h before the cure for aging was found.

The mural he was working on depicted a very neat garden. Men and women
in white, doctors and nurses, turned the soil, planted seedlings,
sprayed bugs, spread fertilizer.

Men and women in purple uniforms pulled up weeds, cut down plants that
were old and sickly, raked leaves, carried refuse to trash-burners.

Never, never, never--not even in medieval Holland nor old Japan--had a
garden been more formal, been better tended. Every plant had all the
loam, light, water, air and nourishment it could use.

A hospital orderly came down the corridor, singing under his breath a
popular song:

If you don't like my kisses, honey,
Here's what I will do:
I'll go see a girl in purple,
Kiss this sad world toodle-oo.
If you don't want my lovin',
Why should I take up all this space?
I'll get off this old planet,
Let some sweet baby have my place.

The orderly looked in at the mural and the muralist. "Looks so real,"
he said, "I can practically imagine I'm standing in the middle of it."

"What makes you think you're not in it?" said the painter. He gave a
satiric smile. "It's called 'The Happy Garden of Life,' you know."

"That's good of Dr. Hitz," said the orderly.

* * * * *

He was referring to one of the male figures in white, whose head was a
portrait of Dr. Benjamin Hitz, the hospital's Chief Obstetrician. Hitz
was a blindingly handsome man.

"Lot of faces still to fill in," said the orderly. He meant that the
faces of many of the figures in the mural were still blank. All blanks
were to be filled with portraits of important people on either the
hospital staff or from the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of
Termination.

"Must be nice to be able to make pictures that look like something,"
said the orderly.

The painter's face curdled with scorn. "You think I'm proud of this
daub?" he said. "You think this is my idea of what life really looks
like?"

"What's your idea of what life looks like?" said the orderly.

The painter gestured at a foul dropcloth. "There's a good picture of
it," he said. "Frame that, and you'll have a picture a damn sight more
honest than this one."

"You're a gloomy old duck, aren't you?" said the orderly.

"Is that a crime?" said the painter.

The orderly shrugged. "If you don't like it here, Grandpa--" he said,
and he finished the thought with the trick telephone numbe