“It’s murder,” Steve Kulozik said, yawning as he swung down from the truck. “Getting all these old gaffers out in the heat will probably kill off half of them. It must be a hundred degrees in the sun — it was ninety-three at eight o’clock.”

“That’s what the medics are for,” Andy said, nodding toward the small group of men in white who were unrolling stretchers next to the Department of Hospitals trailer. The detectives strolled toward the rear of the crowd that already half filled the park, facing toward the speaker’s platform in the center. There was an amplified scratching sound and a quickly cut-off whine as the public address system was tested.

“A record-breaker,” Steve said, his eyes searching the crowd steadily while they talked. “I hear the reservoirs are so low that some of the outlet pipes are uncovered. That and the upstate rubes dynamiting the aqueduct again…”

The squeal from the loudspeaker dissolved into the echoing thunder of an amplified voice.

“…Comrades, Fellows and Dames, members all of the Eldsters of America, I ask your attention. I had ordered some clouds for this morning but it sure looks like the order never got through…”

An appreciative murmur rolled over the park, there were a few handclaps.

“Who’s that talking?” Steve asked.

“Reeves, the one they call Kid Reeves because he’s only sixty-five years old. He’s business manager of the Eldsters now and he’ll be their president next year if he keeps going like this…” His words were drowned out as Reeves’s voice shattered the hot air again.

“But we have clouds enough in our lives so perhaps we can live without these clouds in the sky.” This time there was an angry edge to the crowd’s grumbling answer. “The authorities have seen to it that we cannot work, no matter how fit or able we are, and they have fixed the tiny, insulting, miserable handout that we are supposed to live on and at the same time see to it that money buys less and less every year, every month, almost every day…”