"Certainly. What do you want?"

"Some of everything and fried potatoes on the side. Anna hon, you know meÄif it's not dead, I'll kill it and eat it raw, bones and all.

"And the same for me," agreed Burt.

"Noisy neighbors." Goldie was standing in the doorway, yawning. "Chatterboxes. Go back to bed." I looked at her and realized two things: I had never really looked at her before, even at the beach. And, second, if Anna was annoyed with me for sleeping with Burt, she didn't have any excuse for such feelings; Goldie looked almost indecently satiated.

"It means `harbor island,' " Goldie was saying, "and it really ought to have a hyphen in it because nobody can ever spell it or pronounce it. So I just go as GoldieÄeasy to do in the Master's outfit where last names were always discouraged. But it's not as hard a name as Mrs. Tomosawa'sÄafter I mispronounced hers about the fourth time, she asked me to call her Gloria."

We were finishing off a big breakfast and both of my chums had

talked to Gloria and the will had been read and both of them (and Burt, too, to my surprise and his) were now a bit richer and we were all getting ready to leave for Las Vegas, three of us to shop for jobs, Anna simply to stay with us and visit until we shipped out, or whatever.

Anna was then going to Alabama. "Maybe I'll get tired of loafing. But I promised my daughter that I would retire and this is the right time. I'll get reacquainted with my grandchildren before they get too big."

Anna a grandmother? Does anyone ever know anyone else?

xxv

Las Vegas is a three-ring circus with a hangover.

I enjoy the place for a while. But after I've seen all the shows I reach a point where the lights and the music and the noise and the frenetic activity are too much. Four days is a-plenty.

We reached Vegas about ten, after a late start because each of us had business to doÄeverybody but me with arrangements to make for the collection of moneys from Boss's will and me to deposit my closing draft with MasterCard. That is, I started to. I stopped abruptly when Mr. Chambers said, "Do you want to execute an order to us to pay your income tax on this?"

Income tax? What a filthy suggestion! I could not believe my ears. "What was that, Mr. Chambers?"

"Your Confederacy income tax. If you ask us to handle itÄhere's the formÄour experts prepare it and we pay it and deduct it from your account and you aren't bothered. We charge only a nominal fee. Otherwise you have to calculate it yourself and make out all the forms and then stand in line to pay it."

"You didn't say anything about any such tax when I made the deposit the day I opened this account."

"But that was a national lottery prize! That's yours, utterly freeÄ that's the Democratic Way! Besides, the government gets its cut off the top in running the lottery."

"I see. How much cut does the government take?"

"Really, Miss Baldwin, that question should be addressed to the

government, not to me. If you'll just sign at the bottom, I'll fill in the rest."

"In a moment. How much is this `nominal fee'? And how much is the tax?"

I left without depositing my draft and again poor Mr. Chambers was vexed with me. Even though bruins are so inflated that you have to line up quite a few of them to buy a Big Mac, I do not consider a thousand bruins "nominal"Äit's more than a gram of gold, $37 BritCan. With their 8 percent surcharge on top, MasterCard would be getting a fat fee for acting as stooge for the Confederacy's Eternal Revenue Service.

I wasn't sure that I owed income tax even under California's weird lawsÄmost of that money had not been earned in California and I couldn't see what claim California had on my salary anyway. I wanted to consult a good shyster.

I went back to Cabana Hyatt. Goldie and Anna were still out but Burt was there. I told him about it, knowing that he had been in logistics and accounting.

"It's a moot point," he said. "Personal-service contracts with the Chairman were all written `free of tax' and in the Imperium the bribe was negotiated each year. Here an umbrella bribe should have been paid through Mr. EspositoÄthat is to say, through Ms. Wainwright. You can ask her."

"In a pig's eye!"

"Precisely. She should have notified Eternal Revenue and paid any taxes dueÄafter negotiation, if you understand me. But she may be skimming; I don't know. HoweverÄ You do have a spare passport, do you not?"

"Oh, certainly! Always."

"Then use it. That's what I'll be doing. Then I'll transfer my money after I know where I'll be. Meanwhile I'll leave it safe on the Moon."

"Uh, Burt, I'm pretty sure Wainwright has every spare passport listed. You seem to be saying that they'll be checking us at exit?"

"What if Wainwright has listed them? She won't turn over the list to the Confederates without arranging her cut, and I doubt that she's had time to dicker it. So pay only the regular squeeze and stick your nose in the air and walk on through the barrier."

This I understood. I had been so indignant at that filthy notion that for a moment I had ceased to think like a courier.

We crossed the border into Vegas Free State at Dry Lake; the capsule stopped just long enough for Confederacy exit stamps. Each of us used an alternate passport with the standard squeeze folded insideÄno trouble. And no entrance stamp as the Free State doesn't bother with CHI; they welcome any solvent visitor.

Ten minutes later we checked into the Dunes, with much the same accommodations we had had in San Jose save that this was described as an "orgy suite." I could not see why. A mirror on the ceiling and aspirin and Alka-Seltzer in the bath are not enough to justify that designation; my doxyology instructor would have laughed in scorn. However I suppose that most of the marks would not have had the advantages of advanced instructionÄI've been told that most people don't have any formal training. I've often wondered who teaches them. Their parents? Is that rigid incest taboo among human persons actually a taboo against talking about it but not against doing it?

Someday I hope to find out such things but I've never known anybody I could ask. Maybe Janet will tell me. Someday .

We arranged to meet for dinner, then Burt and Anna went to the lounge and/or casino while Goldie and I went out to the Industrial Park. Burt intended to job-hunt but expressed an intention of raising a little hell before settling down. Anna said nothing but I think she wanted to savor the fleshpots before taking up the life of a grandmother-in-residence. Only Goldie was dead-serious about jobhunting that day. I intended to find a job, yesÄbut I had some thinking to do first.

I was probablyÄalmost certainlyÄgoing to out-migrate. Boss thought I should and that was reason enough. But besides that, the study he had started me on concerning the symptoms of decay in cultures had focused my mind on things I had long known but never analyzed. I've never been critical of the cultures I've lived in or traveled throughÄplease understand that an artificial person is a permanent stranger wherever she is, no matter how long she stays. No country could ever be mine so why think about it?

But when I did study it, I saw that this old planet is in sorry shape. New Zealand is a pretty good place and so is British Canada, but

a)On a mission I had spent whatever it took.even those two countries showed major signs of decay. Yet those two are the best of the lot.

But let's not rush things. Changing planets is something a person doesn't do twiceÄunless she is fabulously wealthy, and I was not. I was subsidized for one out-migration... so I had better by a durn sight pick the right planet because no mistakes were going to be corrected after I left the window.