They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit that to the guards. "Take a seat, Mr. Prior." "I have to thank you for granting me this audience," Prior said, without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. "I realize you're a terribly busy man." "I am." Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's desk since Prior had entered. "You're very lucky to have hit the psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior." "Thank you." Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a man. "I hadn't expected to find--I mean that you--" "That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping for?" Prior reddened. "Yes," he admitted. Grinning, Walton said, "I have to do _something_ when I go home at night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite remarkable." "The critics didn't," Prior said diffidently. "Critics! What do they know?" Walton demanded. "They swing in cycles. Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize. Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr. Prior--and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is. Take Yeats, for instance--" Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand, anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him. "Mr. Walton...." "Yes?" "My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now...." Walton understood. "No, Prior. Please don't ask." Walton's skin felt cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy. "He was committed to Happysleep this morning--potentially tubercular. The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you--" Walton rose. "_No_," he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. "Don't ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're an intelligent man; you understand our program." "I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected--" "You thought euthanasia was a fine thing for _other_ people. So did everyone else," Walton said. "That's how the act was passed." Tenderly he said, "I can't do it. I can't spare your son. Our doctors give a baby every chance to live." "_I_ was tubercular. They cured me. What if they had practiced euthanasia a generation ago? Where would my poems be now?"