David E. Fisher

“ At this I feared the Conclave was about to riot. It is at such times that I most revere the wisdom of the ancients, who decreed seventy years the minimum age for a member of the Conclave. They shouted and began to beat their fists, but for how long can a man of seventy years roar like a youngster? ”

“ Every one of your presidents, every general, every field-marshal, every scientist, manufacturer, tennis star, and juvenile delinquent has written a book, or at least a serial for the Post. No reason at all for any historian to come back to this particular age. No other age in all history, I might add, has been so fond of itself or so cognizant of the need for preserving itself and its records for posterity as has yours. ”

“ Nearly every great mind within the past hundred years had pointed out the difficulty of man's accomplishing anything in his brief hundred years of life, had pointed out the necessity of immortality to a great mind. ”

“ Fairfield—"
"Mimi, please, Victor. After all, we're not in your office, and I'm not really your patient, am I? Or am I?"
"Of course not. Well, Mimi, then, the first step is to break down his story. Show him for once and all that it is not plausible, that it is not even possible, that it is plainly and simply a lie which he himself has made up to hide something that he is afraid of. Once we can get him to see this, or at least to wonder about it, once we can break the granite assurance of his that he comes from another time, then perhaps we can probe into his festering secret. ”

“ For if such there was, I was hopeful of dismissing the entire affair with no harm done. "For if people reproduced too often, why then this reproduction must have been a pleasant thing to do; otherwise they would not have done so to excess. And if it was a pleasant thing to do, where is the necessity for the machines, and why were they created?"
Rocsates seemed perplexed by this problem, whereupon Xeon, who together with Melia were at the Conclave without permission, shouted, "Perhaps the process of reproduction was of such a pleasure that the Conclave ruled it to be a sin? ”

“ It could upset the whole pattern of the future!"
"The future will just have to take care of itself," Mimi answered. "I love him, and you can't argue with that. There's nothing you can say that can argue with that. I don't care poof for the future."
Victor sat down quietly on the edge of the bed, he felt a bit weak around the general vicinity of the knees. Mimi stood up and strode over to the window, her back to the conversation. "Mimi," Donald pleaded, "just think of what you're doing. You'll lose your immortality, for one thing. ”

“ He then took out the vodka, settled Bucephalus, his cat, on his lap and began to pour.
Several hours later Henry Talbot sprawled in the armchair and took stock of himself. He came to two conclusions:
1. At his age, what did he care about fame? He knew his theory was sound, and if the people in his own country didn't appreciate it, what difference did it make? Now, free from rancor, he could understand how they must have received his paper. They all knew old Dr. Talbot—seventy-five and not dead yet. What a ridiculous age for a nuclear physicist! ”

“ Rocsates replied after a while. "What to us is an eon, to evolution is but an instant. And then the swelling of the breasts, I believe, proves that there is still reproductive activity in some, at least, of the She's."
We sat shaking our heads, bowed under terrible reality.
"Then we must experiment," I said. "But whom could we ask to submit to such horror?"
"I have already taken the liberty of asking for volunteers," Rocsates replied. "The She, of course, must be one with the swelling of the breasts. Melia has volunteered, on condition that Xeon be released from dungeon. ”

“ The same old thing, always the same old thing. The new wave of immigrants—he looked again to see where they were from this time; he didn't recognize the name of the place, but it didn't matter—the new wave of immigrants was a disgrace to New York, was destroying real estate values, was a burden to society, to the last wave of immigrants who had by now made their place. ”

“ Victor belched.
"For God's sake," said Donald. "There's a time and a place for everything."
Victor crossed to the door. "Mimi," he called. "Mimi, it's me, Victor."
The lock clicked, the door opened, and Mimi walked out and folded herself into his arms. He held her until she stopped shaking, then until he himself stopped shaking and until his breath came more easily. He kept all the while his back toward Donald and the gun, and his arms folded around her so that she was safe from him. Then he turned and calmly as he could, he asked what in the holy hell was going on. ”

“ He applied for and got a research position at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in the Electronuclear Research Division.
Dr. Henry Talbot, brilliant young scientist, began his career enthusiastically, and ran into a brick wall.
Rather, he crawled up to and against it, for it took several years for him to discover that his life's route lay not on an unobstructed downhill slide. Those years slithered past before he looked up and realized that he had not revolutionized the scientific world; he had discovered no principle of relativity, no quantum theory. ”

“ Mimi agreed. "Why on earth should a cigarette taste good? Who says it should? If one wants to taste something good, why then one takes a bite of cake, or a smidgin of candy, or a plate of cold borscht. If one cares for borscht. But you certainly don't smoke a cigarette to taste something good, they all taste horrible. Horribly? Oh damn, look what you started, Donald. Now I can't think straight. Anyhow, people smoke because of the phallic symbolism, right, Victor?"
Donald looked with distaste from Mimi to the big black cigar he was holding in his right hand, and thence to Victor for a denial. ”

“ A man my age does not hurry in the heat of the midday sun—maddugs nenglishmin go out in the midday sun, as the ancients say, although I often wonder why—but Xeon and Melia ran all the way down to the city. They are of an age to enter manhood, and have all the energy such young men do. ”

“ So it is necessary that you realize that sex is entirely foreign to us."
"Then," said Dr. Quink, "if what you say is true, your physical, let us say, equipment, must have degenerated. And so a simple physical examination—"
"Evolution is slow, my doctor, slow, slow, slow. No, I'm physically indistinguishable from you. Assuming normalcy on your part, of course. To continue along this train of thought, though, it is the mental process that provides the difference. There is no desire in me or mine, Doctor, no urge, no depravity, no sexual hunger. ”

“ Henry Talbot was termed "The Dean of American Men of Science" by the New York Times, which paper triumphantly reported that only thirteen people in the world understood his Warped Field Theory. When asked if there was now anything else for science to do, he replied, "Indubitably." When pressed for more details, he said that his housekeeper always removed his vodka from the refrigerator at three-thirty, and that if he did not immediately return home, it would become unbearably warm. ”

“ That there was indeed a time before the machines, in fact the books were created in that time, for not one of them mentions the machines. Then reproduction was carried on by individuals, without help of the then nonexistent machines. The She's are not wanderers from another land, but they have lived with us for all time; they are not another race, but we are all types of one race. And the fact of reproduction is somehow intimately related to the physical distinctions of the She's! ”