ny fission
bomb. I've laid the train for a century-long reign of anarchy!"

"I doubt that; I think Klarnood will take hold, now that he has
committed himself to it. You know, in spite of his sanguinary
profession, he's the nearest thing to a real man of good will I've
found on that sector. And here's something else you haven't
considered. Our own First Level life expectancy is from four to five
hundred years. That's the main reason why we've accomplished as much
as we have. We have, individually, time to accomplish things. On the
Akor-Neb Sector, a scientist or artist or scholar or statesman will
grow senile and die before he's as old as either of us. But now, a
young student of twenty or so can take one of your auto-recall
treatments and immediately have available all the knowledge and
experience gained in four or five previous lives. He can start where
he left off in his last reincarnation. In other words, you've made
those people time-binders, individually as well as racially. Isn't
that worth the temporary discarnation of a lot of ward-heelers and
plug-uglies, or even a few decent types like Dirzed and Olirzon? If it
isn't, I don't know what scales of values you're using."

"Vall!" Dalla's eyes glowed with enthusiasm. "I never thought of that!
And you said, 'temporary discarnation.' That's just what it is. Dirzed
and Olirzon and the others aren't dead; they're just waiting,
discarnate, between physical lives. You know, in the sacred writings
of one of the Fourth Level peoples it is stated: 'Death is the last
enemy.' By proving that death is just a cyclic condition of continued
individual existence, these people have conquered their last enemy."

"Last enemy but one," Verkan Vall corrected. "They still have one
enemy to go, an enemy within themselves. Call it semantic confusion,
or illogic, or incomprehension, or just plain stupidity. Like
Klarnood, stymied by verbal objections to something labeled 'political
intervention.' He'd never have consented to use the power of his
Society if he hadn't been shocked out of his inhibitions by that
nuclear bomb. Or the Statisticalists, trying to create a classless
order of society through a political program which would only result
in universal servitude to an omnipotent government. Or the
Volitionalist nobles, trying to preserve their hereditary feudal
privileges, and now they can't even agree on a definition of the term
'hereditary.' Might they not recover all the silly pre