it up from the basket and read the page a second time. He raised his eyes to meet the tense gaze of Carre.

"Is this what you were trying to tell me, Herbert?"

"That sort of thing. Yes."

"Is something wrong, Commissioner?" said Hartridge. "I thought you'd be pleased."

"Pleased? But this is something I never wrote!"

"But you must have written it," said Hartridge. "Or are you just trying to sabotage my project with a deliberate misstatement?"

"Read it!" said Ludwig. "Read that paragraph out loud."

"'Our duties to the aged,'" read Hartridge, "'are closely bound to our duties to ourselves. When the old become infirm, they should be quietly helped out of a contented existence. After all, the only measure of the value of aged men and women should be their present usefulness to society.'

He looked up from the page. "I don't see why you're so unwilling to admit your authorship, Commissioner. There's nothing wrong with this."

"Only," Ludwig said softly, "I didn't write it. What the monologue actually said was something like this: 'Our duties to the aged are closely bound to our duties to ourselves. When the old become infirm, they should be quietly helped to a contented existence. After all, the only measure of the value of aged men and women should be their past usefulness to our society.'

"You've made your point, Carre," he went on. "If this sort of perverted advice has been fed to our people the last few years, it's no wonder we're having a wave of crimes. Be selfish! It pays. An eye for an eye! Poison the old man! Nobody will ever know and you'll get his money!"

Hartridge was still studying the typescript, and he spoke with defiance. "Number Seven's excerpt from your monologue seems perfectly sensible to me," he said. "For some reason of your own you must be lying about it. Why, the version you say you remember is utterly illogical!"

"Of course it's illogical!" said Carre. "Don't you see—"

"Of course it's illogical!" shouted Ludwig. "It was illogical for Joan to forgive her tormentor. It's illogical to take care of invalids. It's illogical to forget an injury. But it's human! How on earth is society to exist if it feels only the rational emotions? You, yourself, Hartridge, have been corrupted by reading the work of Script-Lab, and you no longer have any sense of human charity. These monsters have been undermining our whole life, because the only motivation they were provided was the most dangerous and ugly thing possible in the world of human beings—pure logic!"

As he shouted, he fumbled at his watch, unhooked the long gold chain, and with a sudden lunge, flung it across the bus bars which supplied the current to the machines.

There was a blinding flash, a hiss, and the eternal clacking of the typewriters was replaced by silence.