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. Now shut up, I want to study art."
"Who's talking?"
Thorby did not ask Loeen what she had done in El Nido, but it did open his eyes to the fact that he was playing the leading role in a courtship without having known it. It scared him. Doctor Mader's words haunted his sleep " -- before Grandmother decides to marry you to someone . . . if you wait that long -- you're lost!"
Father and the Woolamurra official gossiped while Thorby fretted. Should he leave Sisu? If he wasn't willing to be a trader all his life he had to get out while still a bachelor. Of course, he could stall -- look at Fritz. Not that he had anything against Loeen, even if she had made a fool of him.
But if he was going to leave -- and he had doubts as to whether he could stand the custom-ridden "monotonous life forever -- then Woolamurra was the best chance he might have in years. No castes, no guilds, no poverty, no immigration laws -- why, they even accepted mutants! Thorby had seen hexadactyls, hirsutes, albinos, lupine ears, giants, and other changes. If a man could work, Woolamurra could use him.
What should he do? Say, "Excuse me, please," leave the room -- then start running? Stay lost until Sisu jumped? He couldn't do that! Not to father, not to Sisu; he owed them too much.
What, then? Tell Grandmother he wanted off? If she let him off, it would probably be some chilly spot between stars! Grandmother would regard ingratitude to Sisu as the unforgivable sin
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