“Oh,” he said vaguely, “I guess everything.”

“Listen. The only reason why you’d be carrying a psychiatrist around with you is that you must have gotten your draft notice. Right?”

After a pause he nodded. That he remembered. The familiar elongated blue-green envelope had arrived one week ago; next Wednesday he would be taking his mental at the UN military hospital in the Bronx.

“Has it helped? Has he—” She gestured at the suitcase. “—Made you sick enough?”

Turning to the portable extension of Dr. Smile, Barney said, “Have you?”

The suitcase answered, “Unfortunately you’re still quite viable, Mr. Mayerson; you can handle ten Freuds of stress. Sorry. But we still have several days; we’ve just begun.”

Going into the bedroom, Roni Fugate picked up her underwear, and began to step into it. “Just think,” she said reflectively. “If you’re drafted, Mr. Mayerson, and you’re sent to the colonies… maybe I’ll find myself with your job.” She smiled, showing superb, even teeth.

It was a gloomy possibility. And his precog ability did not assist him: the outcome hung nicely, at perfect balance on the scales of cause-and-effect to be.

“You can’t handle my job,” he said. “You couldn’t even handle it in People’s China and that’s a relatively simple situation in terms of factoring out pre-elements.” But someday she could; without difficulty he foresaw that. She was young and overflowing with innate talent: all she required to equal him—and he was the best in the trade—was a few years’ experience. Now he became fully awake as awareness of his situation filtered back to him. He stood a good chance of being drafted, and even if he was not, Roni Fugate might well snatch his fine, desirable job from him, a job up to which he had worked by slow stages over a thirteen-year period.