Da Vincelleo's eyes swiveled back and forth. Revanche could see the tubes glowing, the switches clickclacking on the tremendous grey board, inside that Greek temple of a forehead. But, he reflected, somewhat hypocritically, it was a temple that needed a whip to drive out the moneychangers. The Messinan made up his mind suddenly. "Done! I'll get my lawyers, and we'll make the transfer at once. I'll conduct operations sub rosa. That's best." He sat down at his desk, and ran his fingers over several electronic "eyes" and said, "Your hometown is a free city, isn't it?" "Yes, it has no contracts with the other cities. No alliances. It's a non-co-op all the way. It exists by its smug self-righteous little self!" "And it refuses to use modern-day mechanisms. Right?" "Yes. It has reverted back to the horse-and-buggy days. Claims machines take the soul out of a man. Yet, and get this--here's the irony of their set-up. Despising machinery, they're still run by the most mechanical religion, and the most mechanical state, politically-speaking, imaginable. They think the devil invented the steam engine! "Yet each soul in Dafess City is destined from birth to a certain rank in society. Destined to a certain job, a certain mate, and a certain place in Heaven! They've got a book which they call the Celestial Blueprint. It outlines the future in veiled, allegorical terms. But the Dafesses take every word literally, the letter being their spirit." "Dafesses?" asked the artist, pretending ignorance. "After Multum Bonum Dafess, founder and prophet. Anyway, the Blueprint foretells the end of the world, when the inhabitants of Dafess will be saved, and the rest of the world will go to a nice little place reserved for them, called Rejectus. "Rejectus is furnished with all the comforts of home--with hot water, baked meats, specially-built furniture, highly-trained personal attendants. You get me. Only the Dafesses, the Truncated, will be left untouched after the Day of Judgment. The Untruncated will go to Rejectus." Da Vincelleo shifted uncomfortably in his chair. When he was a boy, his loving mother had described just such a place as his ultimate destination--if he didn't mend his ways. And, though he had scoffed, his unconscious knew how to pitchfork certain obscure uncalloused figments into his conscious mind. "You really hate them, don't you?" he gibed. "I hate them because they're so hateful," Revanche replied. "You would, too, if you were destined to be looked down on all your life by people you knew were stupid. Or if you fell in love, and you were forbidden to marry because the girl wasn't slated by the Elders to be your mate. Or if you were forced to marry some fat cow with the brains of a magpie because the Elders interpreted a certain passage in the Blueprint as referring to you."