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elevators.
    “Oh,
shit,
Daddy,” Esther said.
    At sixteen, Esther had got a little more height, though she still hunched over as if her head was pulled forward by her effort
     to see through the thick glasses that kept sliding down her nose. Her temper was pretty moody. Ike couldn’t seem to say much
     lately without her jumping him.
    “ ‘Shit’ isn’t a statement that furthers discussion, Esther,” he said mildly.
    “What discussion?”
    “The topic, as I understood it, was John Kelly’s impatience with Mo, and what might motivate it.”
    “Oh,
shit,
Daddy!”
    “Stop it, Esther,” Susan said.
    “Stop what?”
    “If you know, as your tone implies you do, what was annoying John,” Ike said, “would you share your knowledge with us?”
    When you worked hard not to give in to irrational impulses, it was discouraging to get no response at all but emotionality.
     His perfectly fair request merely drove the girl into speechless fury. The thick glasses glared at him a moment. He could
     scarcely see her grey eyes through them. She stalked ahead and got into an elevator that seemed to open to accommodate her
     rage. She didn’t hold the doors for them.
    “So,” Ike said tiredly, waiting for the next elevator to Vermont. “What was that all about?”
    Susan shrugged a little.
    “I don’t understand this behavior. Why is she so hostile, so aggressive?”
    It wasn’t a new question, perhaps, but Susan didn’t even make an effort to answer it. Her silence was almost hostile, and
     he resented it. “What does she think this kind of behavior gains her? What is it she wants?”
    “Timmy Kelly calls you Kike Rose,” Susan said. “So Esther told me. He calles her Kikey Rose at school. She said she liked
     ‘Glasseyes’ better.”
    “Oh,” Ike said. “Oh—shit.”
    “Exactly.”
    They rode down to Vermont in silence.
    Crossing the Common under the pseudostars he said, “I don’t even understand where he learned the word.”
    “Who?”
    “Timmy Kelly. He’s Esther’s age—a year younger. He grew up in the Colony just as she did. The Kellys joined the year after
     we did. My God! We can keep out every virus, every bacterium, every spore, but this—this gets in? How? How can it be?—I tell
     you, Susan, I think the monitors should be closed. Everything these children see and hear from earth is a lesson in violence,
     bigotry, supersition.”
    “He didn’t need to listen to the monitors.” Her tone was almost patronizingly patient.
    “I worked with John at Moonshadow, close quarters, daily, for eight months,” he said. “There was nothing, nothing of this
     sort.”
    “It’s Pat more than John, actually,” Susan said in the same disagreeably dispassionate way. “Little sub-snubs on the Nutritional
     Planning Committee, for years. Little jokes. ‘Would that be kosher—Susan?’ Well. So. You live with it.”
    “Down below, yes, but here, in the Colony, in Spes—”
    “Ike, Spes people are very conventional, conservative people, hadn’t you noticed? Very elitist people. How could we be anything
     but?”
    “Conservative? Conventional? What are you talking about?”
    “Well, look at us! Power hierarchy, division of labor by gender, Cartesian values, totally mid-twentieth century! I’m not
     complaining, you know. I chose it too. I love feeling safe. I wanted the kids to be safe. But you pay for safety.”
    “I don’t understand your attitude. We risked everything for Spes—because we’re future-oriented. These are the people who chose
     to leave the past behind, to start fresh. To form a true human community and to do it right, to do it right, for once! These
     people are innovators,intellectually courageous, not a bunch of gutbrains sunk in their bigotries! Our average IQ is 165—”
    “Ike, I know. I know the average IQ.”
    “The boy is rebelling,” Ike said after a short silence. “Just as Esther is. Using the foulest language they know, trying to
     shock the adults.