"[Hollister's] new rating entitled him to private quarters, a tiny room with minimal furniture, though he still had to wash and eat publicly like everyone else except the very top." (IV, p. 229)
"Hollister's present rank let him visit another bar than the long, crowded room where plain laborers caroused. This one had private tables, decorations, music in the dim dusky air. It was quiet, the engineer aristocracy had their own code of manners." (p. 231)
That answers a question that I had asked: do the highest ranks receive a greater share of the limited living space etc? I suppose that the answer was obvious - although, in James Blish's and Norman L. Knight's A Torrent Of Faces, about overpopulation, members of the Union of Occupied Classes live in the same standard accommodation and consume the same basic rations as everyone else.
What is Hollister doing on Venus? He is a secret service Un-man although not a Rostomily Brother. He has been conditioned with false memories to get him through a narcoquiz. He has a real job to be getting on with and is on a mission of some kind. He is setting himself against the "...powerful and ruthless government..." (II, p. 214) He has to find out why and how that government has misled and indoctrinated the population of Venus.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Not in the least surprising. Of course there was going to be social and economic stratification on Venus. And esp. in so regimented and militarized a setup as seen there.
Ad astra! Sean
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