Just as Bill was leaving the apartment, the visiophone
buzzed. In his hurry Bill flipped the switch before he thought.
Too late, his band froze and the implications of this call, an
hour before anyone would normally be home, shot a shaft
of terror through him.
But it was not the image of a medicop that formed on
the screen. The woman introduced herself as Mrs. Harris,
one of Mary's teachers.
It was strange that she should have thought he might be
home. The shift for children was half a day earlier than
for adults, so the parents could have half their rest day free.
This afternoon would be for Mary the first classes of her
shift, but the teacher must have guessed something was wrong
with the shifting schedules in Mary's family. Or had the child
told her?
Mrs. Harris explained rather dramatically that Mary was
being neglected. What could he say to her? That he was a
criminal breaking drug regulations in the most flagrant man-
ner? That nothing, not even the child appointed to him,
meant more to him than his wife's own hypoalter? Bill finally
ended the hopeless and possibly dangerous conversation by
turning off the receiver and leaving the apartment.
Bill realized that now, for both him and Clara, the greatest
joy had been those first few times together. The enormous
threat of a Medicorps retaliation took the pleasure from their
contact and they came together desperately because, having
tasted this fantastic nonconformity and the new undrugged
intimacy, there was no other way for them. Even now as. he
drove through the triffic towards where she would be waiting,
he was not so much concerned with meeting Clara in their
fear-poisoned present as with the vivid, aching remembrance
of what those meetings once had really been like.
He recalled an evening they had spent lying on the
summer lawn of the park, looking out at the haze-dimmed
stars. It had been shortly after Clara joined him in cutting
down on the drugs, and the clear memory of their quiet laugh-
ter so captured his mind now that Bill amost tangled his
car in the traffic.
In memory he kissed her again and, as it had been, the
newly cut grass mixed with the exciting fragrance of her
skin. After the kiss they continued a mock discussion of the
ancient word 'sin'. Bill pretended to be trying to explain
the meaning of the word to her, sometimes with definitions
that kept them laughing and sometimes with demonstrational
kisses that stopped their laughter.
He could remember Clara's face turned to him in the eve-
ning light with an outrageous parody of interest. He could
hear himself saying, 'You see, the ancients would say we
are not
