Elsie will have a silly cake for me with lots of candles on it and the robots all will bring me a gift and those dogs of Bruce's will come in and wish me happy returns of the day and wag their tails at me. And there will be a few televisor calls – although not many, perhaps. And I'll pound my chest and say I'm going to live to be a hundred and everyone will grin behind their hands and say "listen to the old fool".

Eighty– six years and there were two things I meant to do. One of them I did and the other one I didn't.

A cawing crow skimmed over a distant ridge and slanted down into the valley shadow. From far away, down by the river, came the quacking of a flock of mallards.

Soon the stars would be coming out. Came out early this time of year. He liked to look at them. The stars! He patted the arms of the chair with fierce pride. The stars, by Lord, were his meat. An obsession? Perhaps – but at least something to wipe out that stigma of long ago, a shield to keep the family from the gossip of historic busybodies. And Bruce was helping too. Those dogs of his A step sounded in the grass behind him.

"Your whisky, sir," said Jenkins.

Thomas Webster stared at the robot, took the glass off the tray.

"Thank you, Jenkins," he said.

He twirled the glass between his fingers. "How long, Jenkins, have you been lugging drinks to this family?"

"Your father, sir," said Jenkins. "And his father before him."

"Any news?" asked the old man.

Jenkins shook his head. "No news."

Thomas Webster sipped the drink. "That means, then, that they're well beyond the solar system. Too far out even for the Pluto station to relay. Halfway or better to Alpha Centauri. If only I live long enough-"

"You will, sir," Jenkins told him. "I feel it in my bones."

"You," declared the old man, "haven't any bones."

He sipped the drink slowly, tasting it with expert tongue.

Watered too much again. But it wouldn't do to say anything. No use flying off the handle at Jenkins. That doctor! Telling Jenkins to water it a bit more. Depriving a man of proper drinking in his final years "What's that down there" he asked, pointing to the path that straggled up the hill.

Jenkins turned to look.

"It appears, sir," he said, "that Nathaniel's bringing someone home."

The dogs had trooped in to say good night, had left again.

Bruce Webster grinned after them.

"Great gang," he said.

He turned to Grant. "I imagine Nathaniel gave you quite a start this afternoon."

Grant lifted the brandy glass, squinted through it at the light.

"He did," he said. "Just for a minute. And then I remembered things I'd read about what you're doing here. It isn't in my line, of course, but your work has been popularized, written up in more or less non-technical language."

"Your line?" asked Webster. "I thought-"

Grant laughed. "I see what you mean. A census taker. An enumerator. All of that, I grant you."

Webster was puzzled, just a bit embarrassed. "I hope, Mr. Grant, that I haven't-"

"Not at all," Grant told him. "I'm used to being regarded as someone who writes down names and ages and then goes on to the next group of human beings. That was the old idea of a census, of course. A nose counting, nothing more. A matter of statistics. After all, the last census was taken more than three hundred years ago. And times have changed."

"You interest me," said Webster. "You make this nose counting of yours sound almost sinister."

"It isn't sinister," protested Grant. "It's logical. It's an evaluation of the human population. Not just how many of them there are, but what are they really like, what are they thinking and doing?"

Webster slouched lower in his chair, stretching his feet out towards the fire upon the hearth. "Don't tell me, Mr. Grant, that you intend to psycho-analyse me?"

Grant drained the brandy glass, set it on the table. "I don't need to," he said. "The World Committee knows all it needs to know about the folks like you. But it is the others – the ridge runners, you call them here. Up north they're jackpine savages. Farther south they're something else. A hidden population – an almost forgotten population. The ones who took to the woods. The ones who scampered off when the World Committee loosened the strings of government."

Webster grunted. "The governmental strings had to be loosened," he declared. "History will prove that to anyone. Even before the World Committee came into being the governmental set-up of the world was burdened by ox-cart survivals. There was no more reason for the township government three hundred years ago than there is for a national government today."

"You're absolutely right," Grant told him, "and yet when the grip of government was loosened, its hold upon the life of each man was loosened. The man who wanted to slip away and live outside his government, losing its benefits and escaping its obligations, found it an easy thing to do. The World Committee didn't mind. It had more things to worry over than the irresponsibles and malcontents. And there were plenty of them. The farmers, for instance, who lost their way of life with the coming of hydroponics. Many of them found it hard to fit into industrial life. So what? So they slipped away. They reverted to a primitive life. They raised a few crops, they hunted game, they trapped, they cut wood, did a little stealing now and then. Deprived of a livelihood, they went back to the soil, all the way back, and the soil took care of them."

"That was three hundred years ago," said Webster. "The World Committee didn't mind about them then. It did what it could, of course, but, as you say, it didn't really mind if a few slipped through its fingers. So why this sudden interest now?"

"Just, I guess," Grant told him, "that they've got around to it."

He regarded Webster closely, studying the man. Relaxed before the fire, his face held power, the shadows of the leaping flames etching planes upon his features, turning them almost surrealistic.

Grant hunted in his pocket, found his pipe, jammed tobacco in the bowl.

"There is something else," he said.

"Eh," asked Webster.

"There is something else about this census. They'd take it anyhow, perhaps, because a picture of Earth's population must always be an asset, a piece of handy knowledge; But that isn't all."

"Mutants," said Webster.

Grant nodded. "That's right. I hardly expected anyone to guess it."

"I work with mutants," Webster pointed, out. "My whole life is bound up with mutations."

"Queer bits of culture have been turning up," said Grant.

"Stuff that has no precedent. Literary forms which bear the unmistakable imprint of fresh personalities. Music that has broken away from traditional expression. Art that is like nothing ever seen before. And most of it anonymous or at least hidden under pseudonyms."

Webster laughed. "Such a thing, of course, is utter mystery to the World Committee."

"It isn't that so much as something else," Grant explained. "The Committee is not so concerned with art and literature as it is with other things – things that don't show up. If there is a backwoods renaissance taking place, it would first come to notice, naturally, through new art and literary forms. But a renaissance is not concerned entirely with art and literature."