The Duke of Uranium

"I think maybe Minister for External Affairs Myx. It's where I'm best qualified." Dujuv made a little, coughing laugh. "If I'd said that—"

"You'd better not even think it, Dujy. All right, so I'm in public service, and what are you toves going to do?" "The Army."

"I'm going to try out for pro slamball." Jak noted with approval that neither of the girls voiced a word of disapproval. "So what are you planning on, Sesh?"

She sighed. "Can you be nonjudgmental?" "I can try," Jak said, and Myx added, "Of course we can." Dujuv nodded.

"Well, there's a lot of money in my family. I don't think I'll be picking any occupation." After a painful, dead silence, Myx said, "You can't possibly mean you plan to register S.P."

Sesh nodded. "I do mean that." After an awkward pause, when she seemed to be waiting for one of them to say something, she added, "It's not such a big deal anymore. Toktru it's not. And you can still do lots of interesting things if you're registered S.P. You just can't do anything for money or have any responsibility. That's not a big deal."

S.P. stood for Social Parasite—a person who lived off family money. A registered Social Parasite was a pariah with sharp restrictions on legal rights: S.P.s could own common stock but the government voted it; they had the same free expression rights as anyone else but couldn't vote; they could sue but not speak in court or serve on a jury. Getting your feets back after registering S.P. was painfully difficult, beginning with a mandatory unpaid five-year hitch in the Forces and continuing through four years of re-education and probation. It was a permanent repository for idiot children of the rich, hopelessly eccentric artists, dangerous incompetents, and the incurably annoying. Although people no longer suicided when they were declared S.P., most 350-year-olds, the oldest generation still alive, would rather have been registered as sex criminals than S.P., and even among young people there was still widespread support for sterilizing S.P.s.

"You're really going to do it," Jak said. "Toktru." "But, you're not superrich or anything. I mean you don't dress especially well—" "Thanks."

"I should have said, you don't dress rich. Don't change the subject. I mean I've never seen any evidence that you were rich, and we've been mekko and demmy for more than two years. You don't vacation on the moon or anything."

"Not lately. I've been there, though, on vacation, when I was younger. And I've been to the Aerie many times. And to Mars, and to Earth. It's just that that was all before you knew me. I didn't travel for the last three years because I wanted to finish gen school. Toktru, once I'm registered S.P. and don't have to hide the trust fund from my toves anymore, I'll probably travel much more."

All of them stared at Sesh; none of them had any idea what to say. "Look," she said, "it's not a big deal. I'm not evil. The Wager makes perfect sense if you're smart and ambitious and need to make money because your trust fund isn't big enough. But I'm glib more than smart, my main ambition is nice things and lots of time off, and I can afford all that without any job. And it makes sense to teach the Wager to people so that they're more predictable and easier to get what you want from, but I don't care whether I'm predictable or whether anyone gets what they want from me.