"Oh! I see. There is still a third clone from Lazarus. Female?"

"A spoiled one, Deety. Ishtar tells me that it is difficult, rather than otherwise, to get a bad clone from Lazarene tissue... so it is especially suitable for induced mutation experiments. She orders the destruction of these experiments when they have served their purpose."

"Deety said to make it brief," growled Lazarus.

Lib ignored him. "But, while Ishtar checks on the students, no one checks on her. For twenty years Ishtar watched for a clone that would look human but not be human. So deficient in forebrain that it could never be anything but a vegetable, unaware. She told me that her students had unknowingly provided her with dozens to work on. Usually they died too soon, or never developed human appearance, or had some other fault that made them unusable. But several years ago she succeeded. I testify that this thing looked like Laz and Lor as it passed through the stage of its forced development... and also that it looked like an older version, wrinkled and hair streaked with gray, when it died two Tertian years ago-"

"Huh? Fresh corpse'!"

"-and was quick-frozen at once. I testify to something else. Friends, in becoming a woman I acquired an interest in biology that I had not had, as a male. While I teach math at B.I.T., I am also staff mathematician to the clinic and have studied a bit of human biology. When I say that this spoiled clone was never alive in any real sense I speak as the mathematical biologist who checked its monitors' records daily. It always required full metabolic support; we monitored everything. The surprising thing is that Ishtar could keep it alive long enough to let it appear to age. But Ishtar is very skillful." Libby added, "Lazarus would not only have become upset in telling this, but he could not have told it first hand as Ishtar refused to permit Lazarus to see this spoiled clone or any records on it."

"A willful woman," said Lazarus. "In three seconds I could have told Ish whether or not this thing looked enough like my mother to be useful. Instead I must depend on the opinions of people who have never laid eyes on my mother. Damn it, I am owner of record of the clinic and Chairman Regent of all B.I.T. Does that count with Ishtar? Hilda, my senior wife is as tough a case as you are... and looks as little like it as you do."

"So? It will be interesting to see what happens when I am your junior wife," Sharpie answered at her pertest.

"Are you going to be my junior wife?" Lazarus swung around and looked at her husband. "Jake?"

"I don't think I have a vote," my blood brother answered easily.

"I'll automatically be your junior wife if we are invited to join the Long Family which we damn well ought to be if we make this work!" Sharpie said indignantly.

"Wait a half!" I put in. "If we are invited to join the Long Family-a tall assumption if I ever saw one-Deety would be junior. Not you, you elderly baggage."

"Hillbilly can be junior if she wants to be. I don't mind."

"Deety," I said, "are you serious? I've been trying to point out to your stepmother that you don't push your way into a family."

"I wasn't pushing, Zebadiah," my wife answered. "I want us to stay on Tertius at least until we have our babies, and possibly make it our home; it seems to be a pleasant place and should be free of 'Black Hats'-no skin taboos. But that doesn't mean that the Longs have to have us in their laps."

'i intend to nominate you, Zebadiah," Libby told me. "All four of you. And I hope you four accept. But, Deety twin, you know what I'm attempting. With your father."

"Yes, I know. I'm cheering for it."

"Your husband must hear this. Deety, I still have that Y chromosome in every cell even though it has been so inhibited by hormone balance that I don't notice it. You and I could try for a mathematical-genius baby, too."

"Huh! Which one of us supplies the penis?"

"Ishtar does. Neither of us would be host-mother, the way it would be done. But any of my sister-wives would supply womb room if she didn't happen to be pregnant. Or the host-mother could be a stranger we would never meet and the child's family-parents strangers, too-all handled by Ishtar who always reads the relevant genetic charts before approving anything."

"Zebadiah?"

I said without hesitation, "It's up to you, hon. I'm in favor of it; it makes sense. But don't lose track of the child. Elizabeth, I want to adopt the baby ahead of time. Hmm- Bottle baby... but the formulas are probably better now. Not here-now. Tertius there-then-now."

"Bottle baby'? Oh! No longer done; a baby needs to suckle. But there is usually spare milk around the Longs'. If I'm lactating I always have excess; I turn out to be a good milch cow despite that extra chromosome. But Deety can nurse our child if she wishes to; causing a woman to come fresh with milk without bearing a child is a minor biochemical manipulation today-Tertiantoday. Professional wet nurses do it regularly and are likely to be in that vocation because they love babies but can't have 'em themselves for some reason."

"Sounds good." (What sounded best was this: a baby Deety is a wonderful idea-but a baby Deety who is also a baby Libby is sure to be wonderful squared. Cubed!)

"While I'm on this and no one here but family-Jacob, there is no reason not to create a third mathematical supergenius by crossing you with your daughter."

I was looking at my wife, thinking pleasant thoughts about baby DeetyLibby, when Elizabeth dropped this bomb-and Deety shut down her face. It's not an unpleasant expression; it's a no-expression, a closed door, while Deety sorts out her thoughts.

So I looked at Jake, in time to see his face shift from surprise to shock. "But that's-"

"Incest?" Libby supplied. "No, Jacob, incest is a social matter. Whether you bed your daughter is none of my business. I'm speaking of genes, of still another way to conserve mathematical genius. Ishtar would scan your charts most carefully and would resort to chromosome surgery if there was the slightest chance of double dosage of a bad allele. But you and your daughter could see

Ishtar on different days and never know anything about the outcome. Your genes are not your property; they come from your race. This offers opportunity to give them back to the race with your highest talent reinforced... without loss to anyone. Think about it."

Jake looked at me, then at his daughter. "Deety?"

She added no-expression voice to no-expression face-but directed her answer to me: "Zebadiah, this is necessarily up to you and Jacob." I'm not sure that anyone but Sharpie noticed that she had not said "Pop."

Deety added at once with total change in manner, "First things first! Maureen's rescue. All of you are stuck in a rut of time sequence. Oh, the minor problem of keeping clear of Dora and the missile both times. Routine." (And I was hit by a satori.)

Lazarus answered, "But Deety, I promised Dora never again to take her anywhere near Albuquerque."

Deety sighed. "Lib?"

"Frames one-thirteen through seven-seven-two, then seven-seven-three through one thousand and two?"

"Precisely. And precisely it must be, too. I'm timing it by that yellow open roadable approaching from the other direction. What are you using?"

"The same one. Easy to spot and its speed never varies."

Lazarus said, "Jake, do you know what they are saying?"

"Yes and no. They are treating it as two problems. But we lack three seconds of time enough to dump one and snatch the other. Those-traffic lights, you called them?-leave that intersection clear by a measured interval, clocked by your camera."

Sharpie suddenly grinned; I nodded to her to take it. She did. "Deety and Libby are saying that we do it twice. First, we rescue Maureen. Then we come back and dump the corpse."