He worried most about Barbara-and the twins, although the boys were not as real to him. He had never heard of a slut being severely punished for anything. However, he had never heard of a slut being involved in an attempted escape and a killing, either; he just did not know. But he did know that the Lord Protector preferred slut meat for his table.

He tried to tell himself that old Ponse would do nothing to a slut while she was still nursing babies-and that would be a long time yet; among servants, according to Kitten, mothers nursed babies for at least two years.

He worried about Kitten, too. Would the child be punished for something she had had nothing to do with? A completely innocent bystander? Again he did not know. There was "justice" here; it was a major branch of religious writings. But it resembled so little the concept "justice" of his own culture that he had found the stuff almost unreadable.

He spent most of his time on what he thought of as "constructive" worry, i.e., what he should have done rather than what he had done.

He saw now that his plans had been laughably inadequate. He should never have let himself be panicked into moving too soon. It would have been far better to have built up his connection with Joe, never disagreed with him, tickled his vanity, gone to work for him and, in time, prevailed on him to adopt Barbara and the kids. Joe was an accommodating person and old Ponse was so openhanded that he might simply have made Joe a present of these three useless servants instead of demanding cash. The boys would have been in no danger for years (and perhaps never in danger if Joe owned them), and, in time, Hugh could have expected to become a trusted business servant, with a broad pass allowing him to go anywhere on his master's business-and Hugh .would have acquired sophisticated knowledge of how this world worked that a house servant could never acquire.

Once he had learned exactly how it ticked, he could have planned an escape that would work.

Any society man has ever devised, he reminded himself, could be bribed-and a servant who handles money can find ways to steal some. Probably there was an "underground railroad" that ran to the mountains. Yes, he had been far too hasty.

He considered, too, the wider aspects-a slave uprising. He visualized those tunnels being used not for escape but as a secret meeting place-classes in reading and writing, taught in whispers; oaths as mighty as a Mau Mau initiation binding the conspirators as blood brothers with each Chosen having marked against his name a series of dedicated assassins, servants patiently grinding scraps of metal into knives.

This "constructive" dream he enjoyed most-and believed in least. Would these docile sheep ever rebel? It seemed unlikely. He had been classed with them by accident of cornplexion but they were not truly of his breed. Centuries of selective breeding had made them as little like himself as a lap dog is like a timber wolf.

And yet, and yet, how did he know? He knew only the tempered males, and the few studs he had seen had all been dulled by a liberal ration of Happiness-to~ say nothing of what it might do to a man's fighting spirit to lose his thumbs at an early age and be driven around with whips-that-weremore-than-whips.

This matter of racial differences-or the nonsense notion of "racial equality"-had never been examined scientifically; there was too much emotion on both sides. Nobody wanted honest data.

Hugh recalled an area of Pernambuco he had seen while in the Navy, a place where rich plantation owners, dignified, polished, educated in France, were black, while their servants and field hands-giggling, shuffling, shiftless knuckleheads "obviously" incapable of better things-were mostly white men. He had stopped telling this anecdote in the States; it was never really believed and it was almost always resented-even by whites who made a big thing of how anxious they were to "help the American Negro improve himself." Hugh had formed the opinion that almost all of those bleeding hearts wanted the Negro's lot improved until it was almost as high as their own- and no longer on their consciences-but the idea that the tables could ever be turned was one they rejected emotionally.

Hugh knew that the tables could indeed be turned. He had seen it once, now he was experiencing it.

But Hugh knew that the situation was still more confused. Many Roman citizens had been "black as the ace of spades" and many slaves of Romans had been as blond as Hitler wanted to be-so any "white man" of European ancestry was certain to have a dash of Negro blood. Sometimes more than a dash. That southern Senator, what was his name?-the one who had built his career on "white supremacy." Hugh had come across two sardonic facts: This old boy had died from cancer and had had many transfusions-and his blood type was such that the chances were two hundred to one that its owner had nnt inst a tnnch nf thn tarhriish hut nraetk~a1lv thp. whn1~ tar barrel. A navy surgeon had gleefully pointed this out to Hugh and had proved both points in medical literature.

Nevertheless, this confused matter of races would never be straightened out-because almost nobody wanted the truth.

Take this matter of singing- It had seemed to Hugh that Negroes of his time averaged better singers than had whites; most people seemed to think so. Yet the very persons, white or black, who insisted most loudly that "all races were equal" always seemed happy to agree that Negroes were superior, on the average, in this one way. It reminded Hugh of Orwell's Animal Farm, in which "AU Animals Are Equal But Some Are More Equal Than Others."

Well, he knew who wasn't equal here-despite his statistically certain drop of black blood. Hugh Farnham, namely. He found that he agreed with Joe: When things were unequal, it was much nicer to be on top!

On the sixty-first day in this new place, if it was the sixtyfirst, they came for him, bathed him, cut his nails, rubbed him with deodorant cream, and paraded him before the Lord Protector.

Hugh learned that he still could be humiliated by not being given even a nightshirt as clothing, but he conceded that it was a reasonable precaution in handling a prisoner who killed with his bare hands. His escort was two young Chosen, in uniforms which Hugh assumed to be military, and the whips they carried were definitely not "lesser whips."

The route they followed was very long; it was clearly a huge building. The room where he was delivered was very like in spirit to the informal lounge where Hugh had once played bridge. The big view window looked out over a wide tropical river.

Hugh hardly glanced at it; the Lord Protector was there. And so were Barbara and the twins!

The babies were crawling on the floor. But Barbara was breast deep in that invisible quicksand, a trap that claimed T4iwh as snnui as he was halted She smiled at him hut did not speak. He looked her over carefully. She seemed unhurt and healthy, but was thin and had deep circles under her eyes.

He started to speak; she gestured warningly with eyes and head. Hugh then looked at the Lord Protector-and noticed only then that Joe was lounging near him and that Grace and Duke were playing some card game over in a corner, both of them chewing gum and ostentatiously not seeing that Hugh was there. He looked back at Their Charity.

Hugh decided that Ponse had been ill. Despite the fact that Hugh felt comfortably warm in skin, Ponse was wearing a full robe with a shawl over his lap and he looked, for once, almost his reputed age.

But when he spoke, his voice was still resonant. "You may go, Captain. We excuse you."

The escort withdrew. Their Charity looked Hugh over soberly. At last he said, "Well, boy, you certainly made a mess of things, didn't you?" He looked down and played with something in his lap, caught it and pulled it back to the middle of the shawl. Hugh saw that it was a white mouse. He felt sudden sympathy for the mouse. It didn't seem to like where it was, but if it did manage to escape, the cats would get it. Maggie was watching with deep interest.