Lazarus glowered.

Libby said hastily, "If I assure you that it is all right, will you let it go at that?"

"No," pronounced Sharpie, Woodie must come clean."

"All right, all right! I own this corpse. No murder or any other crime involved. Now will you quit riding me about it?"

"Jake?"

"I don't like it, Zeb."

"I don't, either. But we needn't do anything. We go limp. He may not last long in a culture that 'balances,"

"Possible. But that's his problem."

Sharpie said quickly, "Did either of you promise him a ride back to my ship?"

'~Whose ship?"

"Mv ship. Woodie. Gentlemen?"

"I didn't promise him. Did you. Jake'?"

No. Did you, Deety'? Hilda'?"

'Not me, Pop."

"Nor me, Jacob. Woodie, earlier today I thought you had seen the light. Conceded, 'I am but indifferent honest' myself. But even pirates need to feel safe with their shipmates. You and I shook hands as partners. You don't seem to understand what that means. However I'm not going to abandon you here. You'd be balanced in a week. Dead. Or worse. So we'll take you back. By the way, it is impossible to steal Gay Deceiver. Yes, I know you once stole a ship enormously bigger than Gay. But not as well protected."

"Lazarus! Tell them."

"Lib, I was waiting for the Commodore to finish. That corpse wasn't murdered because it was never alive other than as a vegetable." Lazarus looked embarrassed.

"About thirty years ago we started a medical school on Tertius. A one-horse deal, more of a branch of the clinic. But genetic engineering is taught, and student genetic surgeons must practice. Ordinarily a clone that goes bad is 1'f!led and frozen and its tissues studied. A clone that takes-shows no fault.

deviation--is either cared foi' and allowed to develop if~ its genetic source rots a spare body and will pay for it, Or, more likely, a healthy clone is aui'el\' a laboratory exercise~ an ethical medical school requires supervised destruction during the first pseudo trimester. befoi'e quickening shows in the 'ave form,

"Neither student nor tissue donor is likely to be upset by this quasi-abortion.

as the student is almost always herself the donor-if it bothers her, she's in the wrong vocation.

"If the student is not the donor, emotional upset is hardly possible. The student thinks of the clone as a quasi-living histological specimen the usefulness of which is at end-and the tissue donor can't be upset, being unaware of it."

"Why so, Lazarus? If anybody is tinkering with my cells, I want to know about it, I do!"

"Deety, that tissue may be years, even centuries, old; the donor may be parsecs away. Or still warm and the donor just leaving the building. Or anything in between. A sperm-and-ova bank insures the future of the race; a tissue bank insures the future of the individual. But somebody has to pick up the check; it's a tanstaafl situation. A few of the very wealthy-and neurotic- always have a quickened but unawakened clone in stasis. I'm wealthy but not neurotic; I don't have a reserve clone."

I caught sight of Libby's face as Lazarus made that last statement-her mouth twitched in a half smile about to become (I think) a snicker, had she not suppressed all expression. No one but I caught it.

I made note to ask her about it later-then I remembered what the mouse told the cat and decided not to.

"But I do what any prudent Howard does; I have tissue on deposit. One may do this either of two ways: Pay high... or pay much lower and sign a release on half the donation for research and instruction." He grinned. "I'm stingy. My tissue is available to medical students."

He went on, "Not all medical schools are ethical. I can think of at least three planets where-" Lazarus looked directly at my wife. "Deety, you raised this issue. While I can think of three planets where one can buy any sort of monster, I can think of at least thirty where, for a much lower fee, I could simply say, 'I want that one' "-he pointed at Sharpie-"and the answer would be, 'It's a deal, Mac. How freshly dead and when do you want delivery?"

Sharpie looked around behind herself as if to see at whom Lazarus had pointed.

"That's the cheapest way-"

"Then you weren't pointing at me!" Sharpie interrupted. "Woodie, it's not polite to point. For a moment you had me worried. I'm never cheap-highpriced, always."

"So I found out, Commodore. Deety, that's cheapest, and safe for the buyer in the places I have in mind. But how can I convince you that I never gave even a moment's consideration to that method? You seem to know a lot about me-more than I know about any of you. Is there anything that you have ever read or heard, anything that I've said or done, that would cause you to think that I would murder or contract for a murder-same but nastier-in order to further my own ends? I'm not saying that I have never killed. A man who has lived even half as long as I have has found himself more than once in a killor-be-killed situation. But the best way to deal with such a situation is not to get into it. Anticipate it. Avoid it."

Lazarus Long stopped and looked sad, and for the only time of my acquaintance with him, looked his age. I do not mean he suddenly looked decrepit. But he had an aura of ancient sorrow. "Professor Burroughs, if it would do any good, I would junk all my plans, accept being forever stranded here, for the privilege of taking a twenty-pound sledge and smashing your space-time twister."

I was shocked (damn it, I like good machinery). Jake looked hurt, Deety and Sharpie looked stunned.

Jake said tightly, "Lazarus. .. why?"

"Not to hurt you, Professor; you have my highest respect. You are one of three: the man who invented the wheel, the man who discovered how to use fire-and you. But, in making this supreme discovery, you have accomplished something I had thought impossible. You have made interstellar war logistically practical. Interstellar? Intergalactic-interuniversal !"

Lazarus suddenly straightened up, threw off his gloom, grinned. "All the King's horses and all the King's men can't close Pandora's Box again. Once it hits the fan, the only thing to do is sweep it up, package it, and sell it as fertilizer. Hilda has plans along that line. But I'm going to have to start thinking in military terms again. Figure out how to defend my home place against what appears to be that Ultimate Weapon much talked about but never achieved. I am glad to say that Hilda plans to keep it a close-held secret as long as possible; that may buy us time."

He turned his attention back to my wife. "Deety, I have never murdered,

I never will. The nearest I ever came to it was once being sorely tempted to

strangle a five-year-old boy. I admit that the thought has often passed through

my mind that this character or that would look his best as the centerpiece of

a funeral. But can I convince you that I have never acted on such thoughts?

Think hard, please-all that you know of me. Am I capable of murder?"

Deety doesn't dither. (Remember how we got married?) She jumped up, hurried around our kitchen table, and kissed Lazarus-and stopped hurrying. It was a kiss that calls for a bed, or even a pile of coal-had there not been urgent business before the house.

Deety broke from it, sat down beside him, and said, "Tell us how we get this unmurdered fresh corpse. It's clear that we're going to have to go pick it up-in Gay. So we must know."

Libby said gently, "Lazarus, this is what you have been avoiding. May I tell it?"

"Thanks, Lib. No, you would pretty it up. I-"

"Pipe down!" said Deety. "Elizabeth, give us the straight word. Briefly."

"Very well. The medical school of B.I.T. is as ethical as you will find. My sister-wife Ishtar is director of the rejuvenation clinic and chairman of the board of the medical school, and still finds time to teach. I have never seen Maureen Johnson as I was born about two centuries after she was. But she iS Supposed to resemble Laz and Lor-unsurprising; she is their genetic mother, Since they were cloned from Lazarus."