some GS-9 clerk busy."

"Our forms are hardly designed to keep people busy. They are designed to
give us needed information about applicant institutions."

"And so you plot everybody's heredity."

"As well as possible. You understand, of course, that the data are
necessarily limited."

"Sure. How do our grandpas stack up on the charts?"

"Not very well. Among Clearwater's total faculty of thirty-eight there
were no national political figures through three generations back. There
was one mayor, a couple of town councilmen, and a state senator or two.
That is about all."

"Our people weren't very politically minded."

"This is a measure of social consciousness and contemporary evaluation."

Fenwick shrugged. "As I said, we aren't so good at politics."

"Achievements in welfare activities are similarly lacking. No notable
intentions or discoveries, with the exception of one patent on a new
kind of beehive, appear in the record."

[Illustration: _... But liars figure ...!_]

"And this keeps us from getting a research grant in physics? What _did_
our progenitors do, anyway? Get hung for being horse thieves?"

"No criminal activities were reported by your people, but there is a
record of singular restlessness and dissatisfaction with established
conditions."

* * * * *

"What did they do?"

"They were constantly on the move, for the most part. In the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries they were primarily pioneers, frontiersmen,
settlers of new country. But when the country was established they
usually packed up and went somewhere else. Rovers, trappers, unsettled
people."

"This is not good?" Fenwick glanced at the chart that was open now. It
was almost uncolored.

"I regret to say that such people are not classed as the stable element
of communities," said Baker. "We cannot evaluate the index of hereditary
accomplishment for the Clearwater faculty very high."

"It appears that our grandpas were among those generally given credit
for getting things set up," said Fenwick.

"Such citizens are indeed necessary," said Baker. "But our index
evaluates stability in community life and accomplishments with
long-range effects in science and culture."

"We haven't got much of a chance then, grandpa being foot-loose as he
was."

"Other factors could completely override this negative evaluation. You
see, this is the beauty of the Index; it doesn't depend on any one
factor or sma