hand, raising her eyes.

Recognition flowed into them, followed by icy shock. She yanked the cab
door shut and shouted something to the driver. The cab took off with a
rush that left Feldman in a backwash of slush and mud.

He glanced down at the coins in his hand. It was his lucky day, he
thought bitterly.

He moved across the street and away, not bothering about the squeal of
brakes and the honking horns. He looked back only once, toward the
glowing sign that topped the building. _Your health is our business!_
Then the great symbol of the health business faded behind him, and he
stumbled on, sucking incessantly at the cigarettes he rolled. One hand
clutched the bronze badge belonging to the dead man and his stolen
boots drove onward through the melting snow.

It was Christmas in the year 2100 on the protectorate of Earth.

II

Lobby

Feldman had set his legs the problem of heading for the great spaceport
and escape from Earth, and he let them take him without further
guidance. His mind was wrapped up in a whirl of the past--his past and
that of the whole planet. Both pasts had in common the growth and sudden
ruin of idealism.

Idealism! Throughout history, some men had sought the ideal, and most
had called it freedom. Only fools expected absolute freedom, but wise
men dreamed up many systems of relative freedom, including democracy.
They had tried that in America, as the last fling of the dream. It had
been a good attempt, too.

The men who drew the Constitution had been pretty practical dreamers.
They came to their task after a bitter war and a worse period of wild
chaos, and they had learned where idealism stopped and idiocy began.
They set up a republic with all the elements of democracy that they
considered safe. It had worked well enough to make America the number
one power of the world. But the men who followed the framers of the new
plan were a different sort, without the knowledge of practical limits.

The privileges their ancestors had earned in blood and care became
automatic rights. Practical men tried to explain that there were no such
rights--that each generation had to pay for its rights with
responsibility. That kind of talk didn't get far. People wanted to hear
about rights, not about duties.

They took the phrase that all men were created equal and left out the
implied kicker that equality was in the sight of God and before the law.
They wanted an equality with the greatest men