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discussion was sex. Daniel knew that she and John had tried on one occasion, and it hadn’t worked, and the presumption that he wouldn’t be gaining a rival in that arena probably influenced his decision. It’s likely that Marianne suspected otherwise. Daniel was nine years older, but she had literally worlds more experience in sex.
    At any rate, the predictable transformation occurred. John Ogelby, forty-two years old, physically deformed, Irish Catholic upbringing: besides the unsuccessful event with Marianne, and two equally frustrating youthful encounterswith Dublin prostitutes, his only sexual partner in thirty years had been his own imagination. One simple ceremony and he was a different man.
    Daniel suddenly found himself with a lot of time to reflect, alone, on the ways of a maid with a man. Marianne spent the first week of their expanded marriage up in John’s quarter-gee cubicle, with occasional forays to the zerogee gymnasium, where there were small rooms with locks.
    There was no possibility of the three of them living together, since John couldn’t tolerate normal gravity for long. Eventually they settled down into an informal migratory pattern. Marianne would spend a few days up-stairs, a few days downstairs, free to change at her whim or either man’s desire. She got into the habit of carrying a toothbrush in her bag. The three of them took most of their meals together. Daniel was surprised to find himself not jealous.
    O’Hara’s advanced training had been in the areas of American Studies and administration; she’d been aiming for a liaison position between the Worlds and the U.S. That didn’t look like much of a career now.
    She had a temporary, or tentative, position as a minor administrator in Resources Allocation. Administrative trainee, actually, which turned out to be assistant to anybody junior enough not to have his own assistant. Being in Resources, though, gave her a realistic view of New New’s current situation. It was a fool’s paradise.
    She and John and Daniel were taking their slow Friday walk through the park. Ogelby had to spend a few hours a week in normal gravity, or progressive myasthenia would trap him forever in the upper levels.
    “I’m getting used to it again,” O’Hara said, “not having a horizon.” They sat down to rest on a bench beside thelake. The lake rose in front of them, a sheet of still water that curved gently away to be lost in mist. If you looked straight overhead, squinting against the brilliance of the artificial suns, you might just make out the opposite shore.
    “I never will,” Anderson said. A duck swam toward them, slightly downhill. Ogelby snapped his fingers at it.
    O’Hara frowned. “Don’t tease the poor thing.”
    “Tease?” He opened a pocket and took out a piece of rice cake. The duck waddled over and snatched it. “We must share with the less fortunate.” His speech was slightly slurred, and his eyes bright, from the pain pills.
    “Time will come when you’ll wish you’d saved it,” she said. “When we’re up to our ears in Devonites.”
    “They’ll come to their senses,” Ogelby said. “The whole line’s still in a state of shock.” Two years before, the Devonites had over fifteen thousand souls in their lines. Most of them lived in Devon’s World, a toroidal settlement in the same orbit as New New, about three thousand kilometers downstream. Devon’s World had suffered a direct hit during the war, and all but a few hundred perished. They were rescued and joined the several thousand who lived in New New.
    Even in normal times, a Devonite woman was expected to have many children; their religion was a celebration of fertility. Now they were pregnant constantly, and taking drugs to guarantee multiple births. This put them at odds with public policy; for conservation of food and water, the administration of New New had asked for a five-year period of strict birth control.
    Most women in New New were in the same