"Captain Jason, I insist that you stop referring to--" "Makes a--" Jason raised his voice, "horse's--" "CAPTAIN JASON!" Jason subsided. "Captain, Annex has been most forbearing all these years. We've overlooked your incomprehensible phobia--this--this confoundedly unfounded impossible bias against such an irreproachable philanthropist as Launcelot Raichi--because of the sterling quality of your ... ah ... other work. However--" On the desk, the Commissioner's fingers took up a measured tattoo. "--should this fixed idea begin to encroach on--uh--uh--" "All right ... Sir." Sullenly, Jason submitted. "I understand." With a self-congratulatory smirk up at the ceiling that separated them from Executive Level, the bland face of the Commissioner smoothed out. "All right, Captain, as long as we understand each other ..." Sourly, Jason got himself back to his own office. Drumming his own fingers on his own desk and glaring at his own desk sergeant, he purged his soul. "--damned equipment would only work, I'd gather him in! They couldn't stop me, then! But--" Jason choked. When he could speak again, "He's never studied a lick in his life, I tell you! Yet he makes a he-cow's behind out of the best man and the best scientific equipment Annex can provide! How? How, I ask you! He doesn't know the first blasted thing about any blasted thing in any blasted science!" * * * * * That was true. Conversely, Jason didn't know about Lonnie's philosophy. Nowadays, Lonnie called it a "philosophy." He told reporters it was "based on a triple ethic." (Inside his skull, a small boy jumped up and down in glee over the magnificent language he was able to use.) But he always replied only with a superior smile when asked by reporters to put the philosophy and the triple ethic into words. If pressed, he paraphrased an Ancient Man: "You know my works. Judge by them." He was referring, of course, to his having branched out into patronizing the Arts. He'd even erected Raichi Museum just across the velvety green circle of Gov-Park from Government's own Fane of Artifacts. The reporters would go away and write more articles about his modesty and the superlative treasures of Earth, Moon and Mars that were gathered in the Raichi Galleries; protected, the papers always boasted, by the same ultra-safety mechanisms that guarded the mile-long, one-gallery-wide, glass-fronted Fane itself. Government affably made up two of every anti-break-and-entry device nowadays. One for the Fane and the other for Raichi Museum. Despite occasional grumbles in the letters-to-the-editor columns, the papers never seemed to inquire into why so many priceless trans-worlds artifacts got into Lonnie's private ownership instead of Government's public Fane. And while some artists and architects (unendowed by Lonnie) succeeded in publicly proclaiming Raichi Museum gaudy, such carpings were but to be expected, particularly from modernists.