"Abort and sulk!" Nick finished for her. "No, I'll get Advancement, all right. On my terms! There's not a blasted thing wrong with Applied. It's Father who tried programming the university for me. But I've had different plans." Nick's look turned as hard as Father's could when he'd lost crops.

"What do you mean. Nick? What have you been doing?" Nora was suddenly scared. What had Father driven Nick to do?

"Nora, sweetie. Old Bates at the Everett Complex is about due for retirement. Felicity Everett and I want to pair off as soon as the E.A.'s have been posted. And it's just possible that Landsman Everett would opt for me as assistant." Nick's expression altered again, this time to enthusiasm, and Nora felt relief at the change.

"Oh, he would. Nick. You know what he said about your term paper on ovine gene manipulation." Then Nora caught the significance of his plan.

"Yes, indeedy, sister mine. Nick can cut a program on his own, without your help or Father's."

She was so astonished at the calculation in his smile that he was able to loosen her fingers from the handlebars. He was off on the skimmer at a high blow before she could stop him.

"Nick…"

"Give my love to our foul-feathered friends!" he called over his shoulder cheerfully, and launched the skimmer straight across the meadows toward the Everetts' Herd Complex.

Resolutely, Nora made for the distant poultry house on foot. Father proclaimed that chickens and turkeys were a woman's business. She hated tending them and usually swapped the chore with Nick. Nick found poultry a trifle more engrossing than the tedious crop programming.

Why couldn't Nick focus a little more attention on what he was doing instead of expending all his energies thwarting Father? Irritably, she scuffed at a vagrant pebble in the track that led straight from the low-rambling Farm Complex, set in the fold of the soft hills, toward the Poultry house. She could see the glitter of the round roof as she topped the next rise.

Educational Advancement! She so hoped that she'd qualify… at least for Applied Advancement. That would prove to Father she wasn't all that stupid, even if she was a girl. Maybe, if she could make Journeyman Class Computer… she really felt that she understood mathematics and symbolic logic. If she got Journeyman, Father mightn't be so disappointed when he finally realized that Nick was absolutely set against crop farming. While Father might feel that women were being educated far beyond society's profit, no contributing citizen could argue with the Advancement Board's decision. For the board was impartial, having the best interests of society and the individual at heart. Father might scoff at the premise that everyone had the constitutional right to shelter, food, clothing, and education as long as he maintained a class average. But then, Father disparaged a system that rewarded the diligent student with credit bonuses for something as intangible as academic excellence.

"That doesn't feed anyone, make anything, buy or sell anything," he'd say when he'd started on that tangent. There was no use explaining to such a pragmatist.

If Nora could get certified in computer logistics and was able to handle the Complex's Master Ruralist, then surely he'd be proud of her. He wouldn't mind that one of his children was a girl, not the second boy he'd printed into the Propagation Registration.

Father never let Nora, or her mother, forget that he had not computed twins, nor mixed sexes. He'd opted for both legal progeny to be male. Since early sex education in school, Nora had wondered how her mother had managed not only a multiple birth but a split in sexes without Father's knowledge. For one thing, multiple births had been uncommon for the last hundred years, since Population Control had been initiated. Most duly registered couples opted for one of each sex, well spaced. Of course, George Fenn would complain about PC, too. Or rather, the provision which permitted only exceptional couples to have one or two more children above the legal number—in return for extraordinary contributions to society.

"They put the emphasis on the wrong genetic factors," Father would argue bitterly whenever the subject came up. "If you breed for brain, the species weakens physically, flaws develop." He'd always flex his huge biceps then, show off his two-meter-tall, onehundred-kilo frame in support of his argument. He'd been disappointed, too, when Nick, scarcely an undersized man, stopped slightly short of two meters in height. Father'd glower at Nora, as if her slender body had robbed her twin of extra centimeters.

How had Mary Fenn, a woman of muted qualities, coped so long and amiably with her husband? Her quiet, uncritical voice was seldom raised. She knew when you were upset, though, or sick, and her capable hands were sure and soft. If anyone deserved Maternity Surplus, it was Mother. She was so good! And she'd managed to remain completely in control of herself, a presence unperturbed by her husband's tirades and intemperate attitudes, efficiently dealing with each season and its exigencies.

Of course, it was no wonder that Mother was quiet. Father was such a dominating person. He could shout down an entire Rural Sector Meeting.

"A fine landsman," Nora heard her father called. "But don't cross him," she'd heard whispered. "He'll try to program things his way, come hell or high water. He knows the land, though," was the grudging summation.

"Knows the land, but not humans," Nora muttered under her breath. "Not his children. Certainly he doesn't know what his son really wants."

Maybe once Nick gets away to university, harmony will be restored between father and son. Nick ought to have a stronger desire to maintain family unity…

Crop farming wasn't all that bad, Nora thought. By punching the right buttons, you could now mow a thousand-acre field, as Nora had done as a preteen, when the apprentices let her. You could winnow and cull with a vacuum attachment; grade, bag, clean your field far more efficiently than the most careful ancient gleaners. You could program your Plowboy to fertilize at five levels as the seed was planted. One Complex with two families or a couple of responsible apprentices could efficiently farm an old-time countysized spread and still turn a luxury credit. Not to mention having fresh and ready supplies of any edible and some of those luxuries above the subsistence level that the City Complexes craved.

Now Nora could hear the pitiful muted honking of the geese in the Poultry House. She winced. There were certain aspects of farming that could not be completely automated. You can't tape a broody hen, and you can't computerize the services of a rooster. Cocks' crows still heralded sunrise over the fields, whether the clarion summons issued from a wooden slated crate or the sleek multipentangle that housed the poultry raised by the Fenn Complex. Eggs laid by hens in Nora's charge would be powdered and eventually whipped to edibility on the Jupiter station, or be flash-frozen to provide sustenance when the first colony ship set forth as it was rumored to do in the next decade. Turkeys from this Complex regularly made the one-way trip to the Moon bases for Winter Solstice celebrations, call them Saturnalias or Santa Claus if you would.

She entered the poultry pentangle through the access tunnel which led straight to the computer core that handled all watering, feeding, cleaning, egg collection, and slaughter operations. The Fenn Complex did not sell to dietary groups, so the market preparations were the standard ones.

She checked the tapes on the Leghorn fifth, replenished the grit supply, and tapped out a reorder sequence. She flushed out all the pen floors and refreshed the water. Then she checked the mean weight of the torn turkeys, growing from scrawny, long-legged adolescence to plump-breasted maturity. A trifle more sand for digestion, a richer mash for firmer meats, and a little less of the growth hormones. Concentrated goodness, not size for size's sake anymore.