longed to his feudal landlord.

It was a safe world now. Maybe progress had been halted at about the
level of 1980, but so long as the citizens didn't break the rules of
their lobbies, they had very little to worry about. For that, for
security and the right not to think, most people were willing to leave
well enough alone.

Some rules seemed harsh, of course, such as the law that all operations
had to be performed in Lobby hospitals. But that could be justified; it
was the only safe kind of surgery and the only way to make sure there
was no unsupervised experimentation, such as that which supposedly
caused the plague. The rule was now an absolute ethic of medicine. It
also made for better fees.

Feldman's father had stuck by the rule but had questioned it. Feldman
learned not to question in medical school. He scored second in Medical
Ethics only to Christina Ryan.

He had never figured why she singled him out for her attentions, but he
gloried in both those attentions and the results. He became
automatically a rising young man, the favorite of the daughter of the
Lobby president. He went through internship without a sign of trouble.
Chris humored him in his desire to spend three years of practice in a
poor section loaded with disease, and her father approved; such selfless
dedication was the perfect image projection for a future son-in-law. In
return, he agreed to follow that period by becoming an administrator. A
doctor's doctor, as they put it.

They were married in April and his office was ready in May, complete
with a staff of eighty. The publicity releases had gone out, and the
Public Relations Lobby that handled news and education was paid to begin
the greatest build-up any young genius ever had.

They celebrated that, with a little party of some four hundred people
and reporters at Ryan's lodge in Canada. It was to be a gala weekend.

It was then that Baxter shot himself.

Baxter had been Feldman's closest friend in the Lobby. He'd come along
to handle press relations and had gotten romantic about the countryside,
never having been out of a city before. He hired a guide and went
hunting, eighty miles beyond the last outpost of civilization. Somehow,
he got his hand on a gun, though only guides were supposed to touch
them, managed to overcome its safety devices, and then pulled the
trigger with the gun pointed the wrong way.

Chris, Feldman and Harnett from Public Relations had accompanied him on
the t