I was tempted to spend the next three hours in lotus, chanting my beads. But I have a deep conviction that one should not attend even the End of the World without a good breakfast. . . and my decision was justified as the special that morning was fresh figs with cream, corned-beef hash with poached eggs, and English muffins with Knott's Berry Farm orange marmalade. Fresh milk. Colombian high-altitude coffee. That so improved things that I spent an hour trying to find a mathematical relationship between the past history of plague and the date that had popped into my sleep-drenched mind. I did not find one but was beginning to see some shape to the curve when the terminal gave me a three-minute warning I had punched in.

            I had refrained from having my hair cut and my neck shaved but otherwise I was ready. I walked in on the tick. "Friday reporting,

sir.       -

            "Sit down. Why Bombay? I would think that Calcutta would be a more likely center."

            "It might have something to do with long-range weather forecasts and the monsoons. Fleas can't stand hot, dry weather. Eighty percent of a flea's body mass is water and, if the percentage drops below sixty, the flea dies. So hot, dry weather will stop or prevent an epidemic. But, Boss, the whole thing is nonsense. You woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me a silly question and I gave you a silly answer without really waking up. I probably pulled it out of a dream. I've been having nightmares about the Black Death and there really was a bad epidemic that started in Bombay. Eighteen ninety-six and following."

            "Not as bad as the Hong Kong phase of it three years later. Friday, the analytical section of Operations says that the next Black Death epidemic won't start until a year later than your prediction. And not Bombay. Djakarta and Ho Chi Minh City."

            "That's preposterous!" I stopped abruptly. "Sorry, sir, I guess I was back in that nightmare. Boss, can't I study something pleasantem than fleas and rats and Black Death? It's ruining my sleep."

            "You may. You are through studying plagueÄ"

            "Hooray!"

            "Äother than to whatever extent your intellectual curiosity causes you to tidy up any loose ends. The matter now goes to Operations for action. But action will be based on your prediction, not on that of the mathematical analysts."

            "I have to say it again. My prediction is nonsense."

            "Friday, your greatest weakness is lack of awareness of your true strength. Wouldn't we look silly if we depended on the professional analysts but the outbreak was one year earlier, as you predicted? Catastrophe. But to be a year early in taking prophylactic measures does no harm."

            "Are we going to try to stop it?" (People have been fighting rats and fleas throughout history. So far, the rats and fleas are ahead.)

            "Heavens, no! In the second place, the contract would be too big

for this organization. But in the first place I do not accept contracts that I cannot fulfill; this is one such. In the third place, from the strictest humanitarian viewpoint, any attempt to stop the processes by which overcrowded cities purge themselves is not a kindness. Plague is a nasty death but a quick one. Starvation also is a nasty death . . . but a very slow one."

            Boss grimaced, then continued. "This organization will limit itself to the problem of keeping Pasteurella pestis from leaving this planet. How will we do this? Answer at once."

            (Ridiculous! Any government public health department, faced with such a question, would set up a blue-ribbon study group, insist on ample research funds, and schedule a reasonable timeÄfive years or moreÄfor orderly scientific investigation.) I answered at once, "Explode them."

            "The space colonies? That seems a drastic solution."

            "No, the fleas. Back during the global wars of the twentieth century somebody discovered that you could kill off fleas and lice by taking them up to high altitude. They explode. About five kilometers as I recall but it can be looked up and checked by experiment. I thought of it because I noticed that Beanstalk Station on Mount Kenya was above the critical altitudeÄand almost all space traffic these days goes up the Beanstalk. Then there is the simple method of heat and drynessÄworks but not as fast. But the key to it, Boss, is absolutely no exceptions. Just one case of diplomatic immunity or one VIP allowed to skip the routines and you've had it. One lapdog. One gerbil. One shipment of laboratory mice. If it took the pneumonic form, Ell-Five would be a ghost town in a week. Or Luna City."

            "If I did not have other work for you, I would put you in charge. How about rats?"

            "I don't want the job; I'm sick of the subject. Boss, killing a rat is no problem. Stuff it into a sack. Beat the sack with an ax. Then shoot it. Then drown it. Burn the sack with the dead rat in it. Meanwhile its mate has raised another litter of pups and you now have a dozen rats to replace it. Boss, all we've ever been able to do with rats is fight them to a draw. We never win. If we let up for a moment the rats pull ahead." I added sourly, "I think they're the second team." This plague assignment had depressed me.

            "Elucidate."

            "If Homo sapiens doesn't make itÄhe keeps trying to kill himself offÄthere are the rats, ready to take over." -

            "Piffle. Soft-headed nonsense. Friday, you overstress the human will to die. We have had the means to commit racial suicide for generations now and those means are and have been in many hands. We have not done so. In the second place, to replace us, rats would have to grow enormously larger skulls, develop bodies to support them, learn to walk on two feet, develop their front paws into delicate manipulative organsÄand grow more cortex to control all this. To replace man another breed must become man. Bah. Forget it. Before we leave the subject of plague, what conclusions did you reach concerning the conspiracy theory?"

            "The notion is silly. You specified sixth, fourteenth, and seventeenth centuries . . . and that means sailing ships or caravans and no knowledge of bacteriology. So here we have the sinister Dr. Fu Manchu in his hideaway raising a million rats and the rats are infested with fleasÄeasy. Rats and fleas are infected with the bacillusÄpossible even without theory. But how does he hit his target city? By ship? In a few days all the million rats will be dead and so would be the crew. Even harder to do it overland. To make such a conspiracy work in those centuries would require modern science and a largish time machine. Boss, who thought up that silly question?"

            "I did."

            "I thought it had your skid to it. Why?"

            "It caused you to study the subject with a much wider approach than you otherwise would have given it, did it not?"

            "Uh. . ." I had spent much more time studying relevant political history than I had spent studying the disease itself. "I suppose so."

            "You know so."

            "Well, yes. Boss, there ain't no such animal as a well-documented conspiracy. Or sometimes too well documented but the documents contradict each other. If a conspiracy happened quite some time ago, a generation or longer, it becomes impossible to establish the truth. Have you ever heard of a man named John F. Kennedy?"

            "Yes. Chief of state in the middle twentieth century of the Federation then occupying the land between CanadaÄBritish Canada

and Qu‚becÄand the Kingdom of Mexico. He was assassinated."

            "That's the man. Killed in front of hundreds of witnesses and every aspect, before, during, and after, heavily documented. All that mountain of evidence adds up to is this: Nobody knows who shot him, how many shot him, how many times he was shot, who did it, why it was done, and who was involved in the conspiracy if there was a conspiracy. It isn't even possible to say whether the murder plot was foreign or domestic. Boss, if it is impossible to untangle one that recent and that thoroughly investigated, what chance is there of figuring out the details of the conspiracy that did in Gaius lulius Caesar? Or Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot? All that can truthfully be said is that the people who come out on top write the official versions found in the history books, history that is no more honest than is autobiography."

            "Friday, a¤tobiography is usually honest."

            "Huh! Boss, what have you been smoking?"

            "That will do. Autobiography is usually honest but it is never truthful."

            "I missed a turn."

            "Think about it. Friday, I can't spend more time on you today; you chatter too much and change the subject. Hold your tongue while I say some things. You are now permanently on staff work. You are getting older; no doubt your reflexes are a touch slower. I will not again risk you in field workÄ"

            "I'm not complaining!"

            "Pipe down. ÄBut you must not get swivel-chair spread. Spend less time at the console, more time in exercise; the day will come when your enhanced reflexes will again save your life. And possibly the lives of others. In the meantime give thought to the day when you will have to shape your life unassisted. You should leave this planet; for you there is nothing here. The Balkanization of North America ended the last chance of reversing the decay of the Renaissance Civilization. So you should think about off-planet possibilities not only in the solar system but elsewhereÄplanets ranging from extremely primitive to well developed. Investigate for each the cost and the advantages of migrating there. You will need money; do you want my agents to collect the money of which you were cheated in New Zealand?"

            "How did you know I was cheated?"

            "Come, come! We are not children."

            may I think about it?"       -

            "Yes. Concerning your ex-migration: I recommend that you not move to the planet Olympia. Otherwise I have no specific advice other than to migrate. When I was younger, I thought I could change this world. Now I no longer think so but for emotional reasons I must keep on fighting a holding action. But you are young and, because of your unique heritage, your emotional ties to this planet and to this portion of humanity are not great. I could not mention this until you shuffled off your sentimental connection in New ZealandÄ"

            "I didn't `shuffle' it off; I was kicked out on my arse!"

            "So. While you are deciding, look up Benjamin Franklin's parable of the whistle, then tell meÄno, ask yourselfÄwhether or not you paid too much for your whistle. Enough of thatÄ Two assignments for you: Study the Shipstone corporate complex, including its interlocks outside the complex. Second, the next time I see you I want you to tell me precisely how to spot a sick culture. That's all."

            Boss turned his attention to his console, so I stood up. But I was not ready to accept so abrupt a dismissal as I had had no opportunity to ask important questions. "Boss. Don't I have any duties? Just random study that goes nowhere?"

            "It goes somewhere. Yes, you have duties. First, to study. Second, to be awakened in the middle of the nightÄor stopped in the hallwayÄ to answer silly questions."

            "Just that?"

            "What do you want? Angels and trumpets?"

            "Well . . . a job title, maybe. I used to be a courier. What am I now? Court jester?"

            "Friday, you are developing a bureaucratic mind. `Job title' indeed! Very well. You are staff intuitive analyst, reporting to me only. But the title carries an injunction: You are forbidden to discuss anything more serious than a card game with any member of the analytical section of the general staff. Sleep with them if you wishÄI know that you do, in two casesÄbut limit your conversation to the veriest trivia."

            "Boss, I could wish that you spent less time under my bed!"

            "Only enough to protect the organization. Friday, you are well aware that the absence of Eyes and Ears today simply means that they are concealed. Be assured that I am shameless about protecting the organization."

            "You are shameless, unlimited. Boss, answer me one more question. Who is behind Red Thursday? The third wave sort of fizzled; will there be a fourth? What's it all about?"

            "Study it yourself. If I told you, you would not know; you simply would have been told. Study it thoroughly and some nightÄwhen you are sleeping aloneÄI will ask you. You will answer and then you will know."

            "Fer Gossake. Do you always know when I'm sleeping alone?"

            "Always." He added, "Dismissed," and turned away.

xxiii

As I left the sanctum sanctorum I ran into Goldie coming in. I was feeling grouchy and simply nodded. Not sore at Goldie. Boss! Damn him. Supercilious, arrogant voyeur! I went to my room and got to work, so that I could stop fuming.

            First I punched for the names and addresses of all the Shipstone corporations. While these were printing I called for histories of the complex. The computer named two, an official company history combined with a biography of Daniel Shipstone, and an unofficial history footnoted "muckrake." Then the machine suggested several other sources.

            I told the terminal to print out both books and I asked it for printouts of other sources if four thousand words or less, summarized if not. Then I looked over the corporations list:

Daniel Shipstone Estate, Inc. Muriel Shipstone Memorial Research Laboratories

Shipstone Tempe

Shipstone Gobi

Shipstone Aden

Shipstone Sahara

Shipstone Arica

Shipstone Death Valley

Shipstone Karroo

Shipstone Never-Never

Shipstone Ell-Four

Shipstone Ell-Five

Shipstone Stationary

Shipstone Tycho

Shipstone Ares

Shipstone Deep Water

Shipstone Unlimited, Ltd.

Sears-Montgomery, Inc.

Prometheus Foundation

            Coca-Cola Holding Company            Billy Shipstone School for

            Interworld Transport Corporation   Handicapped Children

            Jack and the Beanstalk, Pty.            Wolf Creek Pass Nature Preserve

            Morgan Associates            A¤o Nuevo Wild Life Refuge

            Out-Systems Colonial            Shipstone Visual Arts Museum

             Corporation   and School

            I looked at this list with easily controlled enthusiasm. I had known that the Shipstone trust had to be bigÄwho does not have half a dozen Shipstones within easy reach, not counting the big one in your basement or foundation? But now it seemed to me that studying this monster would be a lifetime career. I was not that much interested in Shipstones.

            I was nibbling around the edges when Goldie stopped by and told me that it was time to put on the nosebag. "And I have instructions to see to it that you do not spend more than eight hours a day at your terminal and you are to take a full weekend every week."

            "Ah so. Tyrannical old bastard."

            We started for the refectory. "Friday . .

            "Yes, Goldie?"

            "You are finding the Master grumpy and sometimes difficult."

            "Correction. He is always difficult."

            "Mmm, yes. But what you may not know is that he is in constant pain." She added, "He can no longer take drugs to control it."

            We walked in silence while I chewed and swallowed that one. "Goldie? What is wrong with him?"

            "Nothing, really. I would say that he is in good health. . . for his age.

            "How old is he?"

            "I don't know. From things I have heard I know that he is over a hundred. How much over I can't guess."

            "Oh, no! Goldie, when I went to work for him, he could not have been more than seventy. Oh, he used canes but he was very spry. He moved as fast then as anyone."

            "Well . . . it's not important. But you might remember that he hurts. If he is rude to you, it is pain talking. He thinks highly of you."

            "What makes you think so?"

            "Ah ... I've talked too much about my patient. Let's eat."

In studying the Shipstone corporate complex I did not attempt to study Shipstones. The wayÄthe only wayÄto study Shipstones would be to go back to school, get a Ph.D. in physics,-add on some intense postdoctoral study in both solid state and plasma, get a job with one of the Shipstone companies and so impress them with your loyalty and your brilliance that you are at long last part of the inner circle controlling fabrication and quality.

            Since that involves about twenty years that I should have started back in my teens, I assumed that Boss did not intend me to take that route.

            So let me quote from the official or propaganda history:

Prometheus, a Brief Biography and Short Account of the Unparalleled Discoveries of Daniel Thomas Shipstone, &S., MA., Ph.D., LL.D., L.H.D., and of the Benevolent System He Founded.

            Äthus young Daniel Shipstone saw at once that the problem was not a shortage of energy but lay in the transporting of energy. Energy is everywhereÄin sunlight, in wind, in mountain streams, in temperature gradients of all sorts wherever found, in coal, in fossil oil, in radioactive ores, in green growing things. Especially in ocean depths and in outer space energy is free for the taking in amounts lavish beyond all human comprehension.

            Those who spoke of "energy scarcity" and of "conserving energy" simply did not understand the situation. The sky was "raining soup"; what was needed was a bucket in which to carry it.

            With the encouragement of his devoted wife Muriel (n‚e Greentree), who went back to work to keep food on the table, young Shipstone resigned from General Atomics and became the most American of myth-heroes, the basement inventor. Seven frustrating and weary years later he had fabricated the first Shipstone by hand. He had foundÄ What he had found was a way to pack more kilowatt-hours into a

smaller space and a smaller mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an "improved storage battery" (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an "improved firecracker." What he had achieved was the utter destruction of the biggest industry (aside from organized religion) of the western world.

            For what happened next I must draw from the muckraking history and from other independent sources as I just don't believe the sweetness and light of the company version. Fictionalized speech attributed to Muriel Shipstone:

"Danny Boy, you are not going to patent the gadget. What would it get you? Seventeen years at the most. . . and no years at all in threefourths of the world. If you did patent or try to, Edison, and P. G. and E., and Standard would tie you up with injunctions and law suits and claimed infringements and I don't know what all. But you said yourself that you could put one of your gadgets in a room with the best research team G.A. has to offer and the best they could do would be to melt it down and the worst would be that they would blow themselves up. You said that. Did you mean it?"

            "Certainly. If they don't know how I insert theÄ"

            "Hush! I don't want to know. And walls have ears. We don't make any fancy announcements; we simply start manufacturing. Wherever power is cheapest today. Where is that?"

            The muckraking author fairly frothed at the "cruel, heartless monopoly" held by the Shipstone complex over the prime necessities of "all the little people everywhere." I could not see it that way. What Shipstone and his companies did was to make plentiful and cheap what used to be scarce and dearÄthis is "cruel" and "heartless"?

            The Shipstone companies do not have a monopoly over energy. They don't own coal or oil or uranium or water power. They do lease many, many hectares of desert land . . . but there is far more desert not being cropped for sunshine than the Shipstone trust is using. As for space, it is impossible to intercept even one percent of all the sunshine going to waste inside the orbit of Luna, impossible by a factor of many millions. Do the arithmetic yourself otherwise you'll never believe the answer.

            So what is their crime?

            Twofold:

            a) The Shipstone companies are guilty of supplying energy to the human race at prices below those of their competitors;

            b) They meanly and undemocratically decline to share their industrial secret of the final assembly stage of a Shipstone.

            This latter is, in the eyes of many people, a capital offense. My

terminal dug out many editorials on "the people's right to know," others on "the insolence of giant monopolies," and other displays of

righteous indignation.            -

            The Shipstone complex is mammoth, all right, because they supply cheap power to billions of people who want cheap power and want more of it every year. But it is not a monopoly because they don't own any power; they just package it and ship it around to wherever people want it. Those billions of customers could bankrupt the Shipstone complex almost overnight by going back to their old waysÄburn coal, burn wood, burn oil, burn uranium, distribute power through continent-wide stretches of copper and aluminum wires and/or long trains of coal cars and tank cars.

            But no one, so far as my terminal could dig out, wants to go back to the bad old days when the landscape was disfigured in endless ways and the very air was loaded with stinks and carcinogens and soot, and the ignorant were scared silly by nuclear power, and all power was scarce and expensive. No, nobody wants the bad old waysÄeven the most radical of the complainers want cheap and convenient power. . . they just want the Shipstone companies to go away and get lost.

            "The people's right to know"Äthe people's right to know what? Daniel Shipstone, having first armed himself with great knowledge of higher mathematics and physics, went down into his basement and patiently suffered seven lean and weary years and thereby learned an applied aspect of natural law that let him construct a Shipstone.

            Any and all of "the people" are free to do as he didÄhe did not even take out a patent. Natural laws are freely available to everyone equally, including flea-bitten Neanderthals crouching against the cold.

            In this case, the trouble with "the people's right to know" is that it strongly resembles the "right" of someone to be a concert pianistÄ but who does not want to practice.

            But I am prejudiced, not being human and never having had any rights.

Whether you prefer the saccharine company version or the vitriolic muckraker's version, the basic facts about Daniel Shipstone and the

Shipstone complex are well known and beyond argument. What surprised me (shocked me, in fact) was what I learned when I started digging into ownership, management, and direction.

            My first hint came from that basic printout when I saw what companies were listed as Shipstone complex companies but did not have "Shipstone" in their names. When one pauses for a Coke . . . the deal is with Shipstone!

            Ian had told me that Interworld had ordered the destruction of AcapulcoÄdoes this mean that the trustees of Daniel Shipstone's estate ordered the killing of a quarter of a million innocent people? Can these be the same people who run the best hospital/school for handicapped children in the world? And Sears-MontgomeryÄhell's bells, I own some Sears-Montgomery stock myself. Do I share by concatenation some part of the guilt for the murder of Acapulco?

            I programmed the machine to display how the directorates interlocked inside the Shipstone complex, and then what directorships in other companies were held by directors of Shipstone companiesÄand the results were so startling that I asked the computer to list stock ownership of one percent or more of the voting stock in all Shipstone companies.

            I spent the next three days fiddling with and rearranging and looking forbetter ways to display the great mass of data that came back in answer to those two questions.

            At the end of that time I wrote out my conclusions:

            a) The Shipstone complex is all one company. It just looks like twenty-eight separate organizations.

            b) The directors and/or stockholders of the Shipstone complex own or control everything of major importance in all the major territorial nations in the solar system.

            c) Shipstone is potentially a planetwide (systemwide?) government. I could not tell from the data whether it acted as such or not as control (if indeed it were exerted) would be through corporations not overtly part of the Shipstone empire.

            d) It scared me.

            Something I had noticed in connection with one Shipstone company (Morgan Associates) caused me to run a search on credit companies and banks. I was unsurprised but depressed to learn that the

very company now extending me credit (MasterCard of California) was in effect the same company as the one guaranteeing payment (Ceres and South Africa Acceptances) and that was duplicated right down the line, whether it was Maple Leaf, Visa, Credit Qu‚bec, or what. That is not news; fiscal theorists have been asserting that as long as I can remember. But it struck home when I saw it spelled out in terms of directorates interlocking and ownership shared.

            On impulse I suddenly asked the computer: "Who owns you?"

            I got back: "Null Program."

            I rephrased it, conforming most carefully to its language. The computer represented by this terminal was a most forgiving machine and very smart; ordinarily it did not mind somewhat informal programming. But there are limits to what one may expect in machine understanding of verbal language; a reflexive question such as this might call for semantic exactness.

Again:  "Null Program."

            I decided to sneak up on the idea. I asked it the following question, doing it step by step exactly in accordance with this computer's language, computer grammar, computer protocol: "What is the ownership of the information-processing network that has terminals throughout British Canada?"

            The answer was displayed and flashed several times before wipingÄand it wiped without my order: "Requested data are not in my membanks."

            That scared me. I knocked off for the day and went swimming and sought out a friend to share a bed with me that night, not waiting to be asked. I wasn't superhorny, I was superlonely and dern well wanted a warm living body close to mine to "protect" me from an intelligent machine that refused to tell me who (what) it really was.

During breakfast next morning Boss sent word to me to see him at ten hundred. I reported, somewhat mystified because in my opinion there had not been nearly enough time for me to complete my two assignments: Shipstone, and the marks of a sick culture.

            But when I came in, he handed me a letter, of the old-fashioned sort, sealed into an envelope and physically forwarded, just like junk mail.

            I recognized it, for I had sent itÄto Janet and Ian. But I was surprised to see it in Boss's hands, as the return address on it was phony. I looked and saw that it had been readdressed to a law firm in San Jose, the one that had been my contact to find Boss. "Pixies."

"You can hand it back to me and I will send it to Captain Tormey when I know where he is."

            "Uh, when you know where the Tormeys are, I will write a very different letter. This one is sort of blind."

            "Commendably so."

            "You've read it?" (Damn it, Boss!)

            "I read everything that is to be forwarded to Captain and Mrs. TormeyÄand Dr. Perreault. By their request."

            "I see." (Nobody tells me a damn thing!) "I wrote the way I did, phony name and all, because the Winnipeg police might open it."

            "They undoubtedly did. I think you covered adequately. I regret that I did not inform you that all mail sent to their home would be forwarded to me. If indeed the police are forwarding all of it. Friday, I do not know where the Tormeys are . . . but I have a contact method that I can useÄonce. The plan is to use it when the police drop all charges against them. I expected that weeks ago. It has not taken place. From this I conclude that the police in Winnipeg are very much in earnest in their intention of hanging the disappearance of Lieutenant Dickey on the Tormeys as a murder charge. Let me ask you again: Can that body be found?"

            I thought hard, trying to put "worst case" on it. If the police ever moved in on that house, what would they find? "Boss, have the police been inside that house?"

            "Certainly. They searched it the day after the owners departed."

            "In that case the police had not found the body the morning of the day I reported here. If they found it, or were to find it, since that date, would you know?"

            "I think it probable. My lines of communication into that police headquarters are less than perfect but I pay highest for freshest information."

            "Do you know what was done with the livestock? Four horses, a cat and five kittens, a pig, maybe other animals?"

            "Friday, where is your intuition leading you?"

            "Boss, I don't know exactly how that body is hidden. But Janet, Mrs. Tormey, is an architect who specialized in two-tier active defense of buildings. What she did about her animals would tell me whether or not she thought there was the slightest possibility of that body ever being found."

            Boss made a notation. "We'll discuss it later. What are the marks of a sick culture?"

            "Boss, fer Gossake! I'm still learning the full shape of the Shipstone complex."

            "You will never learn its full shape. I gave you two assignments at once so that you could rest your mind with a change of pace. Don't tell me that you've given no thought to the second assignment."

            "Thought is about all I've given to it. I've been reading Gibbon and studying the French Revolution. Also Smith's From the Yalu to the Precipice."

            "A very doctrinaire treatment. Read also Penn's The Last Days of the Sweet Land of Liberty."

            "Yes, sir. I did start making tallies. It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population."

            "A very bad sign. Particularism. It was once considered a Spanish vice but any country can fall sick with it."

            "I don't really know Spain. Dominance of males over females seems to be one of the symptoms. I suppose the reverse would be true but I haven't run across it in any of the history I've listened. Why not, Boss?"

            "You tell me. Continue."

            "So far as I have listened, before a revolution can take place, the population must lose faith in both the police and the courts."

            "Elementary. Go on."

            "Well . . . high taxation is important and so is inflation of the currency and the ratio of the productive to those on the public payroll. But that's old hat; everybody knows that a country is on the skids when its income and outgo get out of balance and stay that wayÄeven though there are always endless attempts to wish it away by legislation. But I started looking for little signs, what some call silly-season symptoms. For example, did you know that it is against

the law here to be naked outside your own home? Even in your own home if anybody can see in?"

            "Rather difficult to enforce, I suspect. What significance do you see in it?"

            "Oh, it isn't enforced. But it can't be repealed, either. The Confederacy is loaded with such laws. It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can't be enforced weakens all other laws. Boss, did you know that the California Confederacy subsidizes whores?"

            "I had not noticed it. To what end? For their armed forces? For their prison population? Or as a public utility? I confess to some surprise."

            "Oh, not that way at all! The government pays them to keep their legs crossed. Take it off the market entirely. They are trained, licensed, examinedÄand stockpiled. Only it doesn't work. The designated `surplus artists' draw their subsidy checks . . . then go right ahead peddling tail. When they aren't supposed to do it even for fun because that hurts the market for the unsubsidized whores. So the hookers' union, who sponsored the original legislation to support the union scale, is now trying to work out a voucher system to plug up the holes in the subsidy law. And that won't work either."

            "Why won't it work, Friday?"

            "Boss, laws to sweep back the tide never do work; that's what King Canute was saying. Surely you know that?"

            "I wanted to be sure that you knew it."

            "I think I've been insulted. I ran across a goody. In the California Confederacy it is against the law to refuse credit to a person merely because that person has taken bankruptcy. Credit is a civil right."

            "I assume that it does not work but what form does noncompliance take?"

            "I have not yet investigated, Boss. But I think a deadbeat would be at a disadvantage in trying to bribe a judge. I want to mention one of the obvious symptoms: Violence. Muggings. Sniping. Arson. Bombing. Terrorism of any sort. Riots of courseÄbut I suspect that little incidents of violence, pecking away at people day after day, damage a culture even more than riots that flare up and then die down. I guess that's all for now. Oh, conscription and slavery and arbitrary compulsion of all sorts and imprisonment without bail

and without speedy trialÄbut those things are obvious; all the histories list them."

            "Friday, I think you have missed the most alarming symptom of all.

            "I have? Are you going to tell me? Or am I going to have to grope around in the dark for it?"

            "Mmm. This once I shall tell you. But go back and search for it. Examine it. Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named . . . but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot."

            "Really?"

            "Pfui. I should have forced you to dig it out for yourself; then you would know it. This symptom is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health but as proof of his/her strength. Look for it. Study it. Friday, it is too late to save this cultureÄthis worldwide culture, not just the freak show here in California. Therefore we must now prepare the monasteries for the coming Dark Age. Electronic records are too fragile; we must again have books, of stable inks and resistant paper. But that may not be enough. The reservoir for the next renaissance may have to come from beyond the sky." Boss stopped and breathed heavily. "Friday . .

            "Yes, sir?"

            "Memorize this name and address." His hands moved at his console; the answer appeared on his high screen. I memorized it.

            "Do you have it?"

            "Yes, sir."

            "Shall I repeat it for check?"

            "No, sir."

            "You are sure?"

            "Repeat it if you wish, sir."

            "Mmm. Friday, would you be so kind as to pour a cup of tea for me before you leave? I find that my hands are unsteady today."

            "My pleasure, sir."

xxiv

Neither Goldie nor Anna showed up next day at breakfast. I ate by myself and consequently fairly quickly; I dawdle over food only when shared with company. This was just as well for I was just standing up, finished, when Anna's voice came over the speaking system:

            "Attention, please. I have the unhappy duty to announce that during the night our Chairman died. By his wish there will be no memorial service. The body has been cremated. At nine hundred hours, in the large conference room, there will be a meeting to wind up the affairs of the company. Everyone is urged to attend and to be on time."

            I spent the time until nine o'clock crying. Why? Feeling sorry for myself, I suppose. I'm certain that's what Boss would think. He didn't feel sorry for himself, he didn't feel sorry for me, and he scolded me more than once for self-pity. Self-pity, he said, is the most demoralizing of all vices.

            Just the same, I was feeling sorry for myself. I had always spatted with him, even way back when he broke my indentures- and made me a Free Person after I had run away from him. I found myself regretting every time I had answered him back, been impudent, called him names.

            Then I reminded myself that Boss would not have liked me at all if I had been a worm, subservient, no opinions of my own. He had

to be what he was and I had to be what I was and we had lived for years in close association that had never, not once, involved even touching hands. For Friday, that is a record. One I arh not interested in surpassing.

            I wonder if he knew, years ago when I first went to work for him, how quickly I would have swarmed into his lap had he invited it. He probably did know. As may be, even though I had never touched his hand, he was the only father I ever had.

The big conference room was very crowded. I had never seen even half that number at meals and some of the faces were strange to me. I concluded that some had been called in and had been able to arrive quickly. At a table at the front of the room Anna sat with a total stranger. Anna had folders of paper, a formidable terminal relay, and secretarial gear. The stranger was a woman about Anna's age but with a stern schoolmarmish look instead of Anna's warmth.

            At two seconds past nine the stranger rapped loudly on the table. "Quiet, please! I am Rhoda Wainwright, Executive Vice-Chairman of this company and chief counsel to the late Dr. Baldwin. As such I am now Chairman pro tem and paymaster for the purpose of winding up our affairs. You each know that each of you was bound to this company by contract to Dr. Baldwin personallyÄ"

            Had I ever signed such a contract? I was bemused by "the late Dr. Baldwin." Was that really Boss's name? How did it happen that his name matched my commonest nom de guerre? Had he picked it? That was so very long ago.

            "Äsince you are all now free agents. We are an elite outfit and Dr. Baldwin anticipated that every free company in North America would wish to recruit from our ranks once his death released you. There are hiring agents in each of the small conference rooms and in the lounge. As your names are called please come forward to receive and sign for your packet. Then examine it at once but do not, repeat do not, stand at this table and attempt to discuss it. For discussion you must wait until all the others have received their termination packets. Please remember that I have been up all nightÄ"

            Hire out with some other free company at once? Did I have to? Was I broke? Probably, except for what was left of that two hundred

thousand bruins I had won in that silly lotteryÄand most of that I probably owed to Janet on her Visa card. Let me see, I had won 230.4 grams of fine gold, deposited with MasterCard as Br. 200,000 but credited as gold at that day's fix. I had drawn thirty-six grams of that as cash andÄ But I must reckon my other account, too, the one through Imperial Bank of Saint Louis. And the cash and the Visa credit I owed Janet. And Georges ought to let me pay half ofÄ Someone was calling my name.

            It was Rhoda Wainwright, looking vexed. "Please be alert, Miss Friday. Here is your packet and sign here to receipt for it. Then move aside to check it."

            I glanced at the receipt. "I'll sign after I've checked it."

            "Miss Friday! You're holding up the proceedings."

            "I'll step aside. But I won't sign until I confirm that the packet matches the receipt list."

            Anna said soothingly, "It's all right, Friday. I checked it."

            I answered, "Thanks. But I'll handle it just the way you handle classified documentsÄsight and touch."

            The Wainwright biddy was ready to boil me in oil but I simply moved aside a couple of meters and started checkingÄa fair-size packet: three passports in three names, an assortment of IDs, very sincere papers matching one or another identity, and a draft to "Marjorie Friday Baldwin" drawn on Ceres and South Africa Acceptances, Luna City, in the amount of Au-0.999 grams 297.3Ä which startled me but not nearly as much as the next item did:

adoption papers by Hartley M. Baldwin and Emma Baldwin for female child Friday Jones, renamed Marjorie Friday Baldwin, executed at Baltimore, Maryland, Atlantic Union. Nothing about Landsteiner CrŠche or Johns Hopkins, but the date was the day I left Landsteiner CrŠche.

            And two birth certificates: one was a delayed birth certificate for Marjorie Baldwin, born in Seattle, and one was for Friday Baldwin, borne by Emma Baldwin, Boston, Atlantic Union.

            Two things were certain about each of these documents: Each was phony and each could be relied on utterly; Boss never did things by halves. I said, "It checks, Anna." I signed.

            Anna accepted the receipt from me, adding quietly: "See me after."

            "Suits. Where?"

            "See Goldie."

            "Miss Friday! Your credit card, please!" Wainwrigfit again.

            "Oh." Well, yes, with Boss gone and the company dissolved, I could not use my Saint Louis credit card again. "Here it is."

            She reached for it; I held on. "The punch, please. Or the shears. Whatever you're using."

            "Oh, come now! I'll incinerate yours along with many others, after I check the numbers."

            "Ms. Wainwright, if I am to surrender a credit card charged against meÄand I am; no argument about thatÄit will be destroyed or mutilated, rendered useless, right in front of me."

            "You are very tiresome! Don't you trust anyone?"

            "No."

            "Then you'll have to wait, right here, until everyone else is through."

            "Oh, I don't think so." I think MasterCard of California uses a phenolic-glass laminate; in any case their cards are tough, as credit cards must be. I had been careful not to show any enhancements around HQ, not because it would matter there but because it isn't polite. But this was a special circumstance. I tore the card two ways, handed her the bits. "I think you can still make out the serial number.

            "Very well!" She sounded as annoyed as I felt. I turned away. She snapped, "Miss Friday! Your other card, please!"

            "What card?" I was wondering who among my dear friends was suddenly being deprived of that utter necessity of modern life, a valid credit card, and being left with only a draft and some small change. Clumsy. Inconvenient. I felt certain that Boss had not planned it that way.

            "MasterCard . . . of. . . California, Miss Friday, issued in San Jose. Hand it over."

            "The company has nothing to do with that card. I arranged that credit on my own."

            "I find that hard to believe. Your credit on it is guaranteed by Ceres and South AfricaÄthat is to say, by the company. The affairs of which are being liquidated. So hand over that card."

            "You're mixed up, counselor. While payment is made through

Ceres and South Africa, the credit involved is my own. It's none of your business."

            "You'll soon find out whose business it is! Your account will be canceled."

            "At your own risk, counselor. If you want a law suit that will leave you barefooted. Better check the facts." I turned away, anxious not to say another word. She had me so angry that, for the moment, I was not feeling grief over Boss.

            I looked around and found that Goldie had already been processed. She was sitting, waiting. I caught her eye and she patted an empty chair by her; I joined her. "Anna said for me to see you."

            "Good. I made a reservation at Cabana Hyatt in San Jose for Anna and me for tonight, and told them that there might be a third. Do you want to come with us?"

            "So soon? Are you already packed?" What did I have to pack? Not much, as my New Zealand luggage was still sitting in bond in Winnipeg port because I suspected that the Winnipeg police had placed a tag on itÄso there it would sit until Janet and Ian were in the clear. "I had expected to stay here tonight but I really hadn't thought about it."

            "Anyone can sleep here tonight but it's not being encouraged. The managementÄthe new managementÄwants to get everything done today. Lunch will be the last meal served. If anyone is still here tonight at dinnertime, it's cold sandwiches. Breakfast, nit."

            "Fer Gossake! That doesn't sound like anything Boss would have planned."

            "It isn't. This womanÄ The Master's arrangements were with the senior partner, who died six weeks ago. But it doesn't matter; we'll just leave. Coming with us?"

            "I suppose so. Yes. But I had better see these recruiters first; I'm going to need a job."

            "Don't."

            "Why not, Goldie?"

            "I'm looking for a job, too. But Anna warned me. The recruiters here today all have arrangements with La Wainwright. If any of them are any good, we can get in touch with them at Las Vegas Labor Mart . . . without handing this snapping turtle a commission. I know what I wantÄhead nurse in a field hospital of a crack

            Goldie said, "We had to have her to sign those drafts."mercenary outfit. All the best ones are represented in Las Vegas."

            "I guess that's the place for me to look, too. Goldie, I've never had to hunt for a job before. I'm confused."

            "You'll do all right."

Three hours later, after a hasty lunch, we were in San Jose. Two APVs were shuttling between Pajaro Sands and the National Plaza; Wainwright was getting rid of us as fast as possibleÄI saw two flatbed trucks, big ones, each drawn by six horses, being loaded as we left, and Papa Perry looking harried. I wondered what was being done with Boss's libraryÄand felt a little separate, selfish sadness that I might never again have such an unlimited chance to feed the Elephant's Child. I'll never be a big brain but I'm curious about everything and a terminal hooked directly to all the world's best libraries is a luxury beyond price.

            When I saw what they were loading I suddenly recalled something with near panic. "Anna, who was Boss's secretary?"

            "He didn't have one. I sometimes helped him if he needed an extra hand. Seldom."

            "He had a contact address for my friends Ian and Janet Tormey. What would have become of it?"

            "Unle~s it's in this"Äshe took an envelope from her bag and handed it to meÄ"it's gone. . . because I have had standing orders for a long time to go to his personal terminal as soon as he was pronounced dead and to punch in a certain program. It was a wipe order, I know, although he did not say so. Everything personal he had in the memory banks was erased. Would this item be personal?"

            "Very personal."

            "Then it's gone. Unless you have it there."

            I looked at what she had handed me: a sealed envelope with nothing but "Friday" on the outside. Anna added, "That should have been in your packet but I grabbed it and held it out. That nosy slitch was reading everything she could get her hands on. I knew that this was private from Mr. Two-CanesÄDr. Baldwin, I should say nowÄto you. I was not going to let her have it." Anna sighed. "I worked with her all night. I didn't kill her. I don't know why I didn't."

            Riding with us was one of the staff officers, Burton McNyeÄa quiet man who rarely expressed opinions. But now he spoke. "I'm sorry you restrained yourself. Look at me; I have no cash, I always used my credit card for everything. That snotty shyster wouldn't give me my closing check until I handed over my credit card. What happens with a draft on Lunar bank? Can you cash it, or do they simply accept it for collection? I may be sleeping in the Plaza tonight."

            "Mr. McNyeÄ"

            "Yes, Miss Friday?"

            "I'm no longer `Miss' Friday. Just Friday."

            "Then I'm Burt."

            "Okay, Burt. I've got some cash bruins and a credit card that Wainwright could not touch, although she tried. How much do you need?"

            He smiled and reached over and patted my knee. "All the nice things I've heard about you are true. Thanks, dear, but I'll handle it. First I'll take this to the Bank of America. If they won't cash it offhand, perhaps they will advance me some pending collection. If not, I shall go to her office in the CCC Building and stretch out on her desk and tell her that it is up to her to find me a bed. Damn it; the Chief would have seen to it that each of us got a few hundred in cash; she did it on purpose. Maybe to force us to sign up with her buddies; I wouldn't put it past her. If she makes any fuss, I'm feeling just ornery enough to find out whether or not I remember any of the things they taught me in basic."

            I answered, "Burt, don't ever tackle a lawyer with your hands. The way to fight a lawyer is with another lawyer, a smarter one. Look, we'll be in the Cabana. If you can't cash that draft, better accept my offer. It won't inconvenience me."

            "Thanks, Friday. But I'm going to choke her until she gives in."

            The room Goldie had reserved turned out to be a small suite, a room with a big waterbed and a living room with a couch that opened into a double bed. I sat down on the couch to read Boss's letter while Anna and Goldie used the bathÄthen got up to use it myself when they came out. When I came out, they were on the big bed, sound asleepÄnot surprising; both of them had been up all

night in nervously exhausting work. I kept very quiet and sat back

down, resumed reading the letter:  -

Dear Friday, Since this is my last opportunity to communicate with you, I must

tell you things I have not been able to say while alive and still your employer.

            Your adoption: You do not remember it because it did not happen that way. You will find that all records are legally correct. You are indeed my foster daughter. Emma Baldwin has the same sort of reality as your Seattle parents, i.e., real for all practical and legal purposes. You need be careful of only one thing: Don't let your several identities trip each other. But you have walked that tight-wire many times, professionally.

            Be sure to be present or represented at the reading of my will. Since I am a Lunar citizen

            (Huh?)

            this will be at Luna City immediately after my death, Luna Republic not having all the lawyer-serving delays one finds in most Earthside countries. Call Fong, Tomosawa, Rothschild, Fong, and Finnegan, Luna City. Do not anticipate too much; my will does not relieve you of the necessity of earning a living.

            Your origin: You have always been curious about this, understandably so. Since your genetic endowment was assembled from many sources and since all records have been destroyed, I can tell you little. Let me mention two sources of your genetic pattern in whom you may take pride, two known to history as Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Green. There is a memorial to them in a crater near Luna City, but it is hardly worth the trip as there is nothing much to see. If you will query the Luna City Chamber of Commerce concerning this memorial, you can obtain a cassette with a reasonably accurate account of what they did. When you hear it, you will know why I told you to suspend judgment on assassins. Assassination is usually a dirty business . .

but honorable hatchet men can be heroes. Play the cassette and judge for yourself.

            The Greens were colleagues of mine many years ago. Since their work was very dangerous, I had caused each of them to deposit genetic material, four of her ova, a supply of his sperm. When they were killed, I caused gene analysis to be made with an eye to posthumous childrenÄonly to learn that they were incompatible; simple fertilization would have caused reinforcement of some bad alleles.

            Instead, when creation of artificial persons became possible, their genes were used selectively. Yours was the only successful design; other attempts at including them were either not viable or had to be destroyed. A good genetic designer works the way a good photographer does: A perfect result derives from a willingness to discard drastically any attempt less than perfect. There will be no more attempts using the Greens; Gail's ova are gone and Joe's sperm is probably no longer useful.

            It is not possible to define your relationship to them but it is equivalent to something between granddaughter and great-granddaughter, the rest of you being from many sources but you can take pride in the fact that all of you was most carefully selected to maximize the best traits of H. sapiens. This is your potential; whether or not you achieve your potential is up to you.

            Before your records were destroyed, I once scratched my curiosity by listing the sources that went into creating you. As near as I can recall they are:

            Finnish, Polynesian, Amerindian, Innuit, Danish, red Irish, Swazi, Korean, German, Hindu, EnglishÄand bits and pieces from elsewhere since none of the above is pure. You can never afford to be racist; you would bite your own tail!

            All that the above really means is that the best materials were picked to design you, regardless of source. It is sheer luck that you wound up beautiful as well.

             ["Beautiful"! Boss, I do own a mirror. Was it possible he had really thought so? Surely, I'm built okay; that just reflects the fact that I'm a crack athlete-which in turn reflects the fact that I was planned, not born. Well, it's nice that he thought so if he did . .

because it's the only game in town; I'm me, whatever.]

            On one point I owe you an explanation if not an apology. It was intended that you should be reared by selected parents as their natural child. But when you still weighed less than five kilos, I was sent toprison. Although I was able, eventually, to escape, I could not return to Earth until after the Second Atlantic Rebellion. The scars of this mix-up are still with you, I know. I hope that you someday will purge yourself of your fear and mistrust of "human" persons; it gains you nothing and handicaps you mightily. Someday, somehow, you must realize emotionally what you know intellectually, that they are as tied to the Wheel as you are.

            As for the rest, what can I say in a last message? That unfortunate coincidence, my conviction at just the wrong time, left you too easily bruised, much too sentimental. My dear, you must cure yourself utterly of all fear, guilt, and shame. I think you have rooted out self pity

[The hell I have!]

            but, if not, you must work on it. I think that you are immune to the temptations of religion. If you are not, I cannot help you, any more than I could keep you from acquiring a drug habit. A religion is sometimes a source of happiness and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strongÄand you are strong. The great trouble with religionÄany religionÄis that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reasonÄbut one cannot have both.

            I have one last thing to tell you-for my own satisfaction, for my own pride. I am one of your "ancestors"-not a major one but some of my genetic pattern lives on in you. You are not only my foster daughter but also in part my natural daughter as well. To my great pride.

So let me close this with a word I could not say while I was aliveÄ Love,

Hartley M. Baldwin

            I put the letter back into its envelope and curled up and indulged in that worst of vices, self-pity, doing it thoroughly, with plenty of tears. I don't see anything wrong with crying; it lubricates the psyche.

            Having gotten it out of my system I got up and washed my face and decided that I was all through grieving over Boss. I was pleased and flattered that he had adopted me and it warmed me all through to know that a bit of him was used in designing meÄbut he was still Boss. I thought that he would allow me one cathartic session of grief but if I kept it up, he would be annoyed with me.

            My chums were still sawing wood, exhausted, so I closed the door that shut them off, was pleased to note that it was a sound-silencer door, and I sat down at the terminal, stuck my card into the slot, and coded Fong, Tomosawa, and so forth, having routed through exchange service to get the code, then coding directly; it's cheaper that way.

            I recognized the woman who answered. Low gee certainly is better than a bra; if I lived in Luna City, I would wear only a monikini, too. Oh, stilts, maybe. An emerald in my bellybutton. "Excuse me," I said. "Somehow I've managed to code Ceres and South Africa when I intended to punch for Fong, Tomosawa, Rothschild, Fong, and Finnegan. My subconscious is playing tricks. Sorry to have bothered you and thanks for the help you gave me a few months ago."

            "Wups!" she answered. "You didn't punch wrong. I'm Gloria Tomosawa, senior partner in Fong, Tomosawa, et al., now that Grandpa Fong has retired. But that doesn't interfere with my being a vice-president of Ceres and South Africa Acceptances; we are also the legal department of the bank. And I'm the chief trust officer, too, which means that I'm going to have business with you. Everybody here is sorry as can be at the news of Dr. Baldwin's death and I hope that it did not distress you too muchÄMiss Baldwin."

            "Hey, back up and start over!"

            "Sorry. Usually when people call the Moon they want to make it as brief as possible because of the cost. Do you want me to repeat all that, a sentence at a time?"

            "No. I think I've assimilated it. Dr. Baldwin left a note telling me to be at the reading of his will or to be represented. I can't be there. When will it be read and can you advise me as to how I can get someone in Luna City to represent me?"

            "It will be read as soon as we get official notification of death from the California Confederacy, which should be any time now as our

San Jose representative has already paid the squeeze. Someone to represent youÄwill I do? Perhaps I should say that Grandpa Fong was your father's Luna City attorney for many years . . so I inherited him and now that your father has died, I inherit you. Unless you tell me otherwise."

            "Oh, would you?ÄMissÄMrs. TomosawaÄis it Miss or Mrs.?"

            "I could and I would and it's Mrs. It had better be; I have a son as old as you are."

            "Impossible!" (This beauty-contest winner twice my age?)

            "Most possible. Here in Luna City we are all old-fashioned cubes, not like California. We get married and we have babies and always in that order. I wouldn't dare be a Miss with a son your age; nobody would retain me."

            "I mean the idea that you have a son my age. You can't have a baby at the age of five. Four."

            She chuckled. "You say the nicest things. Why don't you come here and marry my son? He's always wanted an heiress."

            "Am I an heiress?"

            She sobered. "Urn. I can't break the seal on that will until your father is officially dead, which he is not, in Luna City, not yet. But he will be shortly and there is rio sense in making you call back. I drafted that will. I checked it for changes when I got it back. Then I sealed it and put it into my safe. So I know what's in it. What I'm about to tell you, you don't know until later today. You're an heiress but fortune-hunters won't be chasing you. You are not getting a gram in cash. Instead the bank is instructedÄthat's meÄto subsidize you in migrating off Earth. If you pick Luna, we pay your fare. If you picked a bounty planet, we would give you a Scout knife and pray for you. If you pick a high-priced place like Kaui or Halcyon, the trust pays your fare and your contribution and assists you with starting capital. If you never do migrate off Terra, on your death funds earmarked to assist you revert to the other purposes of the trust. But your migration needs have first call. Exception: If you migrate to Olympia, you pay for it yourself. Nothing from the trust."

            "Dr. Baldwin said something about that. What's so poisonous about Olympia? I don't recall a colony world named that."

            "You don't? No, I guess you're too young. That's where those

self-styled supermen went. No real point in warning you against it, however; the corporation doesn't run ships there. Dear, you are running up a fancy comm bill."

            "I guess so. But it would cost me more if I had to call back. All I mind is having to pay for the speed-of-light dead time. Can you switch hats and be Ceres and South Africa for a moment? Or maybe not; I may need legal advice."

            "I'm wearing both hats, so fire away. Ask anything; today there's no fee. My advertising loss leader."

            "No, I pay for what I get."

            "You sound like your late father. I think he invented tanstaafl."

            "He's not really my father, you know, and I never thought of him as such."

            "I know the score, dear; I drew up some of the papers about you. He thought of you as his daughter. He was inordinately proud of you. I was most interested when you first called meÄhaving to keep quiet about things I knew but looking you over. What is on your mind?"

            I explained the trouble I had had with Wainwright over credit cards. "Certainly MasterCard of California has given me a credit ceiling far beyond my needs or assets. But is that any of her business? I haven't even used up my predeposit and I'm about to back it up with my closing pay. Two hundred and ninety-seven and threetenths grams, fine."

            "Rhoda Wainwright never was worth a hoot as a lawyer; when Mr. Esposito died, your father should have changed representation. Of course it's none of her business what credit MasterCard extends to you, and she has no authority over this bank. Miss BaldwinÄ"

            "Call me Friday."

            "Friday, your late father was a director of this bank and is, or was, a major stockholder. Although you do not receive any of his wealth directly, you would have to run up an enormous unsecured debt and neglect to reduce it for quite some time and refuse to answer queries about it before your account would be red-flagged. So forget it. But, now that Pajaro Sands is closing down, I do need another address for you."

            "Uh, right now, you are the only address I have."

            "I see. Well, get me one as soon as you have one. There are oth

ers with that same problem, a problem unnecessarily made worse by Rhoda Wainwright. There are others who should be represented at the reading of the will. She should have notified theni, did not, and now they have left Pajaro Sands. Do you know where I can find Anna Johansen? Or Sylvia Havenisle?"

            "I know a woman named Anna who was at the Sands. She was the classified documents clerk. The other name I don't recognize."

            "She must be the right Anna; I have her listed as `confidential clerk.' Havenisle is a trained nurse."

            "Oh! Both of them are just beyond a door I'm looking at. Sleeping. Up all night. Dr. Baldwin's death."

            "My lucky day. Please tell themÄwhen they wake upÄthat they should be represented at the reading of the will. But don't wake them; I can fix it afterwards. We aren't all that fussy here."

            "Could you represent them?"

            "On your say-so, yes. But have them call me. I'll need new mailing addresses for them, too. Where are you now?"

            I told her, we said good-bye and switched off. Then I held very still and let my head catch up with events. But Gloria Tomosawa had made it easy. I suspect that there are just two sorts of lawyers:

those who spend their efforts making life easy for other peopleÄand parasites.

A little jingle and a red light caused me to go to the terminal again. It was Burton McNye. I told him to come on up but be mousequiet. I kissed him without stopping to think about it, then remembered that he was not a kissing friend. Or was he? I did not know whether he had helped rescue me from "the Major" or notÄ must ask.

            "No trouble," he told me. "Bank of America accepted it for deposit subject to collection but advanced me a few hundred bruins for overnight money. They tell me that a gold draft can be cleared through Luna City in about twenty-four hours. That, combined with our late employer's sound financial reputation, got me out of the bind. So you don't have to let me sleep here tonight."

            "I'm supposed to cheer? Burt, now that you are solvent again, you can take me out to dinner. Out. Because my roommates are zombies. Dead, maybe. The poor dears were up all night."

            "It's too early for dinner."

            It wasn't too early for what we did next. I hadn't planned on it but Burt claimed that he had, in the APV; and I didn't believe him. I asked him about that night on the farm and, sure enough, he was part of the combat team. He claimed that he had been held in reserve and thus was merely along for the ride, but nobody yet has admitted doing anything dangerous that nightÄbut I recall Boss telling me that anybody at all was taken because bodies were so scarceÄeven Terence, who doesn't really have to shave yet.

            He didn't protest when I started taking his clothes off.

            Burt was just what I needed. Too much had happened and I felt emotionally battered. Sex is a better tranquilizer than any of those drugs and much better for your metabolism. I don't see why human people make such a heavy trip out of sex. It isn't anything complex; it is simply the best thing in life, even better than food.

The bath in that suite could be reached without going through the bedroom, laid out that way, probably, because the living room could double as a second bedroom. So we each tidied up a bit and I put on that Superskin jump suit with the wet look that had been the bait with which I had hooked Ian last springÄand learned that I had put it on through thinking sentimentally about Ian but that I was no longer worried about Ian and JanÄand Georges. I would find them, I was now serenely sure. Even if they never went home, I would at worst track them down through Betty and Freddie.

            Burt made appropriate animal noises over how I looked in the Superskin job, and I let him look and wiggled some and told him that was exactly why I had bought it, because I was a slitch who wasn't even mildly ashamed of being female, and I wanted to thank him for what he had done for me; my nerves had been twanging like a harp and now they were so relaxed they dragged on the ground and I had decided to pay for dinner to show my appreciation.

            He offered to wrestle me for it. I didn't tell him that I had to be very careful in moments of passion not to break male bones; I just giggled. I guess giggling looks silly on a woman my age but there it isÄwhen I'm happy, I giggle.

            I was careful to leave a note for my chums.

            When we got back, latish, they were gone, so Burt and I went to

bed, this time stopping to open out that folding double bed. I woke up when Anna and Goldie tiptoed through, returning from supper. But I pretended not to wake, figuring that morning was soon enough.

            Sometime the next morning I became aware that Anna was standing over us and not looking happyÄand, truthfully, that was the very first time that it occurred to me that Anna might be displeased at finding me in bed with a man. Certainly I had realized which way she leaned a long time ago; certainly I knew that she leaned in my direction. But she herself had cooled it and I had stopped thinking of her as unfinished business I would have to cope with someday; she and Goldie were simply my chums, hair-down friends who trusted each other.

            Burt said plaintively, "Don't scowl at me, lady; I just came in to get out of the rain."

            "I wasn't scowling," she answered too soberly. "I was simply trying to figure out how to get around the end of the bed to the terminal without waking you two. I want to order breakfast."

            "Order for all of us?" I asked.

            "Certainly. What do you want?"

            "Some of everything and fried potatoes on the side. Anna hon, you know meÄif it's not dead, I'll kill it and eat it raw, bones and all.

            "And the same for me," agreed Burt.

            "Noisy neighbors." Goldie was standing in the doorway, yawning. "Chatterboxes. Go back to bed." I looked at her and realized two things: I had never really looked at her before, even at the beach. And, second, if Anna was annoyed with me for sleeping with Burt, she didn't have any excuse for such feelings; Goldie looked almost indecently satiated.

"It means `harbor island,' " Goldie was saying, "and it really ought to have a hyphen in it because nobody can ever spell it or pronounce it. So I just go as GoldieÄeasy to do in the Master's outfit where last names were always discouraged. But it's not as hard a name as Mrs. Tomosawa'sÄafter I mispronounced hers about the fourth time, she asked me to call her Gloria."

            We were finishing off a big breakfast and both of my chums had

talked to Gloria and the will had been read and both of them (and Burt, too, to my surprise and his) were now a bit richer and we were all getting ready to leave for Las Vegas, three of us to shop for jobs, Anna simply to stay with us and visit until we shipped out, or whatever.

            Anna was then going to Alabama. "Maybe I'll get tired of loafing. But I promised my daughter that I would retire and this is the right time. I'll get reacquainted with my grandchildren before they get too big."

            Anna a grandmother? Does anyone ever know anyone else?

xxv

Las Vegas is a three-ring circus with a hangover.

            I enjoy the place for a while. But after I've seen all the shows I reach a point where the lights and the music and the noise and the frenetic activity are too much. Four days is a-plenty.

            We reached Vegas about ten, after a late start because each of us had business to doÄeverybody but me with arrangements to make for the collection of moneys from Boss's will and me to deposit my closing draft with MasterCard. That is, I started to. I stopped abruptly when Mr. Chambers said, "Do you want to execute an order to us to pay your income tax on this?"

            Income tax? What a filthy suggestion! I could not believe my ears. "What was that, Mr. Chambers?"

            "Your Confederacy income tax. If you ask us to handle itÄhere's the formÄour experts prepare it and we pay it and deduct it from your account and you aren't bothered. We charge only a nominal fee. Otherwise you have to calculate it yourself and make out all the forms and then stand in line to pay it."

            "You didn't say anything about any such tax when I made the deposit the day I opened this account."

            "But that was a national lottery prize! That's yours, utterly freeÄ that's the Democratic Way! Besides, the government gets its cut off the top in running the lottery."

            "I see. How much cut does the government take?"

            "Really, Miss Baldwin, that question should be addressed to the

government, not to me. If you'll just sign at the bottom, I'll fill in the rest."

            "In a moment. How much is this `nominal fee'? And how much is the tax?"

            I left without depositing my draft and again poor Mr. Chambers was vexed with me. Even though bruins are so inflated that you have to line up quite a few of them to buy a Big Mac, I do not consider a thousand bruins "nominal"Äit's more than a gram of gold, $37 BritCan. With their 8 percent surcharge on top, MasterCard would be getting a fat fee for acting as stooge for the Confederacy's Eternal Revenue Service.

            I wasn't sure that I owed income tax even under California's weird lawsÄmost of that money had not been earned in California and I couldn't see what claim California had on my salary anyway. I wanted to consult a good shyster.

            I went back to Cabana Hyatt. Goldie and Anna were still out but Burt was there. I told him about it, knowing that he had been in logistics and accounting.

            "It's a moot point," he said. "Personal-service contracts with the Chairman were all written `free of tax' and in the Imperium the bribe was negotiated each year. Here an umbrella bribe should have been paid through Mr. EspositoÄthat is to say, through Ms. Wainwright. You can ask her."

            "In a pig's eye!"

            "Precisely. She should have notified Eternal Revenue and paid any taxes dueÄafter negotiation, if you understand me. But she may be skimming; I don't know. HoweverÄ You do have a spare passport, do you not?"

            "Oh, certainly! Always."

            "Then use it. That's what I'll be doing. Then I'll transfer my money after I know where I'll be. Meanwhile I'll leave it safe on the Moon."

            "Uh, Burt, I'm pretty sure Wainwright has every spare passport listed. You seem to be saying that they'll be checking us at exit?"

            "What if Wainwright has listed them? She won't turn over the list to the Confederates without arranging her cut, and I doubt that she's had time to dicker it. So pay only the regular squeeze and stick your nose in the air and walk on through the barrier."

            This I understood. I had been so indignant at that filthy notion that for a moment I had ceased to think like a courier.

            We crossed the border into Vegas Free State at Dry Lake; the capsule stopped just long enough for Confederacy exit stamps. Each of us used an alternate passport with the standard squeeze folded insideÄno trouble. And no entrance stamp as the Free State doesn't bother with CHI; they welcome any solvent visitor.

            Ten minutes later we checked into the Dunes, with much the same accommodations we had had in San Jose save that this was described as an "orgy suite." I could not see why. A mirror on the ceiling and aspirin and Alka-Seltzer in the bath are not enough to justify that designation; my doxyology instructor would have laughed in scorn. However I suppose that most of the marks would not have had the advantages of advanced instructionÄI've been told that most people don't have any formal training. I've often wondered who teaches them. Their parents? Is that rigid incest taboo among human persons actually a taboo against talking about it but not against doing it?

            Someday I hope to find out such things but I've never known anybody I could ask. Maybe Janet will tell me. Someday .

            We arranged to meet for dinner, then Burt and Anna went to the lounge and/or casino while Goldie and I went out to the Industrial Park. Burt intended to job-hunt but expressed an intention of raising a little hell before settling down. Anna said nothing but I think she wanted to savor the fleshpots before taking up the life of a grandmother-in-residence. Only Goldie was dead-serious about jobhunting that day. I intended to find a job, yesÄbut I had some thinking to do first.

            I was probablyÄalmost certainlyÄgoing to out-migrate. Boss thought I should and that was reason enough. But besides that, the study he had started me on concerning the symptoms of decay in cultures had focused my mind on things I had long known but never analyzed. I've never been critical of the cultures I've lived in or traveled throughÄplease understand that an artificial person is a permanent stranger wherever she is, no matter how long she stays. No country could ever be mine so why think about it?

            But when I did study it, I saw that this old planet is in sorry shape. New Zealand is a pretty good place and so is British Canada, but

            a)On a mission I had spent whatever it took.even those two countries showed major signs of decay. Yet those two are the best of the lot.

            But let's not rush things. Changing planets is something a person doesn't do twiceÄunless she is fabulously wealthy, and I was not. I was subsidized for one out-migration . . . so I had better by a durn sight pick the right planet because no mistakes were going to be corrected after I left the window.

            BesidesÄ Well, where was Janet?

            Boss had had a contact address or a call code. Not me!

            Boss had had an ear in the Winnipeg police HQ. Not me!

            Boss had had his own Pinkerton net over the whole planet. Not me!

            I could try to phone them from time to time. I would. I could check with ANZAC and the University of Manitoba. I would. I could check that Auckland code and also the biodep of the University of Sydney. I would.

            If none of those worked, what more could I do? I could go to Sydney and try to sweet-talk somebody out of Professor Farnese's home address or sabbatical address or whatever. But that would not be cheap and I had suddenly been forced to realize that travel I had taken for granted in the past would now be difficult and perhaps impossible. A trip to New South Wales before semiballistics started to run again would be very expensive. It could be doneÄby tube and by float and by going three-fourths the way around the world .

but it would be neither easy nor cheap.

            Perhaps I could sign on as a ship's doxy out of San Francisco for Down Under. That would be cheap and easy. . . but time-consuming even if I shipped in a Shipstone-powered tanker out of Watsonville. A sail-powered freighter? Well, no.

            Maybe I had better hire a Pinkerton in Sydney. What did they charge? Could I afford it?

            It took less than thirty-six hours from Boss's death for me to bump my nose into the fact that I had never learned the true value of a gram.

            Consider this: Up to then my life had had just three modes of economy:

            b) At Christchurch I spent some but not muchÄmainly presents for the family.

            c) At the farm, at the next HQ, then still later at Pajaro Sands, I didn't spend any money, hardly. Room and board were in my contract. I did not drink or gamble. If Anita had not been bleeding me, I would have accumulated a tidy sum.

            I had led a sheltered life and had never really learned about money.

            But I can do simple arithmetic without using a terminal. I had paid in cash my share at Cabana Hyatt. I used my credit card for my fare to the Free State but jotted down the cost. I noted the daily rate at the Dunes and kept track of other costs, whether card or cash or on the hotel bill.

            I could see at once that room and board in first-class hotels would very shortly use up every gram I owned even if I spent zero, nit, swabo, nothing, on travel, clothes, luxuries, friends, emergencies. Q.E.D. I must either get a job or ship out on a one-way colonizing trip.

            I acquired a horrid suspicion that Boss had been paying me a lot more than I was worth. Oh, I'm a good courier, none betterÄbut what's the going rate on couriers?

            I could sign up as a private, then (I was fairly sure) make sergeant

in a hurry. That did not really appeal to me but it might be where I

would wind up. Vanity isn't one of my faults; for most civilian jobs I

am unskilled laborÄI know it.

            Something else was pulling me, something else was pushing me. I didn't want to go alone to a strange planet. It scared me. I had lost my Ennzedd family (if indeed I ever had them), Boss had died, and I felt like Chicken Little when the sky was falling, my true friends among my colleagues had gone to the four windsÄexcept these three and they were leaving quicklyÄand I had managed to lose Georges and Janet and Ian.

            Even with Las Vegas giddy around me I felt as alone as Robinson Crusoe.

            I wanted Janet and Ian and Georges to out-migrate with me. Then I would not be afraid. Then I could smile all the way.

            BesidesÄ The Black Death. Plague was coming.

            Yes, yes, I had told Boss that my midnight prediction was nonsense. But he had told me that his analytical section had predicted the same thing, in four years instead of three. (Small comfort!)

            I was forced to take my own prediction seriously. I must warn Ian and Janet and Georges.

            I did not expect to frighten them with itÄI don't think you can scare those three. But I did want to say, "If you won't migrate, at least take my warning seriously to the extent of staying out of big cities. If inoculation becomes available, get it. But heed this warning."

The Industrial Park is on the road to Hoover Dam; the Labor Mart is there. Vegas does not permit APVs inside the city but there are slidewalks everywhere and one runs out to Industrial Park. To go beyond there, to the dam or to Boulder City, there is an APV commuter line. I planned to use it as Shipstone Death Valley leases a stretch of desert between East Las Vegas and Boulder City for a charging station and I wanted to see it to supplement my study.

            Could the Shipstone complex be the corporation state behind Red Thursday? I could see no reason for it. But it had to be a power rich enough to blanket the globe and reach all the way out to Ceres in a single night. There were not many such. Could it be a superrich man or group of men? Again, not many possibilities. With Boss dead I probably never would know. I used to slang himÄbut he was the one I turned to when I didn't understand something. I had not known how much I leaned on him until his support was taken away.

The Labor Mart is a large covered mall, with everything from fancy offices of the Wall Street Journal to scouts who have their offices in their hats and never sit down and seldom stop talking. There are signs everywhere and people everywhere and it reminds me of Vicksburg river town but it smells better.

            The military and quasi-military free companies cluster together at the east end. Goldie went from one to the other and I went with her. She left her name and a copy of her brag sheet with each one. We had stopped in town to get her brag sheet printed and she had arranged a mail drop with a public secretary, and she had induced

r

me to pay for a mail and telephonic accommodation address, too. "Friday, if we are here more than a day or two, I'm moving out of the Dunes. You noticed the room tariff, did you not? It's a nice place but they sell you the bed all over again each day. I can't afford it. Maybe you can butÄ"

            "I can't."

            So I established an address of sorts, and sent my brain a memo to tell Gloria Tomosawa. I paid a year's fee in advanceÄand discovered that it gave me an odd feeling of security. It was not even a little grass shack . . . but it was a base, an address, that would not wash away.

            Goldie did not sign up that afternoon but did not seem disappointed. She said to me, "No war going on now, that's all. But peace never lasts more than a month or two. Then they'll start hiring again and my name will be on file. Meanwhile I'll list with the city registry and work substitute jobs. One thing about the bedpan business, Friday; a nurse never starves. The current emergency shortage of nurses has been going on for more than a century and won't let up soon."

            The second recruiter she called onÄrepresentative of Royer's Rectifiers, Caesar's Column, and the Grim Reapers, all crack outfits, worldwide reputations-turned to me after Goldie had made her statement. "How about you? Are you an RN, too?"

            "No," I said, "I'm a combat courier."

            "Not much call for that. Today most outfits use express mail if a terminal won't serve."

            I found myself somewhat piquedÄBoss has warned me against that. "I'm elite," I replied. "I go anywhere. . . and what I carry gets there when the mail is shut down. Such as the late Emergency."

            "That's true," said Goldie. "She's not exaggerating."

            "There still isn't much call for your talents. Can you do anything else?"

            (I should not boast!) "What's your best weapon? I'll duel you with it, either contest rules, or blood. Phone your widow and we'll do it."

            "My, you're a sparky little slitch! You remind me of a fox terrier I once had. Look, dear, I can't play games with you; I have to keep this office open. Now tell me the truth and I'll put your name on file."

            "Sorry, chief. I shouldn't have sounded off. All right, I'm an elite courier. If I carry it, it gets there and my fees are high. Or my salary if I'm hired as a specialist staff officer. As for the rest, of course I have to be the best, bare-handed or with weapons, because what I carry must go through. You can list me as a DI if you wishÄbarehanded or any weapon. But I'm not interested in combat unless the pay is high. I prefer courier duty."

            He made notes. "All right. Don't get your hopes up. The hairy characters I work for aren't likely to use couriers other than battlefield couriersÄ"

            "I'm that, too. What I carry gets through."

            "Or you get killed." He grinned. "They're more likely to use a superdog. Look, sweetheart, a corporate has more need for your sort of messenger than does a military. Why don't you leave your name with each of the multinationals? All the big ones are represented here. And they've got more money. Lots more money."

            I thanked him and we left. At Goldie's urging I stopped in at the local branch post office and made printouts of my own brag sheet. I was going to ease off on the required salary, being sure that Boss had favored meÄbut Goldie wouldn't let me. "Raise it! This is your best chance. Outfits that need you will either pay without a quiver.

or will at least call you and try to dicker. But cut your price? Look, dear, nobody buys at a fire sale if they can afford the best."

            I dropped one at each multinational. I didn't really expect any nibbles but if anyone wanted the world's best courier, they could study my qualifications.

            When the offices started to close, we slid back to the hotel to keep our dinner date, and found both Anna and Burt just a leetle tipsy. Not drunk, just happy and a touch too deliberate in their movements.

            Burt struck a pose and declaimed, "Ladies! Look at me and admire! I am a great manÄ"

            "You're swacked."

            "That, too, Friday, m'love. But you see before you wup! the man who banked the broke at Monte Carlo. I'm a genius, a blinkin', true-blue, authentic, f'nanchal genius. You may touch me."

            I had been planning to touch him, later that night. Now I wondered. "Anna, did Burt break the bank?"

            "No, but he certainly bent it." She stopped to belch carefully, covering up. "Scuse me. We dropped a little here, then went over to the Flamingo to change our luck. Got there just before post time for the third at Santa Anita and Burt put a superbuck on the nose of a little mare with his mother's nameÄa long shot and she romped home. So here is a wheel right outside the track room and Burt put his winnings on double zeroÄ"

            "He was drunk," Goldie stated.

            "I am genius!"