certainly without regard for his safety.
Bill flew his craft carefully through the city traffic, working
his way between the widely spaced towers with the uncertain
hand of one to whom machines are not, an extension of the
body. He put the helicopter down at the landing station
with some difficulty.
Clara would not be expecting him so early. From his apart-
ment, as soon as he had changed make-up, he visiophoned
her. It was strange bow long and how carefully they needed to
look at each other and how few words they could say.
Afterwards, he seemed calmer and went about getting
ready with more efficiency. But when he found himself ad-
dressing the package of Conrad's clothes to his home, he
chuckled bitterly.
It was when he went back to drop the package in the mail
chute that he noticed the storage-room door ajar. He disposed
of the package and went over to the door. Then he stood still,
listening. He had to stop. his own breathing to hear clearly.
Bill tightened himself and opened the door. He flipped
on the light and saw Mary. The child sat on the floor in the
comer with her knees drawn up against her chest. Between
the knees and the chest, the frail wrists were crossed, the
hands closed limply likelike those of a foetus. The fore-
head rested on the knees so that, should the closed eyes stay
open, they would be looking at the placid hands.
The sickening sight of the child squeezed down on his
heart till the colour drained from his face. He went forward
and knelt before her. His dry throat hammered with the
words, what have I done to you, but he could not speak.
The question of how long she might have been here, he
could not bear to think.
He put out his hand, but he did not touch her. A shudder
of revulsion shook him and he scrambled to his feet. He hur-
ried back into the apartment with only one thought. He must
get someone to help her. Only the Medicorps could take care
of a situation like this.
As he stood at the visiophone, he knew that this involuntary
act of panic had betrayed all that he had ever thought
and done. He had to call the Medicorps. He could not face
the result of his own behaviour without them. Like a ghostly
after-image, he saw Clara's face on the screen. She was lost,
cut off, with only himself to depend on.
A part of him, a place where there were no voices and a
great tragedy, had been abruptly shut off. He stood stupidly
confused and disturbed about something he couldn't recall.
The emotion in his body suddenly had no referent. He stood
like a badly frightened animal while his heart slowed and
blood seeped again into whitened parenchymas, while tides
of epinephrine burned lower.
Remembering he must hurry, Bill left the apartment. It
was an apartment with its storage-room door closed, an apart-
ment without a storage-room.
From the moment that he walked in and took Clara in his
arms, he was not worried about being caught. He felt only
the great need for her. There seemed only one difference from
the first time and it was a good difference, because now
Clara was so tense and apprehensive. He felt a new tender-
ness for her, as one might feel for a child. It seemed to him
that there was no end to the well of gentleness and compas-
sion that was suddenly in him. He was mystified by the depth
of his feeling. He kissed her again and again and petted her
as one might a disturbed child.
Clara said, "Oh Bill, we're doing wrong! Mary was here
yesterday!"
Whoever she meant, it had no meaning for him. He said,
"It's all right. You mustn't worry."
"She needs you, Bill, and I take you away from her."
Whatever it was she was talking about was utterly unim-
portant beside the fact that she was not happy herself. He
soothed her. "Darling you mustn't worry about it. Let's be
happy the way we used to be."
He led her to a couch and they sat together, her head
resting on his shoulder.
"Conrad is worried about me. He knows something is
wrong. Oh, Bill, if he knew, he'd demand the worst penalty
for you."
Bill felt the stone of fear come back in his chest. He
thought, too, of Helen, of how intense her shame would be.
Medicorps action would be machine-like, logical as a set
of equation; they were very likely to take more drastic steps
where the complaints would be so strong and no request for
leniency forthcoming. Conrad knew now, of course. Bill had
felt his hate.
It was nearing the end. Death would come to Bill with elec-
tronic fingers. A ghostly probing in his mind and suddenly. . .
Clara's great unhappiness and the way she turned her head
into his shoulder to cry forced him to calm the rising
panic in himself, and again to caress the fear from her.
Even later, when they lay where the moonlight thrust into
the room an impalpable shaft of alabaster, he loved her only
as a succour. Carefully, slowly, smoothing out her mind,
drawing it away from all the other things, drawing it down
into this one thing. Gathering all her mind into her senses and
holding it there. Then quickly taking it away from her in a
moaning spasm so that now she was murmuring, murmuring,
palely drifting. Sleeping like a loved child.
For a long, long time he watched the white moon cut
its arc across their window. He listened with a deep pleasure to
her evenly breathing sleep. But slowly he realized that her
breath had changed, that the body so close to his was tens-
ing. His heart gave a great bound and tiny moths of horror
fluttered along his back. He raised himself and saw that
the eyes were open in the silver light. Even through the make-
up he saw that they were Helen's eyes.
H did the only thing left for him. He shifted. But in
that terrible instant he understood something he had not antic-
ipated. In Helen's eyes there was not only intense shame
over shifting into her hypoalter's home; there was not only
the disgust with himself for breaking communication codes.
He saw that, as a woman of the 20th Century might have
felt, Helen hated Clara as a sexual rival. She hated Clara
doubly because he had turned not to some other woman,
but to the other part of herself whom she could never know.
As she shifted, Bill knew that the next light he saw would
be on the adamant face of the Medicorps.
Major Paul Grey, with two other Medicorps officers, en-
tered the Walden apartment about two hours after Bill left it
to meet Clara. Major Grey was angry with himself. Important
information on a case of communication breaks and drug
refusal could be learned by letting it run its course under ob-
servation. But he had not intended Conrad Manz's life to
be endangered, and certainly he would not have taken the
slightest chance on what they found in the Walden apart-
; ment if he had expected it this early.
Major Grey blamed himself for what had happened to Mary
Walden. He should have had the machines watching Susan
and Mary at the same time that they were relaying wrist-
band data for Bill and Conrad and for Helen and Clara to
his office.
He had not done this because it was Susan's shift and he
had not expected Mary to break it. Now he knew that Helen
and Bill Walden had been quarrelling over the fact that
Clara was cheating on Helen's shifts, and their conversations
had directed the unhappy child's attention to the Manz cou-
ple. She had broken shift to meet them. . . looking for a loving
father, of course.
Stillthings would not have turned out so badly if Cap-
tain Thiel, Mary's school officer, had not attributed Susan
Shorrs' disappearance only to poor drug acclimatization. Cap-
tain Thiel had naturally known that Major Grey was in
town to prosecute Bill Walden, because the major had called
on him to discuss the case. Yet it had not occurred to
him, until eighteen hours after Susan's disappearance, that
Mary might have forced the shift for some reason associated
with her aberrant father.
By the time the captain advised him, Major Grey already
knew that Bill had forced the shift on Conrad under desperate
circumstances and he had decided to close in. He fully ex-
pected to find the father and daughter at the apartment, and
now... it sickened him to see the child's demented condi-
tion and realize that Bill had left her there.
Major Grey could see at a glance that Mary Walden would
not be accessible for days even with the best treatment. He
left it to the other two officers to hospitalize the child and set
out for the Manz apartment.
He used his master wristband to open the door there, and
found a woman standing in the middle of the room, wrapped
in a sheet. He knew that this must be Helen Walden. It was
odd how ill-fitting Clara Manz's softly sensual make-up
seemed, even to a stranger, on the more rigidly composed
face before him. He guessed that Helen would wear colour
higher on her cheeks and the mouth would be done in se-
vere lines. Certainly the present haughty face struggled with
its incongruous make-up as well as the indignity of her dress.
She pulled the sheet tighter about her and said icily, "I will
not wear that woman's clothes."
Major Grey introduced himself and asked, "Where is Bill
Walden?"
"He shifted! He left me with... Oh, I'm so ashamed!"
Major Grey shared her loathing. There was no way to es-
cape the conditioning of childhoodsex relations between
hyperalter and hypoalter were more than outlawed, they were
in themselves disgusting. If they were allowed, they could
destroy this civilization. Those idealiststhey were almost all
hypoalters, of coursewho wanted the old terminology
changed didn't take that into account. Next thing they'd want
children to live with their actual parents!
Major Grey stepped into the bedroom. Through the bath-
room door beyond, he could see Conrad Manz changing his
make-up.
Conrad turned and eyed him bluntly. "Would you mind
staying out of here till I'm finished? I've had about all I
can take."
Major Grey shut the door and returned to Helen Walden.
He took a hypothalamic block from his own pharmacase and
handed it to her. "Here, you're probably on very low drug
levels. You'd better take this." He poured her a glass of pop
from a decanter and, while they waited for Conrad, he dialled
the nearest shifting station on the visiophone and ordered up
an emergency shifting costume for her.
When at last they were both dressed, made up to their satis-
faction and drugged to his satisfaction, he had them sit on a
couch together across from him. They sat at opposite ends
of it, stiff with resentment at each other's presence.
Major Grey said calmly, "You realize that this matter is
coming to a Medicorps trial. It will be serious."
Major Grey watched their faces. On hers he saw grim
determination. On Conrad's face he saw the heavy movement
of alarm. The man loved his wife. That was going to help.
"It is necessary in a case such as this for the Medicorps to
weigh your decisions along with the scientific evidence we will
accumulate. Unfortunately, the number of laymen directly
involved in this caseand not on trialis only two, due to
your peculiar marriage. If the hypoalters, Clara and Conrad,
were married to other partners, we might call on as many
as six involved persons and obtain a more equitable lay judg-
ment. As it stands, the entire responsibility rests on the two
of you."
Helen Walden was primly confident. "I don't see how we
can fail to treat the matter with perfect logic. After all, it is
not we who neglect our drug levels. . . They were refusing to
take their drugs, weren't they?" she asked, hoping for the
worst and certain she was right.
"Yes, this is drug refusal." Major Grey paused while she
relished the answer. "But I must correct you in one impres-
sion. Your proper drug levels do not assure that you will
act logically in this matter. The drugged mind is logical.
However, its fundamental datum is that the drugs and
drugged minds must be protected before everything else." He
watched Conrad's face while he added, "Because of this, it
death is the required solution." He paused, looking at their
white lips. Then he said, "Actually, other, more suitable solu-
tions may be possible."
"But they were refusing their drugs," she said. "You talk
as if you are defending them. Aren't you a Medicorps prose-
cutor?"
"I do not prosecute people in the ancient 20th Century
sense, Mrs. Walden. I prosecute the acts of drug refusal and
communication breaks. There is quite a difference."
"Well!" she said almost explosively. "I always knew Bill
would get into trouble sooner or later with his wild, antisocial
ideas. I never dreamed the Medicorps would take his side."
Major Grey held his breath, almost certain now that she
would walk into the trap. If she did, he could save Clara
Manz before the trial.
"After all, they have broken every communication code.
They have refused the drugs, a defiance aimed at our very
lives. They"
"Shut up!" It was the first time Conrad Manz had spoken
since he sat down. "The Medicorps spent weeks gathering
evidence and preparing their recommendations. You haven't
seen any of that and you've already made up your mind. How
logical is that? It sounds as if you want your husband dead.
Maybe the poor devil had some reason, after all, for what he
did." On the man's face there was the nearest approach to
bate that the drugs would allow.
Major Grey let his breath out softly.
They were split per-
manently. She would have to trade him a mild decision on
Clara in order to save Bill. And even there, if the subsequent
evidence gave any slight hope. Major Grey believed now that
he could work on Conrad to hang the lay judgment and let
the Medicorps' scientific recommendation go through unmodi-
fied.
He let them stew in their cross-purposed silence for a while
and then nailed home a disconcerting fact.
"I think I should remind you that there are a few ad-
vantages to having your alter extinguished in the mnemonic
eraser. A man whose hyperalter has been extinguished must
report on his regular shift days to a hospital and be placed
for five days in suspended animation. This is not very healthy
for the body, but necessary. Otherwise, everyone's natural dis-
taste for his own alter and the understandable wish to spend
twice as much time living would generate schemes to have
one's alter sucked out by the eraser. That happened exten-
sively back in the 21st Century before the five-day suspension.
was required. It was also used as a 'cure' for schizophrenia,
but it was, of course, only the brutal murder of innocent
personalities."
Major Grey smiled grimly to himself. "Now I will have to
'ask you both to accompany me to the hospital. I will want
you, Mrs. Walden, to shift at once to Mrs. Manz. Mr.
Manz, you will have to remain under the close observation of
an officer until Bill Walden tries to shift back. We have to
catch him with an injection to keep him in shift."
The young medicop put the syringe aside and laid his
hand on Bill Walden's forehead. He pushed the hair back
out of Bill's eyes.
"There, Mr. Walden, you don't have to struggle now."
Bill let his breath out in a long sigh. "You've caught me.
I can't shift any more, can I?"
"That's right, Mr. Walden. Not unless we want you to."
The young man picked up his medical equipment and stepped
aside.
Bill noticed then the Medicorps officer standing in the
background. The man was watching as though he contem-
plated some melancholy distance. "I am Major Grey, Bill. I'm
handling your case."
Bill did not answer. He lay staring at the hospital ceiling.
Then he felt his mouth open in a slow grin.
"What's funny?" Major Grey asked mildly.
"Leaving my hypoalter with my wife," Bill answered can-