The average I.Q. on Old Earth ran twenty points below Confederation mean.

Perchevski overtipped his driver. It was enough to convince the man that he had conveyed some criminal kingpin. Crime was one profession where a man could still win some respect.

His codes still opened the building's doors. After all these years. He was amazed.

It was another symptom of what had become of his motherworld. Terror had become so ubiquitous that no one tried very hard to resist anymore.

His mother was drunk. She snapped, "You're not Harold. Who the hell are you? Where's Harold? Nobody comes here but Harold."

He looked past her into the space where he had spent most of his childhood. Three meters by four, it was divided into three tiny rooms. It had seemed bigger back then, even with his father living at home.

He said nothing.

"Look, brother... Holy Christ! It's you. What the hell are you doing here?" She sounded angry. "Don't stand there looking. Get in here before somebody burns us."

He slipped past her, plopped himself down on the same little couch that had been his boyhood bed.

The apartment had not changed. Only his mother had. For the worse.

It was more than age and unrelenting poverty. It was a sliding downhill from the inside.

She had begun to go to fat. Her personal habits had slipped. Her hair had not been combed in days...

"Let me clean up. I just got outta bed." She vanished behind the movable screen that made a bedroom wall. "What have you been doing?" she asked.

"Better I should ask you. I sent letters." And hard Outworlds currency. Neither had drawn any response.

"I never seem to get around to answering."

At least she did not make outrageous excuses, like not being able to pay a writer. He knew she took his missives to a reader. She cared that much. But not enough to reply.

"I did write twice. Once right after you were here last time, and two or three years ago, after your father was killed in the Tanner Revolt. I didn't care anymore, but I thought you might."

"He's dead?"

"As a stone. He got hung up in the Revanchist Crusade. They were getting pretty big. Then most of them got themselves killed attacking Security Fortress."

"I didn't get the letter. I didn't know." He had never heard of the Tanner Revolt or Revanchist Crusade. He asked about them.

"They were going to turn things around. Bring back the golden age, or something. Unite Earth and make it the center of the galaxy. A lot of people think you Loonies were behind it. They say the whole Archaicist tiling was started by your meddling."

Archaicism had had its infancy on Old Earth concurrent with his own. If it had been more social engineering, the plan had backfired. The motherworld had not been awakened by the glory that was. It had merely found a new way to escape the reality of now.

The romantic pasts were popular. Men liked playing empires. Women liked glamour.

Men died when groups like Stahlhelm, SS Totenkopf, or Black September ganged up on Irgun or Stern... The smallest and most obscurely referenced groups were the most dangerous.

The ladies seemed to prefer Regency Balls, French Courts, and seraglio situations.

A search for uniqueness combined with the need for belonging had driven people to probe the remotest corners of Earth's history.

During his flight he had watched a live newscast of a raid on Mexico's Aztec Revivatist Cult. The police attackers had battled their way into the temple too late to save the sacrifices.

Perchevski's mother returned. She wore an outfit that looked ridiculous on a woman her age. The blouse was see-through. The skirt fell only to mid-thigh. He concealed his consternation. No doubt this was her best.

"I don't get into that kind of thing. Not my line. I do know a few guys who make a hobby of trying to save this dump from itself."

She did not like his attitude. "What are you calling yourself this time?"

"Perchevski. Cornelius Perchevski." He stared at her, and saw Greta forty years from now. Unless... If the kid enlisted, he would feel his own life-choice was justified. He would have rescued someone from becoming this...

"What are you into?" he asked. "I don't recognize the period."

"Beatles and Twiggy."

"Eh?"

"Twentieth century. Seventh decade. Anglo-American, with the beginning in England. One of the light periods."

"Youth and no philosophy? I gathered that much, though I'm not familiar with it."

"It's all the rage now. It's so very outré. So clish-clash with itself. So schizophrenic. You speak English, don't you?"

"We have to learn. Most of the First Expansion worlds have some memory of it."

"Why don't you stop all that foolishness? All those ugly Outsiders... You could do well teaching English here. Everybody wants to learn."

Here we go, he thought. She's picking up where she left off eight years ago. It'll only get worse. Why did I come here? To punish myself for getting out of this hell-hole?

She recognized the look on his face. "It's news time. Let's see what's happening." She whistled a few bars of a tune he did not recognize.

The editing was unbelievable. This Archaicist group had done this. That one had done that. The Bay Bombers had beaten the Rat Pack 21-19. There wasn't a word about von Drachau, or anything else offworld, except mention of a Russian basketball team trouncing the touring team from Novgorod.

"Big deal," he muttered. "Novgorod's gravity is seventy-three percent of Earth normal. They'd have to play midgets for it to be fair."

His mother flared up. She hated foreigners almost as much as she hated Outworlders, but the Russians were, at least, good Old Earthers who had had the sense to stay on the mother-world...

He tuned her out, again wondering if he had a masochistic streak.

Would she try to understand if he explained how much in the middle he was? That Outworlders disliked Old Earthers just as much as she loathed them? That he had to reconcile those attitudes both within himself and with everyone he met?

He did not think she would help. He knew her cure. Give it up. Come back home. To squalor and hopelessness...

"Mother, I am what I am. I won't change. You're wasting your time when you try. Why don't we go out somewhere? This place is depressing."

"What's wrong with it? Yes. All right. It's a little old. And I have the extra credit over S.I. basic to move. But it's so big... I like having all this room to knock around in. I wouldn't have that in a new place."

Perchevski groaned to himself. Now came the Mama Marx self-criticism session during which she would confess all her failings as a Social Insuree. Then she would segue into her shortcoming as a mother, ultimately taking upon herself all responsibility for his having gone wrong.

He shook his head sadly. In eight years she should have found a new song. "Come on, Mother. We did this last time. Let's go somewhere. Let's see something. Let's do something."

She dithered. She fussed. It was getting dark out. Only rich Old Earthers, who could afford the armor, went out after the sun went down.

"Here," he said, opening his bag. "I've got my own house now. I brought some holos to show you."

The pictures finally penetrated her façade.

"Tommy! It's beautiful! Magnificent. You really are doing all right, aren't you?"

"Good enough."

"But you're not happy. A mother can tell."

Holy shit, he thought. I'm grown up twice over. I don't need that. "You could live there if you wanted."

She became suspicious immediately. "It's not in some foreign place, is it? Those mountains don't look like the Rockies or Sierras."

"It's on a world called Refuge."

"Omigod! Don't do that! Don't talk that way. My heart... Did I tell you that the medics say I have a weak heart?"