place him. So, evidently, must Rudolph. No doubt he plans to have your double perpetrate some horrible blunder on the eve of the election, and the discredit would reflect on me. Now what you and I must do-” You and I-May’s man Reuben and May-up from the eighty-third! Up from the bare corridors and cheerless bedrooms to marble halls and vaulted chambers! From the clatter of the crowded refectory to small and glowing restaurants where you had your own table arid servant and where music came softly from the walls! Up from the scramble to win this woman or that, by wit or charm or the poor bribes you could afford, to the eminence from which you could calmly command your pick of the beauty of Denv! From the moiling intrigue of tripping your fellow Atomist and guarding against him tripping you to the heroic thrust and parry of generals! Up from the eighty-third! Then May dismissed him with a speech whose implications were deliriously exciting. “I need an able man and a young one, Reuben. Perhaps I’ve waited too long looking for him. If you do well in this touchy business, I’ll consider you very seriously for an important task I have in mind.” Late that night, Selene came to his bedroom. “I know you don’t like me,” she said pettishly, “but Griffin’s such a fool and I wanted somebody to talk to. Do you mind? What was it like up there today? Did you see carpets? I wish I had a carpet.” He tried to think about carpets and not the exciting contrast of metallic cloth and flesh. “I saw one through an open door,” he remembered. “It looked odd, but I suppose a person gets used to them. Perhaps I didn’t see a very good one. Aren’t the good ones very thick?” “Yes,” she said. “Your feet sink into them. I wish I had a good carpet and four chairs and a small table as high as my knees to put things on and as many pillows as I wanted. Griffin’s such a fool. Do you think 111 ever get those things? I’ve never caught the eye of a general. Am I pretty enough to get one, dccyou think?” He said uneasily: “Of course you’re a pretty thing, Selene. But carpets and chairs and pillows-” It made him uncomfortable, like the thought of peering up through binoculars from a parapet. “I want them,” she said unhappily. “I like you very much, but I want so many things and soon I’ll be too old even for the eighty-third
level, before I’ve been up higher, and I’ll spend the rest of my life tending babies or cooking in the creche or the refectory.” She stopped abruptly, pulled herself together, and gave him a smile that was somehow ghastly in the half-light. “You bungler,” he said, and she instantly looked at the door with the smile frozen on her face. Reuben took a pistol from under bis pillow and demanded, “When do you expect him?” “What do you mean?” she asked shrilly. “Who are you talking about?” “My double. Don’t be a fool, Selene. May and I-” he savored it- “May and I know all about it. He warned me to beware of a diversion by a woman while the double slipped in and killed me. When do you expect him?” “I really do like you,” Selene sobbed. “But Almon promised to take me up there and I knew when I was where they’d see me that I’d meet somebody really important. I really do like you, but soon I’ll be too old-” “Selene, listen to me. Listen^to me! You’ll get your chance. Nobody but you and me will know that the substitution didn’t succeed!” “Then I’ll be spying for you on Almon, won’t I?” she asked in a choked voice. “All I wanted was a few nice things before I got too old. All right, I was supposed to be in your arms at 2350 hours.” It was 2349. Reuben sprang from bed and stood by the door, his pistol silenced and ready. At 2350 a naked man slipped swiftly into the room, heading for the bed as he raised a ten-centimeter poignard. He stopped in dismay when he realized that the bed was empty. Reuben killed him with a bullet through the throat. “But he doesn’t look a bit like me,” he said in bewilderment, closely examining the face. “Just in a general way.” Selene said dully: “Almon told me people always say that when they see their doubles. It’s funny, isn’t it? He looks just like you, really.” “How was my body to be disposed of?” She produced a small flat box. “A shadow suit. You were to be left here and somebody would come tomorrow.” “We won’t disappoint him,” Reuben pulled the web of the shadow suit over his double and turned on the power. In the half-lit room, it was a perfect disappearance; by daylight it would be less perfect. “They’ll ask why the body was shot instead of knifed. Tell them you