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Indians or make-believe revolution, it is fine with me; but I didn’t want them intruding on my morning. As I came up to them, Anne was thanking him for meeting us.
    “Not at all. If you hadn’t called and told us this was taking place, we’d have missed it completely. None of us had ever even heard of Micro-Magnetics, and this is just the kind of opportunity we’re always looking for. Nuclear poisoning of the environment is an issue with a really broad appeal. And once you get people—”
    He stopped as I joined them, and they both looked up at me with slightly startled expressions, as if my arrival had been somehow unanticipated, or inappropriate. I felt a childish but considerable annoyance — annoyance that my day was taking a different turn than I had planned, annoyance at the young person’s make-believe work clothes, at his good looks, and at his way of staring at me as if I were an unusual and somewhat suspect form of life.
    “Nick Halloway, Robert Carillon,” Anne said rather quickly, indicating first one of us and then the other with perfunctory waves of the hand. She didn’t seem to want to linger over the introduction. She turned back to Carillon, leaving me with a view of the back of her head, and started to speak to him. But he spoke first.
    “Are you with the
Times
too, Nick?” He was studying me with an expression of deliberate and skeptical appraisal.
    “Gosh, no.” I spoke with the most boyishly ingenuous air I could contrive. “Unfortunately. I mean, I wish I were. Great paper. Tremendous challenge, working there — lot of fun too, I’ll bet. And a tremendous responsibility.” I cast a glance at Anne, who had been looking at me in amazement and who now turned away again, stonily. “Actually, I’m with Shipway & Whitman. Great firm. Nice people.” I grinned a large, friendly, foolish grin.
    Carillon seemed uncertain whether I was serious or not, but I suppose he found me offensive either way. As I spoke, he studied my necktie as if he had never seen one before and found the idea vaguely amusing. He moved his head and squinted slightly to make it clear that he was examining first the initials monogrammed on my shirt front and then my suspenders. His eyes traveled up and down my suit, which was grey with pinstripes, as it happened, and came to rest on my shoes, which seemed to be particularly troubling to him. They were very good English shoes made to fit my particular feet, and as things would turn out it was good luck that I wore them that day.
    “Who are you with?” I asked enthusiastically.
    “I’m with Students for a Fair World.”
    “Oh, right. Of course you are. I’ve been hearing all about you. You’re the head of the whole shooting match, aren’t you?”
    “I don’t think I’d call it a shooting match,” he said a little stiffly. “Shooting is exactly what we’re trying to put an end to. And we don’t have a ‘head.’ We organize ourselves by democratic principles with a collective consensus. You may be unfamiliar with the idea.”
    “But you
are
the head man?”
    “I am sometimes chosen to be a spokesperson,” he said demurely.
    “Gee, that’s great. Probably like being president of a fraternity, or a secret society or whatever, in my day. Or an eating club — it
is
eating clubs you have down here, isn’t it? Your family must be proud as punch.”
    He reddened and his eyes narrowed.
    “I don’t think they see it quite the same way you do. And for once I’m in agreement with them. You’re here, I take it, to see whether someone can make a profit on some new variety of nuclear energy.”
    “That’s it,” I said cheerfully. “Always looking for the highest rate of return, wherever it may be. That’s what makes the world go round, as the poet says. The invisible hand and all. The ruthlessly efficient market.”
    “Well, I suppose it can only be as ruthless and efficient as the people who operate it,” he replied with a sardonic smile. “Perhaps