lighted by piles of cadavers writhing in gasoline flames. The
Medicorps was everywhere. Those who stumbled, those who
coughed, the delirious and their helping partners . . . these
were taken to the side of the road, shot and burned. And
there was bombing again to the south.
Bill stopped in the middle of the road and looked back.
Clara clung to him.
"There is a plague here we haven't any drug for," he said,
and realized he was crying. "We are all mad."
Clara was crying too. "Darling, what have you done?
Where are the drugs?"
The water of the Hudson hung as it had in the late after-
noon, ice crystals in the stratosphere. The high, high sheet
flashed and glowed in the new bombing to the south, where
multicoloured pillars of flame boiled into the sky. But the muf-
fled crash of the distant bombing was suddenly the steady
click of the urgent signal on a bedside visiophone, and Bill
was abruptly awake.
Clara was throwing on her robe and moving towards the
machine on terror-rigid limbs. With a scrambling motion, Bill
got out of the possible view of the machine and crouched at
the end of the room.
Distinctly, he could hear the machine say, "Clara Manz?"
"Yes," Clara's voice was a thin treble that could have been
a shriek had it continued.
"This is Medicorps Headquarters. A routine check discloses
you have delayed your shift two hours. To maintain the sta-
tistical record of deviations, please give us a full explanation."
"I . . ." Clara had to swallow before she could talk. "I must
have taken too much sleeping compound."
"Mrs. Manz, our records indicate that you have been de-
laying your shift consistently for several periods now. We
" made a check of this as a routine follow up on any such
deviation, but the discovery is quite serious." There was a
harsh silence, a silence that demanded a logical answer. But
how could there be a logical answer.
"My hyperalter hasn't complained and Iwell, I have just
let a bad habit develop. I'll see that itdoesn't happen again."
The machine voiced several platitudes about the respon-
sibilities of one personality to another and the duty of all to
society before Clara was able to shut it off.
Both of them sat as they were for a long, long time while
the tide of terror subsided. When at last they looked at each
other across the dim and silent room, both of them knew
there could be at least one more lime together before
they were caught.
Five days later, on the last day of her shift, Mary Walden
wrote the address of her appointed father's hypoalter, Conrad
Manz, with an indelible pencil on the skin just below her
armpit.
During the morning, her father and mother had spoiled
the family rest day by quarrelling. It was about Helen's hypo-
alter delaying so many shifts. Bill did not think it very
important, but her mother was angry and threatened to com-
plain to the Medicorps.
The lunch was eaten in silence, except that at one point
Bill said, "It seems to me Conrad and Clara Manz are guilty
of a peculiar marriage, not us. Yet they seem perfectly hap-
py with it and you're the one who is made unhappy. The
woman has probably just developed a habit of taking too
much sleeping compound for her rest-day naps. Why don't
you drop her a note?"
Helen made only one remark. It was said through her teeth
and very softly. "Bill, I would just as soon the child did not
realize her relationship to this sordid situation."
Mary cringed over the way Helen disregarded her hearing,
the possibility that she might be capable of understanding, or
her feelings about being shut out of their mutual world.
After lunch Mary cleared the table, throwing the remains
of the meal and the plastiplates into the flash trash disposer.
Her father had retreated to the library room and Helen was
getting ready to attend a Citizens' Meeting. Mary heard her
mother enter the room to say good-bye while she was wiping
the dining table. She knew that Helen was standing well-
dressed and a little impatient, just behind her, but she pre-
tended she did not know.
"Darling, I'm leaving now for the Citizens' Meeting."
"Oh. . . yes."
"Be a good girl and don't be late for your shift. You only
have an hour now." Helen's patrician face smiled.
"I won't be late."
"Don't pay any attention to the things Bill and I discussed
this morning, will you?"
"No."
And she was gone. She did not say good-bye to Bill.
Mary was very conscious of her father in the house. He
continued to sit in the library. She walked by the door and she
could see him sitting in a chair, staring at the floor. Mary
stood in the sun room for a long while. If he had risen from
the chair, if he had rustled a page, if he had sighed, she
would have heard him.
It grew closer and closer to the time she would have to
leave if Susan Shorrs was to catch the first school hours of
her shift. Why did children have to shift half a day before
adults?
Finally, Mary thought of something to say. She could let
him know she was old enough to understand what the quarrel
had been about if only it were explained, to her.
Mary went into the library and hesitantly sat on the edge
of a couch near him. He did not look at her and his face
seemed grey in the midday light. Then she knew that he was
lonely, too. But a great feeling of tenderness for him went
through her.
"Sometimes I think you and Clara Manz must be the only
people in the world," she said abruptly, "who aren't so silly
about shifting right on the dot. Why, I don't care if Susan
Shorrs is an hour late for classes!"
Those first moments when he seized her in his arms, it
seemed her heart would shake loose. It was as though she had
uttered some magic formula, one that had abruptly opened
the doors to his love. It was only after he had explained to
her why he was always late on the first day of the family
shift that she knew something was wrong. He did tell her,
over and over, that he knew she was unhappy and that it was
his fault. But he was at the same time soothing her, petting
her, as if he was afraid of her.
He talked on and on. Gradually, Mary understood in his
trembling body, in his perspiring palms, in his pleading eyes,
that he was afraid of dying, that he was afraid she would
kill him with the merest thing she said, with her very pres-
ence.
This was not painful to Mary, because, suddenly, something
came with ponderous enormity to stand before her: / would
just as soon the child did not realize her relationship to this
sordid situation.
Her relationship. It was some kind of relationship to Conrad
and Clara Manz, because those were the people they had
been talking about.
The moment her father left the apartment, she went to
his desk and took out the file of family records. After she
found the address of Conrad Manz, the idea occurred to her
to write it on her body. Mary was certain that Susan Shorrs