A Matter for Men

SEVENTEEN

THE BUS station was next to the PX. There were fifteen or twenty people standing around and waiting, most of them dressed in evening clothes or uniforms.

Hardly anybody looked up as we approached. "What's up?" I whispered.

Ted said, "I'll find out," and disappeared into the crowd. He left me standing there looking after him.

Our intention had been to ride into town and take in a show or a tribe-dance. Now I just stood in front of the bus terminal, staring at the big wall-screen. It was flashing: NEXT BUS-22 MINUTES. There was a blinking dot on the map, showing its present location.

I shoved my hands into my pockets and turned around. Almost immediately, I found myself staring into the face of a thin, pale little girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen at most, probably younger; she was hanging on the arm of a large, bombastic-looking man. He was puffy and florid-faced, and obviously drunk. He was old enough to be her father. He wore a plaid kilt and a rumpled military jacket. I didn't recognize the nationality; he could have been anything from Australian to Scot. I pegged him as a colonel. Or a buffoon. I was just about to give the girl a smile when he noticed me studying them. He glared and I turned away embarrassed.

I looked at the two WACs instead-at least, I assumed they were WACs. They could just as easily have been whores. Dad always said the way to tell the difference was that "whores dress like ladies, and ladies dress like whores." But I never understood what he meant by that. I always thought a whore was a lady. By definition. These two were murmuring quietly to each other, obviously about something neither of them cared about. They were swathed in elegance and indifference. They should have been waiting for a limousine, not a bus; but-well, the whole crowd was an odd conglomeration. Maybe they were with the three Japanese businessmen in Sony-suits who were arguing so heatedly over something, while a fourth-obviously a secretarykept referring to the readouts on a pocket terminal.

There were four black delegates speaking some unidentifiable African language; I would have guessed Swahili, but I had no way of being sure. Three men and a tall, striking woman with her hair in painful-looking corn rows. All were in bright red and gold costumes. The woman caught me looking at her, smiled and turned away. She whispered something to one of the men and he turned and glanced at me; then he turned back to his companion and the two of them laughed softly together. I felt myself getting hot.

I was embarrassed. I turned and stared into the PX window. I stayed that way, staring at faded packages of men's makeup kits until Ted came up grinning and punched my arm. "You're gonna love this!" he said.

I turned away from the dusty window. "What did you find?"

"Oh ... something." He said it smugly.

"For instance?"

"An orientation reception. You know what's going on here?"

"Chtorran studies, I hope."

"Better than that. The First Worldwide Conference on Extraterrestrial Life, with special emphasis on the Chtorran species, and particular objectives of contact, negotiation and coexistence."

"What about control?"

"I guess that's implied. There is a subsection on defensive procedures and policies, but it seems to be downplayed. In any case, this is a major effort. There are five hundred of the best scientists-"

"Best remaining," I corrected.

Ted ignored me. "-in the world. Not just biologists, Jim boy, but psychologists, ecologists, anthropologists, space scientists-they've even got the head of the Asenion Foundation coming in."

"Who's he?"

"It's a group of speculative thinkers. Writers, artists, filmists, programmers-like your dad-and so on. People with a high level of ideational fluency. People who can extrapolate-like futurists and science fiction writers."

"Oh," I said. "Crackpots. I'm whelmed."

"You gonna come?"

"Huh? We're not officially invited, are we?"

"So? It's about Chtorrans, isn't it? And we're Chtorran experts, aren't we? We have as much right as anybody to be there. Come on, the bus is here." It was a big Chrysler hydro-turbine, one of the regular shuttles between the base and downtown. The driver had all her lights on and the big beast gleamed like a dragon.

I didn't get a chance to object. Ted just grabbed my arm and pulled me aboard after him. The bus was moving even before we found seats; I wanted to head for the back, but Ted pulled me down next to him near a cluster of several young and elegantly dressed couples; we rumbled out the front gate and onto the main highway and I thought of a brilliantly lit cruise ship full of revelers in the middle of a dark and lonely ocean.

Someone up front started passing a flask around and the party unofficially began. Most of the people on the bus seemed to know each other already and were joking back and forth. Somehow, Ted fit himself into the group and within minutes was laughing and joking along with them. When they moved to the lounge at the front of the bus, he waved for me to come up and join them, but I shook my head.

Instead I retreated to the back of the bus-almost bumping into the thin, pale little girl as she came out of the lavatory. "Oops, sorry!"

She flashed a quick angry look at me, then started to step past. "I said I'm sorry."

"Yeah-they all are."

"Hey!" I caught her arm.

"What?!"

I looked into her face. "Who hurt you?"

She had the darkest eyes. "Nobody!" she said. She pulled her arm free and went forward to rejoin her friend, the fat florid colonel.

The Marriott-Regency was a glimmering fairy castle, floating like a cloud above a pool of silvery light. It was a huge white pyramid of a building, all dressed up in terraces and minarets, and poised in the center of a vast sparkling lake. It towered above Denver like a bright complacent giant-a glowing giant. Starbursts and reflections twinkled and blazed across the waterthere were lights below as well as above-and all around, shimmering laser beams played back and forth across the sky like swords of dancing color; the tower was enveloped in a dazzling halo.

High above it all, flashing bursts of fireworks threw themselves against the night, sparkling in the sky, popping and exploding in a never-ending shower of light. The stars were dimmed behind the glare.

By comparison, the rest of the city seemed dark and deserted. It was as if there were nothing else in Denver but this colossal spire, blazing with defiant life-a celebration for the sheer joy of celebration.

A gasp of awe went up from some of the revelers. I heard one lady exclaim, "It's beautiful! But what are they celebrating?"

"Nothing," laughed her companion. "Everything. Just being alive!"

"They do it every night?"

"Yep."

The bus rolled down a ramp, through a tunnel and up into the building itself, finally stopping on an interior terrace overlooking a frosty garden.

It was like stepping into a fairy tale. The inside of this gaudy diamond was a courtyard thirty stories tall, bathed in light, divided by improbable fountains and exuberant forests, spotted with unexpected plateaus and overhung with wide terraces and balconies. There were banners hanging everywhere. I got off the bus and just stared-until Ted grabbed my arm and pulled,me along.

To one side was a lobby containing the hotel's registration desk and elevators, on the other was a ramp leading down into the heart of the courtyard. A Marine Corps band in shining silver uniforms occupied one of the nearby balconies and strains of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty March filled the air. (It used to be a waltz, until the Marines got ahold of it.) Everywhere I looked, I saw uniforms-from every branch of the service, and quite a few foreign ones as well. Had the military taken over the hotel?

There was a young lieutenant-good grief! When had they started commissioning them that young?-at the head of the ramp. He was seated behind a porta-console, checking off each person against the list in the computer. Although we didn't see him prevent anyone from going down the ramp, his authority to do so was obvious. I wondered how Ted was going to get us past.

It turned out to be no problem at all. Ted had attached himself to the buffoon with the sixteen-year-old girl, showing interest only in the buffoon and none at all in the girl. He looked like a hustler in his gaudy flash-pants; now he was acting like one. We approached the console in a group; Ted hooked one arm through the buffoon's, the other through mine. "Now, come on, Jimmy-boy," he said. "Don't be a party-poop." The looey looked up at all four of us, tried unsuccessfully to conceal his reaction and nodded us past without comment.

Turned out the buffoon was one of the better known buffoons in Denver. As well as his predilections for-well, never mind. The girl was not his daughter. But she was hungry.

I shook off Ted's arm and pulled angrily away. I stopped on the ramp and let them keep going without me. Ted just nattered along, barely noticing my departure.

I stood there watching them, Ted gushing on one arm of the buffoon, the girl on the other, and hated all three of them. This wasn't what I'd come to Denver for. I felt hot and embarrassed, a damn fool.

Screw them. I went looking for a phone. Found one, inserted my card and dialed home.

Got a recorded message. "Not here now, back tomorrow." Beep.

Sigh. "Mom, this is Jim-"

Click. "Jim, I'm sorry I missed you. I'm not in Santa Cruz anymore. I've moved down the coast to a place called Family. It's on the New Peninsula. We take care of orphans. I've met a wonderful man here-I want you to meet him. We're thinking of getting married. His name is Alan Plaskow; I know you'll like him. Maggie does. Maggie and Annie send their love-and we all want to know when we'll be seeing you again. Your Uncle Ernie will be in town next month, something to do with the Reclamation Hearings. Please let me know where I can get in touch with you, okay?" Beep.

"Hi, Mom. I got your message okay. I don't know when I'll be able to get away, but as soon as I can I'll come home for a few days. I hope you're well. I hope everyone else is okay too. I'm in Denver right now at the National Science Center and-"

A metallic voice interrupted: "It is required by law to inform you that this conversation is being monitored for possible censorship under the National Security Act."

"Terrific. Anyway, Mom, I'll be in touch with you as soon as I can. Don't try to call me here; I don't think you'll have much luck. Give my love to everyone." I hung up. I tried calling Maggie, but the lines to Seattle were out, or busy, or something. I left a delayed message, pocketed my card and walked away.

I found myself in front of a news stand, studying headlines. It was the same old stuff. The President was calling for unity and cooperation. Again. Congress was in a wrangle over the economy. Again. The value of the casey had jumped another klick. Bad news for the working man. Again.

On an impulse, I picked up a pack of Highmasters, opening them as I headed back.

I stopped to light up at the top of a ramp. "Who's that?" said someone behind me. "Who's who?" someone answered.

"The preacher."

"Oh, that's Fromkin. Ego-tripping again. He loves to play teacher. Whenever he comes to these things, he holds court."

"Looks like a full house."

"Oh, he's a good speaker, never dull-but I've heard him before, and it's always the same sermon: `Let's be unreasonable.' Let's go somewhere else."

"Okay."

They wandered off. I studied the man they were talking about for a moment, then headed down the ramp for a closer listen. He did look like a preacher. The effect was accomplished by a ruffled silk shirt and a black frock coat-he looked like he'd just stepped out of the nineteenth century. He was lean and spare and had a halo of frosty-white hair that floated around his pink skull like a cloud.

His eyes sparkled as he spoke; he was very much enjoying himself. I edged into the crowd and found a place to stand. One of the women at his feet was saying, "But I don't see how it's possible to inflate a labor economy, Professor. . . . I mean, I thought that everything was fixed. "

"It's really quite simple," Fromkin said. "Just devalue your counters."

"But that's what I mean. I thought the point of the whole thing was to create an economy that couldn't be devalued."

"Sure. But-oh, hell, it requires too much explanation. Wait a minute, let me see if I can boil it down. Look, the theory of money is that it's a tool to allow a social organism to manipulate its energy-that is, money units are the corpuscles of the cultural bloodstream; it has to flow for the system to be able to feed itself. You like that, huh? What we think of as money is really only counters, a way of keeping score which organ in the social body-that means you-is presently using or controlling this piece of energy. It's when we start thinking that the counter is valuable that we confuse ourselves. It's not-it's only the symbol."

"I could use a few of those symbols," one wag remarked.

Fromkin looked at him with withering gentleness. "So create some," he said. Suddenly, I knew who he reminded me of-Whitlaw!

"I'd love to. How?" said the wag.

"Easy. Create value-for others. The truth is that you can only measure your wealth by the amount of difference you make in the world. That is, how much do you contribute to the people around you? And to how many people do you contribute?"

"Huh?" The wag had stopped being funny. Now he was honestly curious.

"All right, stick with me. The physical universe uses heat to keep score. Actually, it's motion, but on the molecular level we experience it as heat. Just know that it's the only way one object ever affects another, so it's the only way to measure how big a difference an object really makes. We measure heat in BTUs. British Thermal Units. Calories. We want our money to be an accurate measure, so we use the same system as the physical universe: ergo, we have the KC standard, the kilocalorie."

A chubby woman in a bright-flowered dress giggled nervously. "I used to think we were spending pieces of fat. I thought I'd be rich." Fromkin acknowledged her attempt at humor with a noncommittal smile, and she gushed happily.

The man next to her asked, "How much is a pound of flesh these days?"

"Um, let's see-a pound is two-point-two kilograms. . . ."

"It'd be three caseys," I said. "A pound of flesh is three thousand calories." I looked back to Fromkin.

He was ignoring the interruption. He took a final sip from his drink and put it down. Someone immediately moved to refill it, a thin, bony-looking woman with basset-hound eyes.

Fromkin returned his attention to the brunette who had asked the original question. "Still with me? Good. Okay, this is what the casey teaches us about the law of supply and demand. The purchase price of an object is determined by how much of your labor you're willing to trade for it. The difference between the purchase price and its actual value is called profit. Stop wrinkling your nose, my dear; profit is not a dirty word. Profit is a resource. It is a necessary part of the economic process; it's what we call the energy that the organism uses for reinvestment if it is to continue to thrive and produce. This apple, for instance, is the apple tree's profit-the meat of it is used to feed the seeds inside, and that's how an apple tree manufactures another apple tree. So you cannot charge less than an item costs in energy, but you can charge more; in fact, you must. "

"So why does a kilo of Beluga cost more than a kilo of soya?" someone asked. "The soya has more protein."

Fromkin smiled. "Isn't it obvious? As soon as you have one unit less than the number of willing buyers, you have an auction going. The price will rise until enough people drop out and you have only as many buyers as units to sell; it's called `whatever the market will bear.' "

He stood up then and stepped to a nearby buffet table and started loading a plate. But he kept talking. The man was incredible. "Under the labor standard, a nation's wealth is determined by its ability to produce-its gross national product. Cut the population and you cut the wealth of a country. Automatically. But the amount of counters still in circulation remains high. And there's no easy way to cut back the coinage; it can't help but inflate-and even if you could cut back all the excess cash in circulation, it wouldn't be enough. The system is still pegged to its history. Bonds, for instance-a government sells bonds on the promise of paying interest on them. Interest can only be paid when the system is in a growth situation. If there's no growth, then interest is only a promise by the government to continue inflating the economy and further reduce the value of the counters-the money. That's why I oppose letting the government borrow money-under any circumstances. Because it sets a bad precedent. If it can't pay it back, then it has to borrow more, and the inflationary spiral is endless. Let the government go into debt and we're mortgaging our own future incomes. This country-the whole world, in fact-is in an extreme no-growth situation, yet the interest will still be paid on all outstanding bonds. It has to be; it's the law. So ... the more cash in circulation, the less each bill is worth. Thank God we still have the dollar-that's at least backed by paper, and it can't inflate as fast as the casey can under these circumstances-and it'll continue that way for a long time. It was a commodity; someday soon it'll be money again. We're at the beginning of a long recede-"

"Beginning-?" said the brunette. "I thought-"

"Nope." Fromkin was sitting again, eating. He paused to chew and swallow. "You're wrong. That was a population crash. When four and a half billion people die in two years, that's a crash. The U.N. definition of a recede specifies seven percent or more over an eight-month period-but when it's seventy percent, that's a crash. We're just coming out of the crash now; the curve is finally starting to level off. Now we're going into the recede. The real recede. It's the aftershock of the crash. But it's a lot more than that too. Believe it or not, the human race may have been knocked below the threshold of viability. There may not be enough of us left to survive."

"Huh?" That was a newcomer to the group. His posture was military even though he was wearing a dress jacket. He was standing with a plate in one hand and a drink in the other. "Are you serious? Fromkin, I think you're ignoring the fact that the human race has survived a long time-and we've only been above one billion individuals for a little more than a century."

Fromkin looked up. He recognized the man and grinned. "You'd better stick to your spaceships, Colonel Ferris. Someone make room for the colonel here, thank you. You're right about your figures, of course-I saw the same report-but the figures alone don't tell the whole story. You need to know the demographic cross section. Right now, we are not functioning from a stable population of family or tribal groups. The human network is mostly disjointed-we're all individual atoms, swirling in chaos.

"We haven't reformed into molecules-although that process has begun-let alone crystals and lattices. We're still a very long way from the creation and operation of the necessary social organisms that a self-generating society needs to survive-and I'm still only talking about survival; I haven't even touched upon anything beyond that-like celebration."

Ferris looked unhappy. Some of Fromkin's other listeners looked puzzled.

"Okay, let me put that in English for you. We are not a population yet. We are just a mish-mash of people who've been lucky enough-or perhaps I should say unlucky enough-to survive." He looked at Ferris as he said it. "Each of us has his own horror story."

Now I knew him. Jarles "Free Fall" Ferris. The Lunar Colony. One of the seventeen who made it back. We never heard how they chose who stayed and who returned. I wondered if we'd ever find out.

Fromkin was saying, "The fact is, we're still getting aftereffects of the plagues. We'll be getting them for another year or three-but we're nowhere better equipped to handle them for a small, spread-out, disorganized population than we were able to handle them for a large, dense, organized one. If anything, an individual's chances are worse now for survival. There are still ripples of those plagues circulating. Slowly, but surely, we're going to lose another half-billion people-that's the guess of the RandTanks. Then, of the survivors, we're going to lose ten percent who will have lost the will to live. Anomie. Shock. The walking wounded-and just because you don't see them wandering around in herds anymore doesn't mean they're not there. Then we'll lose the very old and the very young who won't be able to take care of themselves. And the very ill too. Anyone on any kind of maintenance is in danger, even if it's something as easily controllable as diabetes. There simply won't be either the medical care or the supplies. We lost nearly eighty percent of the world's supply of doctors, nurses and support technicians. We'll lose a lot of children because there won't be anyone around to parent them.

"Some will die, some will go feral. The birth rate will be down for a long time. We're going to lose all the babies who won't be born because those who could have been parents are no longer capable or willing. We'll lose even more babies who are born to parents who can't or won't maintain them. Should I go on? No? Okay-but we're real close to the edge. It'll look like positive feedback on the cultural level: psychoses creating more psychoses, distrust and suspicion leading to more distrust and suspicion. And if enough people start to perceive that there isn't enough of anything to go around-food, fuel, whatever-they'll start fighting over what's left. And by then we'll be into serious problems with population density; the survivors-a rag-taggle conglomeration of misfits by any definition-may be too spread out to meet and mate. Those few left who are capable and willing to be responsible parents may not be able to find each other. I expect the recede to take us right down to the level where it will be questionable if we can come back. Which means, by the way, that the casey was a noble experiment, but I'm afraid it's going to be overinflated and worthless for a long time to come. I wish I were wrong, but I've already converted most of my holdings to property or dollars. I'd advise the rest of you to do the same. With a shrinking tax base, the government is going to have to take drastic steps soon, and you're going to have to protect your wealth, or you might find yourself turned into a pauper overnight by a paper revaluation. That's happened a couple times in the past two decades, but this next one ought to be a wowzer."

He paused to take another bite of food and wash it down with a drink.

Maybe it was my high-school reflexes-I had to say something. He was talking about the fact that the dying hadn't ended yet, that we were going to lose one-third, maybe even one-half, of the remaining human beings left on the planet. He wasn't talking about how to save them; he was talking dispassionately about how to avoid economic discomfort. No-he was talking about how to profit from it. I couldn't help myself. "Sir-"

He looked up. His eyes were shaded. "Yes?"

"What about the people?"

"Say again?"

"The people. Aren't we going to try to save them?"

"Save whom? From what?"

"You said at least another half-billion people are going to die. Can't we do something about that?"

"What would you have us do?"

"Well-save them!"

"How?"

"Um, well-"

"Excuse me-I should have asked, `With what?' Most of us are spending most of our energies just staying alive. Most governments are having too much trouble just maintaining internal order to mount a rescue effort even for their own populations, let alone others. And how do you rescue people from the crisscrossing wave fronts of five different plagues, each wave front more than a thousand kilometers wide? We may have identified the plagues, but we haven't finished identifying the mutations. By the way, are you vaccinated?"

"Sure, isn't everybody?"

He snorted. "You're vaccinated because you're in the army, or the Civil Service, or something like that-someone considers you valuable enough to justify keeping you alive; but that vaccine costs time, money-and, most valuable of all, human effort. And there isn't enough of the latter to go around. Not everybody is vaccinated-only the ones that the government needs to survive. We don't have the technicians to program even the automated laboratories. We don't even have the personnel to teach new technicians. We don't have the people to maintain the equipment. We don't have-"

"I get the point-but still, isn't there something-?"

"Young man, if there were something, we would be doing it. We are doing it. Whatever we can. The point is, that even with our best efforts we are still going to lose that half-billion people. It's as unavoidable as sunrise. We might as well acknowledge it because, like it or not, that's what's so."

"I don't like it," I said.

"You don't have to." Fromkin shrugged. "The universe doesn't care. God doesn't take public opinion polls. The fact is, what you like, what I like, what anyone likes-it's all irrelevant." His expression was deceptively cordial. He seemed almost deliberately hostile. "If you really want to make a difference, then you need to ask yourself this question about everything you do: will this contribute to the survival of the species?" He looked around the gathering. "Most of us here are breeders. Would you have us compromise that breeding potential in favor of some altruistic gesture of ultimately questionable value? Or let me put that another way: you can spend the rest of your life raising and teaching the next generation of human beings, or you can spend it nursing a few dozen of the walking wounded, catatonics, autistics and retards who will never be able to contribute, who will only continue to use up resources-not the least of which is your valuable time."

"I hear you, sir. But to sit calmly and eat caviar and strawberries and bagels and lox while talking about global death and benevolent genocide-"

He put down his plate. "Would it be more moral if I starved while I talked about global death and benevolent genocide? Would starving make me care more? Would it increase my ability to do something-other than hurt?"

"You shouldn't be talking about it so dispassionately at all," I said. "It's unthinkable."

A flicker of annoyance crossed his face, but his voice remained steady. "It is not unthinkable." He said it very deliberately-was he angry? "In fact, if we do not think about it, we will be risking the consequences of being caught by surprise. One of the basic fallacies of sophomoric intelligence-don't take it personal, son; I insult everybody equally-is moral self-righteousness. Merely being able to perceive the difference between right and wrong does not make you a moral person; it only gives you some guidelines in which to operate." He leaned forward in his chair. "Now, here's the bad news. Most of the time those guidelines are irrelevant-because the pictures we hold in our heads about the way things should be usually have very little relation to the way things actually are. And holding the position that things should be some way other than what they are will only keep you stuck. You'll spend so much time arguing with the physical universe that you won't produce any result at all. You'll have some great excuses, but you won't have a result. The fact that we can do nothing about the circumstances that are sending us into a long recede is unpleasant, yes-now let's stop arguing about the situation and start handling it. There is still much we can do to minimize the unpleasantness-"

"One half billion human deaths is more than just an unpleasantness-"

"Four and a half billion human deaths is more than just an unpleasantness too." He looked at me calmly. "And please, lower your voice-I'm sitting right here."

"Sorry. My point is, this whole discussion seems inhumane."

He nodded. "Yes, I have to grant that. It does seem inhumane." He changed his tone suddenly. "You know any crazy people?"

"Damaged," I corrected. "Crazy is a negative connotation."

"Sorry," he amended. "I grew up in a different time. Old habits are hard to break. I still hadn't gotten used to women having the vote when the next thing even lawyers wanted to ride in the front of the streetcars. Do you know any mentally dysfunctional human beings? Any damaged people?"

"A few."

"Did you ever stop to consider why they were that way?"

"They were irrational, I suppose."

"Were they? Sometimes irrationality is the only rational response to an irrational situation. It's a very human thing-and it's not limited to humans alone." He said softly, "That's what we're doing here-the only rational response to an irrational and very frightening situation. Quite possibly-no, quite probably-of the people in this room"-and he gestured to include the whole reception, spread out across several acres of hotel-"less than half of us may be alive next year at this time. Or even next week." He shrugged. "Who knows?"

The sweet young thing, whose knee he was resting his hand on, went pale at that. He patted her gently, but otherwise ignored her. He continued looking at me. "All of a sudden, there are a lot of things out there that can kill human beings. And there isn't a lot left to stop them. You know, we've had our way on this planet far too long. Nature is always willing to take advantage of our weaknesses. Remember, Mom's a bitch. We've spent centuries building a technology to isolate us from the real world. That isolation has left most of us survival-illiterate and vulnerable. But the machine has stopped-is stopping now-and most people are going to be at the mercy of the contents of their stomachs. Nature doesn't care; she'll finish the job the plagues started and never miss us. Humans weren't always the hunter at the top of the food chain-we were just a passing fad. Now we're going to be prey again, like in the old days. Ever seen a wolf pack?"

"No...."

"We've got them running loose in the streets of Denver. They're called poodles, terriers, retrievers, Dobermans, shepherds, collies, St. Bernards and mutts-but they're still wolf packs. They're hungry and they can kill. We could lose another thirty million people to animals, formerly domestic and otherwise, right there. Probably more. I'm talking about worldwide, of course. And I'm including people packs in that estimate toothose are animals of another sort. We'll probably lose a hundred million people who would not have died otherwise, but there's no longer the medical care to take care of the injuries and illnesses that they'll incur in the next twelve months. Did you know that appendicitis can be fatal? And so on-" He stopped, looked at me and smiled. I was beginning to understand his charm. He never intended anything personally. "So, my young friend-much as I respect your indignation and the emotions on which it is based-what we are doing here tonight is quite probably the most rational thing we can be doing. I notice you haven't tried to excuse your presence here; perhaps you're quite rational too. In fact, there is only one thing more rational for a person to do that I can think of."

"What's that?"

He went soft for a moment, gentle. "Make love to someone you care about. You're not immortal, you know. If you don't take the opportunity to tell someone you love them tonight, you may never get another chance."

He was right. I thought about a whole bunch of someones. Fromkin stood up and offered his arm to the girl. She and another woman both tried to take it. Fromkin smiled and offered his other arm. He smiled at me again, knowingly, and then the three of them moved off and away.

Yes, just like Whitlaw. He got the last word too.