"I certainly would," the Butcher replied. As Joggy and Hal turned back skeptically to watch the fight, he took out the metal tube, screwed up his face in a dreadful frown and jabbed himself in the hand. He squeaked with pain and whisked the tube out of sight. "A kid can't do anything any more," he announced dramatically. "Can't break anything except the breakables they give him to break on purpose. Can't get dirty except in the dirt-pen--and they graduate him from that when he's two. Can't even be bitten by an uninj--it's contraprogrammed." "Where'd you ever get so fixated on dirt?" Hal asked in a gentle voice acquired from a robot adolescer. "I've been reading a book about a kid called Huckleberry Finn," the Butcher replied airily. "A swell book. That guy got dirtier than anything." His eyes became dreamy. "He even ate out of a garbage pail." "What's a garbage pail?" "I don't know, but it sounds great." The battling uninjes careened into them. Brute had Darter by the ear and was whirling him around hilariously. "Aw, _quit_ it, Brute," the Butcher said in annoyance. Brute obediently loosed his hold and returned to his master, paying no attention to his adversary's efforts to renew the fight. The Butcher looked Brute squarely in the eyes. "You're making too much of a rumpus," he said. "I want to think." * * * * * He kicked Brute in the face. The dog squirmed joyously at his feet. "Look," Joggy said, "you wouldn't hurt an uninj, for instance, would you?" "How can you hurt something that's uninjurable?" the Butcher demanded scathingly. "An uninj isn't really a dog. It's just a lot of circuits and a micropack bedded in hyperplastic." He looked at Brute with guarded wistfulness. "I don't know about that," Hal put in. "I've heard an uninj is programmed with so many genuine canine reactions that it practically has racial memory." "I mean if you _could_ hurt an uninj," Joggy amended. "Well, maybe I wouldn't," the Butcher admitted grudgingly. "But shut up--I want to think." "About what?" Hal asked with saintly reasonableness. The Butcher achieved a fearful frown. "When I'm World Director," he said slowly, "I'm going to have warfare again." "You think so now," Hal told him. "We all do at your age." "We do not," the Butcher retorted. "I bet _you_ didn't."