«Okay, Mr. Berquist.»

Jill tried to be a road block. The man called Johnson brushed her aside and went toward the bedroom. Jill said shrilly, «Where's your warrant? This is an outrage!»

Berquist said soothingly, «Don't be difficult, sweetheart. Behave yourself and they might go easy on you.»

She kicked at his shin. He stepped back nimbly. «Naughty, naughty,» he chided. «Johnson! You find him?»

«He's here, Mr. Berquist. Naked as an oyster — three guesses what they were up to.»

«Never mind that. Bring him.»

Johnson reappeared, shoving Smith ahead, controlling him by twisting one arm. «He didn't want to come.»

«He'll come!»

Jill ducked past Berquist, threw herself at Johnson. He slapped her aside. «None of that, you little slut!»

Johnson did not hit Jill as hard as he used to hit his wife before she left him, not nearly as hard as he hit prisoners who were reluctant to talk. Until then Smith had shown no expression and had said nothing; he had simply let himself be forced along. He understood none of it and had tried to do nothing at all.

When he saw his water brother struck by this other, he twisted, got free — and reached toward Johnson —

-and Johnson was gone.

Only blades of grass, straightening up where his big feet had been, showed that he had ever been there. Jill stared at the spot and felt that she might faint.

Berquist closed his mouth, opened it, said hoarsely, «What did you do with him?» He looked at Jill.

«Me? I didn't do anything.»

«Don't give me that. You got a trap door or something?»

«Where did he go?»

Berquist licked his lips. «I don't know.» He took a gun from under his coat. «But don't try your tricks on me. You stay here — I'm taking him.»

Smith had relapsed into passive waiting. Not understanding what it was about, he had done only the minimum he had to do. But guns he had seen, in the hands of men on Mars, and the expression of Jill's face at having one aimed at her he did not like. He grokked that this was one of the critical cusps in the growth of a being wherein contemplation must bring forth right action in order to permit further growth. He acted.

The Old Ones had taught him well. He stepped toward Berquist; the gun swung to cover him. He reached out — and Berquist was no longer there.

Jill screamed.

Smith's face had been blank. Now it became tragically forlorn as he realized that he must have chosen wrong action at cusp. He looked imploringly at Jill and began to tremble. His eyes rolled up; he slowly collapsed, pulled himself into a ball and was motionless.

Jill's hysteria chopped off. A patient needed her; she had no time for emotion, no time to wonder how men disappeared. She dropped to her knees and examined Smith.

She could not detect respiration, nor pulse; she pressed an ear to his ribs. She thought that heart action had stopped but, after a long time, she heard a lazy lub-dub, followed in four or five seconds by another.

The condition reminded her of schizoid withdrawal, but she had never seen a trance so deep, not even in class demonstrations of hypnoanesthesia. She had heard of such deathlike states among East Indian fakirs but had never really believed the reports.

Ordinarily she would not have tried to rouse a patient in such a state but would have sent for a doctor. These were not ordinary circumstances. Far from shaking her resolve, the last events made her more determined not to let Smith fall back into the hands of the authorities. But ten minutes of trying everything she knew convinced her that she could not rouse him.

In Ben's bedroom she found a battered flight case, too big for hand luggage, too small to be a trunk. She opened it, found it packed with voicewriter, toilet kit, an outfit of clothing, everything a busy reporter might need if called out of town — even a licensed audio link to patch into phone service. Jill reflected that this packed bag showed that Ben's absence was not what Kilgallen thought it was but she wasted no time on it; she emptied the bag and dragged it into the living room.

Smith outweighed her, but muscles acquired handling patients twice her size enabled her to dump him into the big bag. She had to refold him to close it. His muscles resisted force but under gentle steady pressure could be repositioned like putty. She padded the corners with some of Ben's clothes. She tried to punch air holes but the bag was glass laminate. She decided that he could not suffocate with respiration so minimal and metabolic rate as low as it must be.

She could barely lift the packed bag, straining with both hands, and she could not carry it. But it was equipped with «Red Cap» casters. They cut ugly scars in Ben's grass rug before she got it to the parquet of the entrance way.

She did not go to the roof; another cab was the last thing she wanted. She went out by the service door in the basement. There was no one there but a young man checking a kitchen delivery. He moved aside and let her roll the bag out onto the pavement. «Hi, sister. What you got in the keister?»

«A body,» she snapped.

He shrugged. «Ask a jerky question, get a jerky answer. I should learn.»

Part Two

His Preposterous Heritage

IX

THE THIRD PLANET FROM SOL held 230,000 more humans this day than yesterday; among five billion terrestrials such increase was not noticeable. The Kingdom of South Africa, Federation associate, was again cited before the High Court for persecution of its white minority. The lords of fashion, gathered in Rio, decreed that hem lines would go down and navels would be covered. Federation defense stations swung in the sky, promising death to any who disturbed the planet's peace; commercial space stations disturbed the peace with endless clamor of endless trademarked trade goods. Half a million more mobile homes had set down on the shores of Hudson Bay than had migrated by the same date last year; the Chinese rice belt was declared an emergency malnutrition area by the Federation Assembly; Cynthia Duchess, known as the Richest Girl in the World, paid off her sixth husband.

The Reverend Doctor Daniel Digby, Supreme Bishop of the Church of the New Revelation (Fosterite) announced that he had nominated the Angel Azreel to guide Federation Senator Thomas Boone and that he expected Heavenly confirmation later today; news services carried it as straight news, the Fosterites having wrecked newspaper offices in the past. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Campbell VI had a son and heir by host-mother at Cincinnati Children's Hospital while the happy parents were vacationing in Peru. Dr. Horace Quackenbush, Professor of Leisure Arts at Yale Divinity School, called for a return to faith and cultivation of spiritual values; a betting scandal involved half the professionals of the West Point football squad; three bacterial warfare chemists were suspended at Toronto for emotional instability; they announced that they would carry their cases to the High Court. The High Court reversed the United States Supreme Court in re-primaries involving Federation Assemblymen in the case of Reinsberg vs. the State of Missouri.

His Excellency, the Most Honorable Joseph E. Douglas, Secretary General of the World Federation of Free States, picked at his breakfast and wondered why a man could not get a decent cup of coffee. His morning newspaper, prepared by the night shift of his information staff, moved past his eyes at his optimum reading speed in a feedback scanner. The words flowed as long as he looked in that direction. He was looking at it now, but simply to avoid the eyes of his boss across the table. Mrs. Douglas did not read newspapers; she had other ways of finding things out.