to keep your brain and
nervous system active enough to carry out simple specialized work
duties. Or while the New System lasts. And I imagine that will be
forever."

"Forever...."

"Yes, yes. You're immortal now," the Manager smiled. "Surely, after all
this harrowing indoctrination experience, you realize _that_!"

_Immortal. I might have guessed. I might laugh now, but I can't. We who
pretend to live in a hell that is worse than death, and you, the
Managerials who live in paradise._ We two are immortal.

"That is, you're immortal as long as we desire you to be. You'll never
grow any older than we want you to, never so senile as to threaten
efficiency. That was what you were so interested in finding out on
Earth, wasn't it? The mystery behind the Managerials? Why they never
seemed to grow old. Why we have all the advantage, no senility, no
weakening, the advantage of accumulative experience without the
necessity of re-learning?"

"Yes," Marquis whispered.

The Manager leaned back. He lit a paraette and let the soothing
nerve-tonic seep into his lungs. He explained.

"Every one of you political prisoners we bring here want, above
everything else, to die. It was a challenge to our experimental social
order here. We have no objection to your killing yourself. We have
learned that even the will to die can be conditioned out of the most
determined rebel. As it has been conditioned out of you. You try to die
enough times, and you do die, but the pain of resurrection is so great
that finally it is impossible not only to kill yourself, but even to
think of attempting it."

Marquis couldn't say anything. The memory called up by the mention of
self-destruction rasped along his spine like chalk on a blackboard. He
could feel the total-recall of sensation, the threatening bursts of
pain. "No...." he whispered over and over. "No--please--no--"

The Manager said. "We won't mention it anymore. You'll never be able to
try any overt act of self-destruction again."

The bright light from the ceiling lanced like splinters into the tender
flesh of Marquis' eyeballs, danced about the base of his brain in
reddened choleric circles. His face had drawn back so that his
cheekbones stood out and his nose was beak-like. His irises became a
bright painful blue in the reddened ovals of his eyes.

The Manager yawned as he finished explaining. "Each prisoner entering
here has an identification punch-plate made of his unique
electro-mag