"I feel quite sure that I have no 'need to know.' "(A camouflaged side tunnel, Janet, and a lime pit-and I wonder what bodies are already in it? Janet looks as gentle as rosy-fingered dawn... and if anyone lives through these crazy years, she will be one of them. She is about as tender-minded as a Medici.)

"I think so, too. Anything more you want to see?"

"I don't think so, Jan. Especially as I am not likely ever to use

your wonderful hideaway. Go back now?"

"Before long." She closed the interval between us, placed her hands on my shoulders. "What did you whisper to me?"

"I think you heard it."

"Yes, I did." She pulled me to her.

The terminal at the table lighted. "Lunch is ready!"

Jan looked disgusted. "Spoilsport!"

XIII

Lunch was delicious. A cold table of pickles, cheeses, breads, preserves, nuts, radishes, scallions, celery, and such surrounded a pot-au-feu over a table flame. Nearby were chunks of crusty garlic bread dripping butter. Georges presided over the soup with the dignity of a maître d'hôtel, ladling it into large soup plates. As I sat down Ian tied a giant serviette around my neck. "Dig in and make a pig of yourself," he advised.

I tasted the soup. "I shall!" and added, "Janet, you must have been simmering this soup all day yesterday."

"Wrong!" Ian answered. "Georges' grand-mere left this soup to him in her will."

"That's an exaggeration," Georges objected. "My dear mother, may the good God comfort her, started this soup the year I was born. My older sister always expected to receive it, but she married beneath her-a British Canadian-so it was passed on to me. I have tried to maintain the tradition. Although I think the flavor and the bouquet were better when my mother was tending it."

"I don't understand such things," I answered. "All I know is that this soup was never near a tin."

"I started it last week," Janet said. "But Georges took it over and nursed it along. He does understand soups better than I do."

"All I understand about soup is eating it and I hope there is a dividend in that pot."

"We can always," Georges assured me, "toss in another mouse."

"Anything in the news?" Janet asked.

"What happened to your rule about 'not at meals'?"

"Ian my true love, you should know if anyone does that my rules apply to other people, not to me. Answer me."

"In general, no change. No more assassinations reported. If any more claimants to the growing swarm of self-confessed wreckers have appeared, our paternalistic government chooses not to let us know. God damn it, I hate this 'Papa knows best' attitude. Papa does not know best or we would not be in the mess we are in. All that we really know is that the government is using censorship. Which means that we know nothing. Makes me want to shoot somebody."

"I think there has been enough of that. Or do you want to sign up with the Angels of the Lord?"

"Smile when you say that. Or would you like a fat lip?"

"Remember the last time you undertook to chastise me."

"That's why I said 'lip.'

"Sweetheart, I prescribe three stiff drinks or one Miltown for you. I'm sorry you are upset. I don't like it either, but I don't see anything to do but sweat it out."

"Jan, sometimes you are almost offensively sensible. The thing that has me really clawing the counterpane is the great big hole in the news... and no explanation."

"Yes?"

"The multinationals. All the news has been about territorial states, not one word about the corporate states. Yet anyone who can count above ten with his shoes on knows where the power is today. Don't these bloodthirsty jokers know that?"

Georges said gently, "My old, it is perhaps exactly for that reason that corporations have not been named as targets."

"Yes, but-" Ian shut up.

I said, "Ian, the day we met, you pointed out that there really isn't any way to hit a corporate state. You spoke of IBM and Russia."

"That wasn't quite what I said, Marj. I said that military force was useless against a multinational. Ordinarily, when they war among themselves, the giants use money and proxies and other maneuver-

ings that involve lawyers and bankers rather than violence. Oh, they sometimes do fight with hired armies but they don't admit it and it's not their usual style. But these current jokers are using exactly the weapons with which a multinational can be hit and be hurt: assassination and sabotage. This is so evident that it worries me that we don't hear of it. Makes me wonder what is happening that they are not putting on the air."

I swallowed a big chunk of French bread that I had soaked in that heavenly soup, then said, "Ian, is it within possibility that some one-or more-of the multinationals is running this whole show through dummies?"

Ian sat up so suddenly that he jiggled his soup and spotted his bib. "Marj, you amaze me. I picked you out of the crowd originally for reasons having nothing to do with your brain-"

"I know."

"-but you persist in having a brain. You spotted at once what was wrong with the company's notion of contracting for artificial pilots-I'm going to use your arguments in Vancouver. Now you've taken this crazy news picture... and stuck the one piece in the puzzle that makes it make sense."

"I'm not sure that it does make sense," I answered. "But, according to the news, there were assassinations and sabotage all over the planet and on Luna and as far away as Ceres. That takes hundreds of people, more likely thousands. Both assassination and sabotage are specialist jobs; they call for training. Amateurs, even if they could be recruited, would botch the job seven times out often. All this means money. Lots of money. Not just a crackpot political organization, or a crazy religious cult. Who has the money for a worldwide, a systemwide, demonstration like that? I don't know-I just tossed out a possibility."

"I think you've solved it. All but 'who.' Marj, what do you do when you are not with your family in South Island?"

"I don't have a family in South Island, Ian. My husbands and my group sisters have divorced me."

(I was as shocked as he was.)

There was silence all around. Then Ian gulped and said quietly, "I'm very sorry, Marjorie."

"No need to be, Ian. A mistake was corrected; it's over and done with. I won't be going back to New Zealand. But I would like to go to Sydney someday to visit Betty and Freddie."

"I'm sure they would like that."

"I know that I would. And both of them invited me. Ian, what does Freddie teach? We never got around to that."

Georges answered, "Federico is a colleague of mine, dear Marjorie... a happy fact that led to my being here."

"True," Janet agreed. "Chubbie and Georges spliced genes together at McGill, and through that partnership Georges met Betty, and Betty tossed him in my direction and I scooped him up."

"So Georges and I worked out a deal," Ian agreed, "as neither of us could manage Jan alone. Right, Georges?"

"You have reason, my brother. If indeed the two of us can manage Janet."

"I have trouble managing you two," Jan commented. "I had better sign up Marj to help me. Marj?"

I did not take this quasi-offer seriously because I felt sure that it wasn't meant seriously. Everyone was making chitchat to cover the shocker I had dropped into their laps. We all knew that. But did anyone but me notice that my job was no longer a subject? I knew what had happened-but why did that deep-down layer of my brain decide to table the subject so emphatically? I would never tell Boss's secrets!

Suddenly I was urgently anxious to check with Boss. Was he involved in these odd events? If so, on which side?