"Okay."

They wandered off. I studied the man they were talking about for a moment, then headed down the ramp for a closer listen. He did look like a preacher. The effect was accomplished by a ruffled silk shirt and a black frock coat-he looked like he'd just stepped out of the nineteenth century. He was lean and spare and had a halo of frosty-white hair that floated around his pink skull like a cloud.

His eyes sparkled as he spoke; he was very much enjoying himself. I edged into the crowd and found a place to stand. One of the women at his feet was saying, "But I don't see how it's possible to inflate a labor economy, Professor. . . . I mean, I thought that everything was fixed. "

"It's really quite simple," Fromkin said. "Just devalue your counters."

"But that's what I mean. I thought the point of the whole thing was to create an economy that couldn't be devalued."

"Sure. But-oh, h.e.l.l, it requires too much explanation. Wait a minute, let me see if I can boil it down. Look, the theory of money is that it's a tool to allow a social organism to manipulate its energy-that is, money units are the corpuscles of the cultural bloodstream; it has to flow for the system to be able to feed itself. You like that, huh? What we think of as money is really only counters, a way of keeping score which organ in the social body-that means you-is presently using or controlling this piece of energy. It's when we start thinking that the counter is valuable that we confuse ourselves. It's not-it's only the symbol."

"I could use a few of those symbols," one wag remarked.

Fromkin looked at him with withering gentleness. "So create some," he said. Suddenly, I knew who he reminded me of-Whitlaw!

"I'd love to. How?" said the wag.

"Easy. Create value-for others. The truth is that you can only measure your wealth by the amount of difference you make in the world. That is, how much do you contribute to the people around you? And to how many people do you contribute?"

"Huh?" The wag had stopped being funny. Now he was honestly curious.

"All right, stick with me. The physical universe uses heat to keep score. Actually, it's motion, but on the molecular level we experience it as heat. Just know that it's the only way one object ever affects another, so it's the only way to measure how big a difference an object really makes. We measure heat in BTUs. British Thermal Units. Calories. We want our money to be an accurate measure, so we use the same system as the physical universe: ergo, we have the KC standard, the kilocalorie."

A chubby woman in a bright-flowered dress giggled nervously. "I used to think we were spending pieces of fat. I thought I'd be rich." Fromkin acknowledged her attempt at humor with a noncommittal smile, and she gushed happily.

The man next to her asked, "How much is a pound of flesh these days?"

"Um, let's see-a pound is two-point-two kilograms. . . ."

"It'd be three caseys," I said. "A pound of flesh is three thousand calories." I looked back to Fromkin.

He was ignoring the interruption. He took a final sip from his drink and put it down. Someone immediately moved to refill it, a thin, bony-looking woman with ba.s.set-hound eyes.

Fromkin returned his attention to the brunette who had asked the original question. "Still with me? Good. Okay, this is what the casey teaches us about the law of supply and demand. The purchase price of an object is determined by how much of your labor you're willing to trade for it. The difference between the purchase price and its actual value is called profit. Stop wrinkling your nose, my dear; profit is not a dirty word. Profit is a resource. It is a necessary part of the economic process; it's what we call the energy that the organism uses for reinvestment if it is to continue to thrive and produce. This apple, for instance, is the apple tree's profit-the meat of it is used to feed the seeds inside, and that's how an apple tree manufactures another apple tree. So you cannot charge less than an item costs in energy, but you can charge more; in fact, you must. "

"So why does a kilo of Beluga cost more than a kilo of soya?" someone asked. "The soya has more protein."

Fromkin smiled. "Isn't it obvious? As soon as you have one unit less than the number of willing buyers, you have an auction going. The price will rise until enough people drop out and you have only as many buyers as units to sell; it's called 'whatever the market will bear.' "

He stood up then and stepped to a nearby buffet table and started loading a plate. But he kept talking. The man was incredible. "Under the labor standard, a nation's wealth is determined by its ability to produce-its gross national product. Cut the population and you cut the wealth of a country. Automatically. But the amount of counters still in circulation remains high. And there's no easy way to cut back the coinage; it can't help but inflate-and even if you could cut back all the excess cash in circulation, it wouldn't be enough. The system is still pegged to its history. Bonds, for instance-a government sells bonds on the promise of paying interest on them. Interest can only be paid when the system is in a growth situation. If there's no growth, then interest is only a promise by the government to continue inflating the economy and further reduce the value of the counters-the money. That's why I oppose letting the government borrow money-under any circ.u.mstances. Because it sets a bad precedent. If it can't pay it back, then it has to borrow more, and the inflationary spiral is endless. Let the government go into debt and we're mortgaging our own future incomes. This country-the whole world, in fact-is in an extreme no-growth situation, yet the interest will still be paid on all outstanding bonds. It has to be; it's the law. So ... the more cash in circulation, the less each bill is worth. Thank G.o.d we still have the dollar-that's at least backed by paper, and it can't inflate as fast as the casey can under these circ.u.mstances-and it'll continue that way for a long time. It was a commodity; someday soon it'll be money again. We're at the beginning of a long recede-"

"Beginning-?" said the brunette. "I thought-"

"Nope." Fromkin was sitting again, eating. He paused to chew and swallow. "You're wrong. That was a population crash. When four and a half billion people die in two years, that's a crash. The U.N. definition of a recede specifies seven percent or more over an eight-month period-but when it's seventy percent, that's a crash. We're just coming out of the crash now; the curve is finally starting to level off. Now we're going into the recede. The real recede. It's the aftershock of the crash. But it's a lot more than that too. Believe it or not, the human race may have been knocked below the threshold of viability. There may not be enough of us left to survive."

"Huh?" That was a newcomer to the group. His posture was military even though he was wearing a dress jacket. He was standing with a plate in one hand and a drink in the other. "Are you serious? Fromkin, I think you're ignoring the fact that the human race has survived a long time-and we've only been above one billion individuals for a little more than a century."

Fromkin looked up. He recognized the man and grinned. "You'd better stick to your s.p.a.ceships, Colonel Ferris. Someone make room for the colonel here, thank you. You're right about your figures, of course-I saw the same report-but the figures alone don't tell the whole story. You need to know the demographic cross section. Right now, we are not functioning from a stable population of family or tribal groups. The human network is mostly disjointed-we're all individual atoms, swirling in chaos.

"We haven't reformed into molecules-although that process has begun-let alone crystals and lattices. We're still a very long way from the creation and operation of the necessary social organisms that a self-generating society needs to survive-and I'm still only talking about survival; I haven't even touched upon anything beyond that-like celebration."

Ferris looked unhappy. Some of Fromkin's other listeners looked puzzled.

"Okay, let me put that in English for you. We are not a population yet. We are just a mish-mash of people who've been lucky enough-or perhaps I should say unlucky enough-to survive." He looked at Ferris as he said it. "Each of us has his own horror story."

Now I knew him. Jarles "Free Fall" Ferris. The Lunar Colony. One of the seventeen who made it back. We never heard how they chose who stayed and who returned. I wondered if we'd ever find out.

Fromkin was saying, "The fact is, we're still getting aftereffects of the plagues. We'll be getting them for another year or three-but we're nowhere better equipped to handle them for a small, spread-out, disorganized population than we were able to handle them for a large, dense, organized one. If anything, an individual's chances are worse now for survival. There are still ripples of those plagues circulating. Slowly, but surely, we're going to lose another half-billion people-that's the guess of the RandTanks. Then, of the survivors, we're going to lose ten percent who will have lost the will to live. Anomie. Shock. The walking wounded-and just because you don't see them wandering around in herds anymore doesn't mean they're not there. Then we'll lose the very old and the very young who won't be able to take care of themselves. And the very ill too. Anyone on any kind of maintenance is in danger, even if it's something as easily controllable as diabetes. There simply won't be either the medical care or the supplies. We lost nearly eighty percent of the world's supply of doctors, nurses and support technicians. We'll lose a lot of children because there won't be anyone around to parent them.

"Some will die, some will go feral. The birth rate will be down for a long time. We're going to lose all the babies who won't be born because those who could have been parents are no longer capable or willing. We'll lose even more babies who are born to parents who can't or won't maintain them. Should I go on? No? Okay-but we're real close to the edge. It'll look like positive feedback on the cultural level: psychoses creating more psychoses, distrust and suspicion leading to more distrust and suspicion. And if enough people start to perceive that there isn't enough of anything to go around-food, fuel, whatever-they'll start fighting over what's left. And by then we'll be into serious problems with population density; the survivors-a rag-taggle conglomeration of misfits by any definition-may be too spread out to meet and mate. Those few left who are capable and willing to be responsible parents may not be able to find each other. I expect the recede to take us right down to the level where it will be questionable if we can come back. Which means, by the way, that the casey was a n.o.ble experiment, but I'm afraid it's going to be overinflated and worthless for a long time to come. I wish I were wrong, but I've already converted most of my holdings to property or dollars. I'd advise the rest of you to do the same. With a shrinking tax base, the government is going to have to take drastic steps soon, and you're going to have to protect your wealth, or you might find yourself turned into a pauper overnight by a paper revaluation. That's happened a couple times in the past two decades, but this next one ought to be a wowzer."

He paused to take another bite of food and wash it down with a drink.

Maybe it was my high-school reflexes-I had to say something. He was talking about the fact that the dying hadn't ended yet, that we were going to lose one-third, maybe even one-half, of the remaining human beings left on the planet. He wasn't talking about how to save them; he was talking dispa.s.sionately about how to avoid economic discomfort. No-he was talking about how to profit from it. I couldn't help myself. "Sir-"

He looked up. His eyes were shaded. "Yes?"

"What about the people?"

"Say again?"

"The people. Aren't we going to try to save them?"

"Save whom? From what?"

"You said at least another half-billion people are going to die. Can't we do something about that?"

"What would you have us do?"

"Well-save them!"

"How?"

"Um, well-"

"Excuse me-I should have asked, 'With what?' Most of us are spending most of our energies just staying alive. Most governments are having too much trouble just maintaining internal order to mount a rescue effort even for their own populations, let alone others. And how do you rescue people from the crisscrossing wave fronts of five different plagues, each wave front more than a thousand kilometers wide? We may have identified the plagues, but we haven't finished identifying the mutations. By the way, are you vaccinated?"

"Sure, isn't everybody?"

He snorted. "You're vaccinated because you're in the army, or the Civil Service, or something like that-someone considers you valuable enough to justify keeping you alive; but that vaccine costs time, money-and, most valuable of all, human effort. And there isn't enough of the latter to go around. Not everybody is vaccinated-only the ones that the government needs to survive. We don't have the technicians to program even the automated laboratories. We don't even have the personnel to teach new technicians. We don't have the people to maintain the equipment. We don't have-"

"I get the point-but still, isn't there something-?"

"Young man, if there were something, we would be doing it. We are doing it. Whatever we can. The point is, that even with our best efforts we are still going to lose that half-billion people. It's as unavoidable as sunrise. We might as well acknowledge it because, like it or not, that's what's so."

"I don't like it," I said.

"You don't have to." Fromkin shrugged. "The universe doesn't care. G.o.d doesn't take public opinion polls. The fact is, what you like, what I like, what anyone likes-it's all irrelevant." His expression was deceptively cordial. He seemed almost deliberately hostile. "If you really want to make a difference, then you need to ask yourself this question about everything you do: will this contribute to the survival of the species?" He looked around the gathering. "Most of us here are breeders. Would you have us compromise that breeding potential in favor of some altruistic gesture of ultimately questionable value? Or let me put that another way: you can spend the rest of your life raising and teaching the next generation of human beings, or you can spend it nursing a few dozen of the walking wounded, catatonics, autistics and r.e.t.a.r.ds who will never be able to contribute, who will only continue to use up resources-not the least of which is your valuable time."

"I hear you, sir. But to sit calmly and eat caviar and strawberries and bagels and lox while talking about global death and benevolent genocide-"

He put down his plate. "Would it be more moral if I starved while I talked about global death and benevolent genocide? Would starving make me care more? Would it increase my ability to do something-other than hurt?"

"You shouldn't be talking about it so dispa.s.sionately at all," I said. "It's unthinkable."

A flicker of annoyance crossed his face, but his voice remained steady. "It is not unthinkable." He said it very deliberately-was he angry? "In fact, if we do not think about it, we will be risking the consequences of being caught by surprise. One of the basic fallacies of soph.o.m.oric intelligence-don't take it personal, son; I insult everybody equally-is moral self-righteousness. Merely being able to perceive the difference between right and wrong does not make you a moral person; it only gives you some guidelines in which to operate." He leaned forward in his chair. "Now, here's the bad news. Most of the time those guidelines are irrelevant-because the pictures we hold in our heads about the way things should be usually have very little relation to the way things actually are. And holding the position that things should be some way other than what they are will only keep you stuck. You'll spend so much time arguing with the physical universe that you won't produce any result at all. You'll have some great excuses, but you won't have a result. The fact that we can do nothing about the circ.u.mstances that are sending us into a long recede is unpleasant, yes-now let's stop arguing about the situation and start handling it. There is still much we can do to minimize the unpleasantness-"

"One half billion human deaths is more than just an unpleasantness-"

"Four and a half billion human deaths is more than just an unpleasantness too." He looked at me calmly. "And please, lower your voice-I'm sitting right here."

"Sorry. My point is, this whole discussion seems inhumane."

He nodded. "Yes, I have to grant that. It does seem inhumane." He changed his tone suddenly. "You know any crazy people?"

"Damaged," I corrected. "Crazy is a negative connotation."

"Sorry," he amended. "I grew up in a different time. Old habits are hard to break. I still hadn't gotten used to women having the vote when the next thing even lawyers wanted to ride in the front of the streetcars. Do you know any mentally dysfunctional human beings? Any damaged people?"

"A few."

"Did you ever stop to consider why they were that way?"

"They were irrational, I suppose."

"Were they? Sometimes irrationality is the only rational response to an irrational situation. It's a very human thing-and it's not limited to humans alone." He said softly, "That's what we're doing here-the only rational response to an irrational and very frightening situation. Quite possibly-no, quite probably-of the people in this room"-and he gestured to include the whole reception, spread out across several acres of hotel-"less than half of us may be alive next year at this time. Or even next week." He shrugged. "Who knows?"

The sweet young thing, whose knee he was resting his hand on, went pale at that. He patted her gently, but otherwise ignored her. He continued looking at me. "All of a sudden, there are a lot of things out there that can kill human beings. And there isn't a lot left to stop them. You know, we've had our way on this planet far too long. Nature is always willing to take advantage of our weaknesses. Remember, Mom's a b.i.t.c.h. We've spent centuries building a technology to isolate us from the real world. That isolation has left most of us survival-illiterate and vulnerable. But the machine has stopped-is stopping now-and most people are going to be at the mercy of the contents of their stomachs. Nature doesn't care; she'll finish the job the plagues started and never miss us. Humans weren't always the hunter at the top of the food chain-we were just a pa.s.sing fad. Now we're going to be prey again, like in the old days. Ever seen a wolf pack?"

"No...."

"We've got them running loose in the streets of Denver. They're called poodles, terriers, retrievers, Dobermans, shepherds, collies, St. Bernards and mutts-but they're still wolf packs. They're hungry and they can kill. We could lose another thirty million people to animals, formerly domestic and otherwise, right there. Probably more. I'm talking about worldwide, of course. And I'm including people packs in that estimate toothose are animals of another sort. We'll probably lose a hundred million people who would not have died otherwise, but there's no longer the medical care to take care of the injuries and illnesses that they'll incur in the next twelve months. Did you know that appendicitis can be fatal? And so on-" He stopped, looked at me and smiled. I was beginning to understand his charm. He never intended anything personally. "So, my young friend-much as I respect your indignation and the emotions on which it is based-what we are doing here tonight is quite probably the most rational thing we can be doing. I notice you haven't tried to excuse your presence here; perhaps you're quite rational too. In fact, there is only one thing more rational for a person to do that I can think of."

"What's that?"

He went soft for a moment, gentle. "Make love to someone you care about. You're not immortal, you know. If you don't take the opportunity to tell someone you love them tonight, you may never get another chance."

He was right. I thought about a whole bunch of someones. Fromkin stood up and offered his arm to the girl. She and another woman both tried to take it. Fromkin smiled and offered his other arm. He smiled at me again, knowingly, and then the three of them moved off and away.

Yes, just like Whitlaw. He got the last word too.

EIGHTEEN.

I TURNED to go and almost b.u.mped into a dream. "Oops, excuse me-" I caught her to keep from stumbling, then forgot to let go.

"h.e.l.lo!" she said, laughing.

"Uh-" I fl.u.s.tered, unable to speak. I was mesmerized-her eyes were soft and shiny gray, and I was lost in them. Her skin was fair, with just the faintest hint of freckling. Her face was framed by auburn curls that fell in silk cascades down to her shoulders. Her mouth was moist and red.

I wanted to kiss her. Who wouldn't?

She laughed again. "Before you ask," she said, "the answer is yes."

"Huh?"

"You are going to proposition me, aren't you?" Her voice was dusky velvet, with just the slightest hint of Alabama in it.

"Uhh . . ." I took a step back. My feet stayed where they were, but I took a step back.

"Are you shy?" Yes, Alabama. Definitely. She spoke each word so slowly I could taste it. And she smelled of honeysuckle and lilac -and musk.

I found my voice. "Um, I used to be......

"I'm glad to see you got over it," she said, laughing. She put her arm through mine and started walking me toward the elevators to the garage levels. "What's your name?"

"Jim. Uh, what's yours?"

"Jillanna. Everyone calls me Jilly."

I felt suddenly embarra.s.sed. I started to speak-"Um . . " and then shut up.

She looked at me, her head slightly tilted. "Yes?"

"Nothing."

"No, tell me."

"Well, I ... uh, I guess I'm just a little startled."

"Why?"

"I've never been picked up like this before."

"Oh. How do you usually get picked up?"

"Um. I don't," I admitted.

"Goodness. You are shy!"

"Um. Only around women."

"Oh, I see," she said. "Are you gay?"

"I don't think so. I mean, I never tried."