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All in all, the place seemed appetizing to Feric's hunger, and the hubbub within piqued his curiosity.
    Upon passing through the tavern door, Feric found himself in a large vaulted common room filled with sturdy wooden tables and benches. Perhaps forty men or more were scattered about the room sitting at the tables and drinking beer from large ceramic mugs upon which the Eagle's Nest motif had been painted. The attention of perhaps half the men in the room was focused on a slight figure in a trimly cut green tunic who perched on the edge of a table against the far wall haranguing a small group clustered about him; the rest of the customers conversed with each other and were quiescent.
    Feric chose an empty table well within earshot of the slim, intense speaker, but somewhat outside the commotion that surrounded him. A waiter in a brown uniform with red piping approached him even as he seated himself.
    "The present leadership of the High Republic, or more accurately the deadheads and simpletons who profane the seats of the Council Chamber with their unclean buttocks, has not the vaguest notion of the true threat to Heldon,"
    the speaker was saying. Though there was a faint trace of superciliousness about his lips and a light hint of mockery in his voice, there was something about the very sardonic humor of his bright black eyes that drew Feric's attention and approval.
    "Your pleasure, Trueman?" the waiter inquired, diverting Feric's attention momentarily.
    "A mug of beer and a salad of lettuce, carrots, cucum-bers, tomatoes, onions, and whatever other vegetables you may have at hand that are fresh and uncooked."

    The waiter gave Feric a somewhat arch look as he departed. Meat was, of course, the traditional staple in Heldon as elsewhere, and upon occasion Feric indulged himself with this questionable fare, since fanatic dedication to vegetarianism seemed to him both impractical and perhaps a bit .unwholesome. Nevertheless, he knew full well that progress up the food chain from ' 'getable mat-34
    ter to meat concentrated the level of radioactive contamination of foodstuffs, and he therefore eschewed flesh as much as possible. His genetic purity was not his to squan-der on the indulgence of his appetite; in a higher sense it was the common property of the community of true men and demanded to be guarded as a racial trust. A peculiar look from a waiter now and then was not enough to keep him from sticking to his racial duty.
    "And of course your buttocks would better grace the seat of power, eh Bogel?" bellowed a bluff fellow whose face was somewhat reddened by overconsumption of beer.
    His comrades showed their appreciation of this remark with crude, albeit good-natured, laughter.
    The speaker Bogel seemed to have been brought up short for a moment. When his reply came, Feric sensed that it sprang not from inborn instinct but from a sharp, if somewhat cold and mechanical, intellectualization.
    "I seek no personal power for myself," Bogel said impishly. "However if such a fine specimen as yourself urges a Council seat upon me, what an ingrate I would be to thwart your desires!"
    This drew somewhat pallid laughter. Feric directed closer attention to the men attending Bogel. They seemed divided up into two rough classes: those few who were paying serious and rapt attention, and those in the majority who seemed to regard the dapper little man with his bright eyes and thin saturnine features as some sort of comic entertainment. Nevertheless, both groups seemed to be composed of the same sort of fellow by and large: middle-aged, two-fisted beer drinkers, shopkeepers, craftsmen and farmers by the look of them—plain honest folk whose understanding of affairs of state could hardly be deemed profound. It seemed to Feric as if this Bogel overestimated his audience, putting on, as he did, an air of intellectual sarcasm and superiority in a public tavern.
    "Thus might a Dominator speak!" another fellow roared. There was more loud