Simple- Half the building was given over to a rejuvenation clinic, a therapy clinic, an infirmary; these could be reached from the foyer without entering the private part of the house.

The number of family rooms remaining was indefinite; most interior walls were movable. The Howard Clinic and the medical facilities would be moved to a nearby site when the colony needed larger facilities, when size of the Senior's family made more home space desirable.

(I was lucky in that, when I arrived, no client was being rejuvenated, no patient was in the infirmary-or most of the adults would have been busy.)

The size of his family seemed as hazy as the number of rooms. I had thought there were eight-three men, the Senior, Ira, and Galahad; three women, Ishtar, Hamadryad, and Minerva; two youngsters, Lorelei Lee and Lapis Lazuli-but I was not aware of two girl toddlers and a small boy. Besides that, I was neither the first nor the last to be urged to move in and stay as long as one wished. Whether such stay was as a guest or as a member of the Senior's family might also be unclear to an outsider.

Relationships inside his family also were vague. Colonists are always families; a single colonist is a contradiction in terms. But all of Tertius Colony were Howards, and we Howards have used every sort of marriage, I think, except lifetime monogamy.

But Tertius has no laws about marriage; the Senior had not thought them necessary. The few laws it has are in the migration contract, written by Ira and Lazarus jointly. It contains the usual covenants about homesteading, with the colony leader absolute arbitrator until such time as he resigns. But it says not one word about marriage and family relationships. The colonists register their babies; Howards always do-in this case with the Computer Athene as surrogate for the Archives. But I found when I reviewed these records that parentage of children was expressed in genetic classification code, not by marriages and putative ancestry. This system the Families' geneticists have been urging for generations (and I agree), but it does make a genealogist work harder, especially if marriages have not been registered at all, as was sometimes the case.

I found one couple with eleven children, six his, five hers, none theirs. I understood it when I read their codes-utterly incompatible. I met them later, a fine family on a prosperous farm and no suggestion that the swarm of children were anything hut "theirs."

But the Senior's family was even more vague. Genetic ancestry in each case was a matter of record, surely-but who was married to whom?

Their bathing room was as "decadent" as had been promised; it was a lounging room, as well as a refresher, and planned for family relaxation and entertaining. It stretched all along the ground floor on the side facing the foyer across the inner garden, and its walls could be pushed back to open it to the garden in clement weather-which this was and quite warm.

It had anything a jaundiced Sybarite could ask for: a fountain in its center matching a fountain in the garden and each with comfortably wide rims to sit on while soaking tired feet and enjoying a drink; a sauna in one corner; a huge happy shower at the other end with space for several cycles to be enjoyed at once without waiting turns; a companion querafansible with sophisticated controls; a long soaking pool knee-deep at the blue end to chin-deep at the red, and flanked by two bathing pools lavish for one person and comfortable for two or three; couches for napping, for cooling, for sweating, for intimate talk and touch; a cosmetics table with a big duomirror in which one could see her back as readily as her front simply by asking Athene's help; a corner big enough for a dozen people in which floor cushioning was bed-soft and lavish with pillows large and small, firm and soft; a refreshments counter which backed onto their kitchen-and if I failed to name something, it is my omission, not that of the designers. All the more commonplace items were of course at hand.

I had thought that the lighting was random until I realized that Athene was changing it endlessly so as not to shine it in anyone's eyes while changing the light level in all parts of that big room to match what was going on-high key for makeup, subdued light for lounging, and so on-and to match personalities too; our little redheads were crowned with light no matter how they bounced around-as they did.

Soft music was there and in the garden, or on request anywhere, selected by Athene unless someone asked for something-it seemed as if she had stored in her all the music that ever was written. Or she might harmonize with the twins while continuing to take part in three different conversations in other parts of the bath lounge. A self-aware computer of her capacity-great enough to manage Secundus-can and often must talk simultaneously at many places, but I had never encountered it before in such a way as to notice it. But big computers are not often members of a family.

The rest of the house was almost unautomated-a matter of taste as Athene's capacity was largely unused. My hostesses actually cooked, with Athene helping only by seeing to it that nothing burned and watching the timing in other ways- twice on Athene's advice Hamadryad left the bath lounge, once in such a hurry that she fled bare and dripping, not stopping to grab a towel robe.

Bathing with Lazi and Lori is indeed "squirmy but fun," plus squeals, giggles, chatter in which one sentence would be chopped several times before one of them put a period on it (I hypothesized that they were telepathic with each other and had an uneasy suspicion that they sometimes read thoughts of persons in their presence but was not anxious to find out) -all charmingly blunt and childishly innocent.

First they slathered me all over with scented liquid soap and demanded the same service from me and threatened me with chin quivering when I held back a little, and said loudly that "Uncle Cuddly" (my old friend Obadiah, now Galahad) washed them better than that and everybody knows how lazy he is-or didn't I like them well enough to soapy-cuddle them and if they married me, would I go along with them in their spaceship, and while they were still virgins, though not from lack of opportunity, don't worry about that one bit as both Mama Hamadryad and Mama Ishtar were coaching them in beginning and advanced sensuality and would speed up the course if I happened to want to marry them now-won't you, Mama Hamalambie?-tell him!

Hamadryad from a meter away (she was soaping Ira) assured us that she would, if they could persuade me to marry them that quickly. I assumed that the youngsters were farcing me and that their mother-one of their mothers-was going along with the jest. I've wondered since whether I missed a diamond opportunity. Lazarus was in hearing distance; he did not tell them to stop teasing me, he simply advised me not to offer them more than a ten-year contract as their span of attention was limited-which made them indignant-and advised them that, if they intended to get married that night, they had better trim their toenails first, which made them still more indignant so they stopped bathing me to assault him from both sides.

This wound up with one of them under each of his arms and still struggling. Lazarus asked if I would accept custody or should he drop them into the deep end of the soak?

I accepted custody, and we showered each other off and went into the soak pool together-and I was standing in it up to my shoulders with my back to the garden, and supporting them a little, an arm each, as their toes did not touch bottom, when someone placed hands over my eyes.

The twins squealed, "Aunt Tammy!" and levitated out of the water while I turned to look.

Tamara Sperling- I had thought she was on Secundus, in retirement up country. Tamara the Superb, the Superlative, the Unique-in my opinion (and many others) the greatest artist of her profession. I feel sure that I am not the only man who chose when she left New Rome to remain celibate for a long time.