to demonstrate that they were empty, and called, "Tell

Whistler that Rolf Malone is here." .

They looked at one another, consulting together with glances and expressions. Finally, one backed to the building, opened a small plate beside the door, and spoke into a phone. The rest of us waited, in our respective places.

Several minutes went by. The guard at the phone spoke, and waited, and then spoke again, and waited again. Finally he called to me, "You related to Gar Malone?"

"His brother."

The guard relayed this- information, and listened, and nodded, and put the phone away. "Colonel Whistler will see you," he called. "Come forward."

I came forward. When I reached them I said, "You'll watch my car for me."

"Yes, of course. Leave weapons out here."

I gave him everything but the sheath knife. However, I was then frisked and the knife found. "This, too," said the guard, with neither humor nor indignation, and I took it off and gave it to him.

When they were sure I was weaponless, one of them rapped on the iron door. As we stood there, he said, "Who is Gar Malone?"

"My brother," I said.

He didn't like that answer, but before he could decide what to do about it the door slid open and I stepped inside.

23

VI

when I was getting out of prison, in with the other paperwork I put a request for a stellar passport. My counselor mentioned it in our last session, saying, "You plan to start life again on a new world, Rolf, is that it?"

"Something like that," I said.

"Why is that, Rolf?" He used my name a lot, to establish a personal relationship between us. I never used his name at all.

"My record here is pretty bad," I said. "I know that's not supposed to mean anything—an ex-convict is supposed to have the same rights as anybody else—but we both know it doesn't work that way."

"It does for some men, Rolf. Men who are willing to wait it out."

"A record doesn't travel with you to a new world," I said. That's one good rule the UC's got."

He snapped at everything, like a piranha fish, saying now, "You have a grievance against the Union Commission, Rolf?"

"Not a bit," I said. "I've never been off Earth, never had dealings with the Commission. But I know about that rule, and I think it's a good one."

"Do you know anyone out there Rolf? Any friends or relations?"

"My brother's got a job on a place called Anarchaos.'*

"I don't believe I know the name."

"It's small, and way out. New, too."

"Rolf, you could do better on Earth."

"I could do worse, too. Waiting it out isn't a style that's natural with me."

"You mean your temper, Rolf? There hasn't been an outbreak from you in over three years. That's cured, Rolf, I'm convinced of it."

"It's not cured, it's controlled. And it's what got me in here, took seven years off my Me. I don't want to push that control too far."

"You may be right at that, Rolf," he said. "Ill recommend approval."

"Thank you," I said. Because it was necessary.

24

He was right about my temper, but on the other hand he was dead wrong. There had been no outward demonstration of it in over three years, as he'd said, but it had existed, inside me, compressed, chained, stifled, almost every waking minute of all that time. A prison is full of petty irritations, and it is my nature to irritate easily.

But I had to learn to hold it in if I ever wanted to get out of that place, and what a man has to do he can do. And now, after seven years—I'd been given an indeterminate sentence for manslaughter, after I killed five people in an argument over a noisy party—the temper was in tight iron shackles and I at last was free.

I would never lose my temper again, this I knew. By now I was a little afraid of it myself; if once let out after being pent up so long, what would it be likely to do? No. It was the quiet way for me, from now on.

With Gar. My brother Gar, three years my senior, as near enough like me to be my twin in all respects but one, and that one made all the rifference. Gar had no temper at all. Nothing could enrage him, nothing aggravate him past endurance. Relatives—I've alienated myself from all of them by now, of course, parents included—used to say I had Gar's temper as well as my own. That was when we were both children, and my destructive frenzies could do comparatively little damage. Later, as I grew older and stronger, such pleasantries were not among the things my relatives said of me. Gar was their darling, and I—to the extent that they dared ignore me—had ceased to exist.

I suppose it would have been normal for me to grow up hating and envying Gar, but quite the reverse was true. He was the one person I never grew angry with, the only one in the world—in any world—whose opinion mattered to me. And he was fond of me, too, with a curious blend of normal brotherly affection combined with a goodhearted man's indulgence of a rambuctious pet. He kept me out of trouble when he could, calmed me when he could, made things right after my flare-ups when he could.

I finished my schooling at the minimum legal age, of course; school for me had been an endless succession of rows with teachers and fellow students. I had a number of jobs, none of them good, none of them for long. Then, at twenty-

25

three, I went into prison, and stayed there till seven days past my thirtieth birthday.

Gar went on with school, became a mining engineer with additional degrees in allied fields, and went to work for one of the great alloy firms. His even disposition and absorption in his work made him an ideal explorer in virgin territories, either alone or with small parties. He changed jobs infrequently, but each change was a step upward. When he went to work for Wolmak Corporation, my fourth year in prison, he was the highest-paid field man they had, could have had an administrative job at executive level if he'd wanted it, and was only thirty years old.

He wrote me from time to time, and less frequently I wrote back. In his next to last letter he told me of his transfer to Anarchaos, exciting prospects, brand new and unrealized potential, and said that if I were to be released as soon as I expected he was authorized to offer me a job as his field assistant. I accepted at once, and in his final letter he said the job was mine.

After so many false starts, now at last I had found my place. I would be with Gar, the one man in all the world whose company I could tolerate, the two of us moving endlessly across empty landscapes where no human had ever been before, away from society, away from humankind, out where only nature could rasp my naked nerve-endings, and against nature in perfect safety I could howl my rage away.

The day I got out of prison, the message came from the Union Commission: Gar had been killed. He was dead.

Killed? By what? By whom?

I went to the UC embassy, and there I first heard something of the unique nature of Anarchaos. "It was the colony killed your brother," a UC man told me; a statement I was to hear often.

But I wanted more. I read tape after tape at the library, soon exhausting all that had been written about that filthy little planet, and then I read the sources of its social structure—Bakunin and the rest. And Rohstock, in his Voyages to Seven Planets:

"Life on Anarchaos Is Itself sufficient punishment for any crimes its citizens may perform; there is, therefore, no other."