he said. "And get out so I can bathe and dress."

Sophie minced, Howard ran, Ralph toddled.

Bozzy rose, a pudgy man slightly under average height at six feet two,
with blue eyes and thinning brown hair. He was exactly thirty-nine
years, eleven months, and twenty-nine days old.

And that was the point. At forty, he would have to go to work. This
was his day for job-taking.

He dreaded it.

* * * * *

He put the coming ceremonies out of his mind and concentrated on his
supersonic bath, the depilatory cream, the color of his outer
clothing. It took time to achieve the right shade of purple in the
bathroom plastic-dispenser, but no time at all to pour, solidify, and
cut the sheet-like robe required for the occasion.

In it, he was the sensation of the breakfast room, handsome as a male
bird in spring plumage. Kate, his slender wife, who had been up and at
work for an hour, looked moth-eaten by comparison, as if their nest
had been lined with her plucked-out down.

"You look very attractive this morning, Kate," Bozzy told her. He gave
her an extra-warm kiss.

"Well!" she said. "Quite the gallant today, aren't we? Just be sure
you're on time today, darling. Remember what Mr. Frewne had to say
about promptness."

Frewne. That overinflated windbag. The obesity who was about to become
his boss. Without having worked a day in his life, Bozzy found he
hated the idea of having a boss.

"Let's think of something pleasant," he grunted, and thought of
breakfast.

He took his place at the table. Kate and the kids had already eaten,
so Kate served, while the kids, attracted by his finery, stood off and
watched him swallow a vitamin pill, a thyroid pill, and a Dexedrine
pill.

Solemnly, he opened the three eggs Kate brought. Each was guaranteed
by her to have been irradiated for exactly two minutes and fifty-five
seconds, and guaranteed by the grocer to have been enriched by
feeding the hens three kinds of mold.

His mouth was full of the third and last one when Sophie asked, "Why
do you have to go to work, Daddy?"

The reminder choked him. Gulping, he said, "To support us all, honey.
My pension stops tomorrow."

"Yes, but I read in a book where people used to go to work when they
were young."

He was tempted to say, "I _am_ young!" but thought better of it. "That
was long ago, dear."

"Were people different then?"

"No, but society was. Our Senior Citizens used to be pensioned