attacking the other. The others crowding around would chant, "One's scared, and the other's damn glad of it."
Raff was back in Clayville. He took a step toward the Californian, who now stood, but did not come forward himself.
It's the way of nature, Raff thought. Animals spend a lot more time displaying and bluffing than they do fighting. Even his ants held tournaments, settling their territorial boundaries without the loss of a drop of hemolymph--ant blood--most of the time.
They stood like that for another half minute. The remainder of the group remained silent. He's preserving status, Raff thought. He's bigger than me, but he may not be in very good shape. All those marijuana tokes, all that beer could have slowed him, and maybe he knows it.
Raff was sure, by the unspoken and primitive dictate of primate emotion, that if he turned and walked away from this, he would lose whatever status he had among the Gaians. More importantly, he would be humiliated in front of JoLane. She might tell him it was all right to walk away and that she was glad he didn't stoop to violence. But she wouldn't mean it.
It was Ainesley who then spoke to Raff, to a ten-year-old boy: Never back down if you're in the right. The Gaians to the rear of the room were beginning to stand up, to leave or come forward, he couldn't tell, and Raff could hear whispers. Raff thought he knew his man. It was time to call the bluff. He was ready to pay the price of a bloody nose. He took another step forward. The two were now less than four feet apart. Raff's arms were at his side but with fists clenched.
Then the showdown challenge. "You don't know jackshit about anything, do you, boy?" Raff growled. "Let me give you a piece of advice. You keep going where you're headed, boy, and you'll end up in jail somewhere. Everybody'd be better off if you did, you ridiculous loudmouth."
It was the Californian's turn to be startled. He stood his ground, but the only response he managed was "Fuck you," the traditional coward's exit line. Raff let him have that last word, making it a draw.
Then both managed to turn away from each other simultaneously, shaking their heads in mock amazement at the perfidy of the other. Testosterone did not win in the confrontation that day, no violence erupted, but it showed Raff in a way mere introspection never could that he was not gutless, and Chinos the Californian was not entirely stupid.
It was then that Raff finally realized the absurdity of the situation. Nobody, under any circumstance, has a fistfight in the Lowell House Common Room of Harvard University. But Raff felt good about the outcome anyway.
Immediately afterward a greatly relieved and proud Raff walked JoLane home to her room in Leverett House. He decided that the manly thing to do was say nothing to JoLane about the confrontation with the Californian, thus implying, Oh, that? That was nothing, I can handle that kind of thing easily. But he was puzzled that she said nothing about it herself, not even enough to signal her loyalty to him. Nothing was said when they met again two days later in the Memorial Hall cafeteria. By that time Raff had begun to put the confrontation out of his mind, but JoLane's silence still troubled him.
Raff dropped by the next Gaia Force meeting, two weeks later, determined to show that he had not been intimidated by the Californian's hostility, and wanting to continue the friendship he had made with several other members. He looked around to locate his enemy, however, determined to plant himself as far away as possible. No point in going through all that again. When he spotted the other man, he was dismayed to see him in an apparent warm conversation with JoLane. When she spotted Raff, she broke away and came over to him.
Raff felt a surge of jealousy as he struggled for the right things to say to JoLane. Why is my girl, he thought, talking with that jerk. As the feeling receded, it was replaced with a sour aftertaste of resentment.
As more days passed, Raff's annoyance grew, and with it came an ebbing away of trust. JoLane continued to offer no support. She then became too busy with a flood of classwork for sex. Raff tried to rationalize her shift in mood. He loved her, he thought, for the fierce free spirit she now was showing.