lection Amendment, and finally the seclusion and
depersonalization. Until it gradually got out of the rabble's hands,
except symbolically." He paused. "Still, it's good to keep the old
names. As long as the names don't change, the rabble is happy, and say,
'We have preserved the Pan-American way of life'."

"While the rabble is really impotent," added a Stand-in.

"Don't say that!" John Smith XVI snapped irritably, sitting quickly
erect on the self-conforming couch. "And if you believe it, you're a
fool." His voice went sardonic. "Why don't you try abolishing me and
find out?"

"Sorry, John. I didn't mean--"

* * * * *

The President stood up and paced slowly toward the window where he stood
gazing between the breeze-stirred drapes at the sun-swept city of
Acapulco and at the breakers rolling toward the distant beach.

"No, my power is of the rabble," he confessed, "and I am their friend."
He turned to look at them and laugh. "Should I build my power on men
like you? Or the Secondary Stand-ins? Baa! For all your securities, you
are still stooges. Of the rabble. Do you obey me because I control
military force? Or because I control rabble? The latter I think. For
despite precautions, military forces can be corrupted. Rabble cannot.
They rule you through me, and I rule you through them. And I am their
servant because I have to be. No tyrant can survive by oppression."

A gloomy hush followed his words. It was still fourteen minutes before
time for the televiewphone contact with Ivan Ivanovitch IX. The
President turned back to the "window". He stared "outside" until he grew
tired of the view. He pressed a button on the wall. The window went
black. He pressed another button, which brought another view: Pike's
Peak at sunset. As the sky gathered gray twilight, he twisted a dial and
ran the sun back up again.

The palace was built two hundred feet underground, and the study was a
safe with walls of eight-inch steel. It lent a certain air of security.

The historic moment was approaching. The Stand-ins seemed nervous. What
changes had occurred behind the Hell Wall, what new developments in
science, what political mutations? Only rumors came from beyond the
Wall, since the last big peace-effort which had ended in stalemate and
total isolation. The intelligence service did the best that it could,
but the picture was fuzzy and incomplete. There was still "communism",
but the word's meaning