“When I was in prison,” Daniel explained, “I had a P-W lozenge embedded in my stomach. The lozenge is gone, so there’s no chance of my blowing us all up accidentally, but the housing for it is still there, and that, or the traces of metal in it, is what sets off alarms.”

“But why is it still there?”

“I could have it taken out if I wanted, but I’m squeamish about surgery. If they could get it out as easily as they got it in, I’d have no objections.”

“Is it a big operation?” Alethea asked, wrinkling her nose in pretty revulsion.

“Not according to the doctors. But—” He lifted his shoulders: “One man’s meat…”

Alethea laughed.

He was feeling more and more sure of himself, even cocky. This was a routine he’d often gone through, and it always made him feel like Joan of Arc or Galileo, a modern martyr of the Inquisition. He also felt something of a hypocrite, since the reason he’d kept the P-W housing in his stomach (as anyone who thought about it would have known) was that as long as he was still wired for prison he couldn’t be drafted into the National Guard. Not that he minded being or feeling hypocritical. Hadn’t he read, in Reverend Van Dyke’s book, that we’re all hypocrites and liars in the eyes of God? To deny that was only to be self-deluded besides.

However, some molecular switch inside must have responded to this tremor of guilt, for much to his own surprise Daniel started to tell Grandison Whiting of the corruption and abuses he’d witnessed at Spirit Lake. This, on the grounds that Whiting, being on the governing board of the state’s prisons, might be able to do something. He developed quite a head of steam about the system of food vouchers you had to buy just to keep alive, but even at the height of it he could see he was making a tactical error. Grandison Whiting listened to the exposé with a glistening attentiveness behind which Daniel could sense not indignation but the meshing of various cogs and gears of a logical rebuttal. Clearly, Whiting had known already of the evils Daniel was denouncing.

Boa, at the close of Daniel’s tale, expressed a hearty sense of the wrong being done, which would have been more gratifying if he hadn’t seen her through so many other tirades in the Iceberg’s classroom. More surprising was Serjeant’s response. Though it amounted to no more than his saying that it didn’t seem fair, he must have known that he would be flying in the face of his father’s as-yet-unexpressed opinion.

After a long and dour look at his son, Grandison Whiting brightened to a formal smile, and said, quietly: “Justice isn’t always fair.”

“You must excuse me,” said Alethea, putting aside her cup and rising, “but I see that Father means to have a serious discussion, and that is a pastime, like bridge, that I’ve never learned how to enjoy.”

“As you please, my dear,” said her father. “And indeed, if the rest of you would prefer… ?”

“Nonsense,” said Boa. “We’re just beginning to enjoy ourselves.” She took hold of Daniel’s hand and squeezed. “Aren’t we?”

Daniel went, “Mm.”

Serjeant took another pastry from the plate, his fourth.

“Let us say, for the sake of argument,” said Boa pouring tea, and then cream, into Daniel’s cup, “that justice is always fair.”

Grandison Whiting folded his hands across his waistcoat, just above his watchchain. “Justice is always just, certainly. But fairness is to justice as common sense is to logic. That is to say, justice may (and often does) transcend fairness. Fairness usually boils down to a simple, heartfelt conviction that the world should be ordered with one’s own convenience in mind. Fairness is a child’s view of justice. Or a bum’s.”

“Oh, Father, don’t go off on bums.” She turned to Daniel. “I don’t know how many times we’ve had the same argument. Always about bums. It’s Father’s hobbyhorse.”

“Bums,” he went on imperturbably, “as opposed to beggars. Men who have chosen abjection as a way of life, without the extenuating circumstances of blindness, amputation, or imbecility.”

“Men,” Boa contradicted, “who simply can’t take responsibility for themselves. Men who are helpless before a world that is, after all, a pretty rough place.”

“Helpless? So they would have us believe. But all men are responsible for themselves, by definition. All adults, that is. Bums, however, insist on remaining children, in a state of absolute dependency. Think of the most incorrigible such wretch you’ve seen, and imagine him at the age of five instead of five-and-fifty. What change might you observe? There he is, smaller no doubt, but in moral terms the same spoiled child, whining over his miseries, wheedling to have his way, with no plans except for the next immediate gratification, which he will either bully us into giving him or, failing that, will attempt to seduce from us by the grandeur and mystery of his abasement.”

“As you may have gathered, Daniel, we’re not speaking of a completely hypothetical bum. There was a real man, one summer when we were in Minneapolis, with a shoe missing and a cut over one eye, and this man had the temerity to ask Father for a quarter. Father told him: ‘There’s the gutter. Be my guest.’ ”

“She misquotes me, Daniel. I said: I would prefer, really, to contribute directly. And dropped what change I had in my pocket down the nearest drain.”

“Jesus,” said Daniel, despite himself.

“Perhaps the moral was too astringent to be improving. I confess to having had more than my sufficiency of brandy after dinner. But was it an unjust observation? It was he who had chosen to go down the drain, and he’d achieved his desire. Why should I be called on to subsidize his more extensive self-destruction? There are better causes.”

“You may be just, Father, but you aren’t at all fair. That poor man had simply been defeated by life. Is he to be blamed for that?”

“Who but the defeated are to be blamed for a defeat?” Grandison Whiting asked in turn.

“The victors?” Daniel suggested.

Grandison Whiting laughed, somewhat in the manner of his beard. Even so, it didn’t register as wholly genuine: its warmth was the warmth of an electric coil, not of a flame. “That was very good, Daniel. I quite liked that.”

“Though you’ll note he doesn’t go so far as to say that you’re right,” Boa pointed out. “Nor has he said anything about all the horrors you’ve told us about Spirit Lake.”

“Oh, I’m slippery.”

“But really, Father, something ought to be done. What Daniel described is more than unfair — it’s illegal.”

“In fact, my dear, the question of its legality has been argued before several courts, and it’s always been decided that prisoners have a right to buy such food as they can to supplement what the prison provides. As to its fairness, or justice, I believe myself that the voucher system performs a valuable social function: it reinforces that most precious and tenuous of ties, which connects the prisoner to the outside world, to which he must one day return. It’s much better than getting letters from home. Anyone can understand a hamburger; not everyone can read.”

Daniel’s indignation had escalated from being politely scandalized to full rankling outrage. “Mr. Whiting, that is a sinful thing to say! That is brutal!”

“As you said yourself, Daniel — one man’s meat…”

He gathered his wits. “Aside from the fact that it creates a situation where guards profit from the prisoners’ misery, which you have to admit is not a healthy situation…”

“Prison is not a healthy situation, Daniel.”

“Aside from that, what about the people who just don’t have any ties to be ‘reinforced’? And no money. There were lots of those. And they were slowly starving to death. I saw them.”

“That’s why they were there, Daniel — for you to see. They were an example, for any who might suppose, mistakenly, that it is possible to get through life alone, without what the sociologists call primary ties. Such an example is a powerful socializing influence. You might say it’s a cure for alienation.”