purposes, I'm sure. Where do you intend going?'
'To the East Harbor Grouping.'
The Administrator nodded and blew out a thoughtful puff of smoke: 'Unfortunately, East Harbor has a surplus in their favor registered in our books - I can verify that, if you wish -but the Common Units of Exchange on hand will take care of transportation and necessary expenses.'
'Well, that's fine. But tell me, what is my status on the Community Job Roster?'
'Um-m-m - I'll have to get the rolls. You'll excuse me a moment.' He trundled away, heaving his great weight across the room and out into the hallway. Raph paused to poke at the youngest of the children who rolled up to him, growling in mock ferocity with gleaming teeth - a black little bundle of thick fur, with the long, childish snout that had not yet broadened away from the shape of the animal ancestry of half a million years earlier.
The Administrator returned with a heavy ledger and large spectacles. He opened the ledger meticulously, riffled the pages to the proper place and then drew a careful finger down the columns.
He said: There's only the question of water supply, Raph. You're due on the Maintenance gang for this next week. There's nothing else due for at least two months.'
'I'll be back before then. Is there any chance of someone subbing for me on the Water Maintenance?'
'Um-m-m - I'll get someone. I can always send my oldest. He's getting to job age and he might as well taste everything. He may like working on the dam.'
'Yes? You tell me if he does, then. He can replace me, regularly.'
The Administrator smiled gently: 'Don't plan on that, Raph. If he can figure out a way of making sleeping useful to all of us, he'll certainly take it up as a job. And why are you going to East Harbor Grouping, by the way, if it's something you care to talk about?'
'You'll laugh, perhaps, but I have just found out that there exist such things as Eekahs.'
'Eekahs? Yes, I know.' The Administrator pointed a finger. 'Creatures from across the sea! Right?'
'Right! But that's not all. I've come from the Library. I've seen trimensional reproductions, Lahr, and they're Primate Primeval, or almost. They're primates, anyway, intelligent primates. They've got small eyes, flat noses and completely different jawbones - but they're at least second cousins. I've got to see them, Lahr.'
The Administrator shrugged. He felt no interest in the matter himself. 'Why? I ask out of ignorance, Raph. Does it matter, your seeing them?'
'Matter?' Raph was obviously appalled at the question. 'Don't you know what's been going on these last years? Have you read my archaeology book?'
'No,' said the Administrator, definitely, 'I wouldn't read it to save myself a turn at Garbage Disposal.'
Raph said: 'Which probably proves you more suited to Garbage Disposal than archaeology. But never mind. I've been fighting single-handed for nearly ten years in favor of my theory that Primate Primeval was an intelligent creature with a developed civilization. I have nothing on my side so far but logical necessity, which is the last thing most archaeologists will accept. They want something solid. They want the remains of a Grouping, or artifacts, structures, books - get it. All I can give them is a skeleton with a huge brain-pan. Stars above, Lahr, what do they expect to survive in ten million years? Metal dies. Paper dies. Film dies.
'Only stone lasts, Lahr. And bone that's turned to stone. I've got that. A skull with room for a brain. And stone, too, old sharpened knives. Ground flints.'
'Well,' said Lahr, 'there are your artifacts.'
'Those are called eoliths, dawn stones. They won't accept them. They call them natural products, fortuitously shaped by erosion into the shapes they have, the idiots.'
Then he grinned with a scientific ferocity: 'But if the Eekahs are intelligent primates, I've practically proven my case."
Raph had traveled before, but never eastward, and the decline of agriculture on the road impressed him. In early history, the Gurrow Groupings had been entirely unspecialized. Each had been self-sufficient, and trade was a gesture of friendliness rather than a matter of necessity.
And so it was still in most Groupings. His own Grouping, the Red River, was perhaps typical. Some five hundred miles inland, set in lush farm land, agriculture remained centric. The river yielded some fish and there was a well-developed dairy industry. In fact, it was food exports that provided cause for the healthy state of the store of Common Units.
As they traveled eastward,