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be, maybe he could think. Find himself. Not Nicholas St. James, the president of ant tank the Tom Mix, but himself the man; and then he would know, really know, if Commissioner Nunes were right and the law was the law. Or if Carol Tigh were right, and there was something strange or wrong--whatever she had happened onto with her reservoir of aud-tapes of Yancy's speeches over the last year. _Coup de grace_, he thought. _That's this, right here, for me, the dispatching conk over the head_.
     
         He turned to confront the committee of activists, his coffee cup in hand. "Today," he said, mocking Jorgenson, whom he didn't particularly care for; Jorgenson was a red-necked, heavy-set type, the beer and pretzel sort.
     
         "We know it has to be done in a hurry," Hailer spoke up, his voice low; he was conscious of Rita, who stood at the mirror fixing her hair, and it made him nervous--in fact the whole committee was nervous. Afraid, of course, of the cop, the pol-com. And yet they had come here anyhow.
     
         "Let me tell you the situation as regards artiforgs," Nicholas began, but at once Flanders broke in.
     
         "We know all there is to know. All we _want_ to know. Listen, President; _we know the plot they've hatched up_." The six or seven members of the committee glared at him with nervous anger and frustration; the small cubby--or rather, standard-sized--in which Nicholas lived and now stood writhed with their discomfort.
     
         "Who?" he asked.
     
         Jorgenson said, "The bigshot at Estes Park. Who run everything. Tell their mickey mouse size little thugs like Nunes who to put the finger on."
     
         "What's the plot?"
     
         "The plot," Flanders said, almost stammering in his ticlike tenseness, "is they're short on food and they want a pretext to abolish an ant tank here and there; we don't know how many they want to shut down, and force the tankers up to the surface to die--many tanks, maybe, or just a few . . . it depends on how much trouble they're having with rations."
     
         "So see," Haller said beseechingly to Nicholas, his voice rising (the man next to him punched him and he instantly dropped his voice to a whisper), "they need a pretext. They get it as soon as we fail to supply our monthly quota of leadies. And last night after the TV films of Detroit getting it, when Yancy announced that quotas would be upped--that's how we figured it out; they're going to up the quotas and all the tanks that can't meet the new quotas will be abolished. Like us. And up there--" He gestured ceilingward. "We'll die."
     
         Rita, at the mirror, said harshly, "Like you want Nicholas to die when he goes up after that artiforg."
     
         Spinning, Haller said, "Mrs. St. James, he's our president; we elected him--that's _why_ we elected him, so he'd--you know. Help us."
     
         "Nick is not your father," Rita said. "Not a magician. Not a wheel in the Estes Park Government. He can't manufacture an artificial pancreas. He can't--"
     
         "Here's the money," Jorgenson said. And handed Nicholas a fat white envelope. "All Wes-Dem fifty notes. Forty in all. Twenty thousand Wes-Dem dollars. Late last night while Nunes was snoozing we went all over the tank, collecting." This sum represented the wages of half the tank for--he could not compute, under the stress of the moment. But for a long, long time. The committee had worked very hard.
     
         Rita said to the committee, her voice harsh, "Then you do it; you collected the money. Draw lots. Don't stick my husband with this." Her voice became gentle. "Nunes is less apt to notice one of you missing than Nick. It might even be several days before he checks up, but once Nick goes Nunes will know, and--"
     
         "And what, Mrs. St. James?" Hailer said, determinedly but politely. "There's nothing Nunes can do, once President St. James is out of here up the chute and onto the