“That’s right, I’ve never heard of it.”

“You’ve been more or less avoiding the Regular Service with alacrity for the past seven years.”

“Oh, Maud, really-”

“Special Services is reserved for people whose nuisance value has suddenly taken a sharp rise… a sharp enough rise to make our little lights start blinking.”

“Surely I haven’t done anything so dreadful that—”

“We don’t look at what you do. A computer does that for us. We simply keep checking the first derivative of the graphed out curve that bears your number. Your slope is rising sharply.”

“Not even the dignity of a name—”

“We’re the most efficient department in the Police Organization. Take it as bragging if you wish. Or just a piece of information.”

“Well, well, well,” I said. “Have a drink?” The little man in the white coat left us two, looked puzzled at Maud’s finery, then went to do something else.

“Thanks.” She downed half her glass like someone stauncher than that wrist would indicate. “It doesn’t pay to go after most criminals. Take your big-time racketeers, Farnesworth, The Hawk, Blavatskia. Take your little snatch-purses, small-time pushers, housebreakers or vice-impresarios. Both at the top and the bottom of the scale, their incomes are pretty stable. They don’t really upset the social boat. Regular Services handles them both. They think they do a good job. We’re not going to argue. But say a little pusher starts to become a big-time pusher; a medium-sized vice-impresario sets his sights on becoming a full-fledged racketeer; that’s when you get problems with socially unpleasant repercussions. That’s when Special Services arrive. We have a couple of techniques that work remarkably well.”

“You’re going to tell me about them, aren’t you.”

“They work better that way,” she said. “One of them is hologramic information storage. Do you know what happens when you cut a hologram plate in half?”