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us, including yourself, if we did the same. It’s no coincidence that so many of us now live on small islands, where one can get to know the local troublemakers personally and perhaps calm them down.’
    ‘Bribe them to calm down?’
    ‘Occasionally one has to. There’s no alternative. It’s as rigid a predicament as the world was in thirty years ago.’
    ‘No, no and again no,’ Chaim said. ‘One thing we must
not
do is build the foundations of the future on deception. I know there are people who hate my guts just the other side of those hills.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘I can practically feel their breath on the nape of my neck sometimes: Maoris who ran for shelter in the cozy dead end of their old traditional ways, white people of British stock who were brought up to believe that their mother country was the greatest on earth and don’t even yet accept that it doesn’t exist any longer … Nominally I’m a Jew; that gives them enough reason to hate me, even though I bought my land legally, because they’ve always been convinced that any Jew with a fortune came by it dishonestly.But the one thing we dare not be from now on is hypocritical, Boris! We musn’t imitate the lies that brought the old world down, we mustn’t pretend that riches are a burden, we mustn’t deprecate intelligence, we mustn’t preach loving brotherhood with a Bible in one hand and an H-bomb in the other!’
    Boris gave a sober nod. ‘We’ve taken steps in that direction. Making the skelter system free and open – ’
    ‘Hah!’ Chaim gulped his drink. ‘What does the village kid with ambitions see when he goes to a skelter outlet for the first time? Stucks, hundreds of them, and bracees, blocking his way! You know sometimes they attack people trying to get into a transit booth?’
    ‘Yes, I’ve heard about that. We shall simply have to put guards on – ’
    ‘That’s exactly what we must
not
do!’ Chaim flared. ‘Armed patrols at skelter terminals? I can’t think of a worse way of importing the foulness of the past into what we hope and pray will be a brighter future! As a matter of fact, that was the chief reason why I agreed to organize this party. I’m desperately hoping that somebody may turn up who thinks in terms of no-guards, no-guns, no-locks. Come to that, no privateers. If we could only find a few people, just a handful, who’ve lived all their lives with the skelter as a fact, who’ve adjusted to it instead of regarding it as a fearful mechanical monster … ’ Looking lugubrious, he shook his head.
    ‘What you just said reminded me,’ Boris murmured. ‘How is your private venture in rehabilitation coming along?’
    ‘What? Oh, the wild girl? Badly, damn it! In fact I’m minded to quit trying. I never realized before, not all the way down, how horrible the prejudices of the past must have been. Nor how crippling they could be to an innately intelligent child. I mean, she is effectively still a child. I’ve tried everything I can think of: persuasion, pleading, force of example, formal instruction, bribery … Doesn’t work. They used to talk about people being afraid of their own shadow. What was done to her made her afraid of her own substance!’
    ‘But she’ll be around this evening?’
    ‘I guess maybe. I told her to join us. Don’t waste time on her, though. It won’t be worth it.’
    All of a sudden a melodious chime rang out from a bell mounted on the wall of the house, and everybody on the patio glanced reflexively in that direction. Instantly regaining his usual cordiality, Chaim jumped up, glancing at his watch.
    ‘I just lost my bet! It isn’t nearly eight o’clock yet, and somebody has found the way here! I wonder who it can be.’

INTERFACE H
    Doubtless you know better O my beloved
    Than to try and make me jealous of a rival.
    The world holds so few intelligent lovely girls
    I’d feel it selfish to keep one all to myself.
    Do though choose for lovers men I can