ff? What happened
to the dream?"

Nadine had frowned at him--beautifully, he thought. "It's not the first
time man has found abundance in a society, though never to this degree.
The Incas had it, for instance."

"I don't know much about them," Joe admitted. "An early form of
communism with a sort of military-priesthood at the top."

She had nodded, her face serious, as always. "And for themselves, the
Romans more or less had it--at the expense of the nations they
conquered, of course."

"And--" Joe prodded.

"And in these examples the same thing developed. Society ossified. Joe,"
she said, using his first name for the first time, and in a manner that
set off a new count down in his blood, "a ruling caste and a
socio-economic system perpetuates itself, just so long as it ever can.
No matter what damage it may do to society as a whole, it perpetuates
itself even to the point of complete destruction of everything.

"Remember Hitler? Adolf the Aryan and his Thousand Year Reich? When it
became obvious he had failed, and the only thing that could result from
continued resistance would be destruction of Germany's cities and
millions of her people, did he and his clique resign or surrender?
Certainly not. They attempted to bring down the whole German structure
in a Goetterdammerung."

Nadine Haer was deep into her theme, her eyes flashing her conviction.
"A socio-economic system reacts like a living organism. It attempts to
live on, indefinitely, agonizingly, no matter how antiquated it might
have become. The Roman politico-economic system continued for centuries
after it should have been replaced. Such reformers as the Gracchus
brothers were assassinated or thrust aside so that the entrenched
elements could perpetuate themselves, and when Rome finally fell,
darkness descended for a thousand years on Western progress."

Joe had never gone this far in his thoughts. He said now, somewhat
uncomfortably, "Well, what would replace what we have now? If you took
power from you Uppers, who could direct the country? The Lowers? That's
not even funny. Take away their fracases and their trank pills and
they'd go berserk. They don't _want_ anything else."

Her mouth worked. "Admittedly, we've already allowed things to
deteriorate much too far. We should have done something long ago. I'm
not sure I know the answer. All I know is that in order to maintain the
status quo, we're not utilizing the efforts of more than a fraction of