another husband. That kind never seems to.'
'Five rest days?' Conrad repeated. 'Is that what you
said?' He sat up and swung his legs off the table, and he was
grinning again. 'I'll get in a whole shift of )et-skiing! No,
waitI've got a date with the wife of a friend of mine out at
the rocket grounds. I'll take Clara out there; she'll like some
of the men.'
Major Grey nodded abstractedly. 'Good idea.' He shook
hands with Conrad Manz, wished him fun on his rest shift,
and left.
Taking a helicopter hack to his city. Major Grey thought
of his own hyperalter, Ralph Singer. He'd often wished that
the silly fool could be erased. Now he wondered how it would
be to have only one personality, and, wondering, realized that
Conrad Manz had been rightit
the shameful distinction of living in a schizophrenic society
with no alter.
No, Bill Walden had been wrong, completely wrong, both
about drugs and being split into two personalities. What one
made up in pleasure through not taking drugs was more than
lost in the suffering of conflict, frustration and hostility. And
having an alterany kind, even one as useless as Singer
meant, actually,
Major Grey parked the helicopter and found a shifting star
tion. He took off his make-up, addressed and mailed his
clothes, and waited for .the shift to come.
It was a pretty wonderful society he lived in, he realized.
He wouldn't trade it for the kind Bill Walden had wanted.
Nobody in his right mind would.
