like

him the grandson who bore his name, and whom he swore had been minted from the same die as himself.
The odd thing was that as Don grew older, he resembled his grandfather in no physical respect but his size . . . and for all that, the Old Man was right, was dead right. To copy his grandfather, Don let his hair and beard grow—into a black mass as different from the Old Man's white, silken locks as could be imagined. Brother Thomas cut his own fair hair short, but only surgery could have kept every acquaintance from remarking that he looked just like the Old Man.
As the party turned up the helical staircase just within the entrance, Coon Blegan paused to speak to the doorkeeper. "If you had any guts," Blegan whispered—Slade could hear him, but Teddy and surely Marilee could not-"you might even be good for something."
"Up yours, old man," said the natty-looking doorkeeper. He gestured with his shock rod, real as well as symbolic power.
Slade reached from behind and plucked the shock rod away. It was a baton of thumb-thick plastic half a meter long. Electrodes winked at either end. The doorkeeper yelped and tried to snatch the instrument back. Slade's left arm blocked the servant with no more effort than a wall would have displayed.
The doorkeeper's kiosk was cast concrete like the rest of the House's construction. Slade held the baton at its balance with equal portions extending to the thumb-side and heel-side of his hand. He punched upward toward the corner of the kiosk doorway, where the integral post and lintel met. The two ends of the baton took the impact. The instrument crunched into halves.
The tanker handed the pieces back to the doorkeeper with a courteous nod. "Yours, I believe, sir," he said.
Coon Blegan watched with a look of surmise that Slade had not meant to arouse. Pritchard had paused partway up the stairs, just in sight. Waiting, his weapon was unobtrusively at his side.
Most of those drawn into the courtyard were still there. They were fulminating over the damage to their vehicles or gazing with secret delight at the wreckage of some rival's car. The few who trooped babbling back within the House passed the tableau without noticing it. Even Slade's arm could have been a handshake from the angle past his body.
The doorkeeper took his baton back with a look of amazement as silent as the deftness with which it had been stripped from him. Slade gestured to Blegan. The old retainer