"Y'know, I never thought of it before," Stan said to the man in front, "but now that you mention it, I don't know of anybody who's been here three times." A smile of accomplishment spread onto his face. "I'll bet I'm the first one in my sector!" A growing anger blended into Julie's feeling of disgust. "I don't see that it's anything to be proud of," she said coldly. Stan's laugh was a derisive bray. "She talks just like a first timer, doesn't she?" The man in front of them nodded knowingly, again sharing with Stan the common bond of experience. "The next thing you know," Stan jeered kiddingly, "she'll be preaching to us like one of those crackpot reformers." The revulsion that Julie felt must have been clearly evident now. Stan smiled fondly and put his arm around her shoulder. "I'm only kidding, honey," he half-apologized. "What's so wrong about the reformers?" Julie demanded, angrily shrugging away his arm. "Why shouldn't men be given another chance? What...?" "Men?" The man with the moon face burst into loud laughter. "Wait'll you see these bums, kid! They're not men, they're _things_!" "He's right, honey," Stan said. "These joes don't have any homes or jobs or families or friends. They don't even have ID cards." "No ID cards?" That was impossible! But Julie was beginning to learn that many impossible things could happen in a world that most citizens knew nothing about. "Then how can they be expected to get jobs? You've got to have an ID card in order to be assigned...." "That's the general idea, lady," someone nearby said in a loud voice. Several people laughed. "You don't wanna put the court out of business, do ya?" Julie's lips trembled as she opened her mouth to voice the word that shouted emphatically within her: yes! yes! "Here they come!" someone shouted, and excited conversation buzzed throughout the room. Julie's voice was never heard. She stared silently at the people near her, then turned to the front of the room to see what they were all watching so avidly. A straggling line of bedraggled, dirty, unshaven men shuffled into a wire enclosure set along the right wall of the courtroom. Crushed men--weary, lifeless, resigned to a life without hope--they filed into the pen and slumped onto the wooden benches that were placed lengthwise in three rows in the oblong cage. Their shoulders drooped in beaten curves. Their heads were bowed. The man in front turned around and nudged Julie's knee. His triumphant smile was an obscenity. "Call those men?" He laughed and winked at Stan, then turned back to the front of the court to watch the preliminary proceedings. An incipient convulsion crawled about in Julie's stomach. Her knee felt cold and clammy where the moon-faced man had touched it. Her skin was prickly and tight. She began to itch. "Get up, honey," Stan was saying. "Here comes the judge." She stood, numbly, her eyes riveted on the men in the wire enclosure.