Part 2

"But isn't that the company you couldn't find any report of?" gasped Grida.

"It disappeared right off the map," said Lao grimly. "Now it's appeared again. I can't understand this at all!"

"I'd take it to Tello," said Grida firmly. "He can tell you what you should do."

* * * * *

He took his letter to Distane that afternoon. Small towns change little, and the attorney's office was upstairs over a department store, as his great-grandfather's probably had been.

Distane, a white-haired man with a leonine cast to his jaw, listened with fingertips together for a few moments, until the details of Lao's troubles began to unfold.

"Just a moment, Voter," he said. "What did you say your name is?"

"Lao Protik," answered Lao, somewhat nettled.

Moistening his index finger, Distane shuffled through some papers on his desk, peering at them with intense concentration. At last his face lit.

"Ah, Voter Protik," he said, settling back in his chair. "We have a new partner in our firm ... an experienced attorney, you understand, but new to our firm. I think Voter Attok is the man who should handle your case."

Getting to his feet with a grunt, Distane led Lao into an adjoining room which gave evidence of having been newly furnished not long before. An urbane-looking man of middle age sat behind the desk, twiddling a letter opener idly.

"This," said Distane heavily, "is Lao Protik, Voter Attok."

Distane left, shutting the door behind him. Lao stared at Attok. Attok raised his eyebrows quizzically.

"Excuse me," apologized Lao hurriedly. "I was just trying to remember if we had met before, Voter Attok. Your face seems very familiar to me."

"I don't believe so," said Attok in a well-modulated voice. "I gather from Voter Distane that you have a legal problem on your mind, Voter Protik. Won't you sit down?"

Settling himself in a chair, Lao handed the letter to Attok. Prompted occasionally by questions from the attorney, he outlined the events leading to its receipt.

"Well, I don't think you have anything to worry about, Voter Protik," said Attok when he had finished. "If they were delinquent in payment of your salary before you sold the psycho-paintings and you tried unsuccessfully to contact them through the Business Practices Agency, they have no lawsuit. Just leave this letter with me for a few days and I'll get in touch with you when I've completed the investigation necessary to document our case."

Lao left, feeling better but racking his brain for an elusive memory. He was sure he had seen Attok before.

* * * * *

Three days later, Attok called Lao back to his office. The atmosphere was not nearly as hospitable.

"I thought you understood, Voter Protik, that a man must be absolutely honest with his attorney," said Attok severely. "I can't handle your case properly when you withhold facts from me."

"I haven't withheld any facts," said Lao, surprised.

"You did tell me that the Business Practices Agency had told you there was no such firm as Colorvue Publicity, didn't you? The BPA tells me they have no record of your getting in touch with them about the matter. They say Colorvue Publicity has been recorded in their files for several years. It is a small but reputable firm."

"It was a telephone check," said Lao desperately. "I don't know who the man was I talked to, but I'll swear he said there was no Colorvue Publicity!"

"Mmm." Attok stared keenly at him. "As I recall, you told me also that you had not received your salary from Colorvue?"

"That's right, and how they expect me to hold onto the paintings when they don't pay me...."

"How about these?"

Attok laid the photostats of three checks on the desk. Each was for twenty-five thousand dols, and made out to Lao Protik from Colorvue Publicity, Inc.

Lao recognized one of them as the check he had received as his first quarter salary advance. The other two were exact duplicates, but dated at three-month intervals. The photostats of the backs of the checks--all of them--bore what appeared to be his endorsement.

"It's forgery!" howled Lao. "I only signed one of those checks! It's a conspiracy to ruin me!"

"Conspiracy or not, Voter Protik, we can't win your case if experts say that's your handwriting. The expert I took it to says it is."

Lao collapsed.

"Who's doing this to me, Voter Attok?" he whimpered. "Why are they doing it?"

"On the face of it, I'd say to get your money," replied Attok sympathetically. "You were a very successful psycho-artist before your ... ah ... misfortune."

"I don't have any money. I have saved nothing."

"You are familiar with the law, aren't you? If they win the suit, they're entitled to half of everything you make above a minimum five thousand dols annually, until the judgment is paid."

"I don't make five thousand dols a year. I don't have a job. What can I do, Voter Attok?"

"Why, as long as you make less than five thousand dols a year, they can't touch you," replied Attok. "But to safeguard your finances in the event you do regain your former financial status, I'd suggest you incorporate yourself, with your wife as the controlling stockholder. Then you can limit your personal salary to five thousand dols a year, and the remainder of the income will be under her control. The law can't touch it."

"But ... but I'm not married," said Lao.

Attok raised his eyebrows slightly.

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter," he said at last. "As long as you make less than five thousand."

The wheels in Lao's brain were clicking as he left Attok's office. He thought he saw through the whole scheme against him. Whoever was behind Colorvue Publicity had engineered the frauds that got him blackballed and discharged from Consolidated. They had maneuvered him into a position where he would be vulnerable to a million-dol legal judgment. Now, undoubtedly, the next move was to clear him and restore his reputation, so he'd be financially able to pay off.

It was devilish--and he saw no way out.

* * * * *

Lao moped around the house, his nerves near the breaking point. Daily he dreaded notification that the damage suit had been formally instituted, a move which would cut off his only chance to see his income and his position in the psycho-art field restored.

Marriage? It was on his mind constantly. The idea disturbed him almost as much as the thought of Colorvue taking a big slice of his income for the next decade or so. He might have been inclined to marry one of his three mistresses in Nuyork--before they showed themselves for what they were--but he knew better than to trust his former Southgate mistress with control of his finances. She had abandoned him as soon as the money from the sale of his paintings had run out.

A mailman's visit was an unusual enough phenomenon to create interest, for it meant the delivery of a package. Letter mail was delivered from the post office to each home through a vacuum tube system. Since it was a letter Lao feared, he watched with considerable interest when the mailman approached the front door, and curiosity was upper-most in his mind when Grida called from downstairs to say the package was for him.

He knew no one who would be sending him a package.

Grida, her own curiosity apparent, made no move to leave the room when he took the large, oblong package from her and prepared to open it. A premonition smote him as he noted the return address: "The Nuyork Gallery of Traditional Art."

With trembling fingers he tore away the wrappings. His paintings--all three of them--tumbled to the floor.

He dropped into a chair, limp. The most important thing in his life was lying, broken, before him.

"What _is_ this?" exclaimed Grida. She picked up one of the paintings and examined it. "This isn't psycho-art," she said. "This is real! I like this, Lao."

"It's what I've always wanted to do," he said in a tired voice. "Those three paintings have hung in the Gallery of Traditional Art for nearly ten years."

"There's a letter attached," she said, holding it out to him.

"Go ahead--open it, Grida," he said. "I think I know what it says."

* * * * *

Grida tore open the envelope and unfolded the letter.

In accordance with instructions from our board of directors, in special meeting, all the paintings hanging in our gallery have been re-evaluated. We regret to inform you that your paintings were judged to be no longer representative of traditional art. They are being returned to you herewith. We wish to express our appreciation....

She stopped reading.

"That's right," said Lao morosely. "They threw my paintings out."

"But, Lao, I didn't know you did this sort of thing," she said, bewildered.

"It's what I've always wanted to do," he repeated. "I never really liked psycho-art. I never believed it's real art. It isn't something the artist feels and thinks, it's something he tries to make other people feel and think.

"But psycho-art is the only kind of art I could make money at. I didn't have the courage to starve in an attic or make a living in some prosaic way and paint as a hobby. I turned my talent into cash and I always spent the cash as fast as I made it--maybe because I was ashamed that I was a coward."

"But these three?" asked Grida.

"Sometimes," said Lao dreamily, "I've had time to do what I wanted to do. These are the best I've ever done. When I gave them to the gallery, they told me these were among the highest examples of traditional art they had ever seen. I thought they meant it, but I know now it was just because I was a famous, wealthy psycho-artist."

Grida studied the paintings. One was a seascape, the other two mountain scenes. The titles gave some key to Lao's inner feelings: "Peace in the Valley," "The Moving Waters," "The Lonely Peak."

"Your trouble is that you grew up a little boy in a big city," said Grida quietly. "You ought to try to forget the sort of things you knew in Nuyork and settle down to a life among simple folk, like the people around here. I think you could find work here, Lao, that would be a living for you. And you'd have plenty of time to relax and paint the way you want to."

Lao looked at her and saw that her eyes were full of sympathy for him. It was the last little push his overwrought emotions needed.

He did not do it at once; but that night, after supper, he proposed marriage to Grida Mattin and she accepted.

* * * * *

Tern was furious. He did not raise his voice, but Jasso could detect his anger in his eyes and the tone of his voice.

"I put this matter entirely in your hands, Jasso, and I expected you to do a thorough job on it," Tern said coldly. "It's inconceivable to me that you should be so negligent in your investigation."

"It was my fault, I'll admit," said the crestfallen Jasso. "But you can't blame the clerk. He was told to check the personal files on the question 'marriage,' not 'ability to reproduce.' You'll have to agree there's a difference."

"I would think the lowest clerk involved in this operation would be instructed that _progeny_ from the marriage is the key factor!" said Tern. "The whole purpose of this marriage from the first has been to produce a child that the Calculator said would have a high probability rating for solving the problem.

"Can you tell me how the devil you bright minds on the project expect a marriage to produce a child--when the wife is sterile?"

"That's one thing that makes me wonder if there isn't some maladjustment in the Calculator," said Jasso. "Sterility has been marked on Grida Mattin's card for the last eight years. I don't think you can criticize the clerk, or me, too harshly for not thinking about sterility when the Calculator approved the marriage. After all, her card was in the Calculator and...."

"Don't repeat yourself," interrupted Tern brusquely. "Of course, those circuits must be checked, but I'll give 100 to one odds right now there's nothing wrong with the Calculator. Sterility must have registered as a correctible factor."

"I don't know why it would," objected Jasso very thoughtfully. "The only evidence the Calculator has is that the sterility is a normal result of her age, and that can't be reversed as far as I know. But the only thing we can do is treat it as correctible."

"Try it," said Tern. "But, Jasso, I want you to realize you're not dealing now with the movement of traffic in downtown Nuyork or even the selection of a president. The solution of this problem is vital to mankind. I don't want any more slip-ups."

* * * * *

Alina Mattin's fresh beauty seemed to light the interior of the antique Twenty-First Century house. She resembled Grida, but more as Grida's daughter might have looked than as her younger sister.

Lao sighed. Had he met Alina Mattin first, he did not believe any conceivable emergency could have persuaded him to marry her sister.

"There's some misunderstanding somewhere, but they won't admit it," said Alina, a puzzled frown wrinkling the bridge of her nose. She and Lao were having supper in the breakfast nook; Lao found her quite as competent a cook as Grida.

After more than a year at Southgate and many months of marriage to Grida, his lean features were filling out.

"I don't think there's been a mistake," he said complacently. "The board of education ordered Grida to enter the hospital."

"For a routine physical check-up, eh?" replied Alina. "That isn't what she's getting."

"What are they doing, then?" asked Lao, startled.

"They're examining her to see if anything can be done to restore her fertility," answered Alina flatly. "Lao, did you authorize the hospital to do that?"

"Certainly not! I never thought about her fertility, one way or another. You're sure you're not mistaken?"

"I'm a doctor. I know what they're doing. But the hospital administrator won't tell me a thing. He just says that's on the record of her admission to the hospital."

"They must have gotten her records mixed up with someone else," theorized Lao.

"Maybe. I don't know whether you knew it or not, but Grida is too old to have a child."

Supper finished, they piled the plastic dishes in the dishwasher and went into the parlor together. Lao turned the lights low. They sat down together on the sofa. They sat very close together, and after a moment Lao put his arm around Alina's shoulders. She laid her head contentedly on his chest.

"Why couldn't you have stayed out of my life?" he asked, half seriously, half teasingly.

"Would you want me to?" she asked softly.

"No," he admitted, running his fingers through her hair. "But this isn't the way I want things. I suppose we should be thankful for these few days while she's in the hospital, but I'm ashamed to be."

"So am I," confessed Alina, "but, darling, I've been so happy here alone with you. Tell me, why did you marry Grida?"

"I'm not sure I know," he answered slowly. "I'd hate to have to try to analyze my motives right now. I like Grida and respect her, but I don't love her. I couldn't. I love you, Alina."

"Let's end this sneaking about behind Grida's back, Lao," she urged earnestly, looking up into his face. "It isn't fair to her. Get a divorce and let's marry each other."

"You know the law doesn't permit a man to seek a divorce, Alina. And Grida wouldn't release me now. She loves me."

"Grida will divorce you," said Alina positively. "It will hurt her, but she will. Grida is a history teacher, and her moral code is strict--and out of date. It scarcely gets lip service any more from most people."

"You're suggesting I tell her about us? I couldn't, Alina! I can't let her ever find out."

"But she will," said Alina, her eyes shining. "Lao, I'm going to have a baby."

* * * * *

The man's face looked familiar.

Then he approached Lao and Alina, standing in the corridor outside the chancery courtroom, and Lao recognized him with certainty.

"You're the man from Colorvue!" Lao flashed at him angrily.

"That's right, Voter Protik. I'm Casto Roche." The man held out his hand. Lao ignored it.

"I ought to beat you all the way from here to Nuyork!" he growled--with audacity, since Roche was a good deal bigger. "I trusted you, once."

"You trusted me twice," replied Roche amiably. "I think you'd recognize me as someone else with a little different make-up."

He held his hand to his face and puffed out his cheeks slightly.

"Attok! My lawyer!" yelped Lao. People in the corridor turned to stare at him. "I wondered why you disappeared after I paid you that fee! I see it all now! You were part of this whole dirty--"

"Before you get too excited, Voter Protik ..." Roche did not complete the sentence, but turned under his coat lapel to exhibit the badge which identified him as a United Nations agent.

Lao gulped and choked off his tirade.

"I'm here to try to stop these divorce proceedings between you and your wife," said Roche.

"Don't you think you've come to the wrong people?" suggested Alina, apparently not nearly as impressed by Roche's badge as Lao was. "My sister is the only one who can stop the divorce."

"Besides, it's too late," said Lao, regaining his voice. "The hearing is finished. The judge will give his decision in a moment."

Roche said, "That can be stopped at a word from you. As a matter of fact, the judge is waiting for me to confer with you before calling the court back into session. I've told your wife why the government is interested in preserving your marriage. She is willing to drop the divorce proceedings if you are."

"Perhaps you'd better tell _us_ why," said Alina coolly.

* * * * *

Roche sighed. "All right. But it's rather involved. We haven't let it be publicized widely, but the world is faced with a very serious sociological problem. I suppose both of you are aware that there are a great many more women than men."

"Of course," said Lao, his face brightening with reminiscence.

"Of course," concurred Alina, giving Lao a thoughtful glance.

"If you've read the Sunday supplements, you know why," said Roche. "Always, more boy babies have been born than girl babies, but the high mortality rate among boy babies has balanced the discrepancy. Now the mortality rate has climbed tremendously higher for boy babies. We do not know why. We do know that the ratio of women to men is increasing. At the last census taken by the Calculator, it was 9.78 women to each man.

"Under our present social system of monogamous marriage, this means the actual birth rate is decreasing. Even the large number of illegitimate children doesn't make up for the lack of men in the world. That, of course, is the reason the Polygamy League has gained so much strength."

"Well, don't they have a point?" asked Lao. He added hastily: "I don't hold with the ideas of the Polygamy League, you understand, in spite of the propaganda that I was connected with it."

Roche smiled.

"That propaganda was manufactured by UN agents," he confessed. "So were all your troubles, including the dummy corporation. Colorvue Publicity had no other purpose but to maneuver you into marriage with Grida Mattin. A little unethical, I'll admit, but sometimes we have to work that way. You'll be happy to know that the damage suit against you has been withdrawn. You can get your old job back with Consolidated Ads and be restored to the Psycho-Artists Guild any time you wish. And we've even arranged for the Gallery of Traditional Art to re-hang your paintings.

"As a matter of fact," he continued, "the government has given serious consideration to the ideas of the Polygamy League, but the Calculator rejected them; it discovered that they would have an unfortunate impact on our social structure. So polygamy is not the answer.

"The Calculator tells us it is very improbable that anyone now living will find the answer.

"But the child of Lao Protik and Grida Mattin can--and probably will--solve the problem."

* * * * *

"I'm afraid your Calculator is wrong," said Alina. "Go back and tell your government Grida Mattin is unable to bear a child."

"The government has that information," replied Roche, frowning slightly. "We must consider it a soluble problem, because the Calculator has the information on file and it still gave us a high probability on the marriage. The Calculator is a machine. It doesn't make mistakes."

"It's made a mistake this time," said Alina positively. "Lao and I are going to be married. I don't think he will give up our chance for happiness for any such shaky scheme."

"We have no way of forcing him," admitted Roche, "but I believe Voter Protik should speak for himself, knowing how important this is."

"She's right!" said Lao, anger in his tone. "I think the government has interfered with my life enough as it is! I've done my part, and the government didn't even do me the courtesy of letting me know I was doing it. I love Alina. I don't intend to be tied to Grida for the rest of my life just on the outside chance you'll come up with a cure for her sterility."

He turned his back on Roche.

Roche looked at Alina. She looked back, coldly. With a shrug, Roche left them and went through the door to the courtroom.

A few moments later the bailiff threw open the courtroom doors.

Lao, Alina and Grida filed in with the spectators and attorneys. They stood as the judge entered from his chambers, adjusted his black robes and took his seat. The spectators sat down then, but the attorneys and principals remained standing at the bar.

The judge put on his spectacles, looked over some papers, and raised his head to survey the courtroom. Solemnly he announced:

"It is the decision of this court that Grida Mattin Protik be granted a divorce, as requested, from the defendant, Lao Protik.

"It is the further decision of this court that the co-respondent in this suit, Alina Mattin, being unmarried and having proved herself by her admitted actions to be an unfit mother, her unborn child by the defendant shall be delivered as soon as feasible after birth into the custody of the complainant, Grida Mattin Protik."

* * * * *

"Well, that blows it up," said Jasso despondently, laying the newspaper clipping on Tern's desk. "Lao and Alina didn't even contest Grida's custody of their child, even though their marriage before its birth legitimatized it. Now Grida has the baby and Lao and Alina have gone off to parts unknown."

"I suppose we could find them, if we tried," said Tern. "But I don't see the point in following this case any farther, Jasso. They made it pretty plain to your agent that the Lao-Grida marriage is through."

"Shall I write it off as closed, then?"

"I'm afraid you might as well," consented Tern reluctantly. "How have your alternate combinations turned out?"

"We've succeeded in arranging several marriages in the highest probability group. But frankly, Chief, all the probability ratings for their offspring are pretty low. We had our only real chance in the Lao-Grida combination."

"I don't want to go to the third generation if I can help it," said Tern. "There's always the chance that combinations of low probability individuals might result in high probability offspring. Let's run another test on direct probability, on just those individuals who have been filed for the first time since we began the Lao-Grida case."

"I'll get started on it right away," said Jasso.

* * * * *

Two days later, Jasso burst into Tern's office highly excited, a section of tape from the Calculator trailing from his grasp.

"Chief, this is unbelievable!" he cried. "We have an individual here whose probability tests 82.371 per cent to solve the problem, projecting a life expectancy of 50 years!"

Tern whistled and rolled his eyes.

"Pretty high probability!" he said delightedly. "Pretty doggoned high! Baby, I suppose?"