grieving about lost interstellar trade, and bewailing bumper crops, and
searching for a mythical robot god."

"You think, if you can get something like that started, that they'll
forget about the Brain?" his father asked skeptically.

"That crowd up in Kurt Fawzi's office? Niflheim, no! They'll go on
hunting for the Brain as long as they live, and every day they'll be
expecting to find it tomorrow. That'll keep them happy. But they're all
old men. The ones I'm interested in are the boys of Charley's age. I'm
going to give them too many real things to do--building ships, exploring
the rest of the Trisystem, opening mines and factories, producing
wealth--for them to get caught in that empty old dream."

He looked down at the dusty fountain on which his father sat. "That
ghost-dream haunts this graveyard. I want to give them living dreams
that they can make come true."

Conn's father sat in silence for a while, his cigar smoke red in the
sunset. "If you can do all that, Conn.... You know, I believe you can.
I'm with you, as far as I can help, and we'll have a talk with Charley.
He's a good boy, Conn, and he has a lot of influence among the other
youngsters." He looked at his watch. "We'd better be getting along. You
don't want to be late for your own coming-home party."

Rodney Maxwell slid off the edge of the fountain to his feet, hitching
at the gunbelt under his coat. Have to dig out his own gun and start
wearing it, Conn thought. A man simply didn't go around in public
without a gun in Litchfield. It wasn't decent. And he'd be spending a
lot of time out in the brush, where he'd really need one.