Sam grinned ruefully, albeit proudly. "Aw, it would've taken a century for me to make full priest, Papa. The only way to do is like Major Mauser. You didn't know this, but, I've been following the fracases all along. Especially when you were the reporter. I've watched every fracas you've covered for years. I guess you know I'm pretty proud of you."

"Sam! What are you doing in that uniform! Answer me!"

The boy flushed. "I'm old enough, Papa. I switched categories. I've signed up with Chrysler-Ford in their fracas with Hovercar Sports.

They're taking me on as infantryman."

"Infantryman?" Freddy winced, and closed his eyes. "Listen, boy, where'd you get the idea that--" He started over again. "But all your life I've given you the inside on the Category Military, Sam. All your life. No trank in our home. No watching the Telly day in and out.

You've gone to _school_. More than I ever did. You were going to be a Temple priest--"

Sam sat down too, vaguely surprised at this father's reaction. "Aw, Papa, everybody's a fracas buff now. Everybody. You can't get away from it. I ... well, I want to be like Major Mauser. Get so all the fans know me, want my autograph, all that. And all the excitement of being in a fracas, getting in the dill, and all. I just want to be like the other fellas, Papa."

Freddy could only stare at him.

Sam tried to explain. "Shucks, it was really you that made me want to become a mercenary. You're the best Telly reporter of them all. When _you_ cover a fracas, Papa, you really do it. You can see _everything_." He shook his head in admiration. "Gosh, you really feel the emotion. It's the most exciting thing in the world."

"Yeah, son," Freddy Soligen said emptily. "I suppose it is."

XIII

Joe was able to get around on auto-crutches by the time she finally arrived--a stereotype visitor. Done up brightly, a box of candy in one hand, flowers in the other. He could see her coming across the lawn, from the visitor's offices. He wished that he had worn his other suit.

His clothing was on the skimpy side when uniforms were subtracted.

She came up to him. "Well, Joe."

He looked at the flowers and attempted a grin. "Lilies would have been more appropriate, considering the shape I'm in."

Nadine said, "I've just been talking to the staff doctors. You're not in as bad shape as all that. Some bone mending, is all."

The grin turned wry. "I wasn't just thinking of the physical shape."

He settled to the stone bench which stood to one side of the walk he had been exercising upon before her arrival. For a moment, she remained standing.

He looked up at her. "Well," he said. "I didn't break your condition,"

he said. "Am I still receivable?"

She frowned.

Joe said, bitterly, "You told me that you were going to take the fracas in and if my actions resulted in any casualties, you never wanted to see me again."

She took the place beside him. "I did watch. For a time, the rest of the battle going on below was ignored and you were full on lens for at least twenty minutes. I was never so frightened in my life."

Joe said, "The first step toward becoming a buff. First you're scared.

Vicariously. But it's fun to become scared, when nothing can really happen to you. It becomes increasingly exciting to see others threatened with death--and then actually to die before you. After a while, you're hooked."

She looked carefully at the flowers. "That's not exactly what I meant.

I was frightened for you, Joe. Not thrilled."

He looked at her for a long moment. Finally he breathed deeply and said, "Well, you'll never have to go through that again. I'm no longer in the Category Military, I suppose you know."

"It was on the news, Joe." She laughed without amus.e.m.e.nt. "In fact, I knew even before. Balt was tried, too."

"Balt? Your brother?"

She nodded. "You first used your glider in that fracas for father and Vacuum Tube Transport. Now that the commission has ruled against gliders, Balt, now head of the family, has been both fined and expelled from Category Military for life. It hasn't exactly improved his liking for you."

Joe hadn't heard of it, however, he had little sympathy for Balt Haer, nor interest in him. He said, "Why did you take so long to come?"

"I was thinking, Joe."

"And then you finally came."

"Yes."

He looked away and into unseen distances. Finally he cleared his throat and said, "Nadine, the first time I ever talked to you to any extent, I mentioned that I wanted to achieve the top in this status world of ours. I mentioned that I hadn't built this world, and possibly didn't even approve of it, but since I'm in it and have no other recourse, I must follow its rules."

She nodded. "I remember. And I said, why not try and change the rules?"

Joe nodded. He moistened his lips carefully. "O.K. Now I'm willing to listen. How do we go about changing the rules?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XIV

Dr. Nadine Haer, Category Medicine, Mid-Upper caste, was driving and with considerable enjoyment resultant not only from her destination, long desired, now to be realized, but also from the sheer exuberance of handling the vehicle. Since pre-history, man's pleasure in the physical control of a speedy vehicle has been superlative, particularly when that vehicle is known by the driver to be unique in its cla.s.s. The Hitt.i.te charioteer, bowling across the landscape of Anatolia, a Sterling Moss carefully tooling his automobile around the multi-curves of the Upper Cornice on the Riviera, or a Nadine Haer delicately tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the controls of a sports model Hovercar.

She shot a quick glance at Joe Mauser, formerly of Category Military, formerly Rank Major, now an unemployed Mid-Middle who slouched in the bucketseat next to her. He noticed neither speed nor direction.

Nadine called, above the wind, "Zen, Joe! Where did you ever acquire such a car? It must have been built entirely by hand, and by Swiss watchmakers."

Joe stirred and shrugged. Newly from the hospital, he was still deep in the gloom of his recent loss of the dream, the defeat of his life-long ambitions. He said, "A buff gave it to me."

She slowed down, the better to frown at him in amazement. "_Gave_ it to you? Why the thing is priceless."

Joe sighed and told her the salient details. "Quite a few mercenaries manage to acquire a private fracas-buff." He defined the term for her.

"He makes a hobby of your career. Winds up knowing more about it than you, yourself can possibly remember. He follows every fracas you get into. Knows every time you cop one, how serious it was, how long you were in hospital. He glories each time you get a promotion, is in gloom each time your side loses a fracas. He's got pictures of you in various poses taken from the fracas-buff magazines, and files away all articles in which your name appears."

"Zen!" Nadine laughed in deprecation.

"That's just the beginning. After a while he starts writing you fan letters, wanting autographed portraits, wanting a souvenir--sometimes nothing more exciting than a b.u.t.ton off your uniform. More often they want a gun, sword or combat knife, particularly one they saw you using in some fracas or other. They usually offer to pay for such, sometimes quite fabulous amounts. Other times they want a bit of b.l.o.o.d.y uniform, your own true blood from a time when you were in the dill and managed to cop one."

Nadine was astonished. Antagonistic as she was, herself, to the fracases, she wasn't particularly knowledgeable about all their ramifications. She said, repelled, "But doesn't such morbidity disgust you? This fawning, this s...o...b..ring--"

Joe grunted. "All part of the game. A mercenary without buffs to boost him, to form fracas-buff clubs and such, hasn't much chance of promotion. So far as disgust is concerned, you'd have to see one of the really far-out ones. The gleam in an ordinarily fishlike eye when he recounts the time you killed three men in hand-to-hand combat, equipped only with an entrenching tool, when they came at you with bayonets. The trace of spittle, running down from the side of his mouth."

"And this buff of yours. Why did he give you this perfectly marvelous car?"

"It was a she, not a he," Joe said.