"Beast. My daddy is a beast."

            "Doctor Beast, please. Skedaddle, friends, I want to examine my patient. Everyone but Grace. Barbara, go lie down."

            "I'm not tired."

            "You may be awake most of the night. Take a nap. I don't want to cope with a seven-month preemie."

            He folded back the sheet, looked Karen over, and palpated her swollen belly. "Has he been kicking?"

            "Has he! I'm going to sign him up with the Green Bay Packers. I think he's wearing shoes."

            "Wouldn't be surprised. Did you have shoes on when you started him?"

            "What? Daddy, you are a nasty man. Yes."

            "Prenatal influence. Next time take them off." He tried to judge whether the child was in the head-down position, or whether it was-God forbid!-a breech presentation. He was unable to decide. So he smiled at Karen and lied. "Shoes won't bother us, as he is head down, just as he should be. It's going to be an easy birth."

            "How can you tell, Daddy?"

            "Put your hand where mine is. That's his little pointy head, all set to take the dive. Feel it?"

            "I guess so."

            "You could see, if you were where I am." He tried to see if she was dilated. There was a little blood and he decided against a tactile examination-he did not know how it should feel and handling the birth canal would increase danger of infection. He knew that a rectal exploration should tell him something but be did not know what-so there was no point in submitting Karen to that indignity.

            He looked up, caught his wife's eye and thought of asking her opinion, decided not to. Despite having borne children, Grace knew no more about it than he did; the only result would be to shake Karen's confidence. -

            Instead he got his "stethoscope" (three end papers from his encyclopaedia, rolled into a tube) and listened for fetal heartbeat. He had often heard it lately. But he got only a variety of noises which he lumped in his mind as "gut rumble."

            "Ticking like a metronome," he 'announced, putting the tube down and covering her. "Your baby's in fine shape, baby girl, and so are you. Grace, did you start a log when the first pain showed?"

            "Barbara did."

            "Will you keep it, please? But first tell Duke to take the ropes off the other bed and rig them here."

            "Hubert, are you sure she should pull on ropes? Neither of my doctors had me do anything of the sort."

            "It's the latest thing," he reassured her. "All hospitals use them now." Hugh had read somewhere that midwives often had their patients pull on ropes while bearing down. He had looked for this in his books, could not find it. But it struck him as sound mechanics; a woman should be able to bear down better.

            Grace looked doubtful but dropped the matter and left the shelter. Hugh started to get up. Karen grabbed his hand. "Don't go 'way, Daddy!"

            "Pain?"

            "No. Something to tell you. I asked Joe to marry me. Last week. And he accepted."

            "I'm glad to hear it, dear. I think you are getting a prize."

            "I do, too. Oh, it's Hobson's choice but I do love him, quite a lot. But we won't get married until I'm up and around and strong. I couldn't face the row with Mother, not now."

            "I won't tell her."

            "Better not tell Duke, either. Barbara knows., she thinks it's swell."

            A contraction hit Karen while Duke war adjusting ropes. She yelped, chopped it off and gritted her teeth, reached for the ropes as Duke hastily handed them to her. Hugh put his hand on her belly, felt her womb harden as increasing pain showed in her face. "Bear down, baby," he told her. "And pant; it helps." .

            She started to pant, it turned into a scream.

            Endless seconds later she relaxed, forced a smile and said, "They went that a-way! Sorry about the sound effects, Daddy."

            "Yell if you want to. But panting does more good. Now rest while you can. Let's get this organized. Joe, you're drafted as cook. I want Barbara to rest and Grace to nurse-so you cook dinner, please. Fix some cold supper, too. Grace, did you log it?"

            "Yes."

            "Did you time the contraction?"

            "I did," Barbara answered. "Forty-four seconds."

            Karen looked indignant. "Barb, you are out of your mind! It was over an hour."

            "Call it forty-five seconds," Hugh said. "I want the time of each pain and how long it lasts."

            Seven minutes later the next one hit. Karen managed to pant, screamed only a little. But she did not feel like joking afterwards; she turned her face away. The contraction had been long and severe. Though shaken by his daughter's agony, Hugh felt encouraged; it seemed certain that labor was going to be short.

            It was not. All that hot and weary day the woman brought to bed fought to void herself of her burden-white-faced and shrieking, belly hardening with each attempt, muscles in arms and neck standing out as she strained-then fell back limp as the contraction died away, tired and trembling, not speaking, uninterested in anything but the ordeal.

            It got steadily worse. Contractions became only three minutes apart, each one longer and seeming to hurt more. Once Hugh told her not to use the ropes; he could not see that they helped. Quickly she asked for them and seemed not to have heard him. She did seem slightly less uncomfortable braced against them.

            At nine that night there was bleeding. Grace became frantic; she had heard many stories of the dangers of hemorrhage. Hugh assured her that it was normal and showed that the baby would arrive soon. He believed it, as it was not massive and did not continue-and it did not seem possible that birth could be far away.

            Grace looked angry and got up; Barbara slipped into the chair she vacated. Hugh hoped that Grace would rest-the women had been taking turns.

            But Grace returned a few minutes later. "Hubert," she said in a high, brittle voice. "Hubert, I'm goi1~g to call a doctor."

            "Do that," he agreed, his eyes on Karen.

            "You listen to me, Hubert Farnham. You should have called a doctor at once. You're killing her, you hear me? I'm going to call a doctor-and you are not going to stop me."

            "Yes, Grace. The telephone is in there." He pointed into the other wing. Grace looked puzzled, then turned suddenly and went away. "Duke!"

            His son hurried in. "Yes, Dad?"

            Hugh said forcefully, "Duke, your mother has decided to telephone for a doctor. You go help her. Do you understand?"

            Duke's eyes widened. "Where are the needles?"

            "In the smaller bundle on the table. Don't touch the large bundle; it's sterile."

            "Got it. What dosage?"

            "Two c.c. Don't let her see the needle, or she'll jerk." Hugh's head jerked; he realized that he was groggy. "Make that three c.c.; I want her to go out like a light and sleep until morning. She can tolerate it."

            "Right away." Duke left.

            Karen had been lying quiet between contractions, apparently in semi-coma. Now she whispered, "Poor Daddy. Your women give you a lot of grief."

            "Rest, dear."

            "I- Oh, God, here it comes again!"

            Then she was saying between screams: "It hurts! Make it stop! Oh, Daddy, I do want a doctor! Please, Daddy! Get me a doctor!"

            "Bear down, darling. Bear down."

            It went on and on, far into the night, no respite and getting worse. It stopped being worth while to log contractions; they almost overlapped. Karen no longer could be said to talk; she screamed incoherent demands for relief when she strained, spoke unresponsively or did not answer in the brief periods between contractions.

            Around dawn-it seemed to Hugh that the torture had been going on for weeks but his watch showed that Karen had been in labor eighteen hours-Barbara said urgently, "Hugh, she can't take any more."

            "I know," he admitted, looking at his daughter. She was at the peak of a pain, face gray and contorted, mouth squared in agony, high sobbing moans coming out between her teeth.

            "Well?"

            "I suppose she should have had a Caesarean. But I'm no surgeon."

            "I wonder."

            "I don't. I'm not."

            "You know more about it than the first man who ever did one! You know how to keep it sterile. We have sulfa drugs and you can load her up with Demerol." She did not try to keep Karen from hearing; their patient was beyond caring.

            "Hugh, you must. She's dying."

            "I know." He sighed. "But it's too late for a Caesarean, even ill knew how. To save Karen with one, I mean. We might save her baby." He blinked and swayed. "Only it would not. Who's to wet-nurse? You can't, not yet. And cows we don't have."

            He took a deep breath, tried to get a grip on himself. "Only one thing left. Try to get it out Eskimo style."

            "What's that?"

            "Get her up and let gravity help. Maybe it'll work. Call the boys, we'll need them. I've got to scrub again; I might have to do an episiotomy. Oh, God."

            Five minutes and two contractions later they were ready to try it. When Karen lay back exhausted after the second one, Hugh tried to explain what they were going to do. It was hard to get her attention. At last she nodded slightly and whispered, "I don't care."

            Hugh went to the table where his equipment was now opened out, got his one scalpel, took the camp lamp in his other hand. "All right, boys. As soon as she starts, pick her up."

            They had only seconds to wait. Hugh saw the contraction start, nodded to Duke. "Now!"

            "With me, Joe." They started to lift her, each with an arm under her back, a hand under a thigh.

            Karen screamed and fought them off. "No, no! Don't touch me-I can't stand it! Daddy, make them stop! Daddy!"

            They stopped. Duke said, "Dad?"

            "Lift her up! Now!"

            They got her high in a squatting position, thighs pulled open. Barbara got behind Karen, arms around her, and pressed down on the girl's tortured belly. Karen screamed and struggled; they held her fast. Hugh got hurriedly to the floor, shined the light up. "Bear down, Karen, bear down!"

            "Ooooooh!"

            Suddenly he saw the baby's scalp, gray-blue. He started to lay the knife aside; the head retreated. "Try again, Karen!"

            He readjusted the lamp. He wondered whether he was supposed to make the incision in front? Or in back? Or both? He saw the scalp show again and stop; with his hand suddenly rock steady and with no conscious decision he reached up and made one small cut.

            He barely had time to drop the knife before he had both hands full of wet, slippery, bloody baby. He knew there was something else he should do now but all he could think of was to get it by both feet in his left hand, lift it and slap its tiny bottom.

            It let out a choked wail.

            "Get her on the bed, boys-but easy! It's still fastened by the cord."

            They made it, Hugh on his knees and burdened with a feebly wiggling load. Once they had Karen down, Hugh started to put her baby in her arms-but saw that Karen was not up to it. She seemed to be awake-her eyes were open. But she was in total collapse.

            Hugh was close to collapse. He looked dazedly around, handed the baby to Barbara. "Stay close," he told her, unnecessarily.

            "Dad?" said Duke. "Aren't you supposed to cut the cord?"

            "Not yet." Where was that knife? He found it, rubbed it quickly with iodine-hoped that it was sterile. Placed it by two boiled lengths of cotton string-turned and felt the cord to see if it was pulsing.

            "He's beautiful," Joe said softly.

            "She," Hugh corrected. "The baby is a girl. Now, Barbara, if you-"

            He broke off. Suddenly everything happened too fast. The baby started to choke; Hugh grabbed it, turned it upside down, dug into its mouth, scooped out a plug of mucus, handed the baby back, started again to check the cord-saw that Karen was in trouble.

            With a nightmare feeling that he needed to be twins he got one of the strings, tied a square knot around the cord near the baby's belly, trying to control his trembling so as not to tie it too hard-started to tie the second, saw that it was not needed; Karen suddenly delivered the placenta and was hemorrhaging. She moaned.

            With one slash Hugh cut the cord, snapped at Barbara, "Get a bellyband on it!"-turned to take care of the mother.

            She was flowing like a river; her face was gray and she seemed unconscious. Too late to attempt to take stitches in the cut he had made and the tears that followed; he could see that this flood was from inside, not from the damaged portal. He tried to stop it by packing her inside with their last roll of gauze while shouting to Joe and to Duke to get a bellyband and compress on Karen herself to put pressure on her uterus.

            Some agonized time later the belly compress was in place and the gauze was backed by a dam of sanitary napkins-one irreplaceable, Hugh thought tiredly, they hadn't needed much. He raised his eyes and looked at Karen's face-then in sudden panic tried to find her pulse.

            Karen had survived the birth of her daughter by less than seven minutes.

Chapter 9

            Katherine Josephine survived her mother by a day. Hugh baptized her with that name and a drop of water an hour after Karen died; it was clear that the baby might not last long. She had trouble breathing.

            Once when the baby choked, Barbara started her up again by mouth-to-mouth suction, getting a mouthful of something she spat out hastily. Little Jodie seemed better then for quite a while.

            But Hugh knew that it was only a reprieve; he could see no chance of keeping the baby alive long enough-two months-to let Barbara feed it. Only two cans of Carnation milk were left in their stores.

            Nevertheless they worked grimly around the clock.

            Grace mixed a formula from memory-evaporated milk, boiled water, a hoarded can of white Karo. They had no food cells, not even a nipple. An orphaned baby was a crisis for which Hugh had not planned. In hindsight it seemed the most glaring of probable emergencies. He tried not to brood over his failure, dedicated himself to keeping Karen's daughter alive.

            A plastic-barreled eyedropper was the nearest to a nipple they could find. They used it to pick up the formula, try to match the pressure with the infant's attempts to suck.

            It did not work well. Little Jodie continued to have trouble breathing and tended to choke every time they tried to feed her; they spent as much time trying to clear her throat and get her cranked up again as they did in feeding her. She seemed reluctant to suck on the harsh substitute and if they squirted food into her mouth anyway, she always choked. Twice Grace was able to coax her into taking almost an ounce. Both times she threw it up. Barbara and Hugh had even less luck.

            Before dawn following her birthday Hugh was awakened by Grace screaming. The child had choked to death.

            During the long day in which three of them battled to save the baby, Duke and Joe dug a grave, high up the hill in a sunny spot. They dug deep and stocked a pile of boulders; both held concealed horror that a bear or coyotes might dig up the grave.

            Grave dug, boulders waiting, Joe said in a strained voice, "How are we going to build a casket?"

            Duke sighed and wiped sweat from his eyes. "Joe, we can't."

            "We've got to."

            "Oh, we could cut trees and split them and adz out some lumber-we've done that when we had to. That kitchen counter. But how long would it take? Joe, this is hot weather-Karen can't wait!"

            "We've got to tear down something and build out of it. A bed, maybe. Bookcases."

            "Taking the wardrobe apart would be easiest."

            "Let's start."

            "Joe. The 'only things we could use to build a coffin are in the house. Do you think Hugh will let us go in there now and start ripping and tearing and banging? If anybody woke that baby or startled it when they were trying to get it to feed, Dad would kill him. If Barbara or Mother didn't kill him first. No, Joe. No coffin."

            They settled for a vault, using all their stock of bricks; these they used to build a box in the bottom of the grave, then cut down their dining canopy to line it, and cut timbers to cover it. Poor as it was, they felt comforted by it.

            Next morning the grave received mother and daughter.

            Joe and Duke placed them in it, Duke having insisted that his father stay behind and take care of Grace and Barbara. Duke had visualized how awkward it would be, getting the bodies into the grave and arranging them; he would not have had Joe along had not an assistant been necessary. He suggested that his mother not come 'to the grave at all.

            Hugh shook his head. "I thought of that. You try to convince her. I can't budge her."

            Nor could Duke. But when he sent Joe down for the others, his sister and her daughter were decently at rest with their winding sheet neatly arranged, and no trace remained of the struggle it had been to place 'them there, the rebuilding of part of the brick box that had been necessary, or-worst-the moment when the tiny corpse had fallen out of the sheet when they tried to get them both down as one. Karen's face looked peaceful and her daughter was cuddled in her arm as if sleeping.

            Duke balanced with a foot on each brick wall, knelt over her. "Good-bye, Sis," he whispered. "I'm sorry." He covered her face and got carefully out of the grave. A little procession was coming up the hill, Hugh 'assisting his wife, Joe helping Barbara. Beyond the shelter 'their flag flew at half-mast.

            They arranged themselves at the grave, Hugh at the head, his wife on his right, his son on his left, Barbara and Joe at the foot. To Duke's relief no one asked that faces be uncovered nor did his mother seem disturbed at the arrangements.

            Hugh took a small black book from his pocket, opened it to a marked page:

            "'I am the Resurrection and the Life. .

            "'We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can take nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken-'"

            Grace sobbed and her knees started to fail Hugh shoved the book into Duke's hands, moved to support his wife. "Take over, Son!"

            "Take her back down, Dad!"

            Grace said brokenly, "No, no! I must stay."

            "Read it, Duke. I've marked the passages."

            "'. . . he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them.

            "'For I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.

            "'0 spare me a little, that I may recover my strength.

            "'Man, that is born of woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery.

            "'Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our sister- of our sisters-and we commit their bodies to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust-'"

            Duke paused, dropped the tiniest of clods into the grave. He looked back at the book, closed it and said suddenly, "Let us pray."

            They took Grace back and put her to bed; Joe and Duke returned to close the grave. Hugh, seeing that his wife appeared to be resting, started to snuff candles in the rear bay. She opened her eyes. "Hubert-"

            "Yes, Grace?"

            "I told you. I warned you. You wouldn't listen to me."

            "About what, Grace?"

            "I told you she had to have a doctor! You wouldn't call one. You were too proud. You sacrificed my daughter on the altar of your pride. My baby. You killed her."

            "Grace, there are no doctors here. You know that."

            "If you were even half a man, you wouldn't make excuses!"

            "Grace, please. May I get you something? A Miltown? Or would you like a hypo?"

            "No, no!" she said shrilly. "That's how you tricked me when I was going to get a doctor anyway. In spite of you. You'll never again trick me with your drugs. And you'll never touch me again, either. Murderer."

            "Yes, Grace." He turned and left.

            Barbara was on the stoop, sitting with her head in her hands. Hugh said, "Barbara, the flag must be two-blocked. Do you want me to do it?"

            "So soon, Hugh?"

            "Yes. We go on."

Chapter 10

            They went on. Duke hunted, Duke and Joe farmed, Hugh worked harder than ever. Grace worked too, and her cooking improved-and her eating; she got fatter. She never mentioned her conviction that her husband had been responsible for the death of their daughter.

            She did not speak to him at all. When a problem had to be discussed she spoke to Duke. She quit attending church services.

            In the last month of Barbara's pregnancy, Duke sought out his father privately. "Dad, you told me that any time I wanted to leave-or any of us-we could."

            Hugh was startled. "Yes."

            "A pro-rata share, you said. Ammo, tools, and so forth."

            "Better than that; we're a going concern. Duke, you are leaving?"

            "Yes-but not just myself. Mother wants to. She's the one who's dead set on it. I've got reasons, but Mother's wishes are the deciding factor."

            "Mmm- Let's talk about your reasons. Are you dissatisfied with the way I'm running things? I will gladly step aside. I feel sure that I can get Joe and Barbara to go along, so that you will have unanimous support." He sighed. "I am anxious to turn over the burden."

            Duke shook his head. "That's not it, Dad. I don't want to be boss and you've done a good job. Oh, I won't say I liked the high-handed way you started in. But results count and you got results. I'd rather not discuss my reasons except to say that they don't have to do with you-and wouldn't be enough to make me leave if Mother weren't hipped on it. She wants to leave. She's going to leave. I can't let her leave alone."

            "Can you tell me why Grace wants to leave?"

            Duke hesitated. "Dad, I don't see that it matters; she's made up her mind. I pointed out that I couldn't make things as safe for her-nor as comfortable-as it is here. But she's adamant."

            Hugh pondered it. "Duke, if that's how your mother feels, I won't try to persuade her; I've long since lost my influence over her. But I have two ideas. You may find one of them practical."

            "I doubt it."

            "Hear me. You know we have copper tubing; we used some in the kitchen. We have everything for a still; I stocked the items to build one if a war came along-not just for us but because liquor is money in any primitive society.

            "I haven't built it for reasons we both know. But I could and I know how to make liquor." He smiled slightly. "Not book knowledge. While I was in the South Pacific, I bossed a still, with the shut-eye connivance of my C.O. I learned how to turn corn or potatoes or most anything into vodka, or fruit into brandy. Duke, your mother might be happy if she had liquor.

            "She would drink herself to death!"

            "Duke, Duke! If she is happy doing it, who are we to stop her? What does she have to live for? She loved television, she enjoyed parties, she could spend a happy day at the hairdresser's, followed by a movie, then drinks with one of her friends. That was her life, Duke. Now where is it? Gone, gone! There is just this we can give her to make up for what she has lost. Who are you to decided that you mother must not drink herself to death?"

            "Dad, that's not the situation!"

            "So?"

            "You know I don't-didn't-approve of Mother's excessive drinking. But I might go along with letting her drink all she wants now. If you build that still, we might be customers. But we would still leave. Because that won't solve Mother's problem."

            "Well, Duke, that leaves only my other idea. I'll get out instead. Only-" Hugh frowned. "Duke, tell her that I will leave as soon as Barbara has her baby. I can't walk out on my patient. You can give Grace my assur-"

            "Dad, that won't solve a thing!"

            "I don't understand."

            "Oh, Christ, I might as well spill it. It's Barbara. She's- Well, hell, Mother is nuts on the subject. Can't stand her. Ever since Karen died. She said to me, 'Duke, that woman is not going to have her child in my home! Her bastard. I won't have it. You tell your father that he has got to get her out of here.' That's what she said, Dad."

            "Good Lord!"

            "Yeah. I tried to reason with her. I told her that Barbara couldn't leave. I gave her both barrels, Dad; I said there wasn't a chance that you would ever force Barbara to leave. But as for making her leave now, or even letting her, you would no more do it than you would have driven Karen out. I told her that I wouldn't, either, and that Joe and I would fight you to stop it, stipulating that you were crazy enough to try. Which you aren't, of course."

            "Thank you."

            "That did it. She believes me when I lay it on the line. So she decided to leave. I can't stall her any longer. She's leaving. I'm going with her, to take care of her."

            His father rubbed his temples. "I guess there is no situation so bad but what it can get worse. Duke, even with you, she hasn't 'anywhere to go."

            "Not quite, Dad."

            "Eh?"

            "I can swing it, with your help. Do you remember that cave up Collins Canyon, the one they tried to make a tourist attraction? It's still there. Or its twin, I mean. I was hunting up that way that first week. The canyon looked so familiar that I climbed up and looked for the cave. Found it. And Dad, it's habitable and defensible."

            "The door? The mouth?"

            "No problem. If you can spare that steel plate that blocked off the tunnel."

            "Certainly."

            "The cave has a vent, higher up. No smoke problem. It has a spring that hasn't failed all this dry weather. Dad, it's as comfortable as the shelter; all it needs is outfitting."

            "I capitulate. You can take almost anything now. Beds, of course. Utensils. Your pick of the canned goods. Matches, ammunition, guns. Make a list, I'll help you move."

            Duke colored under his tan. "Dad, a few things are up there already."

            "So? Did you think I would be pinchpenny?"

            "Uh . . . I don't mean the past few days. I moved some things up the first days we were here. You see . . . well, you and I had that row-and then you made me rationing officer. That gave me the idea, and for a week or more I always left here loaded, leaving when no one was watching."

            "Stealing."

            "I didn't figure it so. I never took as much 'as one-sixth of anything . . . and just stuff I would have to have in a pinch. Matches. Ammo. That rifle you couldn't find. One blanket. A knife. A little food. Some candles. You see. . . well, look at it from my side. There was always the chance that I would get you sore and either have to fight-one of us killed is the way you put it-or run and not be able to stop for anything. I decided not to fight. So I made preparations. But I didn't steal it; you said I could have it. Say the word and I'll fetch it all back."

            Hugh Farnham peeled a callus, then looked up. "One man's stealing is another man's survival, I suppose. Just one thing- Duke, in that food you took: Were there any cans of milk?"

            "Not one. Dad, don't you think, if there had been, I would have beaten all records getting up there and back when Karen died?"

            "Yes. I'm sorry I asked."

            "I was sorry I hadn't snitched a few cans; then they wouldn't have been used up."

            "The baby didn't last out the milk we had, Duke. All right, it calls for quick surgery-but don't forget that you can come back, any time. Duke, women sometimes get unreasonable at about your mother's age . . . then get over it and are nice old ladies. Maybe we'll have the family together again. I hope we'll see you occasionally. You're~ welcome to all the vegetables you can eat, of course."

            "I was going to mention that. I can't farm up there. Suppose I still hunt for all of us.. . and when I bring in a load of meat I take away a load of green stuff?"

            His father smiled. "We have reinstituted commerce. And we can supply you with pottery and there's no need to do your own tanning. Duke, I suggest you sort out what you want, and tomorrow you and I and Joe will start packing it to your cave. Be lavish. Just one thing-"

            "What?"

            "The books are mine! Anything you want to look up, you'll have to come here. This is not a circulating library."

            "Fair enough."

            "I mean it. You can have my razor, you can have my best knife. But snitch one book and I'll skin you alive and bind that book in human skin. There are limits. All right, I'll tell Joe, and get Barbara out of the house and we'll stay away until dark. Good luck, and tell Grace no hard feelings. There are, but tell her that. But I'm not too groused. It takes two to create a heaven . . . but hell can be accomplished by one. I can't say that I've been happy lately and Grace may be smarter than we think."

            "That's a polite way of telling us to go to hell, Dad."

            "Possibly."

            "Whatever you mean, the same to you. It was no accident that I moved away from home as soon as I could."

            "Touché! Well, get on with it." His father turned and walked away.

            Joe made no comment. He simply said that he had better get on with the irrigating. Barbara said nothing until they were alone.

            Hugh took a picnic lunch-chunks of corn pone, some strings of jerky, two tomatoes, plus a canteen of water. He fetched a rifle and a blanket. They went up the hill above the grave and picked the shade of a detached tree. Hugh noticed fresh flowers on the grave and wondered if Barbara had been trudging up there. The climb was difficult for her; they had taken it very slowly. Or had Grace been doing it? It seemed still less likely. Then he thought of the obvious: Joe.

            Once Barbara had her heavy body comfortable, on her back with knees up, Hugh said, "Well?"

            She was silent a long time. "Hugh, I'm dreadfully sorry. It's my fault. Isn't it?"

            "Your fault? Because a woman sick in her mind fixes on you to hate? You told me once not to blame myself for another person's defect. You should take your own advice."

            "That wasn't what I meant, Hugh. I mean: losing your son. Grace could not leave if Duke did not. Did he say anything? About me?"

            "Nothing but this ridiculous set that Grace has taken. What should he have said?"

            "I wonder if I am free to say? In any case I am going to. Hugh, after Karen died, Duke asked me to marry him. I refused. He was hurt. And surprised. You see- You knew about Karen and Joe?"

            "Yes."

            "I didn't know whether Karen had told you. When she decided to marry Joe, I made up my mind that I would have to marry Duke. Karen took it for granted and I admitted that I intended to. She may have told Duke. In any case, he expected me to say Yes. I said No. And he was hurt. I'm sorry, Hugh. If you want me to, I'll tell him I've changed my mind."

            "Hold on! I think you made a mistake. But I won't have you correcting it to please me. What do you want to do? Do you plan to marry Joe, now?"

            "Joe? I never planned to marry Joe. Although I would marry him as readily as Duke. Hugh, I want to do what I always want to do. Whatever you want." She turned on her side and faced him. "You know that. If you want me to marry Joe, I will. If you want me to marry Duke, I will. You say it, I'll do it."

            "Barbara, Barbara!"

            "I mean it, Hugh. Or anything more, or anything less. You're my boss. Not just some, but all. Haven't I done so, all the time we've been together? I play by the book."

            "Stop talking nonsense."

            "If it's nonsense, it's true nonsense."

            "As may be. I want you to marry whom you want to marry."

            "That's the one thing I can't do. You are already married."

            "Huh?"

            "Are you surprised? No, I've surprised you only by saying it-when we've kept silent so long. That's how it is and that's how it's always been. Since I can't marry you, I'll marry whom you say. Or never marry."

            "Barbara, will you marry me?"

            "What did you say?"

            "Will you marry me?"

            "Yes."

            He leaned over and kissed her. She kissed him back, lips open, full surrender.

            Presently he straightened up. "Would you like some corn pone?"

            "Not yet."

            "I thought we might have some to celebrate. It calls for champagne. But corn pone is what we have."

            "Oh. Then I'll have a nibble. And a sip of water. Hugh, Hugh my beloved, what are you going to do about Grace?"

            "Nothing. She's divorcing me. In fact she divorced me more than a month ago, the day-the day we buried Karen. That she is still here is just housing shortage. It doesn't take a judge to grant a divorce here, any more than it will take a license for me to marry you."

            Barbara spread her hands over her swollen belly. "I have my marriage license, right here!" Her voice was light and happy.

            "The child is mine?"

            She looked at him. "Look over to the east."

            "At what?"

            "Do you see Three Wise Men approaching?"

            "Oh. Idiot!"

            "It is yours, my beloved. A thing a woman can never prove but can be utterly sure of."

            He kissed her again. When he stopped she caressed his cheek. "I'd like corn pone now, lots of it. I'm hungry. I feel very full of life and anxious to live."

            "Yes! Tomorrow our honeymoon starts."

            "Today. It has started, Hugh. I'm going to enter it in our journal. Darling, may I sleep on the roof tonight? I can manage the ladder."

            "You want to sleep with me? Lecherous little girl!"

            "That wasn't what I meant. I'm not lecherous now, my hormones are all keyed against it. No passion, dear. Just love. I won't be any good for a honeymoon. Oh, I'll happily sleep with you; you could have slept with me all these months. No, dear, I meant that I don't want to sleep in the same room with Grace. I'm afraid of her-afraid for the baby at least. Perhaps that's silly."

            "No, it's not. It may not be necessary but it's a precaution we'll take. Barbara, what do you think of Grace?"

            "Must I say?"

            "Tell me."

            "I don't like her. That's apart from being afraid of her; I didn't like her long before I became uneasy about her. I don't like the way she treats me, I don't like the way she treats Joseph, I didn't like the way she treated Karen, I have always resented the way she treats you-and had to pretend not to see it-and I despise what she has done to Duke."

            "I don't like her, either-not for years. I'm glad she's leaving. Barbara, I would be glad even if you were not here."

            "Hugh, I'm relieved to hear that. You know I'm divorced."

            "Yes."

            "When my marriage broke up I swore a solemn oath that I would never break up anyone else's marriage. I've felt guilty ever since the night of the attack."

            He shook his head. "Forget it. The marriage was already long dead. All that was left were duties and obligations. Mine, for she didn't feel any. Beloved, had my marriage been a reality, you could have come into my arms that night, and cuddle and comfort would have been 'all. As it was, we were dying-so we thought-and I was at least as hungry for love as you were. I was parched for love-you gave me yourself."

            "Beloved, I will never let you be parched again."

            About nine the next morning, 'they all were outside where chattels for the new household were piled.

            Hugh looked over 'his ex-wife's selections with wry amusement. Grace had taken literally the invitation to "take almost anything"; she had gutted the place-the best blankets, almost all utensils including the teakettle and the one skillet, three of four foam-rubber mattresses, nearly all the remaining canned goods, all the sugar, the lion's share of other irreplaceables, all the plastic dishes.

            Hugh made only one objection: salt. When he noted that Grace had grabbed all the salt he insisted on a division. Duke agreed and asked if there was anything else Hugh objected to?

            Hugh shook his head. Barbara would not mind making-do. "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is-"

            Duke had shown restraint, taking one shovel, one ax, a hammer, less than half the nails, and no tool not stocked in duplicate. Instead, Duke remarked that he might want to borrow tools someday. Hugh agreed and offered his services on any two-man job. Duke thanked him. Both men found the situation embarrassing, both covered it by being unusually polite.

            A delay in starting was caused by the steel plate for the cave door. Its weight was not too great for a man as husky as Duke, but it was awkward. A pack had to be devised, rugged enough for the trek, comfortable in padding and straps, and so rigged that Duke could fire a rifle.

            This resulted in sacrificing the one intact bear hide, the covering of the bed Karen had died in. Hugh minded only the loss of time. It would take six trips by three men to move the plunder Grace had picked; Duke thought that two trips a day would be maximum. If they did not start soon, only one trip could be made that day.

            At last they got it on Duke's back with a fur pad protecting his spine. "Feels right," Duke decided. "Let's get packs on you two and get going."

            "In a jiffy," Hugh agreed and bent over to pick up his load.

            "My God!"

            "Trouble, Duke?"

            "Look!"

            A shape had appeared over the eastern rise. It slanted through the air on a course that would have missed them, but, as it neared the point of closest approach, it stopped dead, turned and headed for them.

            It passed majestically overhead. Hugh was unable to guess its size at first; there was nothing to which to relate it-a dark shape proportioned like a domino tile. But as it passed about five hundred feet up, it seemed to him that it was around a hundred feet wide and three times that in length. He could make out no features. It moved swiftly but made no noise.

            It swept past, turned, circled-stopped, turned again and came toward them at lower altitude.

            Hugh found that he had an arm around Barbara. When the object had appeared, she had been some distance away, putting clothes to soak in the outside tub. Now she was circled by his left arm and he could feel her trembling.

            "Hugh, what is it?"

            "People."

            The thing hovered above their flag. Now they could see people; heads showed above its sides.

            A corner detached itself, splitting off sharply. It dove, stopped by the peak of the flagpole. Hugh saw that it was a car about nine feet long and three wide, with one passenger. No details could he see, no clue to motive power; the car enclosed the man's lower body; his trunk projected above.

            The man removed the flag, rejoined the main craft. His vehicle blended back in.

            The rectangle disintegrated.

            It broke into units like that which had filched their flag. Most cars remained in the air; some dozen landed, three in a triangle around the colonists. Duke yelled "Watch it!" and dived for his gun.

            He never made it. He leaned forward at an extreme angle, pawed the air with a look of amazement, and was slowly pulled back to vertical.

            Barbara gasped in Hugh's ear. "Hugh, what is it?"

            "I don't know." He did not need to ask what she meant; he had felt, at the instant his son was stopped, that he seemed to be waist deep in quicksand. "Don't fight it."

            "I wasn't going to."

            Grace shrilled, "Hubert! Hubert, do some-" Her cries cut off. She seemed to faint but did not fall.

            Four cars were about eight feet in the air, lined up abreast, and were cruising over Barbara's farm. Where they passed, everything underneath, cornstalks, tomato plants, beans, squash, lettuce, potato hills, everything including branching ditches was pressed flat into a macadam.

            The raw end of the main ditch spilled water over this pavement. One car whipped around, ran a new ditch around the raped area in a wide sweep which allowed the water to circle the destroyed garden and reach the stream at a lower point.

            Barbara buried her face against Hugh. He patted her.

            That car then went upstream along the old ditch. Soon water ceased to flow.

            As the garden was leveled, other cars landed on it. Hugh was 'unable to figure out what they did, but a large pavilion, glossy black, and ornate in red and gold, grew up in seconds in the clearing.

            Duke called out, "Dad! For God's sake, can't you get at your gun?"

            Hugh was wearing a forty-five, the weapon he had picked for the hike. His hands were only slightly hampered by whatever held them. But he answered, "I shan't try."

            "Are you going to just stand there and let-"

            "Yes. Duke, use your head. If we hold still, we may live longer."

            Out of the pavilion strode a man. He seemed seven feet tall but some of this was a helmet, plumed and burnished. He wore a flowing skirt of red embroidered in gold and was bare to the waist save that an end of the skirt thrown across one shoulder covered part of his broad chest. He was shod in black boots.

            All others were dressed in black coveralls with a red and gold patch at the right shoulder. Hugh felt an impression that this man (there was no slightest doubt that he was master)-that the commander had taken time to change into formal clothes. Hugh felt encouraged. They were prisoners-but if the leader took the trouble to dress up before interviewing them, then they were prisoners of importance and a parley might be fruitful. Or did that follow?

            But he was encouraged by the man's face, too. He had an air of good-natured arrogance and his eyes were bright and merry. His forehead was high, his skull massive; he looked intelligent and alert. Hugh could not place his race. His skin was dark brown and shiny. But his mouth was only slightly Negroid; his nose, though broad, was arched, and his black hair was wavy.

            He carried a small crop.

            He strode up to them, stopped abruptly when he reached Joseph. He gave a curt order to their nearest captor.

            Joe stretched and bent his legs. "Thanks."

            The man spoke to Joe. Joe answered, "Sorry, I don't understand."

            The man spoke again. Joe shrugged helplessly. The man grinned and patted him on the shoulder, turned away, picked up Duke's rifle. He handled it clumsily, making Hugh flinch.

            Nevertheless, he seemed to understand guns. He worked the bolt, ejecting one cartridge, then put it to his shoulder, aimed upstream and fired.

            The blast was deafening, he had fired past Hugh's ear. He grinned broadly, tossed the rifle to a subordinate, walked up to Hugh and Barbara, reached out to touch Barbara's child swollen belly.

            Hugh knocked his hand away.

            With a gesture almost negligent, certainly without anger, the big man brushed Hugh's hand aside with the crop he carried. It was not a blow, it would not have swatted a fly.

            Hugh gasped in agony. His hand burned like fire and his arm was numb to the armpit. "Oh, God!"

            Barbara said urgently, "Don't, Hugh. He isn't hurting me."

            Nor was he. With a manner of impersonal interest such as a veterinarian might take in feeling a pregnant mare or bitch, the big man felt out the shape of the child she carried, then lifted one of her breasts-while Hugh writhed in that special humiliation of a man unable to protect his woman.

            The man finished his palpation, grinned at Barbara and patted her head. Hugh tried to ignore the pain in his hand and dug into his memory for a language imperfectly learned. "Vooi govoriti'yeh po-Russki, Gospodin?"

            The man glanced at him, made no answer.

            Barbara said, "Sprechen Sie deutsch, mein Herr?"

            That got her a smile. Hugh called out, "Duke, try him in Spanish!"

            "Okay. ~Habla usted Español, Señor?" No response- Hugh sighed. "We've shot our wad."

            "M'sieur?" Joe said. "Est-ce que vous parlez la langue française?"

            The man turned. "Tiens?"

            "Parlez-vous francais, monsieur?"

            "Mais oui! Vous êtes françaises?"

            "Non, non! Je suis américain. Nous sommes tous amencams."

            "Vraiment? Impossible!"

            "C'est vrai, monsieur. Je vous en assure." Joe pointed to the empty flagpole. "Les Etats-Unis de l'Amérique."

            The conversation became hard to follow as both sides stumbled along in broken French. At last they paused and Joe said, "Hugh, he asked me-ordered me-to come into his tent and talk. I've asked him to let you all loose first. He says No. 'Hell, no!' it amounts to."

            "Ask him to let the women loose."

            "I'll try." Joe spoke at length with the big man. "He says the enceinte femme-that's Barbara-can sit down where she is. The 'fat one'-Grace he means-is to come with us."

            "Good work, Joe. Get us a deal."

            "I'll try. I don't understand him very well."

            The three went into the pavilion. Barbara found that she could sit down, even stretch out. But the invisible web held Hugh as clingingly as ever.

            "Dad," Duke said urgently, "this is our chance, while nobody is around who understands English."

            "Duke," Hugh answered wearily, "can't you see they hold trumps? It's my guess that we are alive as long as he isn't annoyed-not one minute longer."

            "Aren't you even going to try to fight? Where's that crap you used to spout about how you were a free man and planned to stay free?"

            Hugh rubbed his hurt hand. "Duke, I won't argue. You start anything and you'll get us killed. That's how I size it up."

            "So it was just crap," Duke said scornfully. "Well, I'm not making any promises."

            "All right. Drop it."

            "I'm not making promises. Just tell me this, Dad. How does it feel to be shoved around? Instead of shoving?"

            "I don't like it."

            "Neither did I. I've never forgotten it. I hope you get your bellyful."

            Barbara said, "Duke, for heaven's sake, stop talking like a fool!"

            Duke looked at her. "I'll shut up. Just one thing. Where did you get that baby in you?"

            Barbara did not answer. Hugh said quietly, "Duke, if we get out of this, I promise you a beating."

            "Any time, old man."

            They quit talking. Barbara reached out and patted Hugh's ankle. Five men gathered around the pile of household objects, looking them over. A man came up and gave them an order; they dispersed. He looked at the chattels himself, then peered into the shelter and went inside.

            Hugh heard a sound of water, saw a brown wave rushing down the stream bed. Barbara raised her head. "What's that?"

            "Our dam is gone. It doesn't matter."

            After a long time, Joe came out of the pavilion alone. He came up to Hugh and said, "Well, here's the scoop, as nearly as I got it. Not too near, maybe; he speaks a patois and neither of us is fluent. But here it is. We're trespassers, this is private land. He figured we were escaped prisoners-the word is something else, not French, but that's the idea. I've convinced him-I think I have-that we are innocent people here through no fault of our own.

            "Anyhow, he's not sore, even though we are technically criminals-trespass, and planting things where farms aren't supposed to be and building a dam and a house and things like that. I think everything is going to be all right-as long as we do as we're told. He finds us interesting-how we got here and so forth."

            Joe looked at Barbara. "You remember your theory about parallel universes?"

            "I guess I was right. No?"

            "No. This part is as confused as can be. But one thing is certain. Barbara, Hugh-Duke-get this! This is our own world, right here."

            Duke said, "Joe, that's preposterous."

            "You argue with him. He knows what I mean by the United States, he knows where France is. And so forth. No question about it."

            "Well. . ." Duke paused. "As may be. But what about this? Where's my mother? What's the idea of leaving her with that savage?"

            "She's all right, she's having lunch with him. And enjoying it. Let it run easy, Duke, and we're going to be okay, I think. Soon as they finish lunch we'll be leaving."

            Somewhat later Hugh helped Barbara into one of the odd flying machines, then mounted into one himself, behind the pilot. He found the seat comfortable and, in place of a safety belt, a field of that quicksand enclosed his lower body as he sat down. His pilot, a young Negro who looked remarkably like Joe, glanced back, then took off without noise or fuss and joined the re-forming rectangle in the air. Hugh saw that perhaps half the cars had passengers; they were whites, the pilots were invariably colored, ranging from as light brown as a Javanese to as sooty black as a Fiji Islander.

            The car Hugh was in was halfway back in the outside starboard file. He looked around for the others and was only mildly surprised to see Grace riding behind the boss, in the front rank, center position. Joe was behind them, rather buried in cats.

            Off to his right, two cars had not joined up. One hovered over the pile of household goods, gathered them up in a nonexistent cargo net, moved away. The second car was over the shelter.

            The massive block lifted straight up without disturbing the shack on its roof. The small car and its giant burden took position fifty feet off the starboard side. The formation moved forward and gathered speed but Hugh felt no wind of motion. The car flanking them seemed to have no trouble keeping up. Hugh could not see the other loaded car but assumed that it was on the port side.

            The last he saw of their home was a scar where the shelter had rested, a larger scar where Barbara's farm had been, and a meandering track that used to mark an irrigation ditch.

            He rubbed his sore hand, reflecting that the whole thing had been a gross abuse of coincidence. It offended him the way thirteen spades in a putatively honest deal would offend him. He pondered a remark Joe had made before they loaded: "We were incredibly lucky to have encountered a scholar. French is a dead language-'une langue perdue,' he called it."

            Hugh craned his neck, caught Barbara's eye. She smiled.

Chapter 11

            Memtok, Chief Palace Domestic to the Lord Protector of the Noonday Region, was busy and happy-happy because he was busy, although he was not aware that he was happy and was given to complaining about how hard he had to work, because, as he put it, although he commanded eighteen hundred servants there were not three who could be trusted to empty a slop jar without supervision.

            He had just completed a pleasant interview chewing out the head chef; he had suggested that the chef himself, old and tough as he was, nevertheless would make a better roast than the meat the chef had sent in to Their Charity the evening before. One of the duties that Memtok assumed personally was always to sample what his lord ate, despite risk of poison and despite the fact that Their Charity's tastes in cuisine were not his own. It was one of the innumerable ways in which Memtok gave attention to details, diligence that had brought him, still in his prime, to his present supreme eminence.

            The head chef had grumbled and Memtok had sent him away with a taste of the lesser whip to remind him that cooks were not that hard to find. Then he had turned happily to his paper work.

            There were stacks of it, as he had just completed moving the household from the Palace to the Summer Palace-thirty-eight of the Chosen but only four hundred and sixty-three servants; the summer residence was run with a skeleton staff. The twice-yearly move involved a wash of paper work-purchase orders, musters, inventories, vouchers, shipping lists, revisions of duty rosters, dispatches-and he considered advising his patron to have some likely youngster muted and trained as his clerk. But he rejected the idea; Memtok did not trust servants who could read and write and add, it gave them ideas even if they could not talk.

            The truth was, Memtok loved his paper work and did not want to share it. His hands flew over the papers, checking figures, signing his symbol, okaying payments. He held his pen in an odd fashion, nested between the first three fingers of his right hand-this because he had no thumbs.

            He did not miss them, could barely remember what it had been like to have them. Nor did he need them. He could handle a spoon, a pen, and a whip without them, and he had no need ever to handle anything else.

            Far from missing his thumbs, he was proud of their absence; they proved that he had served his lord in both major capacities, at stud when he was younger and now these many years as a tempered domestic. Every male servant over fourteen (with scarce special exceptions) showed one alteration or the other; very few could exhibit both, only a few hundred on the entire Earth. Those few spoke as equals only to each other, they were an elite.

            Someone scratched at the door. "Come!" he called out, then growled, "What do you want?" The growl was automatic but he really did dislike this servant for the best of reasons; he was not subject to Memtok's discipline. He was of a different caste, huntsmen, wardens, keepers, and beaters, and was subject to the Majordomo of the Preserve. The Majordomo considered himself to be of the same rank as the Chief Domestic, and nominally was. However, he had thumb€.

            Memtok's greatest objection to the Summer Palace was that it put him in contact with these servants who had the unpardonable fault of not being under his orders. While it would take only a word to Their Charity to crack down on one of them, he disliked to ask, and while he could touch one of them without real fear of reprimand, the louse would be sure to complain to his boss. Memtok did not believe in friction between executive servants. Bad for morale.

            "Message from Boss. Rayed to tell you Their Charity on his way back. Says four savages with escort. Says you better tear up to the roof, take care of them. All."

            "'All'? Damn you, what do you mean 'All'? Why four savages? And in the Name of Uncle when are they arriving?"

            "All," the servant insisted. "Message came in twenty minutes ago. I been looking all over for you."

            "Get out!" The important part of the message was that Their Charity was arriving home instead of staying away overnight. Chef, Receptionist, Musical Director, Housekeeper, Groundskeeper, all heads of departments-he was phoning orders even as he thought. Four savages? Who cared about savages?

            But he was on the roof and accepted their custody. He would have been there anyway, with the Lord Protector arriving.

            When they arrived, Hugh had no chance to see Barbara. When he was released from the restraint of the "seat belt," he was confronted by a little baldheaded white man with a waspish face, an abrupt manner, and a whip. He was dressed in a white robe which reminded Hugh of a nightshirt, save that it had on the right shoulder the red and gold patch which Hugh had tentatively identified as the insigne of the big man, the boss. The emblem was repeated in rubies and gold on the chest of the little man as a medallion supported by a heavy gold chain.

            The man looked him over with obvious, distaste, then turned him and Duke over to another white man in a nightshirt. This man wore no medallion but did carry a small whip. Hugh rubbed his hand and resolved not to test whether this whip was as potent as the ornate one carried by the big boss.

            Duke tested it. The angry little man gave instructions to his straw boss, and left. The straw boss gave an order; Hugh interpreted the tone and gesture as: "All right, you guys, get going"-and got going.

            Duke didn't. The straw boss barely touched him on his calf; Duke yelped. He limped the rest of the way-down a ramp, into a very fast lift, then into a windowless, light, white-walled room which whiffed of hospitals.

            Duke understood the order to strip without needing to be stimulated; he cursed but complied. Hugh merely complied. He was beginning to understand the system. The whips were used as spurs are used by a good rider, to exact prompt obedience but not to damage.

            From there they were herded into a smaller room, where they were hit from all sides by streams of water. The operator was in a gallery above. He shouted at them, then indicated in pantomime that they were to scrub.

            They scrubbed. The jets cut off, they were doused in liquid soap. They scrubbed again and were rinsed and were required to scrub still again, all to gestures that left no doubt as to how thorough a bath was expected. The jets got very hot and harsh, changed to cold and still harsher, were replaced by blasts of hot air.

            It was too much like an automatic dishwasher, Hugh' felt, but they ended up cleaner than they had been in months. An assistant to the bath master then plastered strips over their eyebrows, rubbed an emulsion on their scalps, into their scratchy beards (neither had shaved that day), over their backs and chests and arms and legs, and finally into their pubic hair. Duke got another lesson in obedience before he submitted to this last. When, thereafter, they were subjected willy-nilly to enemas, he gritted his teeth and took it. The water closet was a whirlpool set in the floor. Their finger- and toenails were cut short.

            After that they were bathed again. The eyebrow patches washed away. So did their hair. When they came out, they were both bald all over, save for eyebrows.

            The bath master made them gargle, showing them what he wanted and spitting into the whirlpool. They gargled three times-a pleasant, pungent liquid-and when it was over, Hugh found that his teeth seemed cleaner than they had ever been in his life. He felt utterly clean, lively, glowing with well being-but humiliated.

            They were taken to another room and examined.

            Their examiner wore the conventional white nightshirt and a small insigne on a thin gold chain but he needed no diplomas on the wall to show his profession. His bedside manner would never make him rich, Hugh decided; he had the air of military surgeons Hugh had known-not unkind but impersonal.

            He seemed surprised by and interested in a removable bridge he found in Hugh's mouth. He examined it, looked in Hugh's mouth at the gaps it had filled, gave it to one of his assistants with instructions. The assistant went away and Hugh wondered if his chewing was going to be permanently hampered.

            The physician took an hour or more over each of them, using instruments Hugh did not recognize-weight, height, and blood pressure were the only familiar tests. Things were done to them, too, none of them really unpleasant-no hypodermic needles, no knives. During this, Hugh's bridge was returned and he was allowed to put it back in.

            But the tests and/or treatments often seemed to be indignities even though not painful. Once, when Hugh was stretched out on a table from which Duke had just been released, the younger man said, "How do you like it, Dad?"

            "Restful."

            Duke snorted.

            The fact that both men had appendicitis scars seemed to interest the physician as much as the removable bridge. By acting he indicated a bellyache, then jabbed a thumb into McBurney's point. Hugh conveyed agreement-with difficulty, as nodding the head seemed to be a negative.

            An assistant came in and handed the physician a contrivance which turned out to be another dental bridge. Hugh was required to open his mouth; the old one was again taken and the new one seated. It felt to Hugh's tongue as if he again had natural teeth there. The physician probed cavities, cleaned them and filled them-without pain but without anesthesia so far as Hugh was aware.

            After that Hugh was suddenly "strapped" (an invisible field) to a table, supine, and his legs were elevated. Another table was wheeled up and Hugh realized that he was being prepared for surgery-and with horror he was sure what sort. "Duke! Don't let them grab you! Get that whip!"

            Duke hesitated too long. The therapist did not carry a whip; he merely kept one at hand. Duke lunged for it, the physician got it first. Moments later Duke was on his back, still gasping his agony at the punishment he had taken and having his knees elevated and spread. They both went on protesting.

            The physician looked at them thoughtfully and the straw boss who had fetched them was called in. Presently the waspish little man with the big medallion strode in, looked the situation over, stormed out.

            There was a long wait. The boss therapist filled in the time by having his assistants complete preparations for surgery and there was no longer the slightest doubt in Hugh's mind, or Duke's, as to what they were in for. Duke pointed out that it would have been better if they had fought-and died-earlier in the day, rather than wind up like this. As they would have fought, he reminded his father, if Hugh hadn't turned chicken.

            Hugh didn't argue, he agreed. He tried to tell himself that his docility in being captured was on account of the women. It afforded him little comfort. True, he hadn't used his own much in recent years . . . and might never need them again. But, damn it, he was used to them. And it would be rough for Duke, young as he was.

            After a long time the little man stormed back in, angrier than ever. He snapped an order; Hugh and Duke were released.

            That ended it, save that they were rubbed all over with a fragrant cream. They were given a white nightshirt apiece, conducted through long bare passages and Hugh was shoved into a cell. The door was not locked but he could not open it.

            In one corner was a tray, with dishes and a spoon. The food was excellent and some of it unidentifiable; Hugh ate with good appetite, scraping the dishes and drinking the thin beer with it. Then he slept on a soft part of the floor, having blanked his mind of worry.

            He was prodded awake by a foot.

            He was taken to another plain, windowless room, which turned out to be a schoolroom. Two short white men in nightshirts were there. They were equipped with props, the equivalent of a blackboard (it could be cleared instantly by some magic), patience-and a whip, for the lessons were "taught to the tune of a hickory stick." No error went unnoted.

            They both could draw and both were imaginative pantomimists; Hugh was taught to speak.

            Hugh discovered that his memory was sharpened by the stimuli of pain; he had little tendency to repeat a mistake. At first he was punished only for forgetting vocabulary, but as he learned, he grew to expect flicks of pain for errors in inflection, construction, idiom, and accent.

            This Pavlovian treatment continued-if his mental records were correct-for seventeen days; he did nothing else and saw no one but his teachers. They worked in shifts; Hugh worked every possible minute, about sixteen hours a day. He was never allowed quite enough sleep although he never felt sleepy-he didn't dare-during lessons. Once a day he was bathed and given a clean nightshirt, twice a day he was fed, tasty food and plentiful, three times a day he was policed to the toilet. All other minutes were spent learning to speak, with ever-sharp awareness that any bobble would be punished.

            But he learned how to duck punishment. A question, quickly put, would sometimes do. "Teacher, this one understands that there are protocol modes for each status rising and falling, but what this one in its ignorance lacks is knowledge of what each status is-being wholly without experience through the inscrutable ways of Uncle the Mighty-and also is sometimes not aware of the status assumed for teaching purposes by my charitable teacher and of the status this humble one is expected to assume in reply. More than that, this one does not know its own status in the great family. May it please its teacher."

            The whip was put down and for the next hour he was lectured. The problem was more involved than Hugh's question showed. The lowest status was stud. No, there was one lower: servant children. But since children were expected to make mistakes, it did not matter. Next higher was slut, then tempered servant-a category with subtle and unlimited gradations of rank so involved that speech of equals was used if the gradient was not clearly evident. High above all servants were the Chosen, with unlimited and sometimes changing variations of rank, including those ritual circumstances in which a lady takes precedence over a lord. But that was not usually a worry; always use protocol rising mode. However- "If two of the Chosen speak to you at once, which one do you answer?"

            "The junior," Hugh answered.

            "Why?"

            "Since the Chosen do not make mistakes, this one's ears were at fault. The senior did not actually speak, for his junior would never have interrupted."

            "Correct. You are a tempered gardener and you encounter a Chosen of the same rank as your lord uncle. He speaks. 'Boy, what sort of a flower is that?'"

            "As Their Charity knows much better than this one can ever know, if this one's eyes are not mistaken, that plant may be a hydrangea."

            "Good. But drop your eyes when you say it. Now about your status-" The teacher looked pained. "You haven't any."

            "Please, teacher?"

            "Uncle! I've tried to find out. Nobody knows but our Lord Uncle and they have not ruled. You're not a child, you're not a stud, you're not a tempered, you don't belong anywhere. You're a savage and you don't fit."

            "But what protocol mode must I use?"

            "Always the rising. Oh, not to children. Nor to sluts, no need to overdo it."

            Except for changes in inflection caused by status, Hugh found the language simple and logical. It had no irregular verbs and its syntax was orderly; it probably had been tidied up at some time. He suspected, from words that he recognized-"simba," "bwana," "wazir," "étage," "trek," "oncle"- that it had roots in several African languages. But that did not matter; this was "Speech" and, according to his teachers, the only language spoken anywhere.

            In addition to protocol modes, quite a chunk of vocabulary was double, one word being used down, its synonym although different in root used up. He had to know both-be able to recognize one and to use the other.

            The pronunciation gave him trouble at first, but by the end of the week he could lip smack, click, make the fast glottal stop, and hear and say vowel distinctions he had never suspected existed. By the sixteenth day he was chattering freely, beginning to think in it, and the whip was rarely used.

            Late next day the Lord Protector sent for him.

Chapter 12

            Although he had been bathed that day, Hugh was rushed through another bath, rubbed down with fragrant cream, and issued a fresh robe, before being whizzed to the lord's private apartments. There he was bounced past a series of receptionists close on Memtok's heels, and into a large and very sumptuous retiring room.

            The lord was not there; Joseph and Dr.-Livingstone-I-Presume were. Joe called out, "Hugh! Wonderful!" and added to the Chief Domestic, "You may go."

            Memtok hesitated, then backed away and left. Joe ignored him, slipped his arm in Hugh's, and led him to a divan. "Gosh, it's good to see you! Sit down, we'll talk until Ponse gets here. You look well." Doctor Livingstone checked Hugh's ankles, purred and stropped against them.

            "I am well. 'Ponse'?" Hugh scratched the cat's ears.

            "Don't you know his name? The Lord Protector, I mean. No, I guess you wouldn't. That's one of his names, one he uses en famille. Never mind, have they been treating you right?"

            "I suppose so."

            "They had better. Ponse gave orders for you to be pampered. Look, if you aren't treated okay, you tell me. I can fix it."

            Hugh hesitated. "Joe, have you had one of those odd whips used on you?"

            "Me?" Joe seemed astonished. "Of course not. Hugh, have they been abusing you? Peel off that Mother Hubbard and let me have a look."

            Hugh shook his head. "There are no marks on me. I haven't been hurt. But I don't like it."

            "But if you've been stroked for no reason- Hugh, that's one thing that Ponse does not tolerate. He's a very humane sort of guy. All he wants is discipline. If anybody-anybody at all, even Memtok-has been cruel to you, somebody is going to catch it."

            Hugh thought about it. He rather liked his teachers. They had worked hard and patiently and had been sparing of him once it became possible to talk instead of using the whip. "I haven't been hurt. Just reminded."

            "I'm glad to hear it. Actually, Hugh, I didn't see how you could be. That quirt Ponse carries-you could kill a man with it at a thousand feet; it takes skill to use it gently. But those toys the upper servants carry, all they do is tingle and that's all they are supposed to do."

            Hugh decided not to argue over what constituted a tingle; he had urgent things on his mind. "Joe, how are the others? Have you seen them?"

            "Oh, they're all right. You heard about Barbara?"

            "I haven't heard a damn thing! What about Barbara?"

            "Slow down. Having her babies, I mean."

            "She had her baby?"

            "'Babies.' Twin boys, identical. A week ago."

            "How is she? How is she?"

            "Easy, man! She's fine, couldn't be better. Of course. They are way ahead of us in medicine; losing a mother, or a baby, is unheard of." Joe suddenly looked sad. "It's a shame they didn't run across us months back." He brightened. "Barbara told me that she had intended to name it Karen, if it was a girl. When it turned out to be twin boys, she named one-the one five minutes the elder-'Hugh' and the other 'Karl Joseph.' Nice, eh?"

            "I'm flattered. Then you've seen her. Joe, I've got to see her. Right away. How do I arrange it?"

            Joe looked astonished. "But you can't, Hugh. Surely you know that."

            "Why can't I?"

            "Why, you're not tempered, that's why. Impossible."

            ''Oh.''

            "I'm sorry, but that's the way it is." Joseph suddenly grinned. "I understand that you were almost made eligible by accident. Ponse laughed his head off at how close you came and how you and Duke yelped."

            "I don't see the humor of it."

            "Oh, Hugh, he simply has a robust sense of humor. He laughed when he told me about it. I didn't laugh and he decided that I have no sense of humor. Different people laugh at different things. Karen used to use a fake Negro dialect that set my teeth on edge, the times I overheard it. But she didn't mean any harm. Karen- Well, they just don't come any better, and you and I know it and I'll shut up about it. Look, if the vet had gone ahead, without orders, it would have cost him his hands; Ponse sent that word to him. Might have suspended the sentence-good surgeons 'are valuable. But his assumption was only natural, Hugh; both you and Duke are too tall and too big for stud. However, Ponse doesn't tolerate sloppiness."

            "All right, all right. I still don't see the harm in my calling on Barbara and seeing her babies. You saw her. And you're not tempered."

            Joe looked patiently exasperated. "Hugh, it's not the same thing. Surely you know it."

            "Why isn't it?"

            Joe sighed. "Hugh, I didn't make the rules. But I'm Chosen and you're not, and that's all there is to it. It's not my fault that you're white."

            "All right. Forget it."

            "Let's be glad that one of us is in a position to get us some favors. Do you realize that all of you would have been executed? If I hadn't been along?"

            "The thought has crossed my mind. Lucky you knew French. And that he knows French."

            Joe shook his head. "French didn't enter into it, it merely saved time. The point was that I was there . . . and the rest of you were excused of any responsibility on that account. What had to be settled then was the degree of my criminality, my neck was in a noose." Joe frowned. "I'm still not in the clear. I mean, Ponse is convinced but my case has to be re viewed by the Supreme Lord Proprietor; it's his preserve- Ponse is just custodian. I could be executed yet."

            "Joe, what in the world is there about it to cause you to talk about being executed?"

            "Plenty! Look, if you four ofays-whites-had been alone, Ponse would have tried you just by looking at you. Two capital crimes and both self-evident. Escapees. Servants who had run away from their lord. Destructive trespass in a personal domain of the Supreme Proprietor. Open-and-shut on both counts and death for each of them. Don't tell me that wasn't the way it was because I know it and it took me long enough to make Ponse see it, using a language neither one of us knows too well. And my neck is still in jeopardy. However-" He brightened. "Ponse tells me that the Supreme Proprietor is years behind in reviewing criminal cases and that it has been more years since he last set foot on this preserve or even cruised over it . . . and that long before my case can come up there won't be a trace of destruction. They are putting the trees back and there's never an accurate count of bears and deer and other game. He tells me not to worry."

            "Well, that's good."

            "But maybe you think I haven't done some sweating over it! Just letting your shadow fall across the Supreme Lord Proprietor means your neck and sneezing in his presence is even worse-so you can figure for yourself that trespassing on land that is his personally is nothing to take lightly. But I shan't worry as long as Ponse says not to. He's been treating me as a guest, not as a prisoner. But tell me about yourself. I hear you've been studying the language. So have I-a tutor every day I've had time for it."

            Hugh answered, "May it meet with their approval, this one's time has, as they know, been devoted to nothing else."

            "Whoo! You speak it better than I do."

            "I was given incentive," Hugh said, relapsing into English. "Joe, have you seen Duke? Grace?"

            "Duke, no. I haven't tried to. Ponse has been away most of the time and took me along; I've been terribly busy. Grace, yes. It's possible that you might see Grace. She's often in these apartments. That's the only way you could see her, of course. Right here. And in the presence of Ponse. Might happen. He's not a stickler for protocol. In private, I mean; he keeps up appearances in public."

            "Hmm- Joe, in that case, couldn't you ask him to let me see Barbara and the twins? Here? In his presence?"

            Joe looked exasperated. "Hugh, can't you understand that I'm just a guest? I'm here on sufferance. I don't have a single servant of my own, no money, no title. I said you might see Grace; I did not say you would. If you did, it would be because he had sent for you and it suited him not to send her out-not for your convenience. As for asking him to let you see Barbara, I can't. And that's that! I advise you not to, either. You might learn that his quirt doesn't just tingle."

            "All I meant was-"

            "Watch it! Here he comes."

            Joe went to meet his host. Hugh stood with head bowed, eyes downcast, and waited to be noticed. Ponse came striding in, dressed much as Hugh had seen him before save that the helmet was replaced by a red skullcap. He greeted Joe, sat heavily down on a large divan, stuck out his legs. Doctor Livingstone jumped up into the lord's lap; he stroked it. Two female servants appeared from nowhere, pulled off his boots, wiped his feet with a hot towel, dried them, massaged them, placed slippers on them, and vanished.

            While this was going on, the Lord Protector spoke to Joe of matters Hugh could not follow other than as words, but he noticed that the noble used the mode of equals to Joe and that Joe talked in the same fashion to him. Hugh decided that Joe must be in as solid as Doctor Livingstone. Well, Joe did have a pleasing personality.

            At last the big man glanced at him. "Sit down, boy."

            Hugh sat down, on the floor. The lord went on, "Have you learned Language? We're told that you have."

            "May it please Their Charity, 'this one's time has been devoted singly to that purpose, with what inadequate resultsknown to them far better than their servant would dare venture to estimate."

            "Not bad. Accent could be crisper. And you missed an infix. How do you like the weather we've been having?"

            "Weather is as Uncle the Mighty ordains it. If it pleases His favorite nephew, it cannot fail to make joyful one so humble as this servant."

            "Quite good. Accent blurry but understandable. Work on it. Tell your teachers we said it. Now drop that fancy speech, I haven't time to listen to it. Equals speech, always. In private, I mean."

            "All right. I-" Hugh broke off; one of the female servants had returned, to kneel in front of her lord with a drink on a tray.

            Ponse glanced sharply at Hugh, then looked at the girl. "It? Doesn't count, it's a deaf mute. You were saying?"

            "I was about to say that I couldn't have an opinion about weather because I haven't seen any since I got here."

            "I suppose not. I gave orders for you to learn Language as quickly as possible and servants are inclined to follow instructions literally. No imagination. All right, you will walk outdoors an hour each day. Tell whoever is in charge of you. Any petition? Are you getting enough to eat? Are you being treated well?"

            "The food is good, I'm used to eating three times a day but-"

            "You can eat four times a day if you wish. Again, tell the one in charge of you. All right, now to other matters. Hugh- That's your name, isn't it?"

            "Yes, Their Charity."

            "Can't you hear? I said, 'Use equals mode.' My private name is Ponse. Use it. Hugh, if I had not picked you people up myself, were I not a scholar, and had I not seen with my own eyes the artifacts in that curious structure, your house, I would not have believed it. As it is, I must. I'm not a superstitious man. Uncle works in mysterious ways, but He doesn't use miracles and I would not hesitate to repeat that in any temple on Earth, unorthodox as it sounds. But- How long does it come to, Joe?"

            "Two thousand one hundred and three years."

            "Call it two thousand. What's the matter, Hugh?"

            "Uh, nothing, nothing."

            "If you're going to throw up, go outside; I picked these rugs myself. As I was saying, you've given my scientists something to think about-and a good thing, too; they haven't turned out anything more important than a better mousetrap in years. Lazy scoundrels. I've told them to come up with a sensible answer, no miracles. How five people-or six-and a building of some mass could hurdle twenty centuries and never break an egg. Exaggeration. Joe tells me it broke some bones and other things. Speaking of bones, Joe tells me this won't please you-and it didn't please him-but I ordered my scientists to disturb some bones. Strontium sampling, that sort of thing; I suppose you've never heard of it. Clear proof that the cadaver had matured before the period of maximum radioactivity- Look, I warned you about these rugs. Don't do it!" Hugh gulped. ("Karen! Karen! Oh, my darling!")

            "Better now? Perhaps I should have told you that a priest was present, proper propitiations were made-exactly as if it had been one of the Chosen. Special concession, my orders. And when the tests were completed every atom was returned and the grave closed with proper rites."

            "That's true, Hugh," Joseph said gravely. "I was there. And I put on fresh flowers. Flowers that will stay fresh, I'm told."

            "Certainly they will," Ponse confirmed, "until they wear out from sheer erosion. I don't know why you use flowers but if there are any other rites or sacrifices necessary to atone for what may seem to you a desecration, just name it. I'm a broadminded man; I'm aware that other times had other customs."

            "No. No, best let it be."

            "As you wish. It was done from scientific necessity. It seemed more reasonable than amputating one of your fingers. Other tests also kept my scientists from wiggling out of the obvious. Foods preserved by methods so ancient that I doubt if any modem food expert would know how to duplicate same- and yet the foods were edible. At least some servants were required to eat them; no harm resulted. A fascinating radioactivity gradient between upper and inner sides of the roof structure-I gave them a hint on that. Acting on information received from Joe, I ordered them to look for evidence that this event took place at the beginning of the East-West War that destroyed the Northern Hemisphere.

            "So they found it. Calculations lead them to believe that the structure must have been near the origin of an atom-kernel explosion. Yet it was unhurt. That produced a theory so wild that I won't tire your ears with it; I've told them to go on working.

            "But the best thing is the historical treasure. I am a man of history, Hugh; history, properly interpreted, tells everything. The treasure, of course, are those books that came along. I am not exaggerating when I say that they are my most precious possessions. There are only two other copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the world today-and those are not this edition and are in such poor shape that they are curiosities rather than something a scholar can work with; they weren't cared for during the Turmoil Ages."

            Ponse leaned back and looked happy. "But mine is in mint condition!"

            He added, "I'm not discounting the other books. Treasures, all of them. Especially the Adventures of Odysseus, which is known only by reputation. I take it that the pictures date from the time of Odysseus too?"

            "I'm afraid not. The artist was alive in my time."

            "Too bad. They're interesting, nevertheless. Primitive art, stronger than we have now. But I exaggerated when I said that the books were my dearest possession."

            "Yes?"

            "You are! There! Doesn't that please you?"

            Hugh barely hesitated. "Yes. If true." (If it's true that I am your chattel, you arrogant bastard, I prefer being a valuable one!)

            "Oh, quite true. If you had been speaking in protocol mode, you wouldn't have been able to phrase a doubt. I never lie, Hugh; remember that. You and- That other one, Joe?"

            "Duke."

            "'Duke.' Although Joe speaks highly of your scholarship, not so highly of its. But let me explain. There are other scholars who read Ancient English. None in my household, true; since it is not a root language to any important degree, few study it. Nevertheless, scholars could be borrowed. But none such as yourself. You actually lived then; you'll be able to translate knowledgeably, without these maddening four and five interpretations of a single passage that disfigure most translations from ancient sources, all because the scholar doesn't really know what the ancient author was talking about. Lack of cultural context, I mean. And no doubt you will be able to supply explanations for things obscure to me and commonplace to you.

            "Right? Right! So you see what I want. Start with the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Get busy today, translate it. Just scribble it out quickly, sloppy but fast. Someone else will pretty it up for my eyes. Understand? All right, go do it."

            Hugh gulped. "But, Ponse, I can't write Language."

            "What?"

            "I was taught to speak; I haven't been taught to read and write."

            Ponse blinked. "Memtok!"

            The Chief Palace Domestic arrived with such speed that one might suspect that he was just outside the door. And so he had been-listening in on private conversation by means Memtok was certain were not known to the Lord Protector

            inasmuch as Memtok was still breathing. Such measures were risky but he found them indispensable to efficient performance of his duties. At worst, it was safer than planting a slut in there who was not quite a deaf mute.

            "Memtok, I told you it was to be taught to speak, read, and write Language."

            Hugh listened, eyes downcast, while the Chief Domestic tried to protest that the order had never been given (it had not) but nevertheless had been carried out (obviously false), all without contradicting the Lord Protector (impossible to reconcile, inconceivable to attempt).

            "Garbage," Ponse remarked. "I don't know why I don't put you up for adoption. You would look good in a coal mine. That pale skin would be improved by some healthy coal dust." He twitched his quirt and Memtok paled still more. "Very well, let it be corrected. It is to spend half of each day in learning to read and write, the other half in translating and in dictating same into a recorder. I should have thought of that; writing takes too long. Nevertheless, I want it to be able to read and write." He turned to Hugh. "Anything you can think of? That you need?"

            Hugh started to phrase a request in the involved indirection which presumed nothing, as required by protocol mode, rising.

            Ponse chopped him off. "Speak directly, Hugh. Memtok, close your ears. No ceremony needed in Memtok's presence, he is a member of my inner family, my nephew in spirit if not in the eyes of my senior sister. Spit it out."

            Memtok relaxed and looked as beatific as his vinegar features permitted. "Well, Ponse, I need room to work. My cell is the size of that divan."

            "Describe your needs."

            "Well, I'd like a room with natural light, one with windows, say a third the size of this one. Working tables, bookshelves, writing materials, a comfortable chair-yes, and access to a toilet without having to wait; it interferes with my thinking otherwise."

            "Don't you have that?"

            "No. And I don't think it helps my thinking to be touched up with a whip."

            "Memtok, have you been whipping it?"

            "No, my uncle. I swear."

            "You would swear if you were caught with cream on your lip. Who has been?"

            Hugh dared to interrupt. "I'm not complaining, Ponse. But those whips make me nervous. And I never know who can give me orders. Anybody, apparently. I haven't been able to find out my status."

            "Mmm- Memtok, where do you have it in the Family?" The head servant barely conceded that he had not been able to solve that problem.

            "Let's solve it. We make it a department head. Mmm- Department of Ancient History. Title: Chief Researcher. Senior head of department, just below you. Pass the word around. I'm doing this to make clear how valuable this servant is to me . . . and anyone who slows up its work is likely to wind up in the stew. I suppose it will really be a one-servant department but you fill it out, make it look good, by transferring its teachers, and whoever looks out for its recorder and prepares the stuff for me, a cleaner or two, an assistant to boss them- I don't want to take up its valuable time on routine. A messenger. You know. There must be dozens of idlers around this house, eating their silly heads off, who would look well in the Department of Ancient History. Now have fetched a lesser whip and a lesser badge. Move."

            In moments Hugh was wearing a medallion not much smaller than Memtok's. Ponse took the whip and removed something from it. "Hugh, I'm not giving you a charged whip, you don't know how to use it. If one of your loafers need spurring, Memtok will be glad to help. Later, when you know how, we'll see. Now- Are you satisfied?"

            Hugh decided that it was not the time to ask to see Barbara. Not with Memtok present. But he was beginning to hope.

            He and Memtok were dismissed together. Memtok did not object when Hugh walked abreast of him.

Chapter 13

            Memtok was silent while he led Hugh back down to servants' country; he was figuring out how to handle this startling development to his own advantage.

            This savage's status had troubled the Chief Domestic from arrival. He didn't fit-and in Memtok's world everything had to fit. Well, now the savage had an assigned status; Their Charity had spoken and that was that. But the situation was not improved. The new status was so ridiculous as to make the whole belowstairs structure (the whole world, that is) a mockery.

            But Memtok was shrewd and practical. The bedrock of his philosophy was: You can't fight City Hall, and his basic strategy in applying it was the pragmatic rule: When you can't beat 'em, you join 'em.

            How could this savage's preposterous promotion be made to appear necessary and proper-and a credit to the Chief Domestic?

            Uncle! The savage wasn't even tempered. Nor would he be. At least not yet. Later, possibly-it would make everything so much more tidy. Memtok had been amazed when Their Charity had postponed the obvious. Memtok hardly recalled his own tempering; his emotions and drives before that time were a thin memory-of someone else. There was no reason for the savage to have kicked up a fuss about it; tempering marked promotion into real living. Memtok looked forward to another half century of activity, power, gracious living- what stud could claim that?

            But there it was. How to make it look good?

            A Curiosity!-that's what the savage was. All great lords possessed Curiosities; there had been times when visiting in his own caste that he had been embarrassed by the fact that his own lord took no interest in Curiosities; there were not even Siamese twins nor a two-headed freak in the whole household. Not even a flipper-armed dwarf. Their Charity was-let's admit it-too simple in his tastes for his high rank; sometimes Memtok was a little ashamed of him. Spending his time on scrolls and such when he should be upholding the pride of the house.

            That lord in Hind- What title? Prince something or other silly. Never mind, he had that big cage where studs and sluts lived and mated with great apes, talked the same jabber-it wasn't Language-and you couldn't tell which was which save that some were hairy and some were smooth. There was a Curiosity worthy of a great household! That lord's chief domestic had declared by the Uncle that there were live crossbreeds from the experiment, hidden away where the priests couldn't object. It might be true, since it was a fact that despite official denial crossbreeds between servants and Chosen were possible-and did happen, even though designated bedwarmers were always sterile. But these accidents were never allowed to see the light of day.

            A Curiosity, that was the angle. An untempered who was nevertheless a servant executive. A Famous Scholar who had not even been able to speak Language when he was almost as old as Memtok. A man out of nowhere. From the stars. Everybody knew that there were men somewhere in the stars.

            Probably a miracle . . . and the temples were investigating and any year now this household would be famous for its unique Curiosity. Yes. A word here, a word there, a veiled hint- "Hugh," Memtok said cordially. "May I call you 'Hugh'?" "What? Why, certainly!" "You must call me 'Memtok.' Let's stroll a bit and pick out space for your departmental headquarters. You would like a sunny place, I understand. Perhaps rooms facing the gardens? And do you want your personal quarters opening off your headquarters? Or would you rather have them elsewhere so that you can get away from it all?" The latter, Memtok decided. Roust out the head gardener and the studmaster and give the savage both their quarters-that would make everyone understand how important this Curiosity was . . . and get both of them sore at the savage, too. He'd soon realize who was his friend. Memtok, namely, and nobody else. Besides, the gardener had been getting uppity, implying that his work didn't come under the Chief Domestic. A touching up was what he needed.

            Hugh said, "Oh, I don't need anything fancy."

            "Come, come! We want you to have every facility. I wish 1 could get away from it all sometimes. But I can't-problems, problems, problems, every minute of the day; some people have to have all their thinking done for them. It will be a treat to have a man of the mind among us. We'll find you cozy quarters, plenty of room for you and your valet. But separate." Valet? Was there a tempered young buck around, well housebroken and biddable, who could be depended on to report everything and keep his mouth shut? Suppose he had his sister's eldest son tempered now, would the lad shape up in time? And would his sister see the wisdom in it? He had great hopes for the boy. Memtok was coldly aware that he would have to go someday-though not for many years-and he was determined that his heir should succeed to his high office. But it would take planning, and planning could never start too soon. If his sister could be made to see it- Memtok led Hugh through crowded passageways; servants scurried out of the way wherever they went-save one who stumbled and got tingled for his awkwardness.

            "My!" said Hugh. "This is a big building."

            "This? Wait till you see the Palace-though no doubt it is falling to rack and ruin, under my chief deputy. Hugh, we use only a quarter of the staff here. There is no formal entertaining, just garden parties. And only a handful of guests. In the city the Chosen are always coming and going. Many a time I am rooted out of bed in the night to open apartments for some lord and his ladies without a moment's warning. And that is where planning counts. To -be able to open the door of a guest-wing flat and know-know, mind you, without looking-that beds are freshly perfumed, refreshments waiting, everything spotless, music softly playing."

            "That must take real staff work."

            "Staff work!" Memtok snorted. "I wish I could agree. What it takes is for me to inspect every room, every night, no matter how tired I am, before I go to bed. Then stay up to see that mistakes are corrected, not depend on their lies. They're all liars, Hugh. Too much 'Happiness.' Their Charity is generous; he never cuts down on the ration."

            "I've found the food ample. And good."

            "I didn't say food, I said 'Happiness.' I control the food and I don't believe in starving them, not even as punishment. A tingle is better. They understand that. Always remember one thing, Hugh; most servants don't really have minds. They're as thoughtless as the Chosen-not referring to Their Charity of course; I would never criticize my own patron. I mean Chosen in general. You understand." He winked and gave Hugh a dig in the ribs.

            "I don't know much about the Chosen," Hugh admitted. "I've hardly laid eyes on them."

            "Well. . . you'll see. It takes more than a dark skin to make brains no matter what they teach in temple. Not that I expect you to quote me nor would I admit it if you did. But- Who do you think runs this household?"

            "I haven't been here long enough to express opinions."

            "Very shrewd. You could go far if you had ambition. Let me put it this way. If Their Charity goes away, the household goes on smoothly as ever. If I am away, or dare to fall sick- Well, I shudder to think of it." He gestured with his whip. "They know. You won't find them scurrying that fast to get out of his way."

            Hugh changed the subject. "I did not understand your remark about a 'ration of Happiness.'"

            "Haven't you been receiving yours?"

            "I don't know what it is."

            "Oho! One bullock gets you three that it has been issued but never got as far as you. Must look into that. As to what it is, I'll show you." Memtok led him up a ramp and out onto a balcony. Below was the servants' main dining hail, crowded with three queues. "This, is issue time-studs at a different hour, of course. They can have it as drink, in chewing form, or to smoke. The dosage is the same but some say that smoking it produces the keenest happiness."

            Memtok used words not in Hugh's vocabulary; Hugh told him so. Memtok said, "Never mind. It improves the appetite, steadies the nerves, promotes good health, enhances all pleasures-and wrecks ambition. The trick is to be able to take it or leave it alone. I never took it regularly even when I was at stud; I had ambition. I take it now only on feast days or such-in moderation." Memtok smiled. "You'll find out tonight."

            "I will?"

            "Didn't I tell you? Banquet in your honor, just after evening prayer."

            Hugh was hardly listening. He was searching the far queue, trying to spot Barbara.

            Memtok sent the Chief Veterinarian and the Household Engineer as an escort of honor for Hugh. Hugh was mildly embarrassed at this attention from the physician and surgeon in view of the helpless posture he had been in the last time he had seen the man. But the veterinarian was most cordial.

            Memtok headed the long table with Hugh on his right. Twenty department heads were seated; there was one lower servant standing behind each guest and endless streams coming in and out from kitchen and pantry. The banquet room was beautiful, its furnishings lavish, and the feast was sumptuous and endless; Hugh wondered what a meal of the Chosen must be like if their upper servants ate this way.

            He soon found out, in part. Memtok was served twice, once from the tasty dishes everyone shared, again from another menu. These dishes he sampled, using separate plates, but rarely did more than taste. Of the regular menu he ate sparingly and sometimes passed up dishes.

            He noticed Hugh's glance. "The Lord Protector's dinner. Try it. At your own risk, of course."

            "What risk?"

            "Poison, naturally. When a man is over a hundred years old his heir is certain to be impatient. To say nothing of business competitors, political rivals, and subverted friends. Go ahead; the taster tries it half an hour before Their Charity- or I-touches it, and we've lost only one taster this year."

            Hugh decided that his nerve was being tested; he tried a spoonful.

            "Like it?" asked the Chief Domestic.

            "Seems greasy to me."

            "Hear that, Gnou? Our new cousin is a man of taste. Greasy. Someday you'll be fried in your own grease, I fear. The truth is, Hugh, that we eat better than the Chosen do. . . although courses are served more elaborately in the Grand Hall, of course. But I am a gourmet who appreciates artistry; Their Charity doesn't care what it is as long as it doesn't squeal when he bites it. If the sauces are too elaborate, the spices too exotic, he'll send it back with a demand for a slice of roast, a hunk of bread, and a pitcher of milk. True, Gnou?"

            "You have said it."

            "And frustrating."

            "Very," admitted the chef.

            "So Cousin Gnou's best cooks work for us, and the Chosen struggle along with ones whose chief skill lies in getting a bird's skin back on without ruffling the feathers. Cousin Hugh, if you will excuse me, I must lift up to the Grand Hall and attempt by proper ceremony to make Cousin Gnou's pièce de résistance seem better than it is. Don't believe what they tell you about me while I'm gone-regrettably it's all true." He exposed his teeth in what must have been a smile and left.

            No one spoke for a while. Finally someone-Hugh thought it was the transportation master but he had met too many- said, "Chief Researcher, what household were you with before you were adopted, may one ask?"

            "One may. House of Farnham, Freeholder Extraordinary."

            "So. I am forced to admit that the title of your Chosen is new to me. A new title, perhaps?"

            "Very old," Hugh answered. "Extremely ancient and granted directly by Uncle the Mighty, blessed be His Name. The rank is roughly that of king, but senior to it."

            "Really?"

            Hugh decided to drop that shovel for a wider one. In earlier conversation he had learned that Memtok knew a great deal about many things-but almost nothing about such trivia as history, geography, and matters outside the household. And from his Language lessons he knew that a servant who could read and write was rare, even among executives, unless the skill was necessary to his duties. Memtok had told him proudly that he had petitioned the opportunity while he was still at stud and had labored at it to the amusement of the other studs. "I had my eyes on the future," he had told Hugh. "I could have had five more years, probably ten, at stud-but as soon as I could read, I petitioned to be tempered. So I had the last laugh-for where are they now?"

            Hugh decided on the very widest shovel; a big lie was always easier to sell. "The title is unbroken for three thousand years in House Farnham. The line remained intact by direct intervention of the Uncle right through Turmoil and Change. Because of its Divine origin its holder speaks to the Proprietor as an equal, 'thee' and 'thou.'" Hugh drew himself up proudly. "And I was factotum-in-chief to Lord Farnham."

            "A noble house indeed. But 'factotum-in-chief'? We don't use that designation here. A domestic?"

            "Yes and no. The chief domestic works under the factotum."

            The man almost gasped. "And so," Hugh went on, "do all servant executives, domestic or not-business, political, agrarian, everything. The responsibility is wearing."

            "So I should imagine!"

            "It is. I was growing old and my health was failing-I suffered a temporary paralysis of my lower limbs. Truthfully I never liked responsibility, I am a scholar. So I petitioned to be adopted and here I am-scholar to a Chosen of similar scholarly 'tastes . . . a fitting occupation for my later years." Hugh realized that he had stretched one item too far; the veterinarian looked up. "This paralysis, I noted no signs of it." (Damn it, doctors never cared about anything but their specialty!) "It came on me suddenly one morning," Hugh said smoothly, "and I haven't been troubled by it since. But to a man of my years it was a warning."

            "And what are your years? Professional interest, of course. One may ask?"

            Hugh tried to make the snub as direct as some he had heard Memtok pass out. "One may not. I'll let you know when I need your services. But," he added, to sooth the smart, "it would be fair to say that I was born some years earlier than Their Charity."

            "Astonishing. From your physical condition-quite good, I thought-I would have judged you to be no more than sixty, at most."

            "Blood will tell," Hugh said smugly. "I am not the only one of my bloodline to live a very long time."

            He was saved from further evasions by the return of Memtok. Everyone stood up. Hugh didn't notice in time, so he remained seated and brazened it out. If Memtok resented it, he did not let it show. He clapped Hugh on the shoulder as he sat down. "No doubt they've told you how I eat my own young?"

            "I was given the impression of a happy family presided over by a beloved uncle."

            "Liars, all of them. Well, I'm through for the evening- until some emergency. Their Charity knows that we are welcoming you; he commanded me not to return to the Grand Hall. So now we can relax and be merry." The Chief Domestic tapped his goblet with a spoon. "Cousins and nephews, a toast to our newest cousin. Possibly you heard what I said-the Lord Protector is pleased at our modest effort to make Cousin Hugh feel at home in Their Family. But I am sure that you already guessed that . . . since one cannot miss that Cousin Hugh carries, not a least whip, but a lesser whip exactly like mine!" Memtok smiled archly. "Let us trust that he will never need to use it."

            Loud applause greeted the boss's brilliant sally. He went on solemnly, "You all know that not even my chief deputy carries such authority, much less the ordinary department head

            and from that I am sure you conclude that a hint from Cousin Hugh, Chief Researcher and Aide in Scholarship to Their Charity by direct appointment-a hint from him is an order from me-so don't let me have to make it a direct order.

            "And now the toasts! All cousins together and let Happiness flow freely . . . so let the junior among us give the first toast. Who claims it, who claims it?"

            The party got rowdy. Hugh noted that Memtok drank sparingly. He remembered the warning and tried to emulate him. It was impossible. The Chief Domestic could drop out of any toast, merely raise his glass, but Hugh as guest of honor felt compelled to drink them all.

            Some unknown time later Memtok led him back to his newly acquired, luxurious quarters. Hugh felt drunk but not unsteady-it was just that the floor was so far away. He felt illuminated, possessed of the wisdom of the ages, floating on silvery clouds, and soaked through with angelic happiness. He still had no idea what was in Happiness drinks. Alcohol? Maybe. Betel nut? Mushrooms? Probably. Marijuana? It seemed certain. He must write down the formula while it was fresh in his mind. This was what Grace should have had! He must- But of course, she did have it now. How very nice! Poor old Grace- He had never understood her-all she needed was a little Happiness.

            Memtok took him into his bedroom. Sleeping across the foot of his lovely new bed was a female creature, blond and cuddly.

            Hugh looked down at her from about a hundred-foot elevation and blinked. "Who she?"

            "Your bedwarmer. Didn't I say?"

            "But-"

            "It's quite all right. Yes, yes, I know you are technically a stud. But you can't harm her; this is what she is for. No danger. Not even altered. A natural freemartin."

            Hugh turned around to discuss it, wheeling slowly because of his great width and high sail area. Memtok was gone. Hugh found that he could just make it to the bed. "Move over, Kitten," he muttered, and fell asleep.

            He overslept but the kitten was still there; she had his breakfast waiting. He looked at her with unease-not because he had a hangover; he did not. Apparently Happiness did not exact such payments. He felt physically strong, mentally alert, and morally straight-and very hungry. But this teen-ager was an embarrassment.

            "What's your name, kitten?"

            "May it please them, this one's name is of such little importance that whatever they please to call it will be a boon."

            "Cut it, cut it! Use equals speech."

            "I don't really have a name, sir. Mostly they just say, 'Hey, you.'"

            "All right, I'll call you 'Kitten.' Does that suit you? You look like a kitten."

            She dimpled. "Yes, sir. It's ever so much nicer than 'Hey, you.'"

            "All right, your name is 'Kitten.' Tell everybody and don't answer to 'Hey, you.' Tell them that is official because the Chief Researcher says so and if anybody doubts it, tell them to check with the Chief Domestic. If they dare."

            "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Kitten, Kitten, Kitten," she repeated as if memorizing it, then giggled. "Pretty!"

            "Good. Is that my breakfast?"

            "Yes, sir."

            He ate in bed, offering her bits, and discovered that she expected to be fed, or at least allowed to eat. There was enough for four; between them they ate enough for three. Then he learned that she expected to assist him in the bathroom; he put a stop to that.

            Later, ready to go to his assigned duties, he said to her, "What do you do now?"

            "I go back to sluts' quarters, sir, as soon as you release me. I come back at bedtime-whatever time you say."

            He was about to tell her that she was charming and that he almost regretted passing .out the night before but that he did not require her services on future- He stopped. An idea had hit him. "Look. Do you know a tall slut named Barbara? Oh, this much taller than you are. She was adopted something over two weeks ago and she had babies, twin boys, about a week ago."

            "Oh, yes, sir. The savage."

            "That's the one. Do you know where' she is?"

            "Oh, yes, sir. She's still in lying-in quarters. I like to go in there and look at the babies." She looked wistful. "It must be nice."

            "Uh, yes. Can you take a message to her?"

            Kitten looked doubtful. "She might not understand. She's a savage, she can't talk very well."

            "Mmm- Damn. No, maybe it's a help. Wait a moment." His quarters were equipped with a desk; he went to it, got one of those extraordinary pens-they didn't stain and didn't wear out and appeared to be solid-found a piece of paper. Hastily he wrote a note, asking Barbara about herself and the twins, reporting his odd promotion, telling her that soon, somehow, he would see her-be patient, dear-and assuring her of his undying devotion.

            He added a P.S. "The bearer of this note is 'Kitten'-if the bearer is short, blond, busty, and about fourteen. She is my bedwarmer-which means nothing and you've got an evil mind, wench! I'm going to hang onto her because she is a way-the only way, it would appear-for me to communicate with you. I'll try to write every day, I'll darn well expect a note from you every day. If you can. And if anybody does anything you don't like, tell me and I'll send you his head on a platter. I think. Things are looking up. Plenty of paper and a pen herewith. Love, love, love-H.

            "PPS-go easy on 'Happiness.' It's habit-forming."

            He gave the girl the note and writing materials. "You know the Chief Domestic by sight?"

            "Oh, yes, sir. I've warmed his bed. Twice."

             "Really? I'm amazed."

            "Why, sir?"

            "Well, I didn't think he would be interested."

            "You mean because he's tempered? Oh, but several of the executives like to have a bedwarmer anyhow. I like it better than being sent upstairs; it's less trouble and you get lots more sleep. The 'Chief Domestic doesn't usually send for a bedwarmer, though-it's just that he checks us and teaches us manners before we are allowed to serve upstairs." She added, "You see, he knows all about it; he used to be a stud, you know." She looked at Hugh with innocent curiosity. "Is it true what they say about you? May one ask?"

            "Uh. . . one may not."

            "I'm sorry, sir." She looked crushed. "I didn't mean any harm." She glanced fearfully at his whip, dropped her eyes.

            "Kitten."

            "Yes, sir."

            "See this whip?"

            "Uh, yessir!"

            "You will never, never, never feel my whip. That's a promise. Never. We're friends."

            Her face lit up and she looked angelically beautiful instead of pretty. "Oh, thank you, sir!"

            "Another thing. The only whip you need fear from now on is the Chief Domestic's-so stay out of his way. Anyone else-any 'least whip'-you tell him, or her, that this lesser whip is what he'll get if he touches you. Tell him to check with the Chief Domestic. Understand me?"

            "Yes, sir." She looked smugly happy.

            Too smug, Hugh decided. "But you stay out of trouble. Don't do anything to deserve a tingle-or I might turn you over to the Chief Domestic for a real tingling, the sort he is famous for. But as long as you work for me, don't allow anyone but him to tingle you. Now git and deliver that. I'll see you tonight, about two hours after evening prayer. Or come earlier if you are sleepy, and go to bed." Must remember to have a little bed put here for her, he reminded himself.

            Kitten touched her forehead and left. Hugh went to his office and spent a happy day learning the alphabet and dictating three articles from the Britannica. He found his vocabulary inadequate, so he sent for one of his teachers and used the man as a dictionary. Even so, he found it necessary to explain almost endlessly; concepts had changed.

            Kitten went straight to the Chief Domestic's office, made her report, turned over the note and writing materials. Memtok was much annoyed that he held in his hand what might be important evidence-and no way to read it. It did occur to him that that other one-Duke? Juke? Some such-might be able to read these hen scratches. But not likely, of course, and even under tingling there would be no certainty that Juke would translate honestly, and no way to check on him.

            Asking Joe never crossed his mind. Nor did asking Their Charity's new bedwarmer. But the impasse had one intriguing aspect. Was it possible that this savage slut actually could read? And perhaps even essay to write a reply?

            He stuck the note in his copier, gave it back to the girl. "All right, your name is Kitten. And do exactly as he tells you about not letting yourself be tingled-and be sure to gossip about it; I want it known all over. But get this-" He gave Kitten the gentlest of reminders; she jumped. "This whip is waiting for you, if you make any mistakes."

            "This one hears and obeys!"

            Hugh returned from the executives' dining room rather late; he had sat around and gossiped. He found Kitten asleep in his bed and remembered that he had forgotten to ask for another bed for her.

            'Clutched in her hand was a folded paper. Gently he worked it out without waking her:

Darling!

            How utterly wonderful to see your handwriting! I knew from Joe that you were safe, hadn't heard about your promotion, didn't know whether you knew about the twins. First about them- They are thriving, they both look like their papa, both have his angelic disposition. Six pounds each at birth is my guess, but, although they were weighed, weights here mean nothing to me. Me? I'm a prize cow, dearest, no trouble at all-and the care I received (and am receiving) is fantastically good. I started to labor, was given something to drink, never hurt again although I remember all details of having two babies-as if it had happened to somebody else. So trouble free and actually pleasant that I'd be willing to do it every day. And would, if the rewards were as nice as little Hugh and Karl Joseph.

            As for the rest, boring except for our fine boys, but I'm learning the language as fast as I can. And somebody should tell the Borden Company about me-which is good, as our scamps are greedy eaters. I'm even able to help out the girl in the next bed, who is short on milk. Just call me Elsie.

            I'll be patient. I'm not surprised at your new honors; I expect that you'll be bossing the place in a month. I have confidence in my man. My husband. Such a beautiful word- As for Kitten, I don't believe your Boy Scout assertions, my lecherous darling; your record shows that you take advantage of innocent young girls. And she's awfully cute.

            Seriously, dearest, I know how noble you are and I didn't have an evil-minded thought. But I would not blame you if your nobility slipped-especially as I've picked up enough words to be aware of her odd category in this strange place. I mean, Kitten is not vulnerable and can't go set. If you did slip, I would not be jealous-not much, anyhow-but I would not want it to become a habit. Not to the exclusion of me, at least; my hormones are rearranging themselves very rapidly. But I don't want you to get rid of her when she is our only way of communicating. Be nice to her; she's a nice kid. But you're always nice to everyone.

            I will write every day-and I will cry into my pillow and be worried to death any day I don't hear from you.

My love forever and forever,

B

P.S. The smear is little Hugh's right footprint.

            Hugh kissed the letter, then got into bed, clutching it. Kitten did not wake.

Chapter 14

            Hugh found learning to read and write Language not difficult. Spelling was phonetic, a sign for every sound. There were no silent letters and never any question about spelling or pronunciation. Accent was on the penultima unless marked; the system was as free from traps as Esperanto. He could sound out any word as soon as he had learned the 47-letter alphabet, and, with thought, he could spell any word he could pronounce.

            Writing and printing were alike, cursive, and a printed page looked like one written by a skilled penman. He was not surprised to find that it looked like Arabic and a search in the Britannica confirmed that the alphabet must have derived from Arabic of his time. Half a dozen letters had not changed; some were similar although changed. There were many new letters to cover the expansion into a system of one sound, one sign-plus letters for sounds XXth century Arabic had never used. Search in the Britannica convinced him that Arabic, French, and Swahili were the main roots of Language, plus Uncle alone knew what else. He could not confirm this; a dictionary with derivations, such as he had been used to for English, apparently did not exist-and his teachers seemed convinced that Language had always been just as they knew it. The concept of change baffled them.

            It was only of intellectual interest; Hugh knew neither Arabic, French, nor Swahili. He had learned a little Latin and less German in high school, and had struggled to learn Russian in his later years. He was not equipped to study the roots of Language, he was merely curious.

            Nor did he dare spend time on it; he wanted to please Their Charity, butter him up so that he might, eventually, petition the boon of seeing Barbara-and that meant a flood of translated articles. Hugh worked very hard.

            The second day after his elevation, Hugh asked for Duke, and Memtok sent for him. Duke was rather worn down-there were lines in his face-but he spoke Language. Duke spoke it not as well as his father and apparently had tangled more with his teachers; his mood seemed to oscillate between hopelessness and rebellion, and he limped badly.

            Memtok made no objection to transferring Duke to the Department of Ancient History. "Glad to get rid of him. He's too monstrous big for stud, yet he doesn't seem to be good for anything else. Certainly, put him to work. I can't bear to see a servant lying around, eating his head off, doing nothing."

            So Hugh took him. Duke looked over Hugh's private apartment and said, "Christ! You certainly managed to come up smelling like a rose. How come?"

            Hugh explained the situation. "So I want you to translate legal articles and related subjects-whatever you can do best."

            Duke shoved his fists together and looked stubborn. "You can stuff it."

            "Duke, don't take that attitude. This is an opportunity."

            "For you, maybe. What are you doing about Mother?"

            "What can I do? I'm not allowed to see her, neither are you. You know that. But Joe assures me that she is not only comfortable and well treated, but happy."

            "So he says. Or so you say he says. I want to see it myself. I damn well insist on it."

            "Very well, insist on it. Go see Memtok about it. But I must warn you, I can't protect you from him."

            "Rats. I know what that slimy little bastard would say-and what he would do." Duke scowled and rubbed his injured leg. "It's up to you to arrange it. You've got such an unholy drag around here, the least you can do is use it to protect Mother."

            "Duke, I don't have that sort of drag. I'm being pampered for the reason a race horse is pampered . . . and I have just as little to say about it as a race horse has. But I can cut you in on pampering if you cooperate-decent quarters, immunity from mistreatment, a pleasant place to work. But I can no more get you into women's quarters, or have Grace sent here, than I can go to the Moon. They have harem rules here, as you know."

            "And you are content to sit here and be a trained seal for that ape, and neglect Mother? Count me out!"

            "Duke, I won't argue. I'll assign you a room and send you a volume of the Britannica each day. Then it's up to you. If you won't work, I'll try to keep Memtok from knowing it. But I think he has spies all over the place."

            Hugh let it go at that. At first he got no help out of Duke. But boredom worked where argument failed; Duke could not stand to be shut up in a room with nothing to do. He was not locked up but he did not venture out much because there was always the chance that he might run into Memtok, or some other whip-carrying upper servant, who might want to know what he was doing, and why-servants were expected to look busy even if they weren't, from morning prayer to evening prayer.

            Duke began to produce translations and, with them, a complaint that he was short on vocabulary. Hugh was able to have assigned to him a tempered clerk who had worked in Their Charity's legal affairs.

            But he rarely saw Duke-it seemed to be the only way they could stay out of arguments. Duke's output speeded up after the first week but fell off in quality-Duke had discovered the sovereign power of "Happiness."

            Hugh considered warning Duke about the drug, decided against it. If it kept Duke contented, who was he to deny him this anodyne? The quality of Duke's translations did not worry Hugh; Their Charity had no way to judge-unless Joe rendered an opinion, which seemed unlikely. He himself was not trying too hard to turn out good translations; "not good, but Wednesday" was the principle he used: Give the boss lucid copy in great quantity-and leave out the hard parts.

            Besides, Hugh found that a couple of drinks of Happiness at dinner topped off the day. It allowed him to read Barbara's daily letter in a warm glow, write a cheerful answer for Kitten to carry back, then to bed and sound sleep.

            But Hugh did not use much of it; he was afraid of the stuff. Alcohol, he reasoned, had the advantage of being a poison. It gave fair warning if one started drinking heavily. But this stuff exacted no such price; it merely turned anxiety, depression, worry, boredom, any unpleasant emotion, into an uncritical happy glow. Hugh wondered if it was principally methyl meprobamate? But he knew little chemistry and that little was two thousand years behind times.

            As a member of the executive servants' mess Hugh could have all he wanted. But he noted that Memtok was not the only boss who used the stuff abstemiously; a man did not fight his way up in the servants' hierarchy by dulling himself with drugs-but sometimes a servant did get high up, then skidded to the bottom, unable to stand prosperity in the form of unrationed Happiness. Hugh never learned what became of them.

            Hugh could even keep a bottle in his rooms-and that solved the problem of Kitten.

            Hugh had decided not to ask for a bed for Kitten; he did not want to rub Memtok's nose in the fact that he was using the child only as a go-between to women's quarters. Instead he required the girl to make up a bed each night on the divan in his living room.

            Kitten was very hurt by this. By now she was sure that Hugh could make better use of a bedwarmer and she regarded it as rebuke to her in her honorable capacity as comfort and solace-and it scared her. If her master did not like her, she might lose the best job she had ever had. (She did not dare report to Memtok that Hugh had no use for her as a bedwarmer; she gave reports on every point but that.)

            She wept.

            She could not have done better; Hugh Farnham had been a sucker for women's tears all his life. He took her on his knee and explained that he liked her very much (true), that it was a sad thing but he was too old to appreciate a female bedmate (a lie), and that he slept badly and was disturbed by having anyone in bed with him (a half-truth)-and that he was satisfied with her and wanted her to go on serving him. "Now wipe your eyes and have a drink of this."

            He knew that she used the stuff; she chewed her ration like bubble gum-chewing gum it was in fact; the powder was added to chicle. Most servants preferred gum because they could go dreamily through the day, chewing it while they worked. Kitten passed her empty days chewing it and chewed the played-out cud in Hugh's quarters after she learned he did not mind. So he did not hesitate to give her a drink.

            Kitten went happily to bed and right to sleep, no longer worried that her master might get rid of her. That set a precedent. Each evening, half an hour before Hugh wanted the lights out, he would give her a short drink of it.

            For a while he kept track of the level in the bottle. Kitten was often in his quarters when he was not, he knew how much she enjoyed it, and there were no locks in his quarters-his rank entitled him to locks but Memtok had carefully not told him.

            He quit bothering when he was convinced that Kitten was not snitching it. In fact, Kitten would have been terrified at the thought of stealing from her master. Her ego was barely big enough for a mouse; she was less than nothing and knew it and had never owned anything, not even a name, until Hugh gave her one. Under his kindness she was beginning to be a person, but it was still the faintest flicker, anything could blow it out. She would no more have risked stealing from him than she would have risked killing him.

            Hugh, half by intent, encouraged her confidence. She was a trained bath girl; he gave in and let her scrub his back and handle the nozzles for his bath, dress him, and take care of his clothes. She was a masseuse, too; he sometimes found it pleasant to have his head and neck rubbed after a day spent poring over the fine print or following the lines in a scroll reader-and she was pathetically anxious to do anything to make herself necessary.

            "Kitten, what do you do in the daytime?"

            "Why, nothing mostly. Sluts of my subcaste mostly don't have to work if they have night duty. Since I'm having duty every night I'm allowed to stay in the sleep room until midday. So I do, even if I'm not sleepy, because the slutmaster is likely to put one to work if he catches one just wandering around. Afternoons- Well, mostly I try to stay out of sight. That's best. Safest."

            "I see. You can hide out in here if you like. Or can you?"

            Her face lit up. "If you give me a pass, I can."

            "All right, I will. You can watch television- No, it's not on at that hour. Mmm, you don't know how to read. Or do you?"

            "Oh, no, sir! I wouldn't dare petition."

            "Hmm-" Hugh knew that permission to learn to read could not be granted even by Memtok; it required Their Charity's permission and was granted only after investigation of the necessity. Furthermore, anything he did that was out of line jeopardized his thin chances of reunion with Barbara.

            But- Damn it, a man had to be a man! "There are scrolls in here and a reader. Do you want to learn?"

            "Uncle protect us!"

            "Don't swear. If you want to-and can keep your pretty little mouth shut-I'll teach you. Don't look so damned scared! You don't have to decide now. Tell me later. Just don't talk about it. To anyone."

            Kitten did not. It scared her not to report it, but she had a reflex for self-preservation and felt without knowing why that to report this would endanger her happy setup.

            Kitten became substitute family life for Hugh. She sent him to work cheerful, greeted him with a smile when he came back, talked if he wanted to talk and never spoke unless spoken to. Most evenings she curled up 'in front of the television-Hugh thought of it as "the television" and it was in fact closed-circuit television under principles not known to him, in color, in three dimensions, and without lines.

            It played every evening in the servants' main hall, from evening prayer until lights-out, to a packed house, and there were outlets in the apartments of executive servants. Hugh had watched it several evenings, expecting to gain insight into this strange society he must learn to live in.

            He decided that one might as well try to study the United States by watching Gunsmoke. It was blatant melodrama, with acting as stylized as Chinese theater, and the favorite plot seemed to be that of the faithful servant who dies gloriously that his lord may live.

            But it was only second in importance to Happiness in the morale of life belowstairs. Kitten loved it.

            She would watch it, snapping her gum, and suppressing squeals of excitement, while Hugh read-then sigh happily when the program ended, accept her little drink of Happiness with profuse thanks and a touch of her forehead, and go quietly to sleep. Hugh sometimes went on reading.

            He read a great deal-every evening (unless Memtok stopped in to visit) and half of every day. He begrudged the time he spent translating for Their Charity but never neglected it; it was the hopeful key to better things. He had found it necessary to study modern culture if he was to translate matters of ancient history intelligibly. The Summer Palace had a fair library; he was given access when he claimed necessity for his work-Memtok arranged it.

            But his true purpose was not translation but to try to understand what had happened to his world to produce this world.

            So he usually had a scroll in the reader, in his office, or in his living room. The scroll system of printing he found admirable; it mechanized the oldest form of book into a system far more efficient than bound leaves-drop the double cylinder into the reader, flip it on, and hold still. The letters raced across in front of his eyes several hundred feet at a whack, to the end of the scroll. Then the scroll flipped over and chased back the following line, which was printed upside down to the one just scanned.

            The eye wasted no time flipping back and forth at stacked lines. But a slight pressure speeded the gadget up to whatever the brain could accept. As Hugh got used to the phonetics, he acquired speed faster than he had ever managed in English. But he did not find what he was looking for.

            Somewhere in 'the past the distinctions between fact, fiction, history, and religious writings seemed to have been rubbed out. Even when he got it clear that the East-West War that had bounced him out of his own century was now dated 703 B.C. (Before the Great Change), he still had trouble matching the world he had known with the "history" set forth in these scrolls.

            The war itself he didn't find hard to believe. He had experienced only a worm's-eye view of the first hours but what the scrolls related matched the possibilities: a missile-and-bomb holocaust that had escalated in its first minutes into "brilliant first strike" and "massive retaliation" and smeared cities from Peiping to Chicago, Toronto to Smolensk; fire storms that had done ten times the damage the bombs did; nerve gas and other poisons that had picked up where fire left off; plagues that were incubating when the shocked survivors were picking themselves up and beginning to hope-plagues that were going strong when fallout was no longer deadly.

            Yes, he could believe that. The bright boys had made it possible, and the dull boys they worked for had not only never managed to make the possibility unlikely but had never really believed it when the bright boys delivered what the dull boys ordered.

            Not, he reminded himself, that he had believed in "Better red than dead"-or believe in it now. The aggression had been one-sided as hell-and he did not regret a megaton of the "massive retaliation."

            But there it was. The scrolls said that it had killed off the northern world.

            But how about the rest of it? It says here that the United States, at the time of the war, held its black population as slaves. Somebody had chopped out a century. On purpose? Or was it honest confusion and almost no records? There had been, he knew, a great book burning for two centuries during the Turmoil, and even after the Change.

            Was it lost history, like Crete? Or did the priests like it better this way?

            And since when were the Chinese classed as "white" and the Hindus as "black"? Yes, purely on skin color Chinese and Japanese were as light as the average "white" of his time, and Hindus were certainly as dark as most Africans-but it was not the accepted anthropological ordering of his day.

            Of course, if all they meant was skin shade-and apparently that was what they did mean-he couldn't argue. The story maintained that the whites, with their evil ways, destroyed each other almost to the last man . . . leaving the innocent, charitable, merciful dark race-beloved by Uncle the Mighty-to inherit the Earth.

            The few white survivors, spared by Uncle's mercy, had been succored and cherished as children and now again were waxing numerous under the benevolent guidance of the Chosen. So it read.

            Hugh could see that a war which smeared North America, Europe, all of Asia except India, could kill off most whites and almost all Chinese. But what had happened to the white minority in South America, the whites of the Union of South Africa, and the Australians and New Zealanders?

            Search as he would, Hugh could not find out. All that seemed certain was that the 'Chosen were dark whereas servants were pale faces-and usually small. Hugh and his son towered over the other servants. Contrariwise, the few Chosen he had seen were big men.

            If present-day whites were descended from Australians, mostly-No, couldn't be, Aussies had not been runts. And those "Expeditions of Mercy"-were they slave raids? Or pogroms? Or, as the scrolls said, rescue missions for survivors?

            The book burnings might account for these discrepancies. It wasn't clear to Hugh whether all books had been put to the torch, or possibly technical books had been spared-for it was clear that the Chosen had technology superior to that of his time; it seemed unlikely that they had started from scratch.

            Or was it unlikely? All the technology of his own time that had amounted to a damn had been less than five hundred years old, most of it less than a hundred, and the most amazing parts less than a generation. Could the world have gone back to a dark ages, then pulled out of it and more, in two thousand years? Of course it could!

            Either way, the Koran had been the only book officially exempt from the torch-and Hugh harbored a suspicion that the Koran had not been spared either. He 'had owned a translation of the Koran, had read it several times.

            He wished now that he had put it into the shelter, for the Koran as he now read it in "Language" did not match his memory. For one thing, he had thought that Mahomet was a redheaded Arab; this "Koran" mentioned his skin color repeatedly, as black. And he was sure that the Koran was free of racism. This "improved" version was rabid with it.

            Furthermore, this Koran had a new testament with a martyred Messiah. He had taught and had been hanged for it- religious scrolls were all marked with a gallows. Hugh did not object to a new testament; there had been time for a new revelation and religions had them as naturally as a cat has kittens. What he objected to was some revisionist working over the words of the Prophet, apparently to make them fit this new book. That wasn't fair, that was cheating.

            The social organization Hugh found almost as puzzling. He was beginning to get a picture of a complex culture, stable, even static-high technology, few innovations, smooth, efficient-and decadent. Church and State were one-"One Tongue, One King, One People, One God." The Lord Proprietor was sovereign and supreme pontiff and owned everything under Uncle's grant, and the Lords Protector such as Ponse were his bishops and held only fiefs. Yet there were plenty of private citizens (Chosen, of course-a white was not a person), shopkeepers, landowners, professional men, etc. A setup for an absolute totalitarian communism yet streaked through with what appeared to be private enterprise- Hell, there were even corporations if he understood what he was reading.

            The most interesting point to Hugh (aside from the dismal fact that his own status was fixed by law and custom at zero) was the inheritance system. Family was everything, yet marriage was almost nothing-present but not important. Descent was through the female line-but power was exercised by males.

            This confused Hugh until it suddenly fell into place. Ponse was Lord Protector because he was eldest son of an eldest daughter-whose oldest brother had been Lord Protector before Ponse. Ponse's heir therefore was his oldest sister's oldest son-title went down through mother and daughter endlessly, with power vested in the oldest brother of each female heir. It did not matter who Ponse's father was and it mattered even less what sons he had; none of them could inherit. Ponse inherited from his mother's brother; his heir was his sister's son.

            Hugh could see that, under this system, marriage would never be important-bastardy might be a concept so abstract as to be unrecognized-but family would be more important than ever. Women (of the Chosen) could never be downgraded; they were more important than males even though they ruled through their brothers-and Religion recognized this; the One God, Uncle the Mighty, had an elder sister, the Eternal Mamaloi. . . so sacred that she was not prayed to and her name was never used in cursing. She was just there, the Eternal Female Principle that gave all life and being.

            Hugh had a feeling that he had read about this sort of descent before, uncle to nephew through the female line, so he searched the Britannica. He was surprised to discover that the setup had prevailed at one time or another in every continent and many cultures.

            The Great Change had been when Mamaioi had at last succeeded-working indirectly, as always-in uniting all Her children under one roof and placing their Uncle in charge. Then She could rest.

            Hugh's comment was: "And God help the human race!"

            Hugh kept expecting Their Charity to send for him. But two months passed and he did not, and Hugh was beginning to fret that he would never have a chance to ask to see Barbara-apparently Ponse had no interest in him as long as he kept on grinding out translations. Translating the Britannica looked like a job for several lifetimes; he resolved to stir things up, so he sent one day's batch with a letter to Their Charity.

            A week later the Lord Protector sent for him. Memtok came for Hugh, dancing with impatience but insisting that Hugh wash his armpits, rub himself with deodorant, and put on a clean robe.

            The Lord Protector did not seem to care how Hugh smelled; he let him wait while he did something else. Hugh stood in silence. . . although Grace was present. She was lounging on a divan, playing with cats and chewing gum. She glanced at Hugh, then ignored him, save that her face took on a secret smile that Hugh knew well- He called it "canary that ate the cat."

            Dr.-Livingstone-I-Presume greeted Hugh, jumping down, coming over and rubbing against his ankles. Hugh knew that he should ignore it, wait for the lord to recognize his presence-but this cat had been his friend a long time; he could not snub it. He bent down and stroked the cat.

            The skies did not split, Their Charity ignored the breach.

            Presently the Lord Protector said, "Boy, come here. What's this about making money from your translations? What in Uncle gave you the notion I needed money?"

            Hugh had got the notion from Memtok. The Chief Domestic had growled about how difficult it was to run things, with penny-pinching from on high getting worse every year.

            "May it please Their Charity, this one's opinions are of no value, it is true, but-"

            "Cut the flowery talk, damn you!"

            "Ponse, back where-when-I came from there never was a man so rich but what he needed more money. Usually, the richer he was, the more he needed."

            The lord grinned. "'Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.' Hugh, you aren't just sniffing Happiness. Things are the same now. Well? What's your idea? Spit it out."

            "It seems to me that there are things in your encyclopaedia which might be turned to a profit. Processes and such that have been lost in the last two thousand years-but might be worth money now."

            "All right, do it. The stuff you send up is satisfactory, what I've had time to read. But some of it is trivial. 'Smith, John, born and died-a politician who did nothing much and did that little poorly.' Know what I mean?"

            "I think so, Ponse."

            "All right, skip that garbage and dig me up four or five juicy ideas I can cash in on."

            Hugh hesitated. Ponse said, "Well? Didn't you understand?"

            "I think I need help. You see, I don't know anything really, except what goes on belowstairs. I thought Joe might help."

            "How?"

            "I understand that he has traveled with you, seen things. He is more likely to be able to pick out subjects that merit study. He could pick the articles, I will translate them, and you can judge whether there is anything to exploit. I can synopsize them, so that you needn't waste time wading through details if the subject doesn't merit it."

            "Good idea. I'm sure Joe will be happy to help. All right, send up the encyclopaedia. All."

            Hugh was dismissed so abruptly that he had no chance to mention Barbara. But, he reflected, he could not have risked it with Grace present.

            He considered digging out Duke, telling him that his mother was fat and happy-both literally-but decided against it. He wasn't sure how pleased Duke would be with a truthful report. They didn't see eye to eye and that was that.

Chapter 15

            Joe sent down a volume every day for many days, with pages marked; Hugh slaved to keep up and to make useful translations. After two weeks Hugh was again sent for.

            He expected a conference over some business idea. What he found was Ponse, Joe, and a Chosen he had never seen. Hugh instantly prepared to speak protocol mode, rising.

            The Lord Protector said, "Come here, Hugh. Cut the cards. And don't start any of that tiresome formality, this is family. Private."

            Hugh hesitantly approached. The other Chosen, a big dark man with a permanent scowl, didn't seem pleased. He was carrying his quirt and twitched it. But Joe looked up and smiled. "I've been teaching them contract, Hugh, and our fourth had to be away. I've been telling Ponse that you are the best player any where or when. So don't let me down."

            "I'll try not to." Hugh recognized one deck of cards, they had once been his. The other deck appeared to be hand painted and were beautiful. The card table was not from the shelter; fabulous hand craftsmanship had gone into it.

            The cut made Hugh partner of the strange Chosen. Hugh tried not to show how nervous it made him, as his partner clearly did not like it. But the Chosen grunted and accepted it.

            His partner's contract, at three spades-by a fluke distribution 'they made four. His partner growled, "Boy, you underbid, you wasted game. Don't let it happen again."

            Hugh kept quiet and dealt.

            On the next hand Joe and Ponse made five clubs. Hugh's partner was furious-at Hugh. "If you had led diamonds, we would have set them! And you washed out our leg. I warned you. Now I'm-"

            "Mrika!" Ponse said sharply. "This is contract. Play it as such. And put that tickler down. The servant played correctly."

            "It did not! And I'm damned if I care for letting it in the game anyhow. I can smell the rank, sharp stink of a buck servant no matter how much it's scrubbed. I don't think this one is scrubbed at all."

            Hugh felt sweat breaking out in his armpits and flinched. But Ponse said evenly, "Very well, we excuse you. You may leave."

            "That suits me!" The 'Chosen stood up. "Just one thing before I do- If you don't quit staffing, Their Mercy will let the North Star Protectorate-"

            "Are you planning to put up the money?" Their Charity said sharply.

            "Me? It's a Family matter. Not but what I wouldn't jump at the chance! Forty million hectares and most of it in prime timber? Of course I would! But I hardly have one bullock to jingle against another-and you know why."

            "Certainly we know. You gamble."

            "Oh, come now! A businessman has to take chances. You can't call it gambling when-"

            "We do call it gambling. We do not object to gambling but we have a vast distaste for losing. If you must lose, you will do it with your own bullocks."

            "But this isn't gambling, it's a sure thing-as well as getting us in solid with Their Mercy. The Family-"

            "We decide what is good for the Family. Your turn will come soon enough. In the meantime we are as anxious to please the Lord Proprietor as you are. But not with bullocks the Family doesn't have in the treasury."

            "You could borrow it. The interest would only come to-.-"

            "You wanted to leave, Mrika. We note that you have left." Ponse picked up cards and began to shuffle.

            The younger Chosen snorted and left.

            Ponse laid out a solitaire game, started to play. Presently he said to Joe, "Sometimes that young man gets me so annoyed that I would happily change my will."

            Joe looked puzzled. "I thought you could not disinherit him?"

            "Oh, no!" Their Charity looked shocked. "Not even a peasant can do that. Where would we be if there were no stability here on Earth? I wouldn't dream of it, even if the law permitted it; he's my heir. I was just thinking of the servants."

            Joe said, "I don't follow you."

            "Why, you know- No, perhaps you don't. I keep forgetting that you didn't grow up among us. My will disposes of things personally mine. Not much-jewelry, scrolls, such. Value probably less than a million. Trivia. Except household servants. Just the household, I'm not talking about servants in mines or on ranches, or in our shipping lines. It's customary to list all household servants in a will-otherwise they escort their uncle." He grinned. "It would be a good joke on Mrika if he found that he was going to have to raise the money to adopt fifteen hundred, two thousand servants-or shut the house and live in a tent. I can just see that. Why, the lad can't take a pee without four servants to shake it. I doubt if he knows how to put on his boots. Hugh, if you tell me to put the black lady on the red lord, I'll tingle you. I'm not in a good mood."

            Hugh said hastily, "Did you miss a play? I hadn't noticed."

            "Then why were you staring at the cards?" Hugh had indeed been staring at the game, trying to be invisibie. He had been made very nervous by witnessing a quarrel between Ponse and his nephew. But he had missed not a word, he found it extremely interesting.

            Ponse went on, "Which would you prefer, Hugh? To escort me to Heaven? Or stay here and serve Mrika? Don't answer too quickly. If you stay here, I venture you may be eating your own toes to stay your hunger before I'm gone a year. . whereas Heaven is a nice place, so the Good Scroll tells."

            "It's a hard choice."

            "Well, you don't have to make it, nor will you know. A servant should never know, it keeps him on his toes. That scoundrel Memtok keeps praying me for the honor of being in my escort. If I thought he was sincere, I would dismiss him for incompetence." Ponse swept the cards together. "Damn that lad! He's poor company but I had my liver set on a few good, hard rubbers. Joe, we've got to teach more people to play. Being left without a fourth is annoying."

            "Certainly," agreed Joe. "Right now?"

            "No, no. I want to play, damn it, not watch some beginner's bumbles. I'm growing addicted. Takes a man's worries off his mind."

            Hugh was hit by inspiration. "Ponse, if you don't mind having another servant in the game . . ."

            Joe brightened up. "Why, of course! He-"

            "Barbara," Hugh cut in fast, before Joe could mention Duke.

            Joe blinked. Then he smoothly picked it up. "He-Hugh, I mean-was about to mention a servant named Barbara. Good bridge player."

            "Well! You've been teaching this game belowstairs, Hugh?" Ponse added, "'Barbara'? A name I don't recognize. Not one of the upper servants."

            "You remember her," Joe said. "She was with us when you picked us up. The tall one."

            "Oh, yes. Bigging, it was. Joe, are you telling me that a slut can play this game?"

            "She's a top player," Joe assured him. "Plays better than I do. Heavens, Ponse, she can play rings around you. Isn't that right, Hugh?"

            "Barbara is an excellent player."

            "This I must see to believe."

            A few minutes later Barbara, freshly bathed and scared, was fetched in. She glanced at Hugh, looked startled silly, opened her mouth, closed it, and stood mute.

            Ponse came up to her. "So this is the slut who is supposed to be able to play contract. Stop trembling, little one; nobody's going to eat you." In bluff words he convinced her that she was there only to play bridge and that she was expected to relax and be informal-no fancy talk. "Just behave as if you were downstairs, having a good time with other servants. Hear me?"

            "Yes, sir."

            "Just one thing." He tapped her on her chest. "When you're my partner, I shan't be angry if you make mistakes-after all, you're only a slut and it's surprising that you can play an intellectual game at all. But"-he paused- "when you are playing against me, if you fail to fight for every trick, if I even suspect that you are trying to let me win, I guarantee you'll tingle when you leave. Understand?"

            "That's right," agreed Joe. "Their Charity expects it. Just play by the book, and play your best."

            "'By the book,' " Ponse repeated. "I've never seen this book but that's the way Joe says he has taught me to play. So do it. All right, let's cut the cards."

            Hugh hardly listened, he was drinking in the sight of Barbara. She looked well and healthy although it was startling to see her slender again-or almost, he corrected; she was still largish in the fanny and certainly in the bust. She had lost most of her tan and was dressed in the shapeless short robe all female servants wore belowstairs, but 'he was delighted to see that she had not had her hair removed. It was cropped but could grow back.

            He noticed that his own appearance seemed to startle her, realized why. He said, smiling, "I comb my hair with a washrag now, Barbie. No matter, I didn't have enough to matter. Now that I'm used to being hairless, I like it."

            "You look distinguished, Hugh."

            "He's ugly as sin," said Ponse. "But are we chatting? Or playing bridge? Your bid, Barba."

            They played for hours. As it progressed, Barbara seemed to relax and enjoy it. She smiled a great deal, usually at Hugh, but also at Joe and even at Their Charity. She played by the book and Ponse never found fault. Hugh decided that their host was a good player, not yet perfect but he remembered what cards had been played and usually bid accurately. Hugh found him a satisfactory partner and an adequate opponent; it was a good game.

            But once, with Barbara as Ponse's partner and contract in her hand, Hugh saw when Ponse laid down the dummy that Ponse had overbid in his answer. So he contrived to lose one sure trick, thereby letting Barbara make contract, game, and rubber.

            It got him a glance with no expression from Barbara and Joe gave him a look that had a twinkle in it, but Joe kept his mouth shut. Ponse did not notice. He gave a bass roar, reached across and patted Barbara's head. "Wonderful, wonderful! Little one, you really can play contract. Why, I doubt if I could have made that myself."

            Nor did Ponse complain when, on the next rubber, Barbara and Hugh gave him and Joe a trouncing. Hugh decided that Ponse had the inborn honesty called "sportsmanship"-plus a good head for cards.

            One of the little deaf-mutes trotted in, knelt, and served Their Charity a tumbler of something cold, then another to Joe. Ponse took a swig, wiped his mouth and said, "Ah, that hits the spot!"

            Joe made a whispered suggestion to him. Ponse looked startled and said, "Oh, certainly. Why not?"

            So Hugh and Barbara were served. Hugh was pleased to discover 'that it was apple juice; he wasn't sure of his ability to play tight bridge had it been Happiness.

            During this rubber Hugh noticed that Barbara was squirming a little and seemed to have trouble in concentrating. When the hand ended he said quietly, "Trouble, hon?"

            She glanced at Ponse and whispered, "Some. I was about to feed the boys when I was sent for."

            "Oh." Hugh turned to his host. "Ponse, Barbara needs to stop.,,

            Ponse looked up from shuffling. "Plumbing call? One of the maids can show it, I suppose. They must go somewhere."

            "Not that. Well, maybe that, too. What I meant was, Barbara has twins."

            "Well? Sluts usually have twins, they have two breasts."

            "That's the point, she's nursing them and she's hours past time. She has to leave."

            Ponse looked annoyed, hesitated, then said, "Oh, garbage. Its milk won't cake from so short a delay. Here, cut the cards."

            Hugh did not touch them. Ponse said, "Didn't you hear me?" Hugh stood up~ His heart was pounding and he felt a shudder of fear. "Ponse, Barbara hurts. She needs to nurse her twins right now. I can't force you to let her-but if you think I'll play cards while you don't let her, you're crazy."

            For long moments the big man stared, without expression. Then suddenly he grinned. "Hugh, I like you. You did something like this once before, didn't you? The slut is your sister, I suppose."

            "Then you are the one who is crazy. Do you know how close you came to being cold meat?"

            "I can guess."

            "I doubt it, you don't look worried. But I like spunk, even in a servant. Very well, I'll have its brats fetched. They can suck while we play."

            The twins were fetched and Hugh saw at once that they were the handsomest, healthiest, and loveliest babies that had ever been born; he told Barbara so. He did not immediately get a chance to touch them as Ponse took one in each arm, laughed at them, blew in their faces, and jiggled them. "Fine boys!" he roared. "Fine boys, Barba! Holy little terrors, I'll bet. Go on, swing that fist, kid! Sock Uncle in the nose again. What do you call them, Barba? Do they have names?"

            "This one is Hugh-"

            "Eh? Does Hugh have something to do with them? Or thinks he has, perhaps?"

            "He's 'their father."

            "Well, well! Hugh, you may be ugly, but you have other qualities. If Barba knows what she's talking about. What's this one's name?"

            "That one is little Joe. Karl Joseph."

            Ponse lifted an eyebrow at Joe. "So you have sluts naming brats for you, Joe? I'll have to watch you, you're a sly one. What did you give Barba?"

            "Beg pardon?"

            "Birthing present, you idiot. Give her that ring you're wearing. So many brats in this house named after me that I have to order trinkets by the basket load; they know it obliges me to make them a present. Hugh is lucky, he has nothing to give. Hey, Hughie has teeth!"

            Hugh got to hold them while they settled down for combined bridge and nursing. Barbara took them one at a time and played cards with her free hand. The little maids fussed over the one not nursing and, in due time, took them away. In spite of the handicap Barbara played well, even brilliantly; the long session ended with Ponse top scorer, Barbara close behind, and Joe and Hugh tied for last. Hugh had cheated very little to make it come out that way; the cards had favored Ponse and Barbara when they were partners; they had made two small slams.

            Ponse was feeling very jovial about it. "Barba, come here, little one. You tell the slutmaster I said to find a wet nurse for your brats and that I want the vet to dry you up as soon as possible. I want you available as my bridge partner. Or opponent-you give a man a tough fight."

            "Yes, sir. May one speak?"

            "One may."

            "I would rather nurse them myself. They're all I have."

            "Well-" He shrugged. "This seems to be my day for balky servants. I'm afraid you are both still savages. A tingling wouldn't do you any harm, slut. All right, but you'll have to play 'one-handed sometimes; I won't have brats stopping the game." He grinned. "Besides, I'd like to see the little rascals occasionally, especially that one that bites. You may go. All."

            Barbara was dismissed so suddenly that Hugh barely had time to exchange smiles with her; he had hoped to walk down with her, steal a private visit. But His Charity did not dismiss him, so he stayed-with a warm glow in his heart; it had been the happiest time in a long time.

            Ponse discussed the articles he had been translating, why none of them offered practical business ventures. "But don't fret, Hugh; keep plugging and we'll strike ore yet." He turned the talk to other matters, still kept Hugh there. Hugh found him a knowledgeable conversationalist, interested in everything, as willing to listen as he was to talk. He seemed to Hugh the epitome of the perfect decadent gentleman-urbane, cosmopolitan, disillusioned, and cynical, a dilettante in arts and sciences, neither merciful nor cruel, unimpressed by his own rank, not racist-he treated Hugh as an intellectual equal.

            While they were talking, the little maids served dinner to Ponse and to Joe. Nothing was offered to Hugh, nor did he expect it-nor want it, as he could have meals served in his rooms if he was not on time in the executive servants' dining room and he had long since decided, from samplings, that Memtok was right: the upper servants ate better than the master.

            But when Ponse had finished, he shoved his dishes toward Hugh. "Eat."

            Hugh hesitated a split second; he did not need to be told that he was being honored-for a servant. There was plenty, at least three times as much left as Ponse had eaten. Hugh could not recall that he had ever eaten someone's leavings, and certainly not with a used spoon. He dug in.

            As usual, Their Charity's menu did not especially please Hugh-somewhat greasy and he had no great liking for pork. Pork was hardly ever served belowstairs but was often part of the menus Memtok sampled, Hugh had noticed. It surprised him, as the revised Koran still contained the dietary laws and the Chosen did follow some of the original Muslim customs. They practiced circumcision, did not use alcohol other than a thin beer, and observed Ramadan at least nominally and called it that. Mahomet would have been shocked by the revisions to his straightforward monotheistic teachings but he would have recognized some of the details.

            But the bread was good, the fruits were superb, and so were the ices and many other things; it wasn't necessary to dine solely on roast. Hugh kept intact his record for enjoying the inevitable.

            Ponse was interested in what the climate had been in this region in Hugh's time. "Joe tells me you sometimes had freezing temperatures. Even snow."

            "Oh, yes, every winter."

            "Fantastic. How cold did it get?"

            Hugh had to think. He had not had occasion to learn how these people marked temperatures. "If you consider the range from freezing of water to boiling, it was not unusual for it to get one third of that range lower than freezing."

            Ponse looked surprised. "Are you sure? We call that range, freezing to boiling, one hundred. Are you telling me that it sometimes got as much as thirty-three degrees below freezing?"

            Hugh noted with interest that the centigrade scale had survived two millennia-but no reason why not; they used the decimal system in arithmetic and in money. He had to do a conversion in his head. "Yes, that's what I mean. Nearly cold enough to freeze mercury, and cold enough for that, up in those mountains." Hugh pointed out a view window.

            "Cold enough," Joe agreed, "to freeze your teeth! Only thing that ever made me long for Mississippi."

            "Where," asked Ponse, "is Mississippi?"

            "It's not," Joe told him. "It's under water now. And good riddance."

            This led to discussion of why the climate had changed and Their Charity sent for the last volume of the Britannica, containing ancient maps, and for modern maps. They poured over them together. Where the Mississippi Valley had been, the Gulf now reached far north. Florida and Yucatan were missing and 'Cuba was a few small islands. California had a central sea and most of northern Canada was gone.

            Similar shrinkages had taken place elsewhere. The Scandinavian Peninsula was an island, the British isles were several small islands, part of the Sahara was under water. What had been lowlands anywhere were missing-Holland, Belgium, Northern Germany could not be found. Nor Denmark-the 3altic was a gulf of the Atlantic.

            Hugh looked at it with odd sorrow and had never felt so homesick. He had known it was so, from reading; this was the first map he had seen of it.

            "The question," said Ponse, "is whether the melting of ice ~vas triggered by the dust of the East-West War, or was it a natural change that was, at most, speeded up a little by artificial events? Some of my scientists say one thing, some the other."

            "What do you think?" asked Hugh.

            The lord shrugged. "I'm not foolish enough to hold opinions when I have insufficient data; I'll leave that folly to scientists. I'm simply glad that Uncle saw fit 'to let me live in an age in which I can go outdoors without freezing my feet. I visited the South Pole once-I have some mines there. Frost on the ground. Dreadful. The place for ice is in a drink."

            Ponse went to the window and stood looking out at the silhouette of mountains against darkening sky. "However, if it got that cold up there now, we would root them out in a hurry. Eh, Joe?"

            "Back they would come with their tails between their legs," Joe agreed.

            Hugh looked puzzled. "Ponse means," Joe explained, "the runners hiding up in the mountains. What they thought you were when we were found."

            "Runners and a few aborigines," Ponse supplemented. "Savages. Poor creatures who have never been rescued by civilization. It's hard to save them, Hugh. They don't stand around waiting to be picked up the way you did. They're crafty as wolves. The merest shadow in the sky and they freeze and you can't see them-and they are very destructive of game. Of course we could smoke them out any number of ways. But that would kill the game, can't have that. Hugh, you've lived out there; you must have acquired some feel for it. How would you go about rescuing those critters? Without killing game."

            Mr. Hugh Farnham hesitated only long enough to phrase his reply. "Their Charity knows that this one is a servant. This one's ears must be at fault in thinking that it heard its humble self called on to see the problem as it might appear to the Chosen."

            "Why, damn your impudence! Come, come, Hugh, I want your opinion."

            "You got my opinion, Ponse. I'm a servant. My sympathies are with the runaways. And the savages. I didn't come here willingly. I was dragged."

            "Surely you aren't resenting that now? Of course you were captured, even Joe was. But there was language difficulty. Now you've seen the difference. You know."

            "Yes, I know."

            "Then you know how much your condition has improved. Don't you sleep in a better bed now? Aren't you eating better? Uncle! When we picked you up, you were half starved and infested with vermin. You were barely staying alive with the hardest sort of work, I could see. I'm not blind, I'm not stupid; there isn't a member of my Family down to 'the lowest cleaner that works half as 'hard as you had to, or sleeps in as poor a bed-and in a stinking little sty; I could hardly bear the stench before we fumigated it-and as for the food, if that is the word, any servant in this house would turn up his nose at what you ate. Isn't all that true?"

            "Yes."

            "Well?"

            "I prefer freedom."

            "'Freedom!'" Their Charity snorted. "A concept without a referent, like 'ghosts.' Meaningless. Hugh, you should study semantics. Modern semantics, I mean; I doubt if they really had such a science in your day. We are all free-to walk our appointed paths. Just as a stone is free to fall when you toss it into the air. No one is free in the abstract meaning you give the word. Do you think 1 am free? Free to change places with you, say? Would I if I could? You bet I would! You have no concept of the worries I have, the work I do. Sometimes I lie awake half the night, worrying which way to turn next-you won't find that in servants' hall. They're happy, they have no worries. But I have to carry my burden as best I can."

            Hugh looked stubborn. Ponse came over and put his arm around Hugh's shoulders. "Come, let's talk this over judicially-two civilized beings. I'm not one of those superstitious persons who thinks a servant can't think because his skin is pale. Surely you know that. Haven't I respected your intellect?"

            "Well . . . yes."

            "That's better. Let me explain some things-Joe has seen them-and you can ask questions, and we'll arrive at a rational understanding. First-Joe, you've seen Chosen here and there who are what our friend Hugh would no doubt describe as 'free.' Tell him."

            Joe snorted. "Hugh, you should see-and you would be glad to be privileged to live in Ponse's household. There is just one phrase I can think of to describe them. Po' black trash. Like the white trash there used to be in Mississippi. Poor black trash, not knowing where their next meal is."

            "I follow you."

            "I think I do, too," agreed Their Charity. "A pungent phrase. I look forward to the day when every man will have servants. It can't come overnight, they'll have to lift themselves up. But a day when all the Chosen will be served-and all servants as well cared for as they are in my own Family. That's my ideal. In the meantime I do the best I can. I look after their welfare from birth until they're called Home by Uncle. They have nothing to fear, utter security-which they wouldn't have out in those mountains as I'm sure you know better than I. They are happy, they are never overworked- which I am-and they have plenty of fun, which is more than I can say! This bridge game today-the first real fun I've had in a month. And they are never punished, only just enough to remind them when they err. Have to do that, you've seen how stupid most of them are. Not that I am inferring that you are- No, I tell you honestly that I think you are smart enough to take care of servants yourself, despite your skin. I'm speaking of the ordinary run. Honestly, Hugh, do you think they could take care of themselves as well as I look out for them?"

            "Probably not." Hugh had heard all this before, only nights ago, and in almost the same words-from Memtok. With the difference that Ponse seemed to be honestly fond of his servants and earnest about their welfare-whereas the Chief Domestic had been openly contemptuous of them, even more strongly so than his veiled contempt for the Chosen. "No, they couldn't, most of them."

            "Ah! You agree with me."

            "No."

            Ponse looked pained. "Hugh, how can we have a rational discussion if you say one thing and contradict it in the next breath?"

            "I didn't contradict myself. I agreed that you took fine care of the welfare of your servants. But I did not agree that I prefer it to freedom."

            "But why, Hugh? Give me a reason, not a philosophical abstraction. If you're not happy, I want to know why. So that I can correct it."

            "I can give you one reason. I'm not allowed to live with my wife and children."

            "Eh?"

            "Barbara. And the twins."

            "Oh. Is that important? You have a bedwarmer. Memtok told me, and I congratulated him on having used initiative in an odd situation. Not much gets past that sly old fox. You have one and she is sure to be more expert at her specialty than the ordinary run of breeding slut. As for the brats, no reason why you can't see them-just order them fetched to you whenever you like. But who wants to live with brats? Or with a wife? I don't live with my wife and children, you can bet on that. I see them on appropriate occasions. But who would want to live with them?"

            "I would."

            "Well- Uncle! I want you to be happy. It can be arranged."

            "It can?"

            "Certainly. If you hadn't put up such a fuss over being tempered, you could have had them with you all along- though I confess I don't see why. Do you want to see the vet?"

            "Uh . . . no."

            "Well, there's another choice. I'll have the slut spayed."

            "No!"

            Ponse sighed. "You're hard to please. Be practical, Hugh; can't change a scientific breeding system to pamper one servant. Do you know how many servants are in this family? Here and at the Palace? Around eighteen hundred, I believe. Do you know what would happen if I allowed unrestricted breeding? In ten years there would be twice that number. And what would happen next? They would starve! I can't support them n unlimited breeding. Would if I could, but it's wishing for the Moon. Worse, for we can go to the Moon any time it's worth while but nobody can cope with the way servants will breed if left to their own devices. So which is better? To control it? Or let them starve?"

            Their Charity sighed. "I wish you were a head shorter, we would work something out. You've been in studs' quarters?"

            "I visited it once, with Memtok."

            "You noticed the door? You had to stoop; Memtok walked straight in-he used to be a stud. The doors are that height in ~very studs' barracks in the world-and no servant is chosen Lf he can't walk in without stooping. And the slut in this case Ls too tall, too. A wise law, Hugh. I didn't make it; it was handed down a long time ago by Their Mercy of that time. If they are allowed to breed too tall they start needing to be tingled too often and that's not good, for master or servant. No, Hugh. Anything within reason. But don't ask for the impossible." He moved from the divan where he had been sitting ~tête-à-tête with Hugh and sat down at the card table, picked

            a deck. "So we'll say no more about it. Do you know how ~o play double solitaire?"

            "Yes."

            "Then come see if you can beat me and let's be cheerful. A man gets upset when his efforts aren't appreciated."

            Hugh shut up. He was thinking glumly that Ponse was not a villain. He was exactly like the members of every ruling class in history: honestly convinced of his benevolence and hurt if it was challenged.

            They played a game; Hugh lost, his mind was not on it. They started to lay out another. Their Charity remarked, "I must have more cards painted. These are getting worn."

            Hugh said, "Couldn't it be done more quickly, using a printer such as we use for scrolls?"

            "Eh? Hadn't thought about it." The big man rubbed one of the XXth century cards. "This doesn't seem much like printing. Were they printed?"

            "Oh, yes. Thousands at a time. Millions, I should say, figuring the enormous numbers that used to be sold."

            "Really? I wouldn't have though! that bridge, with its demand on the intellect, would have attracted many people."

            Hugh suddenly put down his cards. "Ponse? You wanted a way to make money."

            "Certainly."

            "You have it in your hand. Joe! Come here and let's talk about this. How many decks of cards were sold each year in the United States?"

            "Gosh, Hugh, I don't know. Millions, maybe."

            "So I would say. At a gross profit of about ninety percent. Mmm- Ponse, bridge and solitaire aren't the only games that can be played with these cards. The possibilities are unlimited. There are games simple as solitaire but played by two or three or more players. There are games a dozen people can play at once. There are hard games and easy games, there is even a form of bridge-'duplicate,' it's called-harder than contract. Ponse, every family-little family-kept one or two or even dozens of decks on hand; it was a rare home that didn't own a deck. I couldn't guess how many were sold. Probably a hundred million decks in use in the United States alone. And you've got a virgin market. All it needs is to get people interested."

            "Ponse, Hugh is right," Joe said solemnly. "The possibilities are unlimited."

            Ponse pursed up his lips. "If we sold them for a bullock a deck, let us say . . . mmm-"

            "Too much," Joe 'objected. "You would kill your market before you got started."