'No I haven't,' Karl said.
All the drawings had the A with the circle around it in the corner. 'What's that for?' Chip asked.
'Artists used to sign their pictures. To show whose work it was.'
'I know,' Chip said, 'but why an A?'
'Oh,' Karl said, and turned the pages back one by one. 'It stands for Ashi,' he said. 'That's what my sister calls me.'
He came to the horse, added a line of charcoal to its stomach, and looked at the horses in the compound with his look of concentration, which now had an object and a reason.
'I have an extra name too,' Chip said. 'Chip. My grandfather gave it to me.'
'Chip?'
'It means 'chip off the old block.' I'm supposed to be like my grandfather's grandfather.' Chip watched Karl sharpen the lines of the horse's rear legs, and then moved from his side. 'I'd better get back to the group I'm with,' he said. 'Those are top speed. It's a shame you weren't classified an artist.'
Karl looked at him. 'I wasn't, though,' he said, 'so I only draw on Sundays and holidays and during the free hour. I never let it interfere with my work or whatever else I'm supposed to be doing.'
'Right,' Chip said. 'See you at the dorm.'
That evening, after TV, Chip came back to his cubicle and found on his desk the drawing of the horse. Karl, in his cubicle, said, 'Do you want it?'
'Yes,' Chip said. 'Thanks. It's greatl' The drawing had even more vitality and power than before. An A-in-a- circle was in a corner of it.
Chip tabbed the drawing to the bulletin board behind the desk, and as he finished, Yin DW came in, bringing back a copy of Universe she had borrowed. 'Where'd you get that?' she asked.
'Karl WL did it,' Chip said.
'That's very nice, Karl,' Yin said. 'You draw well.'
Karl, getting into pajamas, said, 'Thanks. I'm glad you like it.'
To Chip, Yin whispered, 'It's all out of proportion. Keep it there, though. It was kind of you to put it up.'
Once in a while, during the free hour, Chip and Karl went to the Pre-U together. Karl made sketches of the mastodon and the bison, the cavemen in their animal hides, the soldiers and sailors in their countless different uniforms. Chip wandered among the early automobiles and dictypes, the safes and handcuffs and TV 'sets.' He studied the models and pictures of the old buildings: the spired and buttressed churches, the turreted castles, the large and small houses with their windows and lock-fitted doors. Windows, he thought, must have had their good points. It would be pleasant, would make one feel bigger, to look out at the world from one's room or working place; and at night, from outside, a house with rows of lighted windows must have been attractive, even beautiful.
One afternoon Karl came into Chip's cubicle and stood beside the desk with his hands fisted at his sides. Chip, looking up at him, thought he had been stricken by a fever or worse; his face was flushed and his eyes were narrowed in a strange stare. But no, it was anger that held him, anger such as Chip had never seen before, anger so intense that, trying to speak, Karl seemed unable to work his lips.
Anxiously Chip said, 'What is it?'
'Li,' Karl said. 'Listen. Will you do me a favor?'
'Sure! Of course!'
Karl leaned close to him and whispered, 'Claim a pad for me, will you? I just claimed one and was denied. Five fighting hundred of them, a pile this high, and I had to turn it back in!'
Chip stared at him.
'Claim one, will you?' Karl said. 'Anyone can try a little sketching in his spare time, right? Go on down, okay?'
Painfully Chip said, 'Karl-'
Karl looked at him, his anger retreated, and he stood up straight. 'No,' he said. 'No, I—I just lost my temper, that's all.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, brother. Forget it.' He clapped Chip's shoulder. 'I'm okay now,' he said. 'I'll claim again in a week or so. Been doing too much drawing anyway, I suppose. Uni knows best.' He went off down the aisle toward the bathroom.
Chip turned back to the desk and leaned on his elbows and held his head, shaking.
That was Tuesday. Chip's weekly adviser meetings were on Woodsday mornings at 10:40, and this time he would tell Li YB about Karl's sickness. There was no longer any question of being an alarmist; there was faulted responsibility, in fact, in having waited as long as he had. He ought to have said something at the first clear sign, Karl's slipping out of TV (to draw, of course), or even when he had noticed the unusual look in Karl's eyes. Why in hate had he waited? He could hear Li YB gently reproaching him: 'You haven't been a very good brother's keeper, Li.' Early on Woodsday morning, though, he decided to pick up some coveralls and the new Geneticist. He went down to the supply center and walked through the aisles. He took a Geneticist and a pack of coveralls and walked some more and came to the art-supplies section. He saw the pile of green-covered sketch pads; there weren't five hundred of them, but there were seventy or eighty and no one seemed in a rush to claim them.
He walked away, thinking that he must be going out of his mind. Yet if Karl were to promise not to draw when he wasn't supposed to...
He walked back again—'Anyone can try a little sketching in his spare time, right?'—and took a pad and a packet of charcoal. He went to the shortest check-out line, his heart pounding in his chest, his arms trembling. He drew a deep-as-possible breath; another, and another.
He put his bracelet to the scanner, and the stickers of the coveralls, the Geneticist, the pad, and the charcoal. Everything was yes. He gave way to the next member.
He went back up to the dorm. Karl's cubicle was empty, the bed unmade. He went into his own cubicle and put the coveralls on the shelf and the Geneticist on the desk. On the top page of the pad he wrote, his hand still trembling, Free time only. I want your promise. Then he put the pad and the charcoal on his bed and sat at the desk and looked at the Geneticist.
Karl came, and went into his cubicle and began making his bed. 'Are those yours?' Chip asked Karl looked at the pad and charcoal on Chip's bed. Chip said, 'They're not mine.'
'Oh, yes. Thanks,' Karl said, and came over and took them. 'Thanks a lot,' he said. 'You ought to put your nameber on the first page,' Chip said, 'if you're going to leave it all over like that.' Karl went into his cubicle, opened the pad, and looked at the first page. He looked at Chip, nodded, raised his right hand, and mouthed, 'Love of Family.'
They rode down to the classrooms together. 'What did you have to waste a page for?' Karl said. Chip smiled.
'I'm not joking,' Karl said. 'Didn't you ever hear of writing a note on a piece of scrap paper?'
'Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei,' Chip said.
In December of that year, 152, came the appalling news of the Gray Death, sweeping through all the Mars colonies except one and completely wiping them out in nine short days. In the Academy of the Genetic Sciences, as in all the Family's establishments, there was helpless silence, then mourning, and then a massive determination to help the Family overcome the staggering setback it had suffered. Everyone worked harder and longer. Free time was halved; there were classes on Sundays and only a half-day Christmas holiday. Genetics alone could breed new strengths in the coming generations; everyone was in a hurry to finish his training and get on to his first real assignment. On every wall were the white-on-black posters: MARS AGAIN/ The new spirit lasted several months. Not until Marxmas was there a full day's holiday, and then no one quite knew what to do with it. Chip and Karl and their girlfriends rowed out to one of the islands in the Amusement Gardens lake and sunbathed on a large flat rock. Karl drew his girlfriend's picture. It was the first time, as far as Chip knew, that he had drawn a living human being.
In June, Chip claimed another pad for Karl.
Their training ended, five weeks early, and they received their assignments: Chip to a viral genetics research laboratory in USA90058; Karl to the Institute of Enzymology in JAP50319.
On the evening before they were to leave the Academy they packed their take-along kits. Karl pulled green- covered pads from his desk drawers—a dozen from one drawer, half a dozen from another, more pads from other
