e-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.

Actually, Everyone Who Mattered felt Raichi Museum's granite walls were
much more dignified than the narrow, glass-faced arcade that was the
Fane, wide open to the most disrespectfully casual public inspection all
the time. Why, even late at night gawking loiterers pressed their noses
against the glass; black, clumsy images pinned to the blazing whiteness
hurled by radionic tubes against the back wall of snowy marble from
Mars' arctic quarries. Besides, that glass, proof though it was against
anything but an atomic explosion, still made every true art lover feel
disquietingly insecure.

No, on the whole, the papers and reporters and true art lovers who felt
the