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I’m not too much of a disappointment.”
     
“So you’re in the book business.”
     
“So to speak.”
     
“Plan to make a lot of money that way?”
     
“Hardly.”
     
“Did the SPARTA program turn out other scholars like yourself?”
     
“I haven’t kept in touch with the others.” Blake studied Noble a moment and decided to take a risk; he interrupted before Noble could speak. “But why don’t you tell me, Jack? You’re a Tapper.”
    Noble grimaced reflexively. “You’ve heard of our little organization.” The Tappers were a philanthropic group that met once a month for dinner at private clubs in both Washington and Manhattan. They never admitted guests and never publicized their activities.
“You sponsored several of us SPARTA kids, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t realize that was general knowledge.”
    “You sponsored Khalid, for example,” Blake said. Blake’s parents and their friends belonged to some of the same clubs–only the first of the coincidences Blake had uncovered–so he knew that the Tappers’ aim was ostensibly to discover and encourage young talent in the arts and sciences. Encouragement took the form of scholarships and other, unspecified support. No aspiring youth could apply for Tapper aid, however. Discovery was a Tapper prerogative. “What’s Khalid up to these days?”
“In fact he’s a rising young ecologist with the Mars Terraforming Project, of which I’m one of the directors.”
     
“Good for Khalid. Why do I get the sense you’re needling me, Jack? Don’t you approve of book collecting?”
    “You are a blunt young fellow,” said Noble. “I’ll be just as blunt. SPARTA was a noble undertaking, but it seems to have produced few like Khalid, people with an interest in public service. I wondered about your perspective on that.”
“SPARTA was intended to help people live up to their potential–so they could make choices for themselves.”
     
“A recipe for selfishness, it would seem.”
    “We also serve who only sit and read,” Blake said flippantly. “Let’s face it, Jack, you and I don’t have to worry about the roofs over our heads. You made your fortune selling water on Mars; short of some disaster, I’ll inherit mine. Books are my hobby. Do-gooding with the Tappers is yours.”
    Noble shook his head once, sharply. “Our purpose is a bit more serious. We believe the world, all the worlds, will soon be confronted with an unprecedented challenge. We do what we can to prepare for that event, to search out the man or woman . . .”
Blake leaned imperceptibly closer, his expression relaxing into frank interest. It was one of those tricks known to the socially adept, one of the tricks one had been apt to pick up at SPARTA.
     
And it almost worked, before Noble recovered himself. “Well, I was about to bore you,” he said. “Please excuse me, I really do wish you the best of luck. I’m afraid I must run.”
     
Blake watched the man walk hastily away. From the corner of the room his father raised an eyebrow in a silent question; Blake smiled back cheerily.
    Interesting exchange, that. Jack Noble had certainly confirmed Blake’s suspicion that the Tappers were not what they seemed. Through discrete inquiries of his parents and their friends, Blake had already compiled a list of the dozen men and women currently on the Tappers’ rolls and looked into their backgrounds. Their circumstances and occupations were quite varied–an educator, a nanoware tycoon, a well-known symphony orchestra conductor, a cognitive psychologist, a medical doctor, a neuroscientist, a freebooter like Noble–but they had more in common than just their interest in encouraging youth, and this too seemed an odd coincidence: all the Tappers had had ancestors who had left England in the 17th century, after having been arrested as “Ranters.”
Blake continued his researches when he moved to London. In the reading room where Karl Marx had written Das Kapital , Blake came