Treasury cleared his throat. "As a matter of fact, I've asked him to
stop by right about now." He hurled a medicine ball into the budgetary
gut.
"Oof!" said the Director. "You bastard. Steiner would be perfect. He
runs Standards like a watch." He treacherously fired the medicine ball
at the Secretary of Raw Materials, who blandly caught it and slammed it
back.
"Here he comes," said the Secretary of Raw Materials. "Steiner! Come and
sweat some oleo off!"
Steiner ambled over, a squat man in his fifties, and said: "I don't mind
if I do. Where's Willy?"
State said: "The President unmasked him as a traitor. He's probably been
executed by now."
Steiner looked grim, and grimmer yet when the Secretary of the Treasury
said, dead-pan: "We want to propose you for Defense."
"I'm happy in Standards," Steiner said. "Safer, too. The Man's father
took an interest in science, but The Man never comes around. Things are
very quiet. Why don't you invite Winch, from the National Art
Commission? It wouldn't be much of a change for the worse for him."
"No brains," the Secretary for Raw Materials said briefly. "Heads up!"
Steiner caught the ball and slugged it back at him. "What good are
brains?" he asked quietly.
"Close the ranks, gentlemen," State said. "These long shots are too hard
on my arms."
The ranks closed and the Cabinet told Steiner what good were brains. He
ended by accepting.
* * * * *
The Moon is all Republic. Mars is all Soviet. Titan is all Republic.
Ganymede is all Soviet. But Io and Callisto, by the Treaty of Greenwich,
are half-and-half Republic and Soviet.
Down the main street of the principal settlement on Io runs an invisible
line. On one side of the line, the principal settlement is known as New
Pittsburgh. On the other side it is known as Nizhni-Magnitogorsk.
Into a miner's home in New Pittsburgh one day an eight-year-old boy
named Grayson staggered, bleeding from the head. His eyes were swollen
almost shut.
His father lurched to his feet, knocking over a bottle. He looked
stupidly at the bottle, set it upright too late to save much of the
alcohol, and then stared fixedly at the boy. "See what you made me do,
you little bastard?" he growled, and fetched the boy a clout on his
bleeding head that sent him spinning against the wall of the hut. The
boy got up slowly and silently--there seemed to be something wrong with
his left arm--and glowered at his father.
He said nothing.
"Fighting again," the father said, in a would-be fierce voice. His eyes
fell under the peculiar fire in the boy's stare. "Damn fool--"
A woman came in from the kitchen. She was tall and thin. In a flat voice
she said to the man: "Get out of here." The man hiccupped and said:
"Your brat spilled my bottle. Gimme a dollar."