But just the same, damn it—“Don’t anybody mention ice skating because Grandmaw is too old and frail for ice skating and it wouldn’t be polite. Hilda, you suggest that we play checkers and we’ll all chime in—Grandmaw likes checkers. And we’ll go ice skating some other time. Okay, kids?”

Jubal resented the respectful consideration, if that was what it was—he would almost have preferred to have gone ice skating anyhow, even at the cost of a broken hip.

But he decided to forget the matter, put it entirely out of mind, which he did with the help of the man on his right, who was as talkative as the girl on his left was not. His name, Jubal learned, was Sam, and presently he learned that Sam was a man of broad and deep scholarship, a trait Jubal valued in anyone when it was not mere parrot learning—and he grokked that in Sam it was not.

“This setback is only apparent,” Sam assured him. “The egg was ready to hatch and now we’ll spread out. Of course we’ve had trouble; we’ll go on having trouble—because no society, no matter how liberal its laws may appear to be, will allow its basic concepts to be challenged with impunity. Which is exactly what we are doing. We are challenging everything from the sanctity of property to the sanctity of marriage.

“Property, too?”

“Property the way it rules today. So far Michael has merely antagonized a few crooked gamblers. But what happens when there are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and more, of people who can’t be stopped by bank vaults and who have only their self-discipline to restrain them from taking anything they want? To be sure, that discipline is stronger than any possible legal restraint—but no banker can grok that until he himself travels the thorny road to achieve that discipline . . . and he’ll wind up no longer a banker. What happens to the stock market when the illuminati know which way a stock will move—and the brokers don’t?”

“Do you know?”

Sam shook his head. “Not interested. But Saul over there—that other big Hebe; he’s my cousin—gives it grokking, along with Allie. Michael has them be very cautious about it, no big killings, and they use a dozen-odd dummy accounts—but the fact remains that any of the disciplined can make any amount of money at anything—real estate, stocks, horse races, gambling, you name it—when competing with the half awake. No, I don’t think that money and property will disappear—Michael says that both concepts are useful—but I do say that they’re going to be turned upside down and inside out to the point where people will have to learn new rules (and that means learn the hard way, just as we have) or be hopelessly outclassed. What happens to Lunar Enterprises when the common carrier between here and Luna City is tele-portation?”

“Should I buy? Or sell?”

“Ask Saul. He might use the present corporation, or he might bankrupt it. Or it might be left untouched for a century or two. But besides bankers and brokers, consider any other occupation. How can a school teacher teach a child who knows more than she does and won’t hold still for mistaken teaching? What becomes of physicians and dentists when people are truly healthy? What happens to the cloak & suit industry and to the I.L.G.W.U. when clothing isn’t really needed at all and women aren’t so endlessly interested in dressing up (they’ll never lose interest entirely)—and nobody gives a damn if he’s caught with his arse bare? What shape does ‘the Farm Problem’ take when weeds can be told not to grow and crops can be harvested without benefit of International Harvester or John Deere? Just name it; it changes beyond recognition when the discipline is applied. Take just one change that will shake both the sanctity of marriage—in its present form—and the sanctity of property. Jubal, do you have any idea how much is spent each year in this country on Malthusian drugs and devices?”

“I have a fairly exact idea, Sam. Almost a billion dollars on oral contraceptives alone this last fiscal year . . . more than half of which was for patent nostrums about as useful as corn starch.”

“Oh, yes, you’re a medical man.”

“Only in passing. A pack rat mind.”

“Either way. What happens to that big industry—and to the shrill threats of moralists—when a female can conceive only when she elects to as an act of volition, when also she is immune to disease, cares only for the approval of her own sort . . . and has her orientation so changed that she desires intercourse with a whole-heartedness that Cleopatra never dreamed of—but any male who tried to rape her would die so quickly, if she so grokked, that he wouldn’t know what hit him? When women are free of guilt and fear—but invulnerable other than by decision of self? Hell, the pharmaceutical industry will be just a passing casualty—what other industries, laws, institutions, attitudes, prejudices, and nonsense must give way?”