m, really. The point
is that _nothing_ would be hidden from _anyone_.

"The way we play the Game of Life today is similar to playing poker. We
keep a straight face and play the cards tight to our chest. But what
would happen if everyone could see everyone else's cards? It would cease
to be a game of strategy, and become a game of pure chance.

* * * * *

"We'd have to start playing Life another way. It would be like chess,
where you can see the opponent's every move. But in all human history
there has never been a social analogue for chess. That's why Paul
Wendell and his group had to be stopped--for a while at least."

"But what could you have done with them?" asked the Secretary. "Imprison
them summarily? Have them shot? What _would_ you have done?"

The President's face became graver than ever. "I had not yet made that
decision. Thank Heaven, it has been taken out of my hands."

"One of his own men shot him?"

"That's right," said the big FBI man. "We went into his apartment an
instant too late. We found eight madmen and a near-corpse. We're not
sure what happened, and we're not sure we want to know. Anything that
can drive eight reasonably stable men off the deep end in less than an
hour is nothing to meddle around with."

"I wonder what went wrong?" asked the Secretary of no one in particular.

SCHERZO--PRESTO

Paul Wendell, too, was wondering what went wrong.

Slowly, over a period of immeasurable time, memory seeped back into him.
Bits of memory, here and there, crept in from nowhere, sometimes to be
lost again, sometimes to remain. Once he found himself mentally humming
an odd, rather funeral tune:

_Now, though you'd have said that the head was dead,
For its owner dead was he,
It stood on its neck with a smile well-bred,
And bowed three times to me.
It was none of your impudent, off-hand nods...._

Wendell stopped and wondered what the devil seemed so important about
the song.

Slowly, slowly, memory returned.

When he suddenly realized, with crashing finality, where he was and what
had happened to him, Paul Wendell went violently insane. Or he would
have, if he could have become violent.

MARCHE FUNEBRE--LENTO

"Open your mouth, Paul," said the pretty nurse. The hulking mass of
not-quite-human gazed at her with vacuous eyes and opened its mouth.
Dexterously, she spooned a mouthful of baby food into it. "Now swallow
it, Paul. That