I yelled at the ceiling, "(Bleep) you! GO TO BED!"

The basket of fruit, minus half its contents, gleamed in the dim light. "Oh, Inky!" she said reprovingly. "Strictly dishrag again."

The bhong teetered on the side table. Her hand steadied it and, with the other, she applied a match. "Well,

I can remedy that! Just a couple more puffs, Inky, and then I can apply the ruler and go to bed."

A horizontal beam of sunlight coming in through the port pried at my eyelids. I woke with a start.

The bedside clock said 7:00 A.M.!

Teenie's head on the other pillow didn't move. Lying on her side, turned away from me, she was sleeping with a smile upon her lips.

I shook her shoulder savagely. "Wake up, (bleep) you!"

She turned her head in my direction. An oversize grin sprang to her oversize lips.

"Oh, you (bleep)!" I snarled.

The sun was doing a crazy circle just above the horizon.

The bowl of fruit exploded.

Her hand picked up her robe and ruler from the floor. "Inky, how can a girl keep a bargain like that when you just keep attacking her?"

She gave her ponytail a fluff. "I would have completed the measurements and gone to bed but you just never gave me a chance."

Her hand was upon the doorhandle to her room. "Now I will never know if whales have the correct proportions." She passed through and slammed the door.

"Have a nice sleep?" the steward said a few minutes later as he opened all the ports and began to air the marijuana smoke out of the room, a thing he had to do each morning.

I had a bath and breakfast and in no good mood went topside. Madison was by himself in the squash court, batting one of these balls that come back on a rubber band. The very sight of him made me furious.

The sports director had not come up to tear my muscles and limbs apart yet. I stalked over to Madison.

He looked fresh and handsome, a very collar-ad of a man, the kind girls are supposed to pant after and scream about. Teenie, liar that she was, had obviously been maligning him.

"Why don't you do something about Teenie!" I snarled.

He looked at me with those sincere and honest brown eyes of his. "But I do do something about Teenie. I race with her with her new bikes against a miniature car. She's even tried to teach me how to skateboard and I have a scraped knee to prove it. I swim with her. I dance with her and try to show her the latest steps. I resent your implications, Smith. I'm doing all I can to bring her up and help you make a lady out of her."

"You know (bleeped) well what I mean," I grated. "Madison, are you a mother lover?"

"Smith, time after time I have noticed that you have no real idea of PR."

"Jesus, Madison," I said, "Don't try to change the subject on me."

"I'm not changing the subject. It just proves that you are ignorant of the whole field. I'll have you know that the whole popularity of Sigmund Freud came about because he married into a New York advertising firm."

"Good Christ, Madison! What does that have to do with it?"

"It has everything to do with it," said Madison. "The whole fields of advertising and PR would be helpless if it were not for Sigmund Freud. If I went against his teachings, I could be thrown completely out of the field-excommunicated!"

"I can understand that," I said. "I myself have every reverence for Sigmund Freud. But I cannot possibly see – "

"Smith, once again, I have to point out that you are NOT a professional PR man. If it got out in the field that I was not following the orders of a Freudian psychoanalyst, I would be absolutely ruined-financially, socially and in every other way."

"Madison..."

"Smith," he said, "I am not being fair to you, ignorant as you are. I was very well brought up. My mother is quite wealthy and the children of the rich, you know, must all be psychoanalyzed. It is a caste mark, so to speak. When I was five, I had nightmares. My analyst prescribed that I must sleep with my mother. This was many years before my father committed suicide, so that has nothing to do with it. I am simply carrying out the accepted prescription."

"You mean you make love to your mother?" I said, aghast.

"Tut, tut," said Madison. "All little boys love their mothers. The psychoanalyst was simply prescribing what was natural."

He had conned me clear off the subject!"(Bleep) it, Madison! We're talking about Teenie. Are you or are you not going to start making love to her and get her the Hells off my hands? Don't tell me that you're allergic to sex with girls!"

He looked at me. The paddle fell out of his fingers. His jaw dropped. "Girls? Sex with girls? Oh, good heavens, Smith, that's obscene!" He went pale green. He staggered to the rail.

The sports director, when he came up to torture me, gave Madison a Dramamine and sent him below to his bunk. "I can't understand it," he said. "Flat calm sea,

the ship stabilized like a billiard table and I have a seasick passenger throwing up his boots. Shows you what a mental problem can do. That fellow needs to be psycho­analyzed."

"He has been," I said bitterly, "that's the trouble." And I settled down to hours on exercise machines to get rid of the pot.

It was the twelfth day out of Bermuda when we sighted the low sand coast, the white mosques and hills of Casablanca. For the last day or so we had seen the occasional ship north and south bound on the frequented routes. The sea had become somewhat more choppy and I was very happy of the chance to get ashore.

We were piloted and tugged to a fuel dock and I looked around. What on Earth were we doing here? The name might sound romantic but Casablanca looked awfully dirty and threadbare to me.

Madison was up and at it promptly. "I've got to study this king," he said. "He sounds like a real first-grade outlaw. His name is Hussan-Hussan. When his father got independence from the French, they say Hussan-Hussan murdered him. He also murdered the man who had effected the real revolution and took the credit. He is held in power by the United States and he banks all the mineral receipts of the country in Switzerland in his own name. He keeps the majority of the population, who are Berbers, in total repression and perpetuates the minority rule by the Arabs with violence and force. He's worse many times over than South Africa in racial subjugation and yet he gets away with it all. I've read all I can find in our library. Now I've got to find if he is a true outlaw and, if he is, study his approaches. So I'm going to be quite busy."

He grabbed a taxi and was gone.

Teenie trotted down the gangway dressed in pony-tail, sandals and shorts. A dock policeman sent her back to get a bra. She trotted down again and she was gone.

I wandered up and down the pier. The town certainly didn't look very inviting. Dust and Arabs with dust on them whining and begging through the dust. They were trying to sell me anything from donkeys to their sisters.

We were finished fuelling and moved to another dock. It was just as dirty as the first. Arabs hopefully spread their wares on the pier, thinking we were a cruise liner. When nobody came off to be robbed, they spotted me sitting in a deck chair and shook their fists and went away.

I wondered where Charles Boyer was. Or maybe Humphrey Bogart. It didn't look like the kind of place either one would frequent.

Suddenly a cab came tearing along the railroad rails on the pier. It braked to a halt. Teenie leaped out. She came tearing up the gangway and dashed into the ship. She went tearing up the ladder to the bridge and then shortly came tearing down.

She saw me. She was holding a yellow card.

"Oh, Inky!" she said. "The nicest thing has hap­pened. I had to come back to tell you. I am flying down to Marrakech. I also had to get a landing card as a sailor because I don't have any passport."