"You mean I'm going to get younger and
younger, until finally I become a baby? And then--what then, Greek?"

He shrugged. "How do I know? Ask me in another ten years. _Look at me,
Virgie!_" he cried, suddenly loud. "How old do I look to you?
Eighteen? Twenty?"

It was the plain truth. He looked no more than that. Seeing him day by
day, I wasn't conscious of change; remembering him from when we had
gone to school, I thought of him as younger anyway. But he was forty,
at the very least, and he didn't look old enough to vote.

He said, "I've had demons inside of me for six years. It seems they're
a bit choosy about where they'll live. They don't inhabit the whole
body, just parts of it--heart, lungs, liver. Maybe bones. Maybe some
of the glands--perhaps that' s why I feel so chipper physically. But
not my brain, or not yet. Fortunately."

"Fortunately? But that's wrong, Greek! If your brain grew younger
too--"

"Fool! If I had a young brain, I'd forget everything I learned, like
unrolling a tape backwards! That's the danger, Virgie, the immediate
danger that's pressing me--that's why I needed help! Because if I ever
forget, that's the end. Not just for me--for everybody; because
there's no one else in the world who knows how to control these things
at all. Except me--and you, if I can train you."

"They're loose?" I felt my hair wonderingly. Still, it was not exactly
a surprise. "How many?"

He shrugged. "I have no idea. When they let the first batch of rabbits
loose in Australia, did they have any idea how many there would be a
couple of dozen generations later?"

I whistled. Minnie popped her head in the door and giggled. I waved
her away.

"She could use some of your demons," I remarked. "Sometimes I think
she has awfully young ideas, for a woman who's sixty if she's a day."

Greco laughed crazily. "Minnie? She's been working for me for a year.
And she was eighty-five when I hired her!"

"I can't believe you!"

"Then you'll have to start practicing right now," he said.

It was tough, and no fooling; but I became convinced. It wasn't the
million dollars a year any more.

It was the thought of ending my days as a drooling, mewling infant--or
worse! To avert that, I was willing to work my brain to a shred.

* * * * *

First it was a matter of learning--learning about the "strange
particles." Ever hear of them? That's not my term--that's what the
physicists call them. Posi