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assignment’s beneath you? I thought you had some ideals? I thought you believed in a future for mankind?”
    “Yes,” I said. “But not a future as a studhorse!”
    “Crockett, you’ve seen my men! None of them would have the patience, not when the country’s full of women to whom fornication is as natural as a respiration. Neatly put, isn’t it, Crockett? For a situation of this sort we need a man like you.”
    “Why don’t you send a member of the Board?”
    “An amusing idea, but you and I know the necessities of our profession. We can contact Barnum Fly through his daughter. And one contact leads to another,” he added coarsely.
    That last comment was too much for me. I rushed to the door while he called. “You need a rest, Crockett. Have fun.”
    I returned to the Hotel Pompadour. Gladys had gone, and since she was one of the natives I could guess what she was up to. I cursed her, the Commissioner and the Board. Then I searched the room for what I wanted — the wall taps that were featured in the hotels of Greater Miami. They were on the wall next to the bathroom door. There was bourbon and rye and five or six drinks I had never heard of. I tried a bourbon but was too excited for it to have any effect. I switched to opgin 1 . As soon as I swallowed an inch of the stuff I felt as if I’d been kicked in the head. Then seven or eight black spots floated before me, on each spot a seated Turkish beauty. I guessed they were Turkish for they were wearing veils, only veils. I drank a second opgin and instantly the floor rushed up and hit me. In fact when I stood up I was completely sober.
    To hell with a drink like that, I thought. I picked up a chair and heaved it at the mirror. The glass tinkled, a pleasant tinkle and my nerves relaxed. That opgin had its points, I thought and poured myself a third shot. There before me on the couch was my wife or maybe it was Gladys smiling and waving. I hurried over when suddenly the floor seemed to break open and a swarm of those Turkish beauties flew up at me like devils, their veils red as fire …
    When I recovered consciousness I was lying on the floor. It was solid, everything a floor should be. I tried to stand up but was too dizzy. My head was pounding and through the pounding I heard a voice saying. “How do you feel, darling?”
    It was Gladys, but what I saw were two blurs, one black, the other yellow, and both blurs were vibrating in a sickening biological rhythm with my insides. “I’m sick,” I moaned.
    “Serves my little sparrow right for drinking while I’ve been working.”
    “Working!” I cried. “You don’t know what work is!” I felt a little steadier. The yellow blur, I realized, was her hair, the black blur her dress. She was wearing one of the shroud-like dresses of the St. Ewagiow, a miniature silver coffin 1 pinned to it for ornament. “Where did you get that awful rag?”
    “It’s not a rag. It’s the latest style, darling. I know what you need.” She hurried to the wall taps and returned with a glass full of some violet-colored stuff 2 . “This’ll help you, darling.”
    I drank it. I felt it slide down my throat into my stomach and then slide up into my head, and as it slid it scraped. As if there were iron combs inside of me. I hollered and shrieked and sweated and in about a minute I was normal.
    “My little sparrow feels better?” she smiled.
    “Please don’t sparrow me, I’m still weak.”
    “Well, darling, I’ll get back to work.”
    “Work!” I hooted. “That’s our word, not yours.”
    “Is that so? We can work twice as hard as any dozen of you redskins when we’re inoculated — ”
    “Inoculated with what? Opgin?”
    “Darling,” she smiled. “You’re slowly acquiring a sense of humor. Congratulations. But to answer your question. When we’re inoculated with Bee-Ambo 3 we really do work.”
    “I don’t know that one.”
    “Bee-Ambo is a derivative made of the hormones of the honey bee.”
    “And it