"Yes, Mrs. Garden," The car door swung open.

"I'm not Mrs. Garden any more; I'm Mrs. Gaines." She entered, seated herself at the manual tiller. "Try to keep it straight."

"Yes, Mrs. Gaines." As soon as she put the key in, the motor started up.

"Has Pete Garden already left?" She scanned the gloomy street and did not see Pete's car. "I guess he has." She felt sad. It would have been nice to sit out here under the stars, so late at night, and chat a little. It would be as if they were still married... damn The Game, she thought, and its spins. Damn luck itself, bad luck; that's all we seem to have, any more. We're a marked race.

She held her wrist watch to her ear and it said in its tiny voice, "Two-fifteen A.M., Mrs. Garden."

"Mrs. Gaines," she grated.

"Two-fifteen A.M., Mrs. Gaines."

How many people, she wondered, are alive on the face of Earth at this moment? One million? Two million? How many groups, playing The Game? Surely no more than a few hundred thousand. And every time there was a fatal accident, the population decreased irretrievably by one more.

Automatically, she reached into the glove compartment of the car and groped for a neatly-wrapped strip of rabbit-paper, as it was called. She found a strip—it was the old kind, not the new—and unwrapped it, put it between her teeth and bit.

In the glare of the dome light of the car she examined the strip of rabbit-paper. One dead rabbit, she thought, recalling the old days (they were before her time) when a rabbit had to die for this fact in question to be determined. The strip, in the dome light, was white, not green. She was

not pregnant. Crumpling the strip, she dropped it into the disposal chute of the car and it incinerated instantly. Damn, she thought wretchedly. Well, what did I expect?

The car left the ground, started for her home in Los Angeles.

Too early though to tell about my luck with Clem, she realized. Obviously. That cheered her. Another week or two and perhaps something.

Poor Pete, she thought. Hasn't even rolled a three, isn't back in The Game, really. Should I drop by his bind in Marin County? See if he's there? But he was so stewed, so unmanageable. So bitterly unpleasant, tonight. There is no law or rule, though, that prevents us meeting outside. The Game. And yet—what purpose would it serve? We had no luck, she realized, Pete and I. In spite of our feeling for each other.

The radio of her car came on, suddenly; she heard the call-letters of a group in Ontario, Canada, broadcasting on all frequencies in great excitement. "This is Pear Book Hovel," the man declared exultantly. "Tonight at ten P.M. our time we had luck! A woman in our group, Mrs. Don Palmer, bit her rabbit-paper with no more idea of hoping than she ever did, and—"

Freya shut off the radio.

When he got home to his unlit, unused, former apartment in San Rafael, Pete Garden went at once to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom to see what medication he could find. I'll never get to sleep otherwise, he knew. It was an old story with him. Snoozex? It now took three 25mg. tablets of Snoozex to have any effect on him; he had taken too many for too long. I need something stronger, he thought. There's always phenobarbital, but it slugs you for the next day. Scopolamine hydrobromide; I could try that.

Or, he thought, I could try something much stronger. Emphytal.

Three of those, he thought, and I'd never wake up. Not in the strength capsules I've got. Here ... he let the capsules lie on his palm as he stood considering. No one would bother me; no one would intervene—

The medicine cabinet said, "Mr. Garden, I am establishing contact with Dr. Macy in Salt Lake City, because of your condition."

"I have no condition," Pete said. He quickly put the Emphytal capsules back in their bottle. "See?" He waited. "It was just momentary, a gesture." Here he was, pleading with the Rushmore Effect of his medicine cabinet—macabre. "Okay?" he asked it hopefully.

A click. The cabinet had shut itself off.

Pete sighed in relief.

The doorbell sounded. What now? he wondered, walking through the faintly musty-smelling apartment, his mind still on what he could take as a soporific—without activating the alarm-circuit of the Rushmore Effect. He opened the door.

There stood his blonde-haired previous wife, Freya. "Hi," she said coolly. She walked into the apartment, gliding past him, self-possessed, as if it were perfectly natural for her to seek him out while she was married to Clem Gaines. "What do you have in your fist?" she asked.

"Seven Snoozex tablets," he admitted.

"I'll give you something better than that. It's going the rounds." Freya dug into her leather mailbag-style purse."A new, new product manufactured in New Jersey by an autofac pharmaceutical house, there." She held out a large blue spansule. "Nerduwel," she said, and then laughed.

"Ha-ha," Pete said, not amused. It was a gag. Ne'er-do-well. "Is that what you came for?" Having been his wife, his Bluff partner, for over three months, she of course knew of his chronic insomnia. "I've got a hangover," he informed her. "And I lost Berkeley to Walt Remington, tonight. As you well know. So I'm just not capable of banter, right now."

"Then fix me some coffee," Freya said. She removed her fur-lined jacket and laid it over a chair. "Or let me fix it for you." With sympathy she said, "You do look bad."

"Berkeley—why did I put the title deed up, anyhow? I don't even remember. Of all my holdings—it must have been a self-destructive impulse." He was silent, and then he said, "On the way here tonight I picked up an all-points from Ontario."

"I heard it," she said nodding.

"Does their pregnancy elate or depress you?"

"I don't know," Freya said somberly. "I'm glad for them. But—" She roamed about the apartment, her arms folded.

"It depresses me," Pete said. He put a tea kettle of water on the range in the kitchen.

"Thank you," the tea kettle—its Rushmore Effect—piped.

Freya said, "We could have a relationship outside of The Game, you realize. It has been done."

"It wouldn't be fair to Clem." He felt a camaraderie with Clem Gaines; it overcame his feelings—temporarily, anyhow —for her.

And in any case he was curious about his future wife; sooner or later he would roll a three.

PETE GARDEN was awakened the next morning by a sound so wonderfully impossible that he jumped from the bed and stood rigid, listening. He heard children. They were quarreling, somewhere outside the window of his San Rafael apartment.

It was a boy and a girl, and Pete thought, So there have been births in this county since I was last here. And of parents who are non-B, not Bindmen. Without property which would enable them to play The Game. He could hardly believe it, and he thought, I ought to deed the parents a small town... San Anselmo or Ross, even both. They deserve an opportunity to play. But maybe they don't want to.

"You're one," the girl was declaring angrily.

"You're another." The boy's voice, laden with accusation.

"Gimme that." Sounds of a physical scuffle.

He lit a cigarette, then found his clothes and began to dress.

In the corner of the room, leaning against the wall, an MV-3 rifle ... he caught sight of it and paused, remembering in a rush everything that the great old weapon had meant. Once, he had been prepared to stand off the Red Chinese

with this rifle. But it had never seen use because the Red Chinese had never shown up ... at least not in person. Their representatives, in the form of Hinkel Radiation, had arrived, however, but no amount of MV-3s doled out to California's citizen army could fight and conquer that. The radiation, from a Wasp-C satellite, had done the job expected and the United States had lost. But People's China had not won. No one had. Hinkel Radiation waves, distributed on a worldwide basis, saw to that, god bless 'em.