'How can I get a higher M.R. when you babble to the gapt every time I commit a little indiscretion?'

'Why, that's not my fault!' she said indignantly. 'What kind of Sigmenite would I be if I lied to the good abba and told him you deserved a better M.R.? I couldn't live, with myself after that, knowing that I had been so grossly unreal and that the Forerunner was watching me. Why, when I'm with the gapt, I can feel the invisible eyes of Isaac Sigmen burning into me, reading my every thought. I couldn't! And you should be ashamed because you want me to!'

'H with you!' he said. He walked away and went into the unmentionable.

Inside the tiny room, he shed his clothes and stepped into the shower for the thirty-second fall of water allowed him. Then he stood in front of the blower until; he was dried. Afterward, he brushed his teeth vigorously, as if he were trying to scour out the terrible words he had uttered. As usual, he was beginning to feel the shame of what he had said. And with it the fear of what Mary would tell the gapt, what he would tell the gapt, and what would happen afterward. It was possible that his M.R. would be so devaluated that he would be fined. If that happened, then his budget, strained as it was, would burst. And he would be more in debt than ever, not to mention that he would be passed over when the next promotion time came.

Thinking this, he put his clothes back on and left the little room. Mary brushed by him on her way into the unmentionable. She looked surprised on seeing him dressed, then she stopped and said, 'Oh, that's right! You did throw the night-things on the floor! Hal, you can't mean it!'

'Yes, I do,' he said. 'I'm not sleeping in those sweaty things of Olaf's.'

'Please, Hal,' she said. 'I wish you wouldn't use that word. You know that I can't stand vulgarity.'