In the Book of Love, it is written that a woman in her passion will look up at a man and will tell him:
        "I want you. I need you. I want to have your baby."
         But this is not that kind of story.
         This is not a story from the Book of Love but, rather, a passage from the Book of Life, and the life in question is that of Atlanta Ignalina Jubiladilia.
         Atlanta Ignalina was born in the city of Lexis on the island of Islam Demaxus. On that southernmost of the islands of Chalakanesia, many of the people owe genes to the Mer. Their growth is that of bamboo: tall and slender, yet strong in their elegance. Thus grew Atlanta, and so she was tall: taller than the man whom her lips indulged.
         Therefore, we must not imagine her face hushed in expectation of a kiss, her face turned upward like a sunflower to the sun. She was not that kind of girl. In fact, she was not a girl at all, but a woman, for our story opens in the closing months of the Year of the Elephant, at which time Atlanta counted her age as twenty-six.
         Since all of Chalakanesia owns but one collective and communal birthday, that count was not exact. Nevertheless, it is close enough, for bone does not own to the second nor skin to the heartbeat, and the lines which a woman counts in her own reflection are the measure of the changes of a lustrum rather than the work of a misplaced month or a scattering of days.
         Imagine, then, Atlanta Ignalina, tall in the manner of the Mer, her skin a milksilver gloss and gleam, her hair pure white in its waterfall, and pearls of the moon's make descending to the dignity of her silk.
         She was in silk? She was in silk indeed, though it was broad daylight, for she was taking her boyfriend home to announce their engagement. Since there was every possibility that her mother would take the news badly, Atlanta had abandoned the grim and utilitarian uniform of the law, exchanging the sobriety of her professional routines for the finery of a debutante, seeking by this method to ease her mother's heart.
         Need we give an account of Atlanta's mother? Need we name her, then state her lineage? One supposes that we must. Need we give an account of the greatness of her fingers and the narrowness of her eyes? It is unavoidable. Must we measure the distension of her nostrils in terms of a number of notional grapes, and invoke the malign influence of the astrological planet Skobulus in an effort to account for the caliber of her moustache? Tradition demands it.
         Well then -
         Atlanta's dam was Olabadilia Lazamora Jubiladilia, a woman of intense ambition which she sought to gratify through her children's lives . The mother's hope for the daughter? A great marriage! But Atlanta's intended husband was a world removed from greatness, so, by way of weak appeasement, Atlanta had dressed herself in pretty-doll silks.
         Atlanta Ignalina worked in the heart of the city of Lexis, in Lexis Central. Her boyfriend Yulius lived nearby, in Westport. But Atlanta's own home was on the Mexicus Hojo, the residential peninsular which lies south of Lexis Central, reaching away to the fisherman's haven of Ezakinfin. A perfectly good road, the broad avenue of Qin Sistock Maruka, ran straight down the middle of the Mexicus Hojo — but Yulius, being suddenly beset by an almost pathological attack of shyness, was too scared to use it.
         Instead, Atlanta and her beau went by way of Eastbeach, which was deserted but for a couple of dogs, some children building sandcastles, and a group of boys staging gladiatorial games between stag beetles and atlas beetles. It was a fine, bright day, with no trace of metapsychic purple in the sky — the kind of day when light is infinite, and the sea likewise.
         The sea which washed ashore upon Eastbeach was the Eastern Ocean, that wilderness of whales which is more romantically known as the Ocean of Vishna Elmira. The archipelago of Chalakanesia lies in the wash of the Oceans of Light, dividing the Eastern Ocean from the Western; and the Mexicus Hojo, in a small-scale fractal imitation of the whole archipelago, does likewise.
         Imagine, then, the Mexicus Hojo, a narrow peninsular with a row of great mansions on either side of its central road. To the west is the Western Ocean, otherwise known as the Ocean of Solasalassa; to the east is Vishna Elmira; and both great expanses of glittering water are dotted with the bright bob of praus, the prau being that seagoing Chalakanesian sailing canoe which is flanked by two outriggers.
         On the pearlsands of Eastbeach walks Atlanta Ignalina, dressed in her finery but walking barefooted because of the sand, her silken evening shoes in one hand and Yulius Epoktatima's nail-bitten fingers in the other.
         Atlanta does so wish the boy would not bite his nails. Can he be made to wear gloves? Perhaps. Leather gloves would do the trick, even if the climate is rather too warm for such fashion accessories. He'll soon get used to them, and they'll break him of that filthy habit. Yes: a good idea. First marriage, then training. As soon as she has him at her mercy, she will coerce him to the nearest tailor and begin his reeducation.
         Thus Atlanta, making merciless plans for her Yulius as she walks barefoot along Eastbeach. Consider, then, Atlanta, Atlanta Ignalina, she who, despite the daylight, is dressed in the formal silks of evening fashion.
         If we were to be so crude as to seek beneath those silks to pry our way to a forbidden zone of privacy, we would find this woman to be a virgin.
         Now, dare another liberty. Place your hand on the softness of her left breast. Your fingers point skywards, and the base of your hand is orientated toward the earth. The palm of your hand now rests upon the luxury of a virgin's heartbeat.
         Perhaps you imagine the heart to be solid, in the manner of the wooden hearts sold in Hell as tokens of chastity, or Heaven's chocolate hearts (sweet tokens of love), or the hearts of opium bought everywhere for their own sake (and avidly consumed by such fallen creatures as Glan Gleneth Soba Lubamacasta, of whom we shall learn more hereafter).
         But the heart is not solid but hollow; and, if you attend an autopsy, then you will marvel at the curiously thin elegance of its walls, at the neatness of its plumbing and the ingenuity of its valves. It is built along lines of fragility, yet in truth is a masterwork of strength, reliable in crisis, tireless in everyday resource. This device for the percussion of blood is of a functional beauty which your best mechanical fabricator would be hard put to rival; and, if we are to construe Atlanta Ignalina as a beautiful woman, then it is fitting that we should extend our admiration to the meticulous mechanics of her heart.
         Let us imagine Atlanta, then, with a scrupulous accuracy which takes account of systole and diastole. Let us know her full nature without benefit of autopsy, and contemplate the sweet rhythms of those chambers which feed her pulse to her flesh. The breath-pulse: thus they call that beat in Chalakanesia, though they know full well that the pulse is synched to the heart, and not to the lungs.
         Everyone has a heart, but Atlanta's physical mysteries do not end with her pulsing blood, nor yet with her virginity, for she is descended from the Mer, and those of such descent are not constructed quite like us ordinary earthbound mortals. Consider the nature of this child of the sea-genes. Consider, and press your fingers together.
         Press your fingers together. Five sticks of padded bone create the imitation of a wall. Yet the hand is no wall, for flesh meets flesh in lines of patent latency. It takes but a moment for latency to become actuality: for flesh to gape from flesh, and solidity to become a sieve.
         Were we to examine Atlanta as a textbook might examine her then we would find just such lines of latency between her floating ribs.
         The floating ribs of a human skeleton are made of staunch bone unyielding, bone as tough as that of skull or pelvis. But those born to the sealines have floating ribs like those of the purebred Mer, floating ribs fashioned from a cartilage like that of the nose. Such cartilage is strong, yet flexible, and accommodates itself to the underwater exertions which allow the Mer and their earth-walking descendants to gill water.
         Here "gill" is a word of vulgar extraction, a word which science shuns, holding that the water-breathing of the Mer has nothing in common with that of a fish. Technically, science is right. The Mer do not breathe water with the gills of a fish. Instead, each of the Mer has a water-lung centered beneath the naval, and it is this organ which feeds on the water admitted between the ribs. Scholars usually characterize this extra lung as an adapted womb (though all the Mer, regardless of sex, possess just such an organ) and claim that it wins oxygen from seawater by a process analogous to that whereby a baby wins air from its mother's blood.
         Shall we argue this out in detail?
         We could, but such argument is not strictly our province. For convention has construed biology and biography as empires of mutual exclusion. So tightly patrolled are these imperial borders that the world of research knows of no treatment of any person, great or small, which admits that the biographical personage in question is also (necessarily) a biological construct, a munch-crunching feeding thing with the teeth of an ape and the tongue of a hippopotamus, a puddle-gulping drinking thing with a hedgehog's liver and the throat of a horse, a thing with an oyster's gut and the sweat glands of a pig.
         Still, the fact remains that Atlanta Ignalina is, amongst other things, a zoological specimen, complete with earbones and jawbone, with sweat glands and a bile duct, with the same seven neckbones as gazelle and giraffe, with the kidneys of a crocodile and the heart of a whale.
         The zoo beneath her skin remains an irrevocable fact of the flesh, regardless of the concealments of silk. In breach of convention, then, let us linger a little longer on the flesh.
         Atlanta's lineage has seen humans mate with the Mer. This makes her of the Merlines — or, as such descent is commonly phrased, of the sealines. Since the woman is thus descended, to undress her would be to discover subtle lines of latency marking the potential gill-gaping of her flesh. At need, her floating ribs can part to feed the sea to her water-lung, and thus to let her breathe beneath water.
         Ancestry and ability are mutually marked by her milksilver skin, the sure and surest sign of the sealines.
         The above-mentioned breathing of water is the most remarkable thing about those of the sealines, or so thinks Heaven, and so says Hell. But we have not commented on Atlanta's anatomy primarily to draw attention to her ancestry. Atlanta thinks little of her breeding, and so seldom indulges herself in the sea that she might as well be living in a desert.
         In accordance with custom, and with her own desire, Atlanta will shortly marry. She will go to marriage virginal, for the women of Chalakanesia are chaste until marriage.
         In pursuit of such commitment, Atlanta is bringing her Yulius to the House Jubiladilia, there to be formally introduced to her family.
         Imagine, then, Atlanta, walking hand in hand with her Yulius on the shores of the Ocean of Light. Imagine her, poised in light, barefooted on the whisper of pearlsand, her lines of grace bright-lit by sunlight and by reflections from the sea. The sea is a billion facets of sun, animated by the eternal sine wave of the swell from the east, breaking in splumes of sun and froth on the dazzle of the shore sands. Imagine Atlanta, and hold her eternally thus: young and proud, and tall and slender in the manner of the sea.
         Having described Atlanta herself in such deep and intimate detail, shall we now apply the same methodology to Yulius himself? We will not. For our culture proscribes such an approach. In history and in court cases alike, the woman is described in terms of her physical attributes, whereas we speak of the man in terms of his wealth, power, status and career. Therefore, let us say nothing of the gloss of his liver and the internal sheen of his intestines, of the worms in his bowels and the malarial enlargement of his spleen.
         Of Yulius Epoktatima, let us rather merely remark that his wealth was scant, his status lowly and his political power all but nugatory. Still, the Family Epoktatima was affluent, and the fulfillments of time looked certain to provide Yulius with a sound and satisfying career in the warehouse business.
         It might also be said (for it is true) that Yulius was suitably dark and suitably tall, though not as tall as Atlanta herself. And he was young, yes, as young as Atlanta (though he sometimes looked older, for his lip tended to a frown, and his brow often sported wrinkles of worry, as if pretending to an extra thirty years of life). He usually kept his mouth tight shut, for he was overly conscious of the state of his teeth, a set of eroded lugs of carious brown. Atlanta, whose own teeth were of an exceedingly great sharpness, and pearl-white into the bargain, had to admit that those bluntly rounded brown knobs dismayed her exceedingly. Still, nobody's perfect.
         Hand in hand with the admittedly imperfect, Atlanta proceeded to the House Jubiladilia. As they approached the eastern lawns of that House, she realized Yulius was still extremely apprehensive. He lacked her own sense of entitlement. This she knew. He had often told her quite frankly that he felt himself an outsider, an interloper whose presence was tolerated at best.
         Though Yulius annoyed Atlanta by his lack of confidence, she could understand it. After a fashion. This was not his native land. Atlanta, being born into one of the Families of Chalakanesia's traditional mercantile plutocracy, was possessed of an imperial confidence which was consequent upon her belief that she had been born to inherit the world and all that was in it. Consequently, her conquering ego was second to none.
         By contrast, Yulius knew himself to be an immigrant. His Family, though richer than Atlanta's, and more aggressively successful in business, nevertheless depended for its survival upon the tolerance of Chalakanesia. It was not a natively established institution.
         So they came onto the eastern lawn, Atlanta in her confidence and Yulius in his lack. Above the brilliant verdancy of those lawns, one of the zogo zalth hovered, then was gone, alarmed by their approach. The adaptive skins, by contrast, showed no signs of any such alarm. Those lubbering tubes of hollow grey lay on the lawn amidst slicks of blood.
         Tubes?
         The skins look, to the untutored eye, like mere undifferentiated tubes of thick and rubbery skin, but closer inspection will reveal the whip-thin sensory stalks fringing both ends of the tube, and patterns of low-relief ridges and knobblings on both the interior and the exterior of the tube. But Yulius made no such close inspection, for his gasp had been caught by the blood, blood sufficient for a minor pogrom, a machete-blade massacre.
        "Blood!" said Yulius, his eloquence the obvious. "Hurt, are they hurt? Has somebody killed them, I mean, killed, been killed? Is it safe? Should we run?"
         Atlanta scanned the slick red and the emerald green with a lifetime's indifference.
        "They've just been fed," said she. "Blood-drenched. Twice a day. It's how they get fed. We drench them, twice a day. They absorb it through their skin."
        "But — but so much blood!"
         Yulius had never before ventured to the House Jubiladilia, and, as management of the adaptive skins was the exclusive speciality of that House, this was his first encounter with those beasts. Oh yes, he had heard of those creatures — but one can hear ten thousand rumours of the elephant, yet still find its smell a strangeness.
        "A little blood goes a long way," said Atlanta, she who had been born in blood, who lived with a bloody pulse less than a knifeblade's distance beneath the skin, and who was entirely unaffected by the sight of her lifelines' fluid, whether doled out in minums or drenched out in oceans.
        "Yes, yes, a long way," said Yulius. "Undoubtedly. Still! Twice a day! Where does it come from?"
        "We buy it from the Gan."
        "From the Gan? Then where do they get it?"
        "I think," said Atlanta maliciously, "that they kill their children and sell us the profits."
        "They breed pigs," said Yulius quickly.
        "Possibly," said Atlanta. "But you must admit, their families are awfully large. A child, a few children — what's the difference? A couple of slaughters a week? They'd never notice."
         Yulius laughed, but nervously. As Atlanta had effortlessly divined, he did not care for the sight of blood, and was more than a little frightened of the Gan.
        "I've heard," said Atlanta, thinking to tease Yulius a little further, "that a pathologist once did an autopsy on a dozen sausages sold by the Gan. Sea anemones were the least of it."
        (Sea anemones? Heaven and Hell will doubtless be alike in finding this reference cryptic, so let us elucidate. Chalakanesian rumour damns the Gan as demon-worshippers who think of the sea anemone as a demonic incarnation, and bake it into their sausages with obscene intent. In all fairness, however, it is probable that Gan-made sausages are made like sausages elsewhere: of goat's blood, chicken necks, pig bladders, bovine offal, breadcrumbs, boiled cabbage and carpet fluff).
        "Blob the Butcher," said Yulius, staving off unwelcome images of sea anemones by invoking the name of the famous nursery rhyme villain.
        "Blob?" said Atlanta, momentarily confused. Then she placed the reference: "Oh, Blob!"
         Lines of witty response occurred to her, but, as she was choosing between them, someone within the house started screaming. Yulius almost jumped out of his skull.
        "Screaming!" said Yulius. "There's somebody screaming!"
        "A person, you mean?" said Atlanta, affecting boredom. "No, surely not. It sounds like a cat to me. A cat or a bat. Or maybe a morepork." She made a show of listening, then said: "Or maybe it's my mother. Yes, on reflection, it probably is my mother. Over-dramatizing, as usual."
        "About what?" said Yulius.
        "About nothing," said Atlanta, with an unfeigned weariness. Atlanta had not been amused in the slightest by her mother since the year she was seven. "It's her habit, it gets quite tiresome, but there you are. Come on. Get a smile on your face, and let's go inside."
         With that, Atlanta bullied Yulius into the House Jubiladilia, where she found her mother wailing yet. This time, the wailing in which Olabadilia Lazamora Jubiladilia was indulging had a cause, for Atlanta's sister Panjalo Pantaline had run away to join Lox of the Lighthouse, master of the dreaded Cult of Orgy which respectable Chalakanesia regarded with fascinated horror. Atlanta was quite put out to find her planned formal introduction of Yulius Epoktatima thus disrupted.
        "Run away?" said Atlanta, in tones of the strongest displeasure. "What do you mean, she's run away?"
        "Just that," said her mother. "A ship, she's gone on a ship, they left today, from Eastport."
        "So what," said Atlanta. "It's her choice."
        "Are you supporting her in this?" said her mother.
        "Support?" said Atlanta, snorting. "What's support got to do with it?"
         Atlanta, who had long known of Panjalo's infatuation with Lox and his doctrines, did not doubt that her sister was a fool to be sacrificing herself to the Pleasures of the Flesh. After all, the Act of the Flesh is but a transitory pang. A pang, moreover, that is hedged around with all manner of disagreeables. Sweaty sheets, for instance. Embarrassed aftermaths. Pregnancies. Diseases variously irritating, debilitating or unabashedly lethal. Not to mention the fetid breath of unwashed tongues and furry teeth at suncrack, first thing in the morning.
        "Panjalo is a fool," said Atlanta, handing down a lordly judgment like the judge she aspired to be. "But you're a fool likewise to be making such a fuss about it."
         Yulius was shocked to hear Atlanta speak thus to the great Olabadilia Lazamora Jubiladilia, mother of Atlanta Ignalina, of Heineman Yakaskam and of the delinquent Panjalo Pantaline. The great Olabadilia Lazamora was shocked likewise. When Atlanta looked in the mirror, she saw a lawyer, and a future judge. But when Olabadilia set eyes on Atlanta, she saw (would always see) a child. And a wayward child at that.
        "Don't you take that tone with me, young woman," said Olabadilia, as mother to child. "I'm your mother, and I demand your respect."
        "Demand, then," said Atlanta, whose legal training had made her contemptuous of protocols which the state had not seen fit to enshrine in statute. "Honestly, mother. It's just such a nonsense that probably chased Panjalo out of the house in the first place. You and your demands! In any case, she's twenty-one years old. She's an adult. For the last three years she's been — "
        "Don't play the lawyer with me," said Olabadilia, very curt.
        "The law is no matter of play," said Atlanta, with a matching tartness. "It's my profession."
         Atlanta's mother had never taken her legal aspirations seriously, and, with the passage of years, this had embittered Atlanta severely. It was Heineman who got all the praise, encouragement and support, even though he lacked even half Atlanta's capacity. Sometimes she hated Heineman. Sometimes she was at least half-convinced she wanted to kill him. Sometimes she imagined leveling a frygun at him and saying, in comic book fashion:
        "Heineman. This is it. I'm about to cancel your Chalakanesian citizenship."
         By this time, Yulius Epoktatima was suffering from an intolerable anguish of embarrassment. He wanted to run, to flee, to abolish himself, to be gone from the presence of these two women and their utterly uninhibited cat-scratch argument. Inspired desperation bred swift excuse for escape.
        "If Panjalo's gone," said Yulius, "gone by sea, I mean, then, then maybe I can chase her back, you know, reason with her, I could get a ship from Westport, which ship did she leave on?"
        "Heineman can tell you," said Olabadilia. "Go talk to him. He'll give you all the details."
        "You will not go and talk to Heineman," said Atlanta, who was infuriated at her boyfriend's entirely gratuitous efforts to involve himself in the turmoils of her Family. "I forbid it."
        "I've given my word," said Yulius bravely. "I can't take it back."
         And, having delivered himself of that heroic sentiment, he fled from the furious Atlanta, and went to seek out her brother Heineman.
        (Are we geographically orientated? Lighthouse and Zachalacharo are the twin islands which lie south of Chalakanesia. Zachalacharo, otherwise known as Paradise, is the site of the Gardens of the Dead, whereas Lighthouse is a barren mass of tunneled rock named for the beacon which La Lantis has caused to be erected on its heights).
        "Men!" said Atlanta, in disgust.
         She had long suspected that the male sex was going to be a disappointment to her, but, even so, she regretted that her suspicions were so often and so consistently confirmed.
         Later in the day, after Atlanta's mother had taken herself off to bed with a headache, and when Yulius was presumably in or around Westport (or heading for Lighthouse by ship for all Atlanta knew), Atlanta was sitting under a sunshade by the eastlawn swimming pool, drinking a lime cordial as she indulged herself in a comic book about vampires (she was a great fan of vampires) when her brother Heineman approached her.
        "I've had word from Yulius," said Heineman portentously.
        "Word!" said Atlanta. "I want more than a word! What did he think he was on about, pandering to my mother like that?"
        "It wasn't pandering," said Heineman. "You're not taking this seriously. In contradistinction, Yulius is showing a mature concern."
        "Contradistinction!" said Atlanta scornfully. "What does that mean? Fried octopus? Boiled mongoose? Or what?"
        "It means I read more things than comic books," said Heineman, entirely unabashed at speaking like an auditor's report.
         Atlanta had to admit he'd scored a good hit, particularly as her comic book lay open at a particularly unedifying double-page spread showing a vampire acting the predator. She treated Heineman to her fiercest of courtroom stares, hoping to break his eloquence by sheer willpower.
        "Yulius is showing a mature attitude," said Heineman, unabashed by Atlanta's scrutiny. "However, he couldn't get a ship, so he's gone to La Lantis."
        "La Lantis?" said Atlanta. "Why there?"
        "The vug machine, of course."
         Then Atlanta realized that Yulius had a vision of himself floating across the sea without benefit of ship or shoes. His head and hands, effortlessly projected by the vug machine, would appear unto Panjalo like the incarnation of a bad conscience, and then -
        "You're hopeless," said Atlanta. "Both of you."
        "I thought it was a very good idea," said Heineman staunchly.
        "A good idea, is it?" said Atlanta. "Then tell me, Mister Accountant, sir, what, pray tell, do you think is the range of the vug machine."
        "Range?" said Heineman.
         There was only one machine in all the world which Heineman knew to a nicety, and that device was the abacus. But there was something he remembered about vugs -
        "Water," said Heineman. "You're thinking about water. You think vugs can't cross water, but you're wrong, that's idle superstition."
        "My word was range, not water," said Atlanta. "The vug machine can project to a range of less than ten thousand paces, and Panjalo's ship will be far further than that by now."
         Heineman tried to argue with her, but started to lose ground rapidly. Atlanta knew more than she cared to about ships and shipping, since so much of her legal practice concerned the sea. Furthermore, she knew the precise range of the vug machine from the classroom study of a murder case in which the killing had supposedly been committed by a vug.
        "Anyway," said Heineman, trying to extract himself from defeat, "Yulius has gone to La Lantis, it can't hurt. He'll see what he can do, and, and he'll report to you at your office tonight."
        "Tonight?" said Atlanta. "What is this, the secret service?"
        "You're not taking this seriously," said Heineman.
        "Oh," said Atlanta, "but why should I? It's hardly my concern, or yours. If my thrice-perjured sister wants to live as an unpaid whore, then what do I care?"
        "You don't care?" said Heineman. "Taking up with Lox, you don't care if Panjalo — you don't seem to realize. Politics. Panjalo on Lighthouse. You don't seem to realize what it would do to my political career."
        "Your political career," said Atlanta, positively sneering. "How much career do you think you've got?"
         This was a great day for being irritated, and Heineman's pretensions irritated her in the extreme. After all, she was twenty-six which was (surely) almost middle-aged, whereas Heineman was a mere juvenile of twenty-four. Furthermore, this juvenile was pretentious enough to speak as if he were an elderly statesman.
        "I could be a senator by this time next year," said Heineman, his facade of elderly statesmanship falling away, to be replaced by a boy's unabashed greed.
        "You could be a beggar on your backside just as easily," said Atlanta, reverting to the style of their earliest childhood clashes.
        "A senator," said Heineman stubbornly.
        "Or president, I suppose," said Atlanta, freighting her words with a shipload of sarcasm.
        "Why, yes," said Heineman. "It's possible."
         Atlanta looked at him in astonishment.
        "Are you in your right mind?" she said.
        "Well," said Heineman, "it is possible. Not next year, I mean, the next election isn't till, till what, three years, but it's possible."
         Atlanta laughed. She could not help herself. Her laughter broke forth, clear and honest, and in the face of that laughter Heineman grew angry in the extreme.
        "I've done you a favor," said Heineman, scrabbling around for moral grounds to bolster his outrage. "I brought you a message."
        "What message?" said Atlanta.
        "That Yulius will be reporting to you tonight. At your office."
        "If you want my vote," said Atlanta, "you'll need to do more than play postman."
        "You don't get a vote," said Heineman.
         This, of course, was true. Unlike the rulers of Heaven, the senators of Chalakanesia were not elected by universal franchise. Rather, the senators themselves voted to fill whatever vacancies arose in their ranks, and to periodically raise one of their number to the presidency.
        "So, so," said Atlanta. "If you don't want my vote, what do you want? A pat on the back? Pats are for dogs. Good dog! Good dog! Doggy want a bone?"
         This was childish, but not unprecedented, for the rationality of adulthood was the first casualty whenever Atlanta sparred with her brother. Their internecine hostilities had peaked when he had been five and she had been seven, and, even now, when Atlanta was upset by her brother she was inclined to exchange lawyer for child.
         In the face of Atlanta's dog-denunciation, Heineman retreated without a fight, which is a measure of his timidity and his general inadequacy. Atlanta watched him go: glowering.
         As a small child, the firstborn Atlanta had thought the intrusion of the newborn Heineman to be a big mistake. Decades later, she thought so still, and wished she could swap him for something useful, like ten sheets of flypaper or a brand new wastepaper basket. But she was stuck with him, and he with her, for such is the nature of the human family.
         With Heineman gone (not for good, but for the rest of the afternoon, with any luck) Atlanta tried to return to her lime cordial and her comic book. But her mother's renewed wailings broke the peace — friends must have arrived to commiserate — so Atlanta hastened to the closing of the crypt, drained the last of her lime, then headed for her law office.
         It was, she realized, late afternoon, and it would soon be dark.