A jar of jelly beans

Doris stirred and murmured. Justin stiffened with concern. Doris said: "It didn't really hurt. It was the surprise. I can't get used to the little monster bumping around inside me. You don't mind me calling it a little monster, do you?"

"Of course not."

"And it won't be, will it? You promised it wouldn't. Oh, Jus, I simply couldn't stand having an abnormal baby."

"No," he said, sticking to the truth as he saw it. "No, it won't be abnormal."

They had been through this before, ever since the first month when Doris agreed to the hormone injections and the special diet. He said suddenly:

"Did you ever hear of Count Borulwaski? He was a Pole. Handsome, witty, a scholar, and very healthy. He lived to be ninety-eight years old."

"Do you mean my baby will be like him? Oh, I'd love that!"

"I think he will be very much like Borulwaski," Justin said, again quite honestly. And he hoped to God Doris never took it into her pretty blonde head to look up the man in the encyclopedia. It wasn't likely. That was the nice thing about a girl with so few intellectual pretensions.

To a President of the United States in the hot spot of making unpopular decisions every day and simultaneously seeking reelection, this was important. And it was to have Justin's advice at hand that he had named him consultant to the National Demographic Authority, the agency which--in view of the galloping population crisis--had long since succeeded the Security Council as No. 1 pusher-around of people. Nobody envied Justin this position.

Nobody, either, gave Murray Austin a Chinaman's chance of whipping Senator Wheeler. In sixty years not one American President had won a second term; not one had made good his campaign promise to bring order out of chaos.

To this unavoidable handicap, President Austin had added one of his own: his deliberate by-passing of the powerful Strip City Bosses who had placed him in office.

By habit, Justin glanced at Doris and then at the calendar on his work table with its fatefully-ringed election date of two weeks hence--Tuesday, November 2. A bizarre race, he reflected, between the ballot and the stork. Mind-reading Doris teased:

"What if I had a miscarriage?"

"My God, don't even think it!"

Doris reached for her manicure set and began to do her nails. She'd really never understood why Justin thought her baby would be more important than anyone else's--except to themselves, of course. But if she were puzzled, and if she wished Justin were less secretive about the experiments that took him so often to his Rockland County laboratory camp, she did not actually worry. She said:

"You're rather fond of the old goat, aren't you?"

"Let us say, rather," said Justin stiffly, "I am fond of my country. Murray Austin is the first President I can remember who is really trying to do something."

"Meaning," smiled Doris, "that the old goat listens to you."

"Exactly. But I wish you would not call him an old goat. He's younger than I, a shade taller, and almost as handsome."

"Gee, we sure hate ourself."

Grinning, Justin stepped to the window, his usual method of closing a conversation. Three panes were cracked and he had patched them with tape. Just outside, the once-private terrace had been converted to a fire escape long ago when the apartments were sub-divided. Somebody had told him that Washington Square Village in the old days was a very nice place to live, with elevators even and private bathrooms. It would be pleasant to have your own bath. Still, they were darn lucky to have this single room to themselves, and that only because of his standing with the Government.

In loose, unmilitary formation they filed past the Arch, perhaps to picket some visiting delegation; more likely to stage another hot-headed rally of their own Society for the Settlement of Space.

Exasperated at their persistence (and the persistence of all human hope) Justin watched as they lost themselves in the wretched pedestrian hordes of Fifth Avenue. A little uneasily, he wondered how they would take the President's announcement. Or, for that matter, his own.

"Hon, I'm gasping. Roll me one, huh?"

Justin returned to the table and lifted the porcelain top of the room's only antique, a 19th Century apothecary's jar deceptively labeled "Opium." There was but little tobacco left. Careful to spill not a single grain, he rolled a cigarette, inserted it between Doris' lips and held a match. When she'd inhaled, hungrily, she asked:

"Aren't you having one?"

"Joe's not sure when he can get some more," he said thoughtlessly, and at once regretted subtracting from her pleasure.