Five phyle, or levels of achievement, were stipulated: Base, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth. Base became known as Brood; Second, the Wedge; Third, less frequently, Arrant; and Fourth, Verge. When the original Grand-Union group organized the Amaranth Society, Fifth became Amaranth.

  The Fair-Play Act carefully defined the conditions of advance. A child was born without phyle identification. At any time after the age of sixteen he might register in the Brood, thus submitting to the provisions of the Fair-Play Act.

  If he chose not to register, he suffered no penalty and lived a natural life without benefit of the Grand-Union treatments, to an average age of eighty-two. These persons were the “glarks”, and commanded only small social status.

  The Fair-Play Act established the life span of the Brood equal to the average life span of a non-participator—roughly eighty-two years. Attaining Wedge, a man underwent the Grand-Union process halting bodily degeneration, and was allowed an added ten years of life. Reaching Third, he won sixteen more years; Verge, another twenty years. Breaking through into Amaranth brought the ultimate reward.

  At this time, the people of the Reach numbered twenty million, with the maximum desirable population estimated at twenty-five million. The population would reach this maximum very rapidly. The ugly dilemma had to be faced: when a member of a phyle lived out his years, what then? Emigration was a dubious solution. Clarges was hated throughout the world; setting foot beyond the border was inviting sudden death. Nevertheless, an Emigration Officer was appointed to study the problem.

  The Emigration Officer made his report in an uncomfortable session of the Prytanean.

  Five areas of the world maintained a semblance of civilized, if barbaric, order within their boundaries: Kypre, Sous-Ventre, the Gondwanese Empire, Singhalien, Nova Roma. None of these would allow immigration, except on a reciprocal basis, which made the project impractical.

  The Reach might extend its boundaries by force of arms, until, at the logical limit of the process, the Reach of Clarges included the entire world, with the fundamental problem only postponed.

  The Prytanean listened glumly, and amended the Fair-Play Act. The Emigration Officer was ordered to implement the basic intent of the Act. In short, he was empowered to remove from life any citizen who reached the authorized limit of his years.

  The amendment was not accepted without misgiving. Some labeled the provision immoral, but others cited the demonstrable dangers of over-population. They emphasized that each man made his own choice: he could live a natural life span, or he could seek, and possibly win to, a high phyle. By the latter choice he entered into a definite contract, and at the end of his time was deprived of nothing which had been his except conditionally. He lost nothing—and stood to gain the greatest treasure imaginable.

  The Fair-Play Act became law, together with the amendment. Almost the entire population participated. Attainment to Wedge offered no great problem, especially during the first years. A record of social responsibility, participation in civic affairs, and productive employment was usually sufficient. Access to the higher phyle was more difficult, but possible to men of dedication and ability. Under the compulsions of the new system, these men appeared in great numbers. The effect was to project Clarges into a Golden Age. The sciences, arts and technical crafts, every phase of knowledge and achievement, exploded into new domains.

  As the years passed the Fair-Play Act was modified. The life grants of each phyle were given a variable definition, through a formula based on the annual production, the population of each phyle, the proportion of glarks, and similar considerations.

  To apply this formula to the record of each individual, an enormous calculating machine called the Actuarian was constructed. Besides calculating and recording, the Actuarian printed individual life charts on demand, revealing to the applicant the slope of his lifeline, its proximity either to the horizontal boundary of the next phyle, or the vertical terminator.

  If the lifeline crossed the terminator, the Emigration Officer and his assassins carried out the grim duties required of them by the Act. It was ruthless, but it was orderly—and starkly necessary.

  The system was not without its shortcomings. Creative thinkers tended to work in proved fields, to shun areas which might prove barren of career-points. The arts became dominated by academic standards; nonconformity, fantasy and nonsense were produced only by the glarks—also much that was macabre and morose.

  Anxiety and disappointment were obvious partners to the climb through phyle; the palliatories were crowded with those who had chosen unreality rather than continued struggle.

  As the generations passed, emotional necessity for slope dominated the life of the Reach. Every waking hour was devoted either to work, to planning for work, or to the study of techniques for success. Hobbies and sport became rare; social functions were poorly attended. Without a safety valve, the ordinary man could hardly have avoided breakdown and commitment to a palliatory. The safety valve was provided by Carnevalle. To Carnevalle he came once or twice a month, and one or more Carnevalle costumes were essential to a full wardrobe. At Carnevalle the ordinary man, his mind clogged with work, could find release; he could gratify every suppressed longing, ease each frustration.

  To Carnevalle, on occasion, also came the Amaranth, wearing gorgeous costumes. Anonymous under their masks, they could ignore the restraints imposed upon them by their own elevated place.

  To Carnevalle came The Jacynth Martin, only three years Amaranth, only two weeks out of seclusion.

  The Jacynth Martin three times had driven up from Brood, first as a specialist in medieval instrumentation and arrangement, then as a concert flautist, finally as a critic of contemporary music. Three times her lifeline had slanted at a sharp initial angle, then sagged and sprawled toward the horizontal.

  At the age of forty-eight she courageously broadened her field across the entire history of musical development. Her slope rose at a decisive angle and she broke through into Wedge at the age of fifty-four. (This now was her static age until either she achieved Amaranth or until the black limousine stopped at her door.)

  She made a special study of contemporary music, based on an original theory of musical symbology. Her work was such that at the age of sixty-seven she achieved Third.

  She became assistant professor of Musical Theory at Charterburgh University, but resigned after four years in order to compose. The Ancient Grail, a passionate orchestral suite mirroring the intensity of her own personality, lifted her into Verge at the age of ninety-two. With approximately thirty years in which to attain Amaranth she set aside a year for contemplation, rest, and a new set of stimuli.

  She had always been interested in the delicate culture of the island kingdom Singhalien, and in spite of the apparently insurmountable obstacles and dangers, decided to spend the year she had allowed herself among the Singhali.

  She made elaborate preparation, learning the language, the conventions, the ritual postures. She acquired a Singhali wardrobe, dyed her skin. She obtained an air car with a self-contained power source (the usual vehicles of Clarges, which operated on broadcast power, could fly only a few miles past the borders of the Reach). Her preparations complete, she departed the Reach for the barbarian outlands, where her life would be in continual danger.

  In Kandesta she set herself up as a witchwoman and with the aid of a few scientific tricks achieved a reputation. The Grandee of Gondwana offered her a missal of safe conduct into his pirate empire and she accepted eagerly. Her original schedule was running short, but, fascinated by the Gondwanese artists and their identification of creativity with life, she remained four years. Many aspects of Gondwanese life she found repugnant, in particular the unconcern toward human suffering. The Jacynth was an emotional woman, exquisitely sensitive and all during her time out of the Reach she fought a chronic nausea. At Tonpengh, she innocently attended the ceremonies at the Grand Stupa, and the experience shocked her past her capacity. In an extremity of revulsion she fled Gondwana and returned to the Reach, arriving in a state of near-collapse.

  Six months in the well-ordered security of Clarges restored her mental balance, and the next years were her most productive. She published her Study of Gondwanese Art, and cinematic essays on various subjects: Gondwanese music; the coral gardens tended by slave divers; the sails of the Gondwanese tiger boats, dyed in patterns of near-microscopic intricacy; the dances on the summit of Mount Valakunai which never ceased lest the sun, the moon and the stars should likewise halt.

  At the age of one hundred and four she broke through into Amaranth, becoming The Jacynth Martin.

  She went into her seclusion like a caterpillar into metamorphosis, and emerged a transcendentally beautiful girl of nineteen, more or less similar to the original Jacynth Martin at the age of nineteen.

  The new Jacynth was a girl nineteen years old, not just a rejuvenated edition of the 104-year-old woman. She was equipped with the old Jacynth Martin’s knowledge, memories and personality, although gaps and lapses could easily be found. The new Jacynth, however, was no one else. There were no elements in her character which had not been present in the old Jacynth; she was at once both completely and incompletely the former woman.

  The Jacynth Martin, age nineteen, was contained in a slender nervous body of compelling contour. Ash-blonde hair swept smooth and bright to her shoulders. Her expression, while mobile and open, was not altogether guileless. According to the convention which relates the beauty of a woman to one of the flowers, The Jacynth might be likened to a ginger blossom.

  During the climb up phyle, her sexual experience had been curtailed and desultory. While she had never married she had maintained a sane perspective, and when, earlier in the evening she had arrayed herself in skin-smooth silver, the prompting had been as much from the urge and pride of her healthy body as from the psychic thrust which takes most of the new Amaranth through a stage of abandon. She came to Carnevalle with no conscious design or purpose, untroubled either by currents of foreboding or by pangs of prospective guilt.

  She parked her air car, rode a swift disk down a transparent tube and emerged upon the Concourse, at the very heart of Carnevalle.

  She paused, entranced by the sound and color, by the spirit of Carnevalle.

  The spangled hats, the striped costumes, the hoarse voices; bell tones, musical sounds, the subdued mechanical roar which seemed to come from everywhere; the faint odor of perspiration, eyes peering like intoxicated insects through masks; mouths like pink or purple lilies open to call, laugh, deride; the arms and legs moving in grotesque antics, impromptu capers; the erotic sidling and swaying; the flutter of cloth, the shuffle of shoe or sandal; the tubes and patterns of slave-light; the floating lumes and symbols: Carnevalle! The Jacynth had only to mingle and melt, to drift on the current, to merge with the welter of Carnevalle…

  She crossed the Concourse, turned past the Folie Incredibile, into the Lesser Oval, sauntered down Arcady Way, regarding everything with minute interest and the most intense perception. The colors rang in her eyes with the impact of gongs. She heard overtones, sweet, wild, harsh, in sounds which before had seemed quite unexceptional. She passed the sideshows where any kind of freakishness might be inspected; the Temple of Truth; the Blue Grotto; the Labyrinth; the College of Eros, where the techniques of love were demonstrated by men and women with agile bodies and grave faces.

  A hundred patterns of slave-light swayed overhead, among them the sign of the House of Life. From a booth a man in a brass mask called out in a voice of great power. A disturbing image entered her mind, a recollection from the Grand Stupa at Tonpengh: the master priest demoniacally handsome, exhorting the moaning crowd of initiates.

  Fascinated, The Jacynth paused to listen.

  “Friends, what of your slope?” cried Waylock. “Come into the House of Life! Didactor Bonzel Moncure will help if you so allow! Brood to Wedge, Wedge to Third, Third to Verge, Verge to Amaranth! Why hoard hours when Didactor Moncure will give you years? A florin, I say, a florin! Too much for life eternal?” His voice cut like a brass sickle. “Up with your slope! Learn the hypnotic way to memory! Freeze useful techniques forever, face the future with hope! One florin to enter Didactor Moncure’s marvellous House of Life!”

  A knot of passersby had gathered; Waylock pointed to a man. “You! You Third there! When do you make Verge?”

  “Not me. I’m Brood, draygosser by trade.”

  “You’ve got the look of Third, that’s where you belong. Try Didactor Moncure’s regimen; in ten weeks bid your assassin good-by forever…You!” This was a middle-aged woman. “Good lady, your children—what of them?”

  “Young hounds are already ahead of me!” the woman cried in great good humor.

  “Here’s your chance to outdistance them! No less than forty-two of today’s Amaranth owe their place to Didactor Moncure.” His eye fell on a girl in shining silver. “You—the beautiful young lady! Don’t you want to be Amaranth?”

  The Jacynth laughed. “I am not concerned.”

  Waylock held up his hands in mock astonishment. “No? And why not?”

  “Perhaps because I’m glark.”

  “Tonight may be the turning-point of your life. Pay your florin, perhaps you too will be Amaranth. Then, when you wipe the yellow foam from the face of your first-alive, when you look upon she who is to be you, you will think back and give thanks to Didactor Moncure and his marvellous methods!” A stream of blue lumes floated out of the House and hung over his head. “Inside then, if you want to meet Didactor Moncure tonight; there’s only a moment to enter! One florin, one florin to raise your slope!”

  Waylock jumped to the ground. He was now at liberty; late-stayers at Carnevalle rarely patronized the House of Life. He sought through the crowd—there, the sheen of silver! He thrust into the jostle, fell into step beside The Jacynth.

  The silver glitter on her face concealed whatever surprise she might have felt. “Is Didactor Moncure faring so poorly that his tout must chase prospects through the crowd?” Her tone was light and playful.

  “At this moment,” said Waylock, “I am my own man, and will be until tomorrow sunset.”

  “But you hobnob with Verge and Amaranth—what is your interest in a glark girl?”

  “The usual,” said Waylock. “You’re a beautiful sight; do you realize it?”

  “Why else would I wear so revealing a costume?”

  “And you came to Carnevalle alone?”

  She nodded, giving him a side glance, inscrutable through the silver mask.

  “I’ll accompany you—if I may?”

  “I might lead you into mischief.”

  “A risk I won’t mind taking.”

  They traversed Arcady Way and came out upon the Bellarmine Circus.

  “Here we are at the crossroads,” said Waylock. “The Colophon leads to the Esplanade. Little Concourse returns to the Concourse. Piacenza takes us out to the Ring and into the Thousand Thieves section. How will you choose?”

  “I have no choice. I came to walk and look and feel.”

  “In that case, I must choose. I live and work here, but I know little more of Carnevalle than you.”

  The Jacynth was interested. “You live here—in Carnevalle?”

  “I have an apartment in the Thousand Thieves; many who work here do.”

  She eyed him askance. “Then you’re a Berber?”

  “Oh no. Berbers are outcasts. I’m an ordinary man working at a job, glark like yourself.”

  “And you never become bored with all this?” She indicated the gay crowd.

  “Sometimes to the point of exhaustion.”

  “Why live here then? It’s only minutes to Clarges.”