“Well,” he said to himself, “and which father wouldn’t have felt the same way? Even Marian, the day after Mike’s birth, began calling him ‘our country-club son’.”

Those were happy, pride-filled days. They’d walked the Earth, Marian and he, like young monarchs on their way to coronation. Now—

Cleveland Boettiger, Raley’s lawyer, arrived just as Marian was scolding Lisa into bed. The two men went into the living room and had the handi-robot mix them a drink.

“I won’t sugar-coat it, Stew,” the lawyer said, spreading the contents of his briefcase on the antique coffee-table that Marian had cleverly converted from an early twentieth-century army foot-locker. “It doesn’t look good. I’ve been going over the latest FPB rulings and, in terms of your situation, it doesn’t look good.”

“Isn’t there any chance? Any angle?”

“Well, that’s what we’ll try to find tonight.”

Marian came in and curled up on the sofa next to her husband. “That Lisa!” she exclaimed. “I almost had to spank her. She’s already beginning to look on me as a stranger with no authority over her. It’s maddening.”

“Lisa insists that she’s the one who should be put up for adoption,” Raley explained. “She heard us talking about it.”

Boettiger picked up a sheet covered with notes and shook it out. “Lisa’s right, of course. She’s the oldest. Now, let’s review the situation. You two married on a salary of three thousand territs a year, the minimum for one child. That’s Lisa. Three years later, accumulated raises brought your income up two thousand. That’s Penelope. Another year and a half, another two thousand. Susan. Last year, in February, you took over the Ganymede desk at nine thousand a year. Mike. Today, you were demoted and went back to seven thousand, which is a maximum three-child bracket. Does that cover it?”