There is a fungus that grows on the walls that they eat. It is a violet color, a dark reddish violet, and tastes fresh and sweet. People go into the clefts to pick it.

The caves themselves are not very deep, though the excavated portions go much deeper. They were never actually occupied, and there had been no need for peace to be made for them to be abandoned entirely. People live in them now because they are quiet, even luxurious. There are stockpiles of everything in the world in the caves, if one only knows where to look. But of course there is not much smell of fresh air.

To get to where I live — in the tier called E3 — you have to go through rooms filled with filing cabinets, computers, and refrigerators whose shelves hold tray after tray of spoiled anti-biotics. I know where I can get lots of flashlight bulbs, and the long detour doesn't bother me. I couldn't stand living on the surface, where the bulldozers keep one awake half the night with their clanking, and one is always likely to be forced into contact with people.

That night I had got home rather late. I don't know whether I have a job or not: I go there in the mornings, and sometimes they put me to work. Other times I stand around all day. The work is something any man with fair physical strength could do — moving boxes in a warehouse. I have moved the same stack of boxes over and over again. But it keeps one from thinking, and on Saturdays they give me a voucher. If they don't give me a voucher, it doesn't matter. I have a whole drawer full of them.

Anyhow, they had kept me late that night. When I got near my pad, I saw light coming out around the edges of the door. That meant there must be somebody inside. It bothered me.

It is odd how much we dislike contact with each other nowadays. Partly, of course, it is the habit of avoidance we all formed during the time the yeast plagues were so bad. But the plagues have been in abeyance for years now. B day — the time by which all the plague victims must be buried, to avoid new outbreaks — has been set forward a couple of times already, without anything happening. Still we stay away from each other. We want to be separate, apart. We can't stand each other's company.

And now there was somebody inside my pad. I didn't like it. I was in a bad mood when I went in.

He got up politely when I closed the door. He was a young, thin man in a dark plum-colored uniform. His hair and eyes were light.

"Mr. Sewell," he said, "I'm from the FBY. Here is my identification." He opened a little box and held it out to me.

I glanced inside. My heart was beating fast. As far as I could see, his identification was in order. "Umm," I said.

The FBY is not popular. It has no record of brutality, and, as far as we can be said to have a government nowadays, it is the FBY; I don't know why we dread it so. Perhaps it is the background of "science" which, to a man of my generation, is automatically dreadful. But there is a recurrent rumor that the organization is breeding yeasts for its own purposes. And the FBY men are a little too friendly, and at the same time a little too impersonal. The friendliness seems practiced, the impersonality contemptuous. As I said, they are not popular.

"Mr. Sewell," he said, smiling amiably, "I've come to you for information. My name, by the way is Ames, Clifford Ames. We've been told that you are in contact with a young woman whom we'd like very much to locate. Her name — at least, the name she is currently going under — is Despoina."

I raised my eyebrows. "I never heard the name before," I said. "It's an odd name."

"You don't have to answer me, of course," the FBY man answered, still smiling. "But it would be very much to your advantage to do so" "My advantage?" I answered. "How can anything be to anyone's advantage nowadays?"

He laughed. "You have a point there," he conceded. "But we've been told that you're not only in contact with Despoina, or Spina, or just D, but that she's actually living with you."

"Living with me?" I was more surprised than annoyed. "Nobody's living with me. I couldn't stand it. If you searched my place, you wouldn't find any traces of feminine occupancy"

"None are evident, certainly. But we would very much like to locate her"

"I told you, I never heard the name before" His constant smiling was beginning to get on my nerves. "I don't know any young women, anyhow. Why are you hunting for this one? Wild yeasts?"

"We suspect she may be a sower"

A shiver ran down my spine. Sowers are people who, crazed by the destruction we've all lived through, deliberately disseminate neurolytic strains of yeasts. They are blind mass murderers. Or so it is said. Myself, I've never seen one.

"Even so, I can't help you," I said. "I just don't know anything." "Our information —"

"You've been misinformed."

"I see" Ames moved toward the door. "You work long hours, don't you?" he said idly. "I waited for you a long time. Seven to six, you must work, or something like that."

"Seven to six!" It was my turn to laugh. "Oh, no, not even the bulldozer men, with B day to aim at, work hours like that. I don't even work eight to five."

Ames drew in his breath. I seemed to have said something significant without knowing it. He looked at me with kindling eyes. "Seven to six, eight to five, they add up to pretty much the same thing, don't they?" he said deliberately.

"By the way, I didn't give you a description of the girl we're hunting. She's said to be a little above medium height, slender and small-boned, with a remarkably fair skin. Unless she's cut it or dyed it, she has very heavy red-gold hair. Do you know anybody that looks like that?"

"I told you, I don't know any women at all. I haven't even spoken to a woman for two or three years, except to say good morning occasionally to the woman in the office where I work. And she's short and middle-aged."

"I see," he said again. "Well, if you change your mind and decide to cooperate with us, you can get in touch with me at this address." He handed me a card.

I took it, fuming. How neatly he'd given me the lie! "It's not a question of cooperation. I simply haven't anything to tell you. ... Will you have any trouble finding your way back to the entrance? I can let you have an extra flashlight, if that would help." I wanted to get rid of him.

He opened the door of my pad and stepped out into the corridor. "Thank you, no. I know a shorter way."

While I looked on from the threshold, he unhooked a small tube from the array of gadgets that hung from his belt. He squinted up at the rough ceiling, as if hunting a particular spot. He moved the small tube so a beam from it would have described a circle on the ceiling, and after a second or two I felt a rush of cold air. There was a hole two feet across where the rough, dim ceiling of the corridor had been.

Ames hung the tube back on his belt and unhooked something else. It looked like a bunch of twine. He tossed this up into the hole. It spread out as it went up, and I saw it was an extremely light ladder of cord.

The FBY man put a hand on either side of it and began to climb. When he was halfway inside the hole, he called down something in a muffled voice that sounded like, "We FBY people can do magic too!"

He went on up. The cord ladder hung for a moment and then followed him. The dim ceiling became solid once more. The FBY man was...