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