"That shouldn't stop you having your own career."

"It won't, but I'm not too proud to make sacrifices if it will help him to achieve his ambitions."

"But you've the right to a career of your own," said Ruth.

"Why?" said Annie. "Because it's suddenly become fashionable? Perhaps I'm not like Joanna,"

she said, glancing across at her sister-in-law. "I know what I want, Ruth, and I'll do whatever is necessary to achieve it."

"And what's that?" asked Ruth quietly.

"'Support the man I love for the rest of my life, bring up his children, delight in his success, and with all the pressures of the seventies, that may prove a lot harder than gaining a magna cum laiide from Vassar," said Annie as she picked up the silver knife with an ivory handle. "You know, I suspect there are going to be far fewer golden wedding anniversaries in the twenty-first century than there have been in the twentieth."

"You're a lucky man, Fletcher," said his mother as Annie placed the knife on the bottom layer of the cake.

"I knew that even before the braces had been removed from her teeth," said Fletcher.

Annie passed the knife across to Joanna.

"Make a wish," whispered Jimmy.

"I already have, freshman," she replied, "and what's more, it's been granted."

"Ah, you mean the privilege of being married to me?"

"Good heavens no, it's far more significant than that."

"What could possibly be more significant than that?"

"The fact that we're going to have a baby."

Jimmy threw his arms around his wife. "When didthat happen?"

"I don't know the exact moment, but I stopped taking the pill a while ago once I was convinced you'd graduate."

"That's wonderful. Come on, let's share the news with our guests."

"You say a word, and I'll plant this knife in you instead of the cake. Mind you, I always knew it was a mistake to marry a freshman with red hair."

"I bet the baby has red hair."

"Don't be too sure, freshman, because if you mention it to anyone, I'll tell them I'm not certain who the father is."

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Jimmy, as his wife raised the knife, "I have an announcement to make." The room fell silent. "Joanna and I are going to have a baby." The silence continued for a moment, before the five hundred guests broke into spontaneous applause.

"You're dead, freshman," said Joanna, as she plunged the knife into the cake.

"I knew that the moment I met you, Mrs.

Gates, but I think we should have at least three children before you finally kill me."

"Well, Senator, you're about to become a grandfather," said Ruth. "My congratulations. I can't wait to be a grandmother, although I suspect it will be some time before Annie has her first child."

"She won't even consider it until she's graduated, would be my bet," said Harry Gates, "especially when they find out what I have planned for Fletcher."

"Is it possible that Fletcher might not fall in with your plans?" suggested Ruth.

OO "Not as long as Jimmy and I continue to make him feel that it was always his idea in the first place."

"Don't you think by now he might just have worked out what you're up to?"

"He's been able to do that since the day I met him at the Hotchkiss versus Tail game nearly a decade ago. I knew then he was capable of raising the bar far higher than I ever could."

The senator placed an arm around Ruth."However, there's one problem I may need your help with."

"And what's that?" asked Ruth.

"I don't think Fletcher has made up his mind yet if he's a Republican or a Democrat, and I know how strongly your husband.

"Isn't it wonderful news about Joanna?" said Fletcher to his mother-in-law.

"Sure is," said Martha, "Harry's already counting the extra votes he'll pick up once he becomes a grandfather."

"What makes him so confident of that?" asked Fletcher.

"Senior citizens are the fastest growing section of the electorate, so it must be worth at least a percentage point for the voters to see Harry wheeling a stroller everywhere."

"And if Annie and I have a child, will that be worth another percentage point?"

"No, no," said Martha, "it's all in the timing. Just try to remember that Harry will be up for reelection again in two years" time."

"Do you think we should plan the birth of our first child simply to coincide with the date of Harry's next election?"

"You'd be surprised how many politicians do,"

replied Martha.

"Congratulations, Joanna," said the senator, giving his daughter-in-law a hug.

"Will your son ever be able to keep a secret?"

Joanna hissed as she extracted the knife from the cake.

"No, not if it will make his friends happy,"

admitted the senator, "but if he thought it would harm someone he loved, he would carry the secret to his grave."

professor Karl Abraham's entered the lecture theater as the clock struck nine. The professor gave eight lectures a term, and it was rumored that he had never missed one in thirty-seven years. Many of the other rumors about Karl Abrahams could not be substantiated, and sohe would have dismissed them as hearsay and therefore inadmissible.

However, such rumors persisted, and thus became part of folklore. There was no doubting his sardonic wit should any student be foolish enough to take him on; that could be testified to on a weekly basis. Whether it was the case that three presidents had invited him to join the Supreme Court, only the three presidents knew. However it was recorded that, when questioned about this, Abrahams said he felt the best service he could give the nation was to instruct the next generation of lawyers and create as many decent, honest counselors as possible, rather than clear up the mess made by so many bad ones.

The Washington Post, in an unauthorized profile, observed that Abrahams had taught two members of the present Supreme Court, twenty-two federal judges and several of the deans of leading law schools.

When Fletcher and Jimmy attended the first of Abrahams's eight lectures, they weren't under any illusion about how much work lay ahead of them.

Fletcher was, however, under the illusion that during his final year as an undergraduate, he had put in sufficiently long hours, often ending up in bed after midnight. It took professor Abrahams about a week to familiarize him with hours when he normally slept.

Professor Abrahams continually reminded his first-year students that not all of them would attend his final address to the law graduates at the end of the course. Jimmy bowed his head. Fletcher began to spend so many hours researching that Annie rarely saw him before the library doors had been locked and bolted. Jimmy would sometimes leave a little earlier so that he could be with Joanna, but he rarely departed without several books under his arm. Fletcher told Annie that he'd never known her brother to work so hard.

"And it won't be any easier for him once the baby arrives," Annie reminded her husband oneevening after she had come to pick him up from the library.

"Joanna will have planned for the child to be born during the vacation so she can be back at work on the first day of the term."

"I don't want our first child to grow up like that,"

said Annie. "I intend to raise my children in our home as a full-time mother andwitha father who will be back early enough in the evening to read to them."

"Suits me," said Fletcher. "But if you change your mind and decide to become the chairman of General Motors, I'll be happy to change the diapers."

The first thing that surprised Nat when he returned to the university was how immature his former classmates seemed to be. He had sufficient credits to allow him to move on to his sophomore year, but the students he had mixed with before signing up were still discussing the latest pop group or movie star, and he'd never even heard of The Doors. It wasn't until he attended his first lecture that he became aware just how much the experience of Vietnam had changed his life.

Nat was also aware that his fellow students didn't treat him as if he was one of them, not least because a few of the professors also appeared somewhat in awe.

Nat enjoyed the respect he was afforded, but quickly discovered there was another side to that coin. Over the Christmas vacation, he discussed the problem with Tom, who told him that he understood why some of them were a bit wary of him; after all, they believed he had killed at least a hundred Vietcong.

"At least a hundred?" repeated Nat.

"While others have read what our soldiers did to the Vietnamese women," said Tom.

"I should have been so lucky; if it hadn't been for Mollie, I'd have remained celibate."

"Well, don't disillusion them would be my advice," said Tom, "because my bet is that the men are envious and the women intrigued. The last thing you want them to discover is that you're a normallaw-abiding citizen."

"I sometimes wish they'd remember that I'm also only nineteen," Nat replied.

"The trouble is," said Tom, "that Captain Cartwright, holder of the Medal of Honor, doesn't sound as if he's only nineteen, and I'm afraid the limp only reminds them."

Nat took his friend's advice, and decided to dissipate his energy in the classroom, in the gym and on the cross-country course. The doctors had warned him that it could take at least a year before he would be able to run again-if ever. After their pessimistic prediction, Nat never spent less than an hour a day in the gym, climbing ropes, lifting weights and even playing the occasional game of paddle tennis. By the end of the first term back he was able to jog slowly around the course-even if it did take him an hour and twenty minutes to cover six miles. He looked up his old training schedule, and found that his record as a freshman remained on the books at thirty-four minutes, eighteen seconds. He promised himself that he would break that by the end of his sophomore year.

The next problem Nat faced was the response he got whenever he asked a woman out on a date.

They either wanted to jump straight into bed with him or simply turned him down out of hand. Tom had warned him that his scalp in bed was probably a prize several undergraduates wanted to claim, and Nat quickly discovered that some he hadn't even met were already doing so.

"Reputation has its disadvantages," complained Nat.

"I'll swap places with you if you like," said Tom.

I The one exception turned out to be Rebecca, who made it clear from the day Nat arrived back on campus that she wanted to be "dis"

given a second chance. Nat was circumspect about rekindling that particular old flame, and concluded thatif they were to rebuild any relationship, it would have to be done slowly. Rebecca, however, had other plans.

After their second date, she invited him back to her room for coffee, and started trying to undress him only moments after she'd closed the door. Nat broke away, and could only come up with the lame excuse that he was running a time trial the following day. She wasn't put off that easily, and when she reappeared a few minutes later carrying two cups of coffee, Rebecca had already changed into a silk robe that revealed she was wearing little if anything underneath. Nat suddenly realized that he no longer felt anything for her, and quickly drank his coffee, repeating that he needed an early night.

"Time trials never worried you in the past,"

teased Rebecca.

"That was when I had two good legs," replied Nat.

"Perhaps I'm no longer good enough for you," said Rebecca, "now that everybody thinks you're some kind of hero."

"It's got nothing to do with that. It's just.."

"It's just that Ralph was right about you from the start."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Nat sharply.

"You're simply not in his class. In or out of bed." She paused.

Nat was about to respond but decided it wasn't worth it. He left without saying another word. Later that night he lay awake, realizing that Rebecca, like so many other things, was part of his past life.

One of Nat's more surprising discoveries on returning to the university was how many students pressed him to run against Elliot for the president of the student senate. But Nat made it clear that he had no interest in fighting an election while he still needed to make up for the time he'd lost.

When he returned home at the end of his sophomore year, Nat told his father that he was just as pleased that his cross-country time was now down to under an hour as to discover he was placed in the top six on theclass list.

IBM During the summer, Nat and Tom traveled to Europe. Nat found that one of the many advantages of a captain's salary was that it allowed him to accompany his closest friend without ever feeling he couldn't afford to pay his way.

Their first stop was London, where they watched the guards march down Whitehall. Nat was left in no doubt that they would have been a formidable force in Vietnam. In Paris, they strolled along the Champs Elysees and regretted having to turn to a phrase book every time they saw a beautiful woman. They then traveled on to Rome, where in tiny back-street cafes they discovered for the first time how pasta really should taste, and swore they would never eat at McDonald's again.

But it wasn't until they reached Venice that Nat fell in love, and overnight became promiscuous, his taste ranging from nudes to virgins. It began with a one-day stand-Da Vinci, followed by Bellini, and then Luini. Such was the intensity of these affairs that Tom agreed they should spend a few more days in Italy and even add Florence to their itinerary. New lovers were quickly picked up on every street corner-Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Canaletto, Tintoretto. Almost anyone with an Of at the end of their name qualified to join Nat's harem.

Professor Karl Abrahams stood in front of his desk for the fifth lecture of the term and stared up at the semicircle of tiered seats that rose above him.

He began his lecture, not a book, not a file, not even a note in front of him, as he took them through the landmark case of Carter vs Amalgamated Steel.

"Mr. Carter," began the professor, "lost an arm in an industrial accident in 1923, and was sacked without receiving a cent in compensation. He was unable to seek further employment, as no other steel company would consider offering work to a one-armed man,and when he was turned down for a job as doorman at a local hotel, he realized that he would never work again. There wasn't an Industry Compensation Act until 1927, so Mr. Carter decided to take the rare and almost unheard-of step at that time of suing his employers. He wasn't able to afford a lawyer-that hasn't changed over the years-however, a young law student who felt that Mr. Carter had not received fair recompense volunteered to represent him in court.

He won the case and Carter was awarded one hundred dollars in compensation-not a large amount for such a grievance, you might well feel. However, together these two men were responsible for bringing about a change in the law. Let us hope that one of you might at some time in the future cause the law to be changed when faced with such an injustice. Subtext, the young lawyer's name was Theo Rampleiri. He only narrowly avoided being thrown out of law school for spending too much time on the Carter case. Later, much later, he was appointed to the Supreme Court."

The professor frowned. "Last year General Motors paid a Mr. Cameron five million dollars for the loss of a leg. This was despite the fact that CM was able to prove that it was Mr.

Cameron's negligence that was the cause of the injury." Abrahams took them through the case slowly, before adding, "The law so often is, as Mr.

Charles Dickens would have us believe, an ass, and perhaps more importantly, indiscriminately imperfect. I have no brief for counsel who look only for a way around the law, especially when they know exactly what the Senate and Congress intended in the first place. There will be those among you who forget these words within days of joining some illustrious firm, whose only interest is to win at all cost. But there will be others, perhaps not so many, who will remember Lincoln's dictum, "let justice be done."" Fletcher looked up from his notes and stared down at his mentor.

"By the time we next meet, I expect you to haveresearched the five cases that followed Carter versus Amalgamated Steel, through to Demetri versus Demetri, all of which resulted in changes in the law. You may work in pairs, but not consult any other pair. I hope I make myself clear." The clock struck eleven. "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen."