my fault at all."

He sat there and tried not to listen as waves of hate rolled over him.
Then the front bell rang and Rhoda answered it.

"I haven't been able to reach you," someone was saying through the door.
It was Sheila Williams who lived just down the lane. "Lately lines seem
to get tied up more and more. It's about tonight's game."

Just then Rhoda opened the door and Sheila came to an abrupt halt as she
saw her old friend's face. Her expression turned stony and she said, "I
wanted you to know the game is off." Then she strode away.

Unbelieving, Rhoda watched her go. "After forty years!" she exclaimed.
She slowly came back to her husband and stared down at him. "Forty years
of 'undying' friendship, gone like that!" Her eyes softened a little.
"Maybe I'm wrong, Connor, maybe I said too much through Central myself.
And maybe I'd have acted like Sheila if _they_ had been the ones."

He withdrew his hands from his face. "I've done the same thing to other
wretches myself. We'll just have to get used to it somehow. I've enough
social credits to hang on here a year anyway."

"Get used to it," she repeated dully. This time there was no
denunciation but she had to flee up the stairs to be alone.

He went to the big bay window and, trying to keep his mind blank,
watched Max re-spading the petunia bed. He really should go out and
tell the robot to stop, he decided, otherwise the same work would be
repeated again and again. But he just watched for the next hour as Max
kept returning to the far end of the bed and working his way up to the
window, nodding mindlessly with each neat twist of his spade attachment.

Rhoda came back downstairs and said, "It's six-thirty. The first time
since the boys left that they didn't call us at six." He thought of Ted
on Mars and Phil on Venus and sighed. "By now," she went on, "they know
what's happened. Usually colonial children just refuse to have anything
more to do with parents like us. And they're right--they have their own
futures to consider."

"They'll still write to us," he started reassuring her but she had
already gone outside where he could hear her giving Max vocal
instructions for preparing dinner. Which was just as well--she would
know the truth soon enough. Without a doubt the boys were now also
guilty by association and they'd have nothing left to lose by
maintaining contact.

At dinner, though, he felt less kindly toward her and snapped a few
times. Then it was