able to do so after the forthcoming general elections.
But now, social inequality has become desirable: it gives people
something to look forward to in the next reincarnation. Instead of
wanting to abolish wealth and privilege and nobility, the proletariat
want to reincarnate into them." Harnosh of Hosh laughed happily. "So
you can see how furious the Statisticalist Party organization is!"

"There's a catch to this, somewhere," Marnik the Assassin, speaking
for the first time, declared. "They can't all reincarnate as princes,
there aren't enough vacancies to go 'round. And no noble is going to
reincarnate as a tractor driver to make room for a tractor driver who
wants to reincarnate as a noble."

"That's correct," Dr. Harnosh replied. "There is a catch to it; a
catch most people would never admit, even to themselves. Very few
individuals possess the will power, the intelligence or the capacity
for mental effort displayed by the subject of the case I just quoted.
The average man's interests are almost entirely on the physical side;
he actually finds mental effort painful, and makes as little of it as
possible. And that is the only sort of effort a discarnate
individuality can exert. So, unable to endure the fifty or so years
needed to make a really good reincarnation, he reincarnates in a year
or so, out of pure boredom, into the first vehicle he can find,
usually one nobody else wants." Dr. Harnosh dug out the heel of his
pipe and blew through the stem. "But nobody will admit his own mental
inferiority, even to himself. Now, every machine operator and field
hand on the planet thinks he can reincarnate as a prince or a
millionaire. Politics isn't my subject, but I'm willing to bet that
since Statistical Reincarnation is an exploded psychic theory,
Statisticalist Socialism has been caught in the blast area and
destroyed along with it."

* * * * *

Olirzon was in the drawing room of the hotel suite when they returned,
sitting on the middle of his spinal column in a reclining chair,
smoking a pipe, dressing the edge of his knife with a pocket-hone, and
gazing lecherously at a young woman in the visiplate. She was an
extremely well-designed young woman, in a rather fragmentary costume,
and she was heaving her bosom at the invisible audience in anger,
sorrow, scorn, entreaty, and numerous other emotions.

"... this revolting crime," she was declaiming, in a husky contralto,
as Verkan Vall