Fifteen. And out of that fifteen--

"Tell me exactly," Nicholas said, "when the war ended. How many years ago?"

"It's going to make you hurt," Blair said.

"Say. Anyhow."

Blair nodded. "Thirteen years ago. The war lasted only two years on Earth, after the first one year on Mars. So-thirteen years you've been snow-jobbed, Nicholas, or whatever you said; sorry, I forgot again. Nick. How's that: Nick."

"Fine," Nicholas murmured, and thought of Carol and Rita and old Maury Souza and Stu and all the others, Jorgenson and Flanders and Haller, Giller and Christenson, Peterson and Grandi and Martino and on and on, even to Dale Nunes; even to the Tom Mix's pol-com. Did Nunes know? Nicholas thought. If Nunes knows, I swear; I affirm; I will in god's name kill him--I will do it with my hands so as to feel it, and nothing will stop me. But it was impossible, because Commissioner Nunes had been shut up there with them. But--not for all that time. Only for--

Nunes had known. He had only a few years ago descended the chute, from the "Estes Park Government," from Yancy.

"Listen, Mr. James," one of the bearded men said, "I was wondering; if you didn't guess, then what'd you come up for? I mean, you'd expect to find nothing but the war, and they tell you on TV--boy, how I remember--they'd shoot you on sight--"

"And that's what practically happened to him," Blair said.

"--because of the Bag Plague and the Stink of Shrink, neither of which exists in reality; that's another fink snow-job they made up, those two bacterial plagues, although there really was that hideous nerve gas we invented, that New Jersey Chemical Corporation or whatever its name was; a Soviet missile got it, I'm glad to say, right off, including everyone in it. But it's radioactive in this spot, although the rest of the surface--"

"I came up," Nicholas said, "to buy an artificial pancreas. An artiforg. From the blackmarket."

"There aren't any," Blair said.

Nicholas said, "I'm prepared to--"

"There aren't any! Nowhere! Even the Yance-men can't get them; Brose has them attached; he owns them all, legally." Blair turned, his face wild with rage; distorted like a handpuppet writhing from the twisting fingers contained within. "All for Brose, who's eighty-two or -three and's full of artiforgs, all but the brain. The company's gone and now nobody knows how to make them; we're degenerate, I mean, that's what war does. The Yance-men tried, but they didn't work, grafted in, for more than a month or so. A lot of very specialized techniques depending on what they call 'highly sophisticated' equipment, you know, delicate tools and all--I mean, it was a _real war_ while it lasted; don't forget that. The Yance-men have their demesnes, and you guys down below make leadies for them, and they fly around in their goddam little flapples, the Agency in New York cranks out speeches and Megavac 6-V is kept functioning but--sheoot." He gave up, walked on in silence.

Nicholas said presently, "I've got to get the pancreas."

"You'll never get it," Blair said.

"Then," he said, "I've got to get back to the Tom Mix and tell them. They can come up; they can forget the quota and the threat of having the tank abolished."

"Sure they can come up. And be prisoners above ground. It's better; I agree. Runcible is starting a whole new constellation of conapts in the Southern Utah region; see, we hear a lot of news because David Lantano gave us a wide-band radio receiver, just aud, not vid, but we pick up the stuff that's transmitted not to the ant tanks but like between demesnes; they're always blabbing away to each other in the evening because they're lonely. Just maybe one guy in his fifty-thousand-acre demesne with his leadies."

"No families?" Nicholas said. "No children?"

"They're most of them sterile," Blair said. "See, they were on the surface during the war, remember. Mostly at the Air Arm Academy at Estes Park. And they lived; they were the elite of the U.S., the young Air Arm cadets. But--they can't reproduce. So in a way they paid. Real high. For what they've got. For having been the elite cadets in that great bomb-proof structure in the Rockies."

"We paid, too," Nicholas said. "And look what _we_ got."

"You wait a while," Blair said. "Think it over about trying to get back to your ant tank to tell them. Because the way the system up here is run--"

"They'd be better off," one of his bearded compatriots put in, defiantly. "You've forgotten what it's like down there; you're getting senile like old Brose. Runcible's made sure they're better off; he's a darn good construction man, they have ping-pong and swimming pools and wall-to-wall carpet of that funny plastic imitation--"

"Then how come," Blair said, "you're squatting here in these ruins instead of lounging at a swimming pooi in one of those conapt constellations?"

The man grunted, gestured. "I just--like to be free."

No one commented; it did not require it.

But another topic did seem to require additional comment, and Blair, musingly, supplied it. To Nicholas he said, "I just don't get it. Nick. How could Talbot Yancy have rescued you if Talbot Yancy doesn't exist?"

Nicholas said nothing. He was too weary to speak.

And anyhow he did not know.

The first giant autonomic 'dozer groaned like a stiff old man. And, as it dipped stink-buglike head down, tail up, the first scoop of earth-- and a huge scoop, too-was gathered, pried loose, swung up and then off to one side; the scoop of dirt was dropped into a waiting converter, also on autocircuit, operating homeostatically, without human attention. Within its field the dirt was transformed into energy, and that energy, which did not deserve to be wasted, was carried by cable to a major storage meta-battery assembly a quarter mile away. The meta-battery, a development which had come shortly before the war, could store up power which, when read off as ergs, consisted of billions of units. And--it could store that power for decades.

The energy from the meta-battery would provide electricity to run the completed dwelling units of the conapt buildings; it would be the source for everything that lit up, heated, cooled or turned.

Over the years Runcible had made his modus operandi a highly efficient one. Nothing was discarded.

And the real profit, Robert Hig reflected as he stood near the automatic 'dozer-or rather near the first one; twelve had gone into operation simultaneously-came ultimately from the people who would live in the conapts. Because, as they had worked below ground in their ant tanks, assembling leadies to augment the entourages, the private armies of the demesne owners, now they would work for Runcible.

The lower floors of each conapt building consisted of shops, and in these shops the components for the leadies were made. The components, turned out by hand--the intricate network of the surface autofac system having been wiped out by the war. Below ground the tankers of course did not know this, had no idea where their supply of components originated. Because to let them know this would have been to let them know--god forbid--that humans could live on the surface.

And the whole point, Hig reflected, is to see that they don't know, because just as soon as they come up we will have another war.

At least so he had been told. And he did not question this; he was, after all, not a Yance-man; he was merely an employee of the Agency, of Brose. Someday, if he were lucky and did his job properly, Brose would advance his name as candidate; he would be legally entitled to seek out a hot-spot for his demesne... assuming any hot-spots still existed by then.

Perhaps, Hig thought, as a result of this one job, this major special Agency project, I'll be a Yance-man. And then I can start paying those private cops of Webster Foote to keep readings going for me in the hot-spots that remain; I can start the long vigil like David Lantano did up until just recently. If he could do it, so can I, because who ever heard of him before?