The Duke of Uranium

The Wager is a great set of values to channel people trying to make it into useful pathways, but I was born with it made, and I have no intention of being useful, which is the first step on the road to being used. I'm not going to wear a skirt that doesn't suit my long legs or go out with a heet that doesn't suit my sarcastic taste in humor, so why should I have values that don't suit my real position?" She sighed. "It's nice to just tell you all this. I'm tired of having to tell you that I won an advertising contest or a sweepstakes or something whenever I want to take you somewhere pricey."

"Oh, no," Myx said. "So you were just—" "Toktru masen! And I'm doing it again. After all, there's so much money, toktru it doesn't mean anything to me, but my friends mean a lot to me, and fun means a lot to me. I can afford the lightest, usually many times over, and I like taking you all to places that are light. So-no arguments!—I'm financing some fun with my friends, tonight."

"Sesh, no—" Dujuv began. "I just happen to have four tickets for the closing performance of Y4UB."

There was a dead silence. Those had been sold out for months; if Sesh had gotten four of them legitimately, she had spent a small fortune, and if she'd gotten them from a scalper, it hadn't been small. It was also the kind of event you fantasized about going to.

"Well," Jak said, "'Principle 11: Break any principle except this one and a few others, but expect the consequences.' I hope you two will come along to make sure I don't fall any further into"—he slipped into his best Teacher Fwidya impression—"the dark swamp of that hideous contemporary affliction, that cancer in the engine of society, that endless font of mixed metaphors, moral relativism!"

The girls laughed; Dujuv said, "You'll sound more like him if you use more emphasis." "Everyone's a critic. But are we going to do this?" "Oh, sure," Myxenna said. She stretched in a way that seemed to be sort of an anatomy lesson. "It's not like I've always been extra extremely careful about my principles, if you dak me, masen?"

Copyright © 2002 by John Barnes