Her lips pursed firmly as if she were about to repudiate Cecily.

"Answer the counselor, if you please, Mrs. Baxter," said the judge.

"Yes!" One tight word, and she spat it.

"Bailiff, please direct the attendants to bring in the persons of Carla and Anne Kellogg."

Cecily half rose as a nun (and I now remembered Dr. Dickson's enigmatic reference to the church's help) and the woman warden brought in the babies. Jasper had got around Dr. Dickson's kidnapping by saying that the parents, when they realized what a furor was being caused, had arranged for the girls to be placed in an institution, where they were being anonymously cared for by qualified people. This was the first time Cecily had seen her children in almost three weeks, and she was perilously close to a complete emotional breakdown. "Easy," I told her, putting my arm about her. "It's only a few moments more."

As the attendants reached the front of the chamber, Wizard rose and placed himself between the babies and Mrs. Baxter. I hadn't seen a hand signal from Peter. Fortunately, the judge was too preoccupied to notice the dog's insubordination.

"Your Honor," said Jasper, "it has been said by wise men that all the scientific proof in the world on paper is not worth one second's visual proof. Will you and Mr. Hasbrough please take a careful look at the two infants, and then at Mrs. Baxter?"

The judge peered over the high bench at the babies, who were held up toward him. They were just beginning to rouse from sleep. He glanced at Mrs. Baxter, sitting rigid on the witness stand. He looked quickly back at the twins, muttering something inaudible to me, although the startled bailiff and Hasbrough both stepped closer to the babies. I craned my neck to try to see what they could be looking at.

"Oh, what is it?" breathed Cecily. "Why did Jasper bring Mother here?"

"Your Honor, I renew my motion for a directed verdict," said Jasper, with none of the inner satisfaction he must have been feeling.

The judge leaned back, staring with considerable respect at Jasper's tall, lean figure.

"You have made your point. Counselor, and your motion is granted. As a matter of law, I hold that the evidence adduced by the defense is admirably sufficient to dismiss any hint of incestuous fornication or adultery, or consanguinity, that may have risen from the evidence produced by the prosecution. Therefore, there is in fact no issue for determination. The defendants are not guilty as charged!"

He banged his gavel. Wizard barked twice, and we were all on our feet, yelling and crying, and I wasn't the only one weeping for joy.

Cecily scrambled to the babies. She all but grabbed Carla from the nun's arms and then turned with astonishment toward her mother. By that time, Chuck, Esther, and I were beside her. And we all saw what the judge had seen.

Dr. Dickson's mutterings hadn't registered with me on that frantic day, and I realized now that he had immediately seen that the twins were the spit and image of their maternal grandmother. From eyebrow tilt to the slight cleft in their little chins, they were miniatures of Louise Baxter. All the scientific documentation in the world was unnecessary in the face (I should say, faces) of such a strong familial resemblance. What a trick of fate!

Cecily suddenly moved forward toward her mother, sitting motionless on the stand.

"Look well, Mrs. Baxter," she said in a low voice, rich with the accumulated bitterness and uncertainty of the past weeks. "So help me God, it is the only time you will ever look on your granddaughters."

The only indication Mrs. Baxter gave that she had heard her daughter was to turn her head away.

Pat took Anne from the arms of the warden, and it was a measure of her acquitted innocence that she received a warm smile from the woman. The nun was assuring Cecily that the children had gained weight at a most satisfactory rate and she'd be glad to discuss their "vacation," as she sweetly put it, with Cecily at any time.

Chuck gave up pounding Jasper on the back and started shooing us all toward the door. "Back home where we belong," he said.

No one had left the courtroom, so I don't know how word had reached the reporters, but when the officer at the door opened it, the hall outside was crowded, and the flashbulbs and the noise woke the startled babies. "Miss Kellogg, will you do this again - for your brother and his wife?"

"Will you be a proxy mother for other deserving childless women?"

"Mr. Kellogg, how do you feel about..."

Jasper pushed his way to the front as Chuck protectingly put himself between Pat and the surging crowd.

"Now, now, boys," Jasper said, loudly but amiably. "We got some small girls here who need to get fed. Just let us through."

He and Chuck bowled their way past while Esther and I rear-guarded Cecily and Pat, my arm linked into Peter's.

"Please, now, this has been a trying experience for my clients. Later, fellas, later."

"Aw, come on, Mr. Johnson!" Several of the more aggressive were keeping pace with us, the others swarming in behind.

We were only to the cross-corridors when someone stepped on Wizard's paw, and he let out a hurt yipe, effectively halting our getaway.

"Esther, you take the babies to the car," said Pat, handing over Anne. "Let's get this over with, and they'll leave us alone."

"I didn't mean to step on the dog," the offender said earnestly, but he ruined the apology by getting a full-face shot of Pat in a very angry pose.

"Yes, let's," said Cecily, and handed Carla over to Esther, who hurried away, unhindered.

"No, I don't think my brother and sister-in-law would allow me to help them again," said Pat, "Once is enough. No, the next child I have will be my own. It's a lot easier socially to be the mother of the child you bear." She was grimly humorous.

"Do you think other women will consent to being host-mothers?"

"I wouldn't presume to say. But if people can be bought to take life, I expect there are some who can be paid to give life - She was making a terrific impression on the reporters.

"How did you feel about having these babies?"

"It's not the most comfortable way to spend nine months," Pat said dryly.

"I mean," said the reporter insistently, "how you feel? Psychologically."

"My psychological reactions are my own."

"Oh, c'mon, Miss Kellogg, be a sport. There are millions of people waiting for the personal story behind this exogenesis."

"You forget," she reminded the reporter acidly, her eye-brows raising, "I have been a sport"- one of the group laughed at her double entendre -"and the personal story is much too personal. The facts are all I'll give. My brother's wife couldn't carry a child to term. There was no reason to suppose I couldn't. There was only one way in which that end could be achieved. I did it - with the medical help of Dr. Craft and Dr. Henderson. That's all."

She turned purposefully away, but one of the women reporters grabbed her arm.

"Do you support Women's Lib?"

Pat let out a forbearing sigh. "My philosophy is also private," and she broke through the group and went down the corridor as fast as she could. We tried to follow, with some success, but we were still being bombarded with questions.

"Will you set up in practice as an exogenic specialist. Dr. Craft?"

"I haven't had time to think about it."

"Had any offers from clinics and laboratories?"

"No comment," Chuck said grimly, and pushed Cecily and me on, while Jasper helped Peter.

"Do you plan to have children by exogenesis, Dr. Craft?"

"She won't have to," said Chuck, gripping my arm firmly as he hurried Cecily and me down the steps to my station wagon.

That was as much of a proposal as I ever did get from Charles Irving Henderson, but later, in private, he made his intentions so abundantly clear that I finally realized that his faithfulness had been prompted by an attachment to me, not to Pat or the Kelloggs.

Wizard made an excellent rear guard. He turned, darted, and snapped, and everyone fell back so that we got into the car without further harassment. Then Wizard daintily jumped into the open back window, his tongue hanging on one side of his mouth in a canine laugh.

"Home, 0 noble Ali," Chuck said to me, settling his arm around my shoulders as I turned the ignition key.

As we pulled away from the curb, Pat took young Anne from Esther, at which point the baby let out a squall of protest.

"Good heavens," exclaimed Patricia Kellogg with mock pique, "is that gratitude to the woman who gave you birth?"

A Quiet One

"Have you never ridden a live horse?"

"I achieved the maximum level..."

"Have you ever ridden a live horse?" the Interviewing Representative had repeated.

Remembering her hours on the mechanical surrogate where she'd learned the basic equitational skills. Peri said, "I haven't had the opportunity..."

"Yes, quite. Well, I suppose that can't be helped.

"There will be a trial period, you realize?" He kept scrolling through her file on the recessed screen, which she could not see.

"Yes, I do."

"Well, then, that's all now, young Peri. You'll receive notification of the decision in two weeks." The Interviewer stood, gave her one of those formal little rictus smiles that Interviewers seemed to cultivate, and she had left with the sense that she had not quite won the last argument. But Peri felt that she had won another major battle in her long, private, quiet struggle to have the career of her choice. Modern parents as well as modern educational systems had, as their aim, fitted young people to rewarding, fulfilling careers in the widest variety of professions in a space-traveling society.

Class trips constantly introduced students to possible career opportunities, taking them to aquaculture farms, space stations, laboratories, hydroponic installations. From the day that ten-year-old Peri had visited the Working Farm, her ambition had been to work with horses, whose very existence had recently been under threat. The others on the class trip had fussed and complained about the "smells," the "stinks," the "stenches," but Peri had rapturously inhaled them... especially the lovely odor of the horses. She'd always liked watching them move in the training films or the oldie movies. They were so proud, so regal, so wild.

Alone of her class, she had asked to touch a horse, which had responded to her tentative caresses with a soft nicker that had somehow thrilled her. The feel of the warm muscles under the skin, the bright and intelligent eye of the animal on her, its response to her tentative caress when it snuffled in her hand, its velvet nose nuzzling her palm: that had been the single most enthralling experience in her life.

Through the ensuing years that sudden fascination did not fade. Indeed, she accessed all the information about the equine species that the data banks in her Linear Residence Complex possessed. She even found ancient books about horses, read all available disks by the currently acknowledged experts, like T. King-Sangster-Mahmood III, and, with avid eyes, watched every tape of equestrian sports available.

When Peri discovered that their Residential exercise facility included simulated horseback riding, she had asked permission from her mother to attend regularly. Peri, in her quiet way, simply hadn't mentioned that she had concentrated on one activity. The construct was subtly disappointing - like all things mechanical - although it performed as a living horse would. On it she had learned the basic equitational skills, had gone on to show jump on an advanced model. At least her instructor had recognized her enthusiasm and encouraged her to achieve the maximum skills available on the surrogate. But the simulations were just that, and she was constantly frustrated by the sense that she was ineluctably missing the most important facet.

So, with her goal in mind, she had tailored all her courses, even her special assignments, toward the end of qualifying for the Idaho Preserve. In zoology she had done an extensive survey into the propagation of breed animals. She had studied the stresses now attacking both equines and bovines, and was fully cognizant of the perilous future that needed no probability curve to trace. She had joined the lobby that wished to send specimens of the endangered species out to new worlds where they could flourish and regain the strengths and numbers they had once enjoyed.

When her acceptance to the Idaho Preserve had arrived, complete with hotel travel voucher, Peri was ecstatic. Her mother was horrified that her daughter had applied for a career in such a bizarre occupation.

"What on earth made you choose an-i-mals?" her mother demanded, syllabifying the word to express her disgust.

"You brought me up to think for myself, Mother," Peri said, hoping for a kinder farewell, "and I have done so. If you can be proud of my brother terraforming worlds, please be proud of me for breeding the animals meant to inhabit terraformed places."

"But to do so without discussing it with me at all! And you're leaving today? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. You've always been a quiet, self-contained child." With that, her mother had left the room, not quite slamming the door.

Peri resumed her task of emptying her cabinets and drawers, realizing that there was very little in them that would be useful in her new life. On the Idaho Preserve, where would she need the gauzes of social life: the platformed heels, the decorative face patches, the baubles and bangles, even the security belt? That might deter a grown man, but it would be useless riding a horse!

Her few real treasures of booktapes, holograms of her family, and her comfortable riding gear were all that she packed. Her mother had left a note on the fax-"Do write! Do right!" Her mother had a slogan for everything. But Peri sensed both the outrage and the disappointment in those crisp injunctions.

The journey to the Idaho Preserve was not direct, since the nearest station was relatively unfrequented, and she had to change twice to feeder lines. She arrived at the Preserve in full dark, annoyed at being deprived of her first view - said to be spectacular - of the natural mountains and valleys. The station was also small, dirty, and unoccupied. No one was there to meet her.

The dispenser refused to supply a beverage and the slots for sandwich or snack bar were empty. Disgusted, she blew away enough dust to settle herself on one of the hard benches - wooden? - and ran through a meditation exercise. It wouldn't do to appear disgruntled in her first contact with her new life.

"Yoo-o!" The loud call roused her from a light doze and Peri shot upright, disoriented. "You the tenderfoot?" The tall man in dusty clothes, hat shading his face in the dimly lit station, hauled a scrap of - could it be real paper? - from under his belt. "Peri Schon-Danver-Keyes? Man, that's a lot of name for a li'l thing like you." Stiffly Peri rose and, discarding other reactions to his unexpected approach, smiled. "Peri's enough!" She extended her hand and had it engulfed in a worn leather glove and a moment of viselike grip. No one in polite society ever did more than press fingers. Her hand was numb.

"Monty! That all your gear?" He pushed his hat back and she saw that his face was seamed with lines, tanned a leathery brown, which made his very blue eyes startling. His slight grin somehow told her that she had surprised him.

"Yes." Peri had never been particularly talkative, but her laconic answer surprised even her.

"Wal, how 'bout that!" Unexpectedly he swooped the pak up and started for the door. "C'mon! Time's awasting. Got a long drive." He stopped, one hand on the door. "You can ride a horse, can't you?" Peri nodded, not trusting herself to words as the memory of that interview bobbed up. His expression was slightly skeptical and she psyched herself up for that moment of truth. "Last one couldn't!" He sounded both amused and sour. "Great on theory, lousy in practice."

He went on through the door and she followed into a night the like of which she had never seen. She stood for a moment, face turned up to the starry sky, inhaling the crisp chill air, gasping as a breeze actually flowed across her face and body. She coughed.

"Gotta take it easy, city girl." Monty's voice came out of the darkness and suddenly lights came on, showing the aged ground-effects machine. It was something out of a Vehicular Museum - a straight-sided rectangle with funny windows, great wheels all muddy, and flip-up side seats in the back half. There was even a spare wheel on the front of it, a long narrow package tied to its roof rack. And not a horse in sight.

Peri felt an intense deflation. So his question had been idle curiosity.

"C'mon, Peri. I don't have all night. Morning comes early in these parts. And we'll both be rising and shining with the others."

She hiked herself awkwardly into the high seat and pulled the door shut. A slight shower of dust settled to her clothing and she was halfway to brushing it off when she realized he was watching her out of the corner of his eye. She saw the seat harness and managed to secure it without too much fumbling. He already worked the foot pedals and the vehicle jumped forward with a belch and a roar.

Peri scrabbled for something to hang on to as the vehicle jolted them from side to side. Assuming that the ground-effects machine was operating properly, since the driver seemed unconcerned with its antics, she realized that she must relax. When she felt secure enough among handhold, seat belt, and braced feet, she looked out the dusty window, trying to pick out landmarks in the headlights.

Dark shadows loomed and things seemed to arch over the roadway-if you could call it that, all ruts and stones and untreated surface. It was quite the eeriest experience Peri had ever had.

Suddenly two huge orange orbs loomed out of the darkness and the vehicle swerved violently away from them.

"Damned critter!" Monty muttered. "We'll have to do some fence riding, that's fer sure!"

"You permit your animals out at night?" Peri was astounded.

"You betcha. Now don't tell me you're one of the bleeding hearts? Wrap 'em up in cotton wool and doan let 'em so much as sneeze or stale on their own-i-os."

"No, I am not a bleeding heart," Peri said firmly. "Animals thrive in their proper natural environment. It is mankind who has restricted them to artificial habitats, not always suitable for the species."

"Lordee, those are mighty big words for a li'l girl."

"I wish you would stop with such affectations, Monty, or whatever your name really is," Peri said in a caustic tone. "If you are employed by the Idaho Preserve, then you have to have received an education and training that allows you to deal with its complexity and problems. Don't patronize me."

"Just a touch of local color. Most appreciate it." This time his speech was uncolored by drawl and sloppy enunciation. He almost sounded contrite.

She could think of nothing to say so she continued to peer out the window, trying to identify the natural landscape they passed. Monty did something with what she now realized were antiquated gears, and the engine of the vehicle changed pitch to a deeper tone. The vehicle began to climb. The roadway was narrow, dirt and gravel, pitted with ruts and holes that caused the vehicle to bounce and sway. To her right there seemed to be nothing but black space. To her left the slope of a mountain.

"Rather a spectacular view by day," Monty said in an agreeable tone. "Unless you're agoraphobic."