the representatives of the Medicorps and Communications
Board worked out, it would mean only slight changes in the
types of foodstuffs, entertainment and so forth moving into
Santa Fe, and Conrad could have grasped the entire traffic
change in ten minutes after the real problem had been set-
tled. But, as usual, he and the other traffic men had to sit
through two hours while small wheels from the Medicorps
and Communications acted big about rebalancing a city.
For them, Conrad had to admit, Santa Fe was a great deal
more complex than 100,000 consuming, moderately produc-
ing human bodies. It was 200,000 human personalities, two
to each body. Conrad wondered sometimes what they would
have done if the three and four personality cases so common
back in the 20th and 21st Centuries had been allowed to
reproduce. The 200,000 personalities in Santa Fe were diffi-
cult enough.
Like all cities, Santa Fe operated in five shifts. A, B, C,
D, and E.
Just as it was supposed to be for Conrad in his city, today
was rest day for the 20,000 hypoalters on D-shift in Santa
Fe. Tonight at around 6.00 P.M. they would all go to shifting
rooms and be replaced by their hyperalters, who had differ-
ent tastes in food and pleasure and took different drugs.
Tomorrow would be rest day for the hypoalters on E-shift
and in the evening they would turn things over to their hyper-
alters.
The next day it would be rest for the A-shift hyperalters
and three days after that the D-shift hyperalters, including
Bill Walden, would rest till evening, when Conrad and the D-
shift hypoalters everywhere would again have their five-day
use of their bodies.
Right now the trouble with Santa Fe's retired population,
which worked only for its own maintenance, was that too
many elderly people on the D-shift and E-shift had been
dying off. This point was brought out by a dapper young
department head from Communications.
Conrad groaned when, as he knew would happen, a Medi-
corps officer promptly set out on an exhaustive demonstra-
tion that Medicorps predictions of deaths for Santa Fe had
indicated clearly that Communications should have been
moving people from D-shift and E-shift into the area.
Actually, it appeared that someone from Communications
had blundered and had overloaded the quota of people on
A-shift and B-shift moving to Santa Fe. Thus on one rest day
there weren't enough people working to keep things going,
and later in the week there were so many available workers
that they were clogging the city.
None of this was heated exchange or in any way emotional.
It was just interminably, exhaustively logical and boring. Con-
rad fidgeted through two hours of it, seeing his chance for a
