I shook my head.

"Peter, is Wizard on the guard?"

Peter nodded sadly. So we watched as the trio opened the gate. Wizard advanced menacingly, slowly, but his intention was quite plain. The visitors hesitated, conferred together, withdrew. Wizard took up a new position, twenty yards from the gate.

In the next few hours I would not have traded Wizard's presence for a cordon of unpolluted police. An irate mob might charge a police line (I don't say we had the quantities of a mob), but our visitors had not the courage to face 125 pounds of belligerent unleashed German shepherd. It was incredible to me, or maybe just naive of me, that so many people could believe such a thing of Pat and Peter Kellogg, but the traffic past my house was inordinately heavy. I like to think that those who paused and were not growled at by Wizard had friendly intentions, but they were very few. I still can't figure out why people have to descend in such mobs on the unusual.

At any rate, the only one who entered the house until the police came was the telephone man, and he wouldn't pass the gate until Peter had snapped the choke-chain lead on Wizard.

I frankly don't remember much of the next few hours. I think we all sat around in a semi-stupor, with the exception of the practical Esther. We had brought some of the food left over in the cottage, but it wasn't enough, and more formula mixture was needed, so Esther went out .... the back way. She returned shortly afterward and grumbled angrily under her breath the entire time she cooked lunch, though I don't know what it was she served us. Fortunately there were lusty, hungry, healthy babies to care for, and I think they saved our sanity. If I heard Chuck mutter it once, I heard it fifty times: "We got the kids!"

With Wizard to guard the house, none of us paid any attention to our whilom visitors or hecklers until we heard the police siren whine down to inaudibility right outside the house.

"Well, they took their time," said Esther with righteous indignation.

Innocently we all filed out onto the porch. Wizard was impartial enough to resent police intrusion.

"Call off the dog. We're on official business," the first man ordered.

Wizard obediently retreated to Peter's side at command.

"You certainly took your time coming," Esther said acidly. "We've been plagued by..."

"Which one of you is Peter Kellogg?" the policeman interrupted her arrogantly.

Peter raised his hand.

"I have a warrant for your arrest. Incestuous fornication and adultery is a crime in this state, buddy." There was no doubt of his private opinion of such an offense. "Which of you women is Patricia Kellogg? I've got a warrant for her arrest on the same charge."

Chuck snatched the second warrant out of the cop's hand. When the policeman stepped forward to retrieve it, Wizard gave a warning snarl. Chuck read the document hastily.

"Christ! It is in order, Peter." Chuck had been angry before; now he looked defeated.

"Can't he read his own, mister?" sneered one of the cops. The other man jabbed him in the ribs and pointed to the dog.

"As you so perfectly well know, Joseph Craig," Esther replied, her fury so plain that Policeman Joseph Craig stepped back, "Professor Kellogg was blinded in Vietnam."

"I'm Dr. Henderson, Miss Kellogg's physician. I cannot permit her to answer this summons in person. She's under heavy sedation and incapable of supporting any additional strain."

"You can come with me then. Doctor, and tell it to the judge." Then the man informed Peter of his rights and gestured him off the porch.

Chuck turned to me. "Call"- he gave me a number - "and ask for Jasper Johnson and get him to work immediately."

"Hey, that dog can't come," the arresting officer complained, backing hurriedly away from Wizard's path.

"He's Professor Kellogg's Seeing Eye dog, and he..."

"Hell, he won't need any eyes where he's going!"

"Wizard had better stay here. Chuck," Peter said with quiet meaning. He bent down and cradled the dog's head in his hands. Wizard whined quizzically as if he already understood. Hard not to, with the atmosphere crackling with suppressed emotions.

"Wizard, guard Cecily. Guard the babies. Obey Crafty. Understand?"

Wizard whined, sneezed, and bowed his head but made no move to follow Peter, Chuck, and the policemen. But the moment some of the bystanders tried to crowd in at the gate, he renewed his vigilance with savage growls and risen hackles.

It seemed to take forever to get Johnson's number, and then they must have done an office-to-office search for this Jasper Johnson before his brisk voice came on the line. I explained the situation as tersely as possible. "For this I joined a fraternity ten years ago?" was his cryptic comment; then I heard him mmm-ing to himself for a moment or two. "For such extraordinary charges I'd better get up there. They have to accept bail, but I can do that by phone. I should be able to make it to your place in about two hours at this time of day." Then he groaned. "But my wife's going to hate me again."

His flippancy was oddly reassuring, and as I cradled the phone, the awful depression began to lift.

Chuck and Peter came home in a taxi about an hour later.

"Under the circumstances, I'm sure the neighbors would have preferred another four-alarm fanfare," Chuck said snidely as they came up the walk.

"You're forgetting what Sergeant Weyman said," Peter remarked.

"Yeah," and Chuck's expression brightened.

"George Weyman better be on our side," said Esther, her eyes blazing. "After all Allison did to save his wife and baby. So what did George say?"

"That this was the biggest load of shit he'd ever seen made official," said Peter with a grin.

"He read the riot act to Craig and his cohort and treated us with more courtesy than is customary in police routines. However, I can't be as charitable about His Honor."

"Who?" asked Esther.

"Colston."

That didn't surprise either of us.

"I assume by virtue of our speedy release on bail that you contacted Jasper. Is he coming up?"

"He gave himself two hours."

"Two hours? Well, I suppose he has to obey speed limits. He's only got a Mercury, poor deprived lad." Chuck gave one of his wicked laughs. "His last three babies paid for my Lincoln." His amusement faded, and he barged toward the kitchen. "I need a drink. We all need a drink to celebrate this third day of P.P.E."

"P.P.E.?" asked Peter.

"Yeah," Chuck called from the kitchen, where he was rattling bottles and glasses. He came back in with a laden tray. "Postpartum exogenesis."

Conversation lagged, and Peter, Chuck, Esther, and I sipped our drinks fairly meditatively. I knew I was trying to numb my perceptions even while I knew that drinking at this pace wouldn't do the trick. Then one of the babies started crying and just as suddenly stopped. Pat wandered in from the kitchen with Carla and a bottle.

"Hey," Chuck said, ushering her to a seat, "you shouldn't be awake yet."

Pat shrugged indifferently and settled the baby in the crook of her arm, smiling as her hungry wail was cut off by the nipple.

"I see that my job doesn't end with producing them," she said. "Funny thing. You know. Crafty, I miss their kicking. I waited for it as I was waking up, and I got a little panicky when I didn't feel it, and then I remembered I'd had the babies." Her tender reminiscent smile faded abruptly. "Ah, well. Good thing I'm their aunt, I can tell you. I'd just hate to have to give up all title to them."

Chuck and I exchanged worried frowns over her bent head. In all the unpleasantness I'd forgotten about the emotional impact of maternity on Pat. She was a mother, and she wasn't. She had had all the emotional, biological, and psychological distortion of pregnancy, and if the problem was not handled carefully, her involvement could become critical. In the ill-wind department perhaps this flap would provide sufficient, if salacious, distraction, and she might be damned glad - both psychologically and emotionally - to be relieved of any relationship with the two kids she'd borne.

"Let me hear you say that in another week of sleep-torn nights, m'dear," said Chuck wryly. The twins had different internal clocks.

"Ha," Pat said with some disgust. "With all the professional help around here, you have to have a priority rating to get close to one of them."

Peter moved over to the couch to sit beside her. He touched the child's head where it rested on her arm, cupping the downy scalp in his big hand, his thumb hovering over the fontanel and its gentle pulse. With fingertips, he "read" Carla's face and one waggling arm.

"There are advantages to being blind. I can truthfully say to Cecily that she grows not a day older." Peter smiled gently. "She's truthful, too, and tells me of her wrinkles and graying hair, but I don't see them, any more than I can see the changes they say have occurred all around me. Visual time has stopped forever for me, and I 'see' only my memories." His hand cupped the warm little head. "I've seen a lot of babies. I know what one usually looks like..." What he didn't say was palpable in the room. Esther wasn't the only who made hurried use of a Kleenex.

Chuck cleared his throat and remarked with a broad professional pomposity, "I assure you, sir, your daughter is most beautiful for one so newly born, which, truthfully, isn't very beautiful. She is losing the lobster shade of red, her chin has come forward, the head bones are gradually assuming a normal..."

"Charles Henderson, how can you?" cried Pat, outraged. "Carla is a perfectly beautiful child. Ignore this clinical lout, Peter. He's just plain jealous."

"Truer word was never spoken," Chuck said in a doleful tone.

"Couldn't you have made an honest woman out of any of them," I asked, plaintively, "and acknowledged a child or two?"

Chuck negligently waved aside my suggestion of wholesale philandering. "A baby for A, a baby for B, but never, oh never, a baby for me," he warbled slightly off pitch.

"Oh, you mean, 'always the deliverer, never the delivered'?" asked Pat, all innocence as she deftly burped Carla over one shoulder.

"You can say that about Ali here, not me," said Chuck with simulated indignation.

"Thank heavens you're here," said a voice at the door. "I got home only half an hour ago, and your number doesn't seem to ring."

We all turned.

"Dr. Dickson!" cried Peter, rising to his feet, since he had identified the voice before we could turn to see who could possibly have got past Wizard. "Trust that dog to know our friends."

"Indeed, indeed. Wizard and I are the best of good friends. Such a magnificent beast, such intelligence, such sympathy. I wish I could get along as well with some of the human members of my congregation as I do with Wiz."

Peregrine Dickson, the minister of my Presbyterian church, entered the room, simultaneously mopping a perspiring face and shaking each of our hands with a warm but firm grip. He was a medium-sized, middle-aged, slightly overweight, slightly balding man, but only his physical appearance was mediocre or slight. His whole personality exuded inexhaustible good humor, patience, and empathy, and his kindly face, with alert twinkling eyes, was well wrinkled with laugh lines.

"My dear Peter, how happy I am for you! Allison, my dear girl, but I'd expect you to help!" He shook my hand, passed on to Esther, and grasped Chuck's hand so that I had to make an introduction instead of an explanation. Then Perry Dickson was bending over Carla. "What a remarkable handsome baby! Her sister sleeps? Twins! Well, my word, my smart Pat never does things by halves, does she? I always like to baptize twins. I feel it puts me ahead two steps in the Good Book instead of the usual one. But what an extraordinary resemblance," and he paused, backing off slightly from Carla and narrowing his eyes much as a painter does for perspective. He looked at Pat with an expression akin to awe. "However did you manage that, Pat? But bless you for carrying through with it and giving Peter and Cecily the children. Is Cecily resting?" He looked about hopefully and then collapsed beside Pat on the sofa, mopping his sweating face with his limp handkerchief. "I shouldn't wonder. Such a hot, close day."

At that point Esther appeared with a glass of lemonade for him.

"Thank you, Esther. You are always beforehand. Really, it seems as if I've been hurrying for hours. It's a relief to get here and sit!" Dr. Dickson took a sip or two and then put his glass down to continue his monologue. "I was overcome with joy for you, Peter, when I heard the news. After all, I did baptize you, did confirm you, did marry you, and now I shall be able to start that comforting cycle with the new generation...."

Perry Dickson could rattle on so engagingly that you didn't have time to organize your own thoughts or rebuttals. I was beginning to realize that Perry was telling Peter that the irregularity of the children's births would be no bar to their admission in church.

"Perry," I tried to get a word in edgewise, "I don't think you've heard what..."

"Tut, Allison, I hear everything, you know. Someone always tells me. As I'm a minister, there is always something they think I should hear. That may be one reason why I am impelled to talk so much, so no one else will have a chance to tell me something they think I ought to know.

"In this instance, a kind parishioner - she is very charitable... with her purse - actually telephoned me at the Retreat House with such an exceptional interpretation of a really unexceptional occurrence," and he smiled sweetly at Pat, "that I realized I had better return forthwith. I was already packed when Father Ryan phoned."

"Father Ryan?" Peter and I exclaimed together.

Beside me. Chuck shuddered, groaned, and covered his eyes with his hand. "We're in trouble with the ecclesiastical as well as the secular?"

"Oh, I hardly think so. I assure you. Father Ryan gave me no details, but he was so emphatic that I return because of the... tone... of the gossip..." And now Perry Dickson faltered, as though in the rush the truth had not had a chance to catch up with him. He looked blankly at me, only I didn't know how to start.

"Then you do not believe. Dr. Dickson," Peter asked deliberately, "that the children are mine and Pat's?"

"Good heavens, no!" Perry Dickson lifted voice, eyes and hands upward in horrified repudiation of the thought. Then he gave Pat the kindest possible smile. "I can only hope, Patricia, that you were indiscreet just to give Peter and Cecily the child they've longed for."

"He simply hasn't tumbled," said Chuck to the rest of us, almost annoyed.

"I haven't what?" and Perry looked at the solid sofa as if it were expected to collapse under him.

"Pat was not indiscreet. Dr. Dickson," said Peter in his quietly emphatic way. "She is not an illegitimate mother. She acted as the host-mother for Cecily's and my progeny." And he gestured toward Chuck and me.

"She was... the... host? Mother?" Perry's face was absolutely still. He held his breath while the words made sense to him. He blinked his eyes once, twice, and then gave such a triumphant crow that Carla jerked partially awake and whimpered. "Exogenesis?" His eyes went so wide that his brows joined his receding hairline. "Exogenesis!" He grabbed at Chuck for reassurance, and, grinning, Chuck nodded vigorously.

"Exogenesis documented and done!"

"Exogenesis! Exogenesis!" Perry said in wild excitement. "Oh, absolutely magnificent. Patricia! My dear girl, greater love hath no woman! My dear child!" He was embracing her in an excess of emotion. He pumped Chuck's hand, grabbed Peter in an exultant hug, all the while mumbling "exogenesis" in every sort of tone, from excited, incredulous, and relieved to prayerful.

While we were still grinning delightedly at the effect of our revelation on the good doctor, he collapsed again on the sofa, fanning himself with the soaked handkerchief. "Oh, my dear people, my dear, dear friends..." Then he clapped his hands together and stared down at Carla. "Well, that would, of course, explain it. Wouldn't it?" Then another thought struck his reeling brain. "Oh, good heavens, poor Father Ryan!" At that exclamation. Chuck started to howl with laughter. "Whatever will he say? Oh, my word!" There was, however, an unholy look of gleeful anticipation in Perry's eyes despite the humble dismay in his voice. "This is going to strike him at a very fundamental point in his dogma. How ever is he going to explain this away? Oh, my dear friends, how could you?" As if we'd achieved only to discomfort Father Ryan.

"I'd be glad to provide you with the records," Chuck said, and then took a wild look at Pat but obviously could not re- strain himself, "because they prove that it's an undisputable virgin birth! My dear Patricia, I could not resist!"

We all pounced on Chuck for that, while he kept demanding what was wrong with the guys in this burg and begging Pat's forgiveness. She was so torn between laughter and embarrassment that she couldn't say a thing, but the general confusion roused the baby in her arms. She made that an excuse to leave the room, saying that the conversation had taken a damned crude turn for her virgin ears and it was not fit talk for her niece's impressionable mind.

When we had calmed down, wiping the tears of mirth from our cheeks - we had needed that laugh - Perry pressed us for details. We had no hesitation in being candid with him: it was to our advantage.

"To go back a bit," he suggested when he'd absorbed the important facts and points of the exogenetic technique, "you said something about being in trouble with the ecclesiastical as well as the secular. Now, exactly what did you mean?"

"Your kind parishioners didn't have all the news, Dr. Dickson," said Chuck. "Warrants were served on Peter and Pat about two hours ago for incestuous fornication and adultery."

Perry's eyes went out of focus, and his jaw dropped.

"Oh, my word! How terrible! I mean, who would possibly..."

"My mother," said Cecily from the hall door. She was pale but composed. Pat came in behind her.

Dr. Dickson was on his feet instantly, and after giving her the gentlest, most affectionate of embraces, he drew her and Pat back to the couch to sit on either side of him. He was patting their hands consolingly.

"My dear child, are you positive it was Louise?"

"Oh, yes," Pat answered. "Mrs. Baxter visited the cottage hospital where I was registered as Cecily Kellogg... so the birth certificate would show the real parents. It was Louise."

"I have never understood your mother's antagonism toward Peter," Perry said to Cecily, "particularly since he is so like your own dear father, but for her to... to scandalize her own daughter... I shudder!"

Cecily was doing just that, and then Wizard's warning bark caught her and us up short.

"Hey, call off this dog before I have to shoot him!" yelled an irate male voice. We looked out the front windows. A police car, without sirens, had pulled up to the curb behind an equally official-looking white station wagon. I couldn't see the emblem on its side, but there was a uniformed nurse sitting on the passenger side. The policemen were in their car, just watching the perspiring seersucker-suited man held at bay by Wizard.

"You oughta tie up a vicious animal like that," he said to me as Peter and I got to the porch ahead of the others.