Even
in the absence of any native, she used her handkerchief to mask the
act.
"Suddabit," she said, distinctly. "Sud-da-a-bit." Taking out the
geek-speaker, she put it away. "Why, that's exactly how they'd
pronounce it!"
"And don't tell me you haven't heard it before," O'Leary said. "The
geeks were screaming it at you, over on Seventy-second Street, this
afternoon. _Znidd suddabit_; kill the Terrans. That's Rakkeed the
Prophet's whole gospel."
"So you see," Eric Blount rammed home the moral, "this is just another
case of nobody with any right to call anybody else's kettle black....
Cigarette?"
"Thank you." She leaned toward the lighter-flame O'Leary had snapped
into being. "I suspect that of being a principle you'd like me to bear
in mind at the polar mines, when I see, let's say, some laborer being
beaten by a couple of overseers with three foot lengths of
three-quarter-inch steel cable."
"Well, you could also remember that a native's skin is about half an
inch thick, and a good deal tougher than a human's," von Schlichten
told her. "And it wouldn't hurt any if you found out how these
laborers are treated at home.
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