Alien Earth by Megan Lindholm

her credit card. He keyed in her purchases without looking at her, then ran her consumer chit to make sure she wasn’t over her allotment for clothing commodities. He considered his screen for a moment, leaned closer as if he couldn’t believe his eyes, and then looked up at her.
    “As near as I can read this,” he said carefully, “you have about thirty years of commodity allotment waiting to be used.”
    Connie smiled embarrassedly, wishing only that the transaction were over and that her purchases were in her bag covering her guilty cargo. “Mariner,” she explained, gesturing at her orange coveralls. “I’m out in deep space a lot. No time to use up my allotments when I’m in port.”
    “Oh, yeah?” A faint stirring of interest in the clerk’s brown eyes. “You sure you want to buy this skirt then? The degradable on it is only three years. Probably just rot away in your locker while you’re in Waitsleep. Unless you preservegas it. I hear you guys are allowed to do that.”
    “I’ll gas it,” Connie promised him, and tried to gather up her purchases. He let her get the shawl, tunic, and skirt billowed into her carry bag, but stood holding her cards.
    “You got a lot of back clothing allotment on here,” he told her, as if it were something she hadn’t understood.
    “I know.” She held out her hand for the cards.
    He ignored the gesture, but put an elbow on the counter and leaned across it to say quietly. “I know people who would be interested in that back allotment.”
    “What?” Connie asked stupidly, instinctively drawing back from him.
    “Everybody does it, anymore. You don’t need it, so pass on the allotment to someone who does. Gotta be your size, of course, but the customer tells us what she wants, she pays, but it racks up against your allotment, and she puts a generous credit to your account. Of course, you’re not exactly the most common size, but there’s still a market for all that unused allotment.”
    Connie tightened her grip on the carry bag. Had he seen the plastic? She didn’t think so. So why was he approaching her with something so monstrously illegal? “I’m a good citizen,” she informed him faintly.
    Something in his face changed. It wasn’t what she had expected. Instead of recoiling, his eyes widening as he realized he’d approached an honest citizen with his criminal plan, he just sighed and rolled his eyes, as if he’d told her a joke and she’d asked him to explain it. With a condescending sneer, he flipped her cards onto the counter so that they nearly slid off. She almost dropped her bag catching them. “Of course you’re an honest citizen,” he said sarcastically. “We all are. Aren’t we? Aren’t we all just perfectly adjusted and totally happy being good little citizens? Besides”—he leaned across the counter toward her and lowered his voice to a nasty register—“I didn’t offer to do anything illegal. I was just telling you that such a market existed. The very fact that you thought I was making you an illegal offer probably means that you are unadjusted, with illegal longings just lurking all through your brain. So think on that, good citizen.”
    He pushed himself back abruptly and stalked off across the shop, muttering to himself about “good citizens.” Connie stared mutely after him, then stuffed her cards into her carry bag with her new garments and the illegal plastic recordings. She hurried out of the store and down Main Corridor G, feeling obscurely shamed and guilty. But hadn’t she done what was right? Shouldn’t she feel virtuous and pleased with herself? The goal of the consumer allotment chit system was to prevent excess consumption of goods, a behavior that always resulted in needless harvest of raw materials and future waste. By refusing to sell her own excess allotment, she had worked within the system to prevent waste and discourage greed forconsumer commodities. She had taken the correct action. So why did she feel