or two sisters.

"I'm going to the marriage center."

"What for?" He had tried to inject surprise into his voice. But the tone was listless.

"The Superfather called about your dream."

Twenty-three turned away, lighted a cigarette. He should beg her to stay, should promise to change. But the silence was in him, like a sickness.

"A terrible thing's happening to you. I don't want any part of it." She picked up the bags. "When you come to your senses, you know where to reach me.... If I haven't already made another contract, I might come back to you."

She hesitated at the door.

"There's one thing I don't understand. You haven't begged me to stay. You haven't broken down. You haven't threatened suicide." She paused. "It's standard procedure, you know. It might even make me decide to wait awhile."

"I don't want you to stay," he said. He felt a shock of surprise. It was as though a voice had spoken from behind him.

He watched the door shut between them.

Dressed in his pajamas, he stood beside the metal tube, in which for so many years he had slept his regulation sleep and dreamed his regulation dreams. There was something of the finely made casket about this tube—the six foot length and three foot diameter; the lid along its top and the dull shine of the metal and the quiet of it, as though it were asleep and lying in wait for a tired body to bring it awake so that it could put the body to sleep and live in the dreams it would give to the sleeper.

Beside his own tube stood its twin, where his wife had also slept and dreamed through the years.

Leaning slightly forward, he felt the press of metal against his hip bones, felt the tube roll an inch with his weight. He rested one hand on the metal top, felt its warmth and smoothness, was aware of its cleanness, like that of a surgical instrument.

Now he glanced at the glistening black panel that stood two feet high at the tube's head; quickly checked its four illuminated dials and three gleaming arrows and at the same time raised his hand to drop the cards into the softly glowing slot at the panel's top.

Suddenly his hand stopped.

He bent forward.

What was this? A feeling of strangeness. Vague. Like sensing some subtle change in a picture that has hung for twenty years above the fireplace in one's home.

He drew closer, squinting. The dials and meters seemed to be the same as they had yesterday and the day before and the year before.

And yet?

The dials. Larger? By a fraction? And the tiny gleaming arrows of the meters. Barely longer? And the marks on the dials and meters? One extra each, very faintly, like a piece of hair.

He was very still for a long moment. Then he moved around the foot of his own sleeping tube, pushed between the two and stood at the head of the other one.

He checked its dials and meters. They were as they had been for many years. He stepped back to the panel of his own and pressed a button. As the glistening metal top rose, silently, he ran his hand around the yawning interior, felt the downy softness and the body-like warmth. Then his hand touched a pliable metal plate. That should not be there. He stood back, remembering the workmen who had come into the house that morning for the routine checkup of the tubes. His wife had already left for work and he had just stepped through the door when they had met him in the corridor. They had gone on into the rooms and he had sensed vaguely that something was wrong. Then he had put the feeling out of his mind and gone to his work.

Now suddenly, he turned to the illuminated four inch square panel above the door, read April 15, 2563. The workmen had checked a day early. He frowned. Either the Superfather had ordered the machine changed, which was highly improbable, because every object in the city was standardized and any change would upset the established order, or the workmen were tied up with the man who had given him the different dream