"What's in a name?" might be very dangerous to ask in certain societies, in which sticks and stones are also a big problem! I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep. "Do it!" she said. "Please do it! For me!" It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning. I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard. I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had just swung a decimal or two our way. I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles-or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces.
