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bartender would hurry up. The man Rudy had shaken was now studying Paul sullenly. Paul glanced quickly about the room and saw hostility all around him.
    Addled Rudy Hertz thought he was doing a handsome thing by Paul, showing him off to the crowd. Rudy was senile, remembering only his prime, incapable of remembering or understanding what had followed his retirement….
    But these others, these men in their thirties, forties, and fifties—
they
knew. The youngsters in the booth, the two soldiers and three girls, they were like Katharine Finch. They couldn’t remember when things had been different, could hardly make sense of what had been, though they didn’t necessarily like what was. But these others who stared now, they remembered. They had been the rioters, the smashers of machines. There was no threat of violence in their looks now, but there was resentment, a wish to let him know that he had intruded where he was not liked.
    And still the bartender did not return. Paul limited his field of vision to Rudy, ignoring the rest. The man with thick glasses, whom Rudy had invited to admire Paul, continued to stare.
    Paul talked inanely now about the dog, about Rudy’s remarkable state of preservation. He was helplessly aware that he was hamming it up, proving to anyone who might still have doubts that he was indeed an insincere ass.
    “Let’s drink to old times!” said Rudy, raising his glass. He didn’t seem to notice that silence greeted his proposal, and that he drank alone. He made clucking noises with his tongue, and winked in fond reminiscence, and drained his glass with a flourish. He banged it on the bar.
    Paul, smiling glassily, decided to say nothing more,since anything more would be the wrong thing. He folded his arms and leaned against the keyboard of the player piano. In the silence of the saloon, a faint discord came from the piano, hummed to nothingness.
    “Let’s drink to our sons,” said the man with thick glasses suddenly. His voice was surprisingly high for so resonant-looking a man. Several glasses were raised this time. When the toast was done, the man turned to Paul with the friendliest of smiles and said, “My boy’s just turned eighteen, Doctor.”
    “That’s nice.”
    “He’s got his whole life ahead of him. Wonderful age, eighteen.” He paused, as though his remark demanded a response.
    “I’d like to be eighteen again,” said Paul lamely.
    “He’s a good boy, Doctor. He isn’t what you’d call real bright. Like his old man—his heart’s in the right place, and he wants to do the most he can with what he’s got.” Again the waitful pause.
    “That’s all any of us can do,” said Paul.
    “Well, as long as such a smart man as you is here, maybe I could get you to give me some advice for the boy. He just finished his National General Classification Tests. He just about killed himself studying up for them, but it wasn’t any use. He didn’t do nearly well enough for college. There were only twenty-seven openings, and six hundred kids trying for them.” He shrugged. “I can’t afford to send him to a private school, so now he’s got to decide what he’s going to do with his life, Doctor: what’s it going to be, the Army or the Reeks and Wrecks?”
    “I suppose there’s a lot to be said for both,” said Paul uncomfortably. “I really don’t know much about either one. Somebody else, like Matheson, maybe, would …” His sentence trailed off. Matheson was Ilium’s manager in charge of testing and placement. Paul knew him slightly, didn’t like him very well. Matheson was a powerful bureaucrat whowent about his job with the air of a high priest. “I’ll call Matheson, if you like, and ask him, and let you know what he says.”
    “Doctor,” said the man, desperately now, with no tinge of baiting, “isn’t there something the boy could do at the Works? He’s awfully clever with his hands. He’s got a kind of instinct with machines. Give him one he’s never