erman as we are, our job is not
finished."

I nodded. "I learned a few of the answers at the Macklin Place."

"Then this does not come as a complete shock."

"No. Not a complete shock. But there are a lot of loose ends still. So
the basic theme I'll buy. Scholar Phelps and his Medical Center are busy
using their public position to create the nucleus of a totalitarian
state, or a physical hierarchy. You and the Highways in Hiding are busy
tearing Phelps down because you don't want to see any more rule by the
Divine Right of Kings, Dictators, or Family Lines."

"Go on, Steve."

"Well, why in the devil don't you announce yourselves?"

"No good, old man. Look, you yourself want to be a Mekstrom. Even with
your grasp of the situation, you resent the fact that you cannot."

"You're right."

Phillip nodded slowly. "Let's hypothesize for a moment, taking a subject
that has nothing to do with Mekstrom's Disease. Let's take one of the
old standby science-fiction plots. Some cataclysm is threatening the
solar system. The future of the Earth is threatened, and we have only
one spacecraft capable of carrying a hundred people to safety--somewhere
else. How would you select them?"

I shrugged. "Since we're hypothecating, I suppose that I'd select the
more healthy, the more intelligent, the more virile, the more--" I
struggled for another category and then let it stand right there because
I couldn't think of another at that instant.

Phillip agreed. "Health and intelligence and all the rest being pretty
much a matter of birth and upbringing, how can you explain to Wilbur
Zilch that Oscar Hossenpfeiffer has shown himself smarter and healthier
and therefore better stock for survival? Maybe you can, but the
end-result is that Wilbur Zilch slaughters Oscar Hossenpfeiffer. This
either provides an opening for Zilch, or if he is caught at it, it
provides Zilch with the satisfaction of knowing that he's stopped the
other guy from getting what he could not come by honestly."

"So what has this to do with Mekstrom's Disease and supermen?"

"The day that we--and I mean either of us--announces that we can 'cure'
Mekstrom's Disease and make physical supermen of the former victims,
there will be a large scream from everybody to give them the same
treatment. No, we'll tell them, we can't cure anybody who hasn't caught
it. Then some pedagogue will stand up and declare that we are
suppressing information. This will be believed by enough p