mad, Rog. You see how you can rule Lemon, hence Mundis, hence the human race, hence the galaxy. You can be the most important living thing. That's it, isn't it?"
    Rog didn't seem interested. "Let's stick to the flaws in the Constitution," he said.
    "Oh, we know all about /them/. But the answer is still the same. I'm not marrying Fred." She went on quickly before Fred could speak: "Not yet."
    "Not yet? That means you will when what happens?"
    "How would I know?" She grinned. "When you do something, Rog, damn you. I don't know what, but I expect you'll do it."
    "You mean you'll do it when I show you good