l his duty as a consumer.

"You must change your home because of the change in your family
composition," the Ration Board's bright young female had explained,
right after Tillie's funeral. "Your present furnishings are obsolete.
You must replace them."

"And if I don't?" He'd been truculent.

"I doubt we'd have to invoke the penalties for criminal
underconsumption," she'd explained airily. "There are plenty of other
possible courses of action. Maybe we'd just get a decision that you're
prematurely senile and unable to care for yourself. Then you'd go to a
home for the aged where they'd _help_ you consume--with forced feedings
and such."

So here he was, in this home-of-his-own that seemed to belong to someone
else. Well, at least he wasn't senile, even if he did move a little
slowly, now, getting out of bed. He'd warm up soon. All by himself. With
no one's help.

And as far as these newfangled gadgets in the bathroom were concerned,
he could follow any well-written set of directions. He'd scalded himself
that time only because the printed instructions were so confusing.

He took a cold shower this time.

When the airtowel had finished blowing and he was half dry--not wholly
dry because the machine wasn't adapted to people who took ice-cold
showers--he went in to the clothing machine. He punched the same few
holes in its tape that he put there every day, stood in the right place,
and in due course emerged with his long, rawboned frame covered by
magenta tights having an excessively baggy seat.

He knew the costume was neither pretty nor fashionable and that its
design, having been wholly within his control when he punched the tape,
revealed both his taste and his mood. He didn't care; there was no one
in the world whom he wanted to impress.

He looked in the dressing room mirror not to inspect the tights but to
examine his face and see if it needed shaving. Too late he remembered
that twenty years had elapsed since the permanent depilatories were
first invented and ten since he'd used one and stopped having to shave.

There were too many changes like that in this gadget-mad world; too many
new ways of doing old things. Life had no stability.

He stalked into the kitchen wishing he could skip breakfast--anger
always unsettled his stomach. But everyone was required to eat at least
three meals a day. The vast machine-records system that kept track of
each person's consumption would reveal to the Ration Board an