cops that you and Helen are two completely different peo-
ple, or that Conrad and I are not the same person.'
Clara kissed him with an air of tentative experimentation.
'Mmm, no. I can't say I care for that interpretation.'
'You'd rather be sinning?'
'Definitely.'
'Well, if the ancients did agree with the medicops that we
are distinct from our alters, Helen and Conrad, then they
would say we are sinningbut not for the same reasons the
Medicorps would give.'
'That,' asserted Clara, 'is where I get lost. If this sinning
business is going to be worth anything at all, it has to be
something you can identify.'
Bill cut his car out of the main stream of traffic and to-
wards the park, without interrupting his memory.
'Well, darling, I don't want to confuse you, but the medi-
cops would say we are sinning only because you are my wife's
bypoalter, and I am your husband's hyperalterin other words
for the very reason the ancients would say we are
Furthermore, if either of us were with anyone else, the medi-
cops would think it was perfectly all right, and so would
Conrad and Helen. Provided, of course, I took a hyperalter
and you took a hypoalter only.'
'Of course,' Clara said, and Bill hurried over the gloomy
fact.
'The ancients, on the other hand, would say we are sin-
ning because we are making love to someone we are not
married to.'
'But what's the matter with that? Everybody does it.'
'The ancient Moderns didn't. Or, that is, they often did,
but...'
Clara brought her full lips hungrily to his. 'Darling, I think
the ancient Moderns had the right idea, though I don't see
how they ever arrived at it.'
Bill grinned. 'It was just an invention of theirs, along with
the wheel and atomic energy.'
That evening was long gone by as Bill stopped the little
taxi beside the park and left it there for the next user. He
walked across the lawns towards the statue where he and
Clara always met. The very thought of entering one's own
hypoalter's house was so unnerving that Bill brought himself
to do it only by first meeting Clara near the statue. As he
walked between the trees, Bill could not again capture the
spirit of that evening he had been remembering. The Medi-
corps was too close. It was impossible to laugh that away now.
Bill arrived at the statue, but Clara was not there. He
waited impatiently while a livid sunset coagulated between
the branches of the great trees. Clara should have been there
first. It was easier for her, because she was leaving her shift,
and without doing it prematurely.
