ggested that John Smith XVI had
floated a note to Ivan IX in a bottle, and the suggestion, though
ludicrous, seemed not at all unlikely.

John XVI seemed quite pleased with himself as he sat with his staff of
Primary Stand-ins in the study of his presidential palace. His face, of
course, was invisible behind the golden mask of the official helmet, the
mask of tragedy with its expression of pathos symbolizing the
self-immolation of public service--as well as protecting the President's
own personal visage from public view, and hence from assassination in
unmasked private life, for not only was he publicly nameless, but also
publicly faceless and publicly unknown as an individual. But despite the
invisibility of his expression, his contentment became apparent by a
certain briskness of gesticulation and a certain smugness in his voice
as he spoke to the nine Stand-ins who were also bodyguards,
council-members, and advisors to the chief executive.

"Think of it, men," he sighed happily in his smooth tenor, slightly
muffled by the mask. "Communication with the East--after forty years of
the Big Silence. A great moment in history, perhaps the greatest since
the last peace-effort."

The nine men nodded dutifully. The President looked around at them and
chuckled.

"'Peace-effort'," he echoed, spitting the words out distinctly as if
they were a pair of phonetic specimens. "Do you remember what it used to
be called--in the middle of the last century?"

A brief silence, then a Stand-in frowned thoughtfully. "Called it 'war',
didn't they, John?"

"Precisely." The golden helmet nodded crisply. "'War'--and now
'peace-effort'. Our semantics has progressed. Our present
'security-probe' was once called 'lynch'. 'Social-security' once meant a
limited insurance plan, not connoting euthanasia and sterilization for
the ellie-moes. And that word 'ellie-moe'--once eleemosynary--was once
applied to institutions that took _care_ of the handicapped."

He waited for the burst of laughter to subside. A Stand-in, still
chuckling, spoke up.

"It's our institutions that have evolved, John."

"True enough," the President agreed. "But as they changed, most of them
kept their own names. Like 'the Presidency'. It used to be
rabble-chosen, as our ceremonies imply. Then the Qualifications
Amendment that limited it to the psychologically fit. And then the
Education Amendment prescribed other qualifying rules. And the Genetic
Amendment, and the Se