themselves. There’s no labor problem, no unemployment, no relief, no worry about anything.” She paused, to dip the vitamins out of the dissolver. “The only catch is⁠—it’s so damned monotonous.”

Mark blinked, but Penelope whirled on him, the dissolver in one hand. “Why do you think I sit out there and put on my act all day long? Not to get points, though I confess the points are the measure of my success⁠—but because life is too dull otherwise.” She dished out the vitamins.

“You say the government did all this?”

“Yes.”

A thought struck Mark. “Who is the government?”

Penelope was filling glasses from the ice-water faucet. She turned her head and stared at him like a bright-eyed bird. “To tell you the truth, Mark, as far as I know the men who used to make up the government disappeared after the last war, about the time all this automatic machinery was put in. We used to have an election every so often, but I haven’t heard that word for twenty-five years. Do you know what I think?”

“No,” Mark said attentively.

“I don’t think there is any more government!” Penelope said dramatically. “I think all that’s left are the Machine and Central Audit Bureau⁠—which is nothing but a giant posting machine.”

“Have you seen it⁠—Central, I mean? I see the concourse where we line up every day to have our cards posted⁠—but what’s behind those twelve hundred windows?”

She nodded briskly. “I saw it from one of the last planes. Central covers miles and miles in both directions. They said then it was the biggest