Everybody in the world today is conditioned against violence,
especially the taking of human life," Anthony told him.

"Now, wait a moment!" This time, he was using the voice he would have
employed in chiding a couple of Anatolian peasant partisans who were
field-stripping a machine gun the wrong way. "Those babies in that film
you showed me weren't dying of old age...."

"That is not violence," Paula said bitterly. "That is humane
beneficence. Ugly people would be unhappy, and would make others
unhappy, in a world where everybody else is beautiful."

"And all these oppressive and tyrannical laws," Benson continued. "How
does he enforce them, without violence, actual or threatened?"

Samuel started to say something about the Power of the Evil One; Paula,
ignoring him, said:

"I really don't know; he just does it. Mass hypnotism of some sort. I
know music has something to do with it, because there is always music,
everywhere. This laboratory, for instance, was secretly soundproofed; we
couldn't have worked here, otherwise."

"All right. I can see that you'd need somebody from the past, preferably
a soldier, whose conditioning has been in favor rather than against
violence. I'm not the only one you snatched, I take it?"

"No. We've been using that machine to pick up men from battlefields all
over the world and all over history," Gregory said. "Until now, none of
them could adjust.... Uggh!" He shuddered, looking even sicker than when
the film was being shown.

"He's thinking," Walter said, "about a French officer from Waterloo who
blew out his brains with a pocket-pistol on that table, and an English
archer from Agincourt who ran amok with a dagger in here, and a trooper
of the Seventh Cavalry from the Custer Massacre."

Gregory managed to overcome his revulsion. "You see, we were forced to
take our subjects largely at random with regard to individual
characteristics, mental attitudes, adaptability, et cetera." As long as
he stuck to high order abstractions, he could control himself. "Aside
from their professional lack of repugnance for violence, we took
soldiers from battlefields because we could select men facing immediate
death, whose removal from the past would not have any effect upon the
casual chain of events affecting the present."

A warning buzzer rasped in Benson's brain. He nodded, poker-faced.

"I can see that," he agreed. "You wouldn't dare do anything to change
the past. That was always one of t