“Through implantation?” Dr. Cameron asked scornfully, his eyes full of contempt. Then even as she watched, Nicole saw the first flickers of pain tug at the corners of his mouth. She looked down quickly, as he visibly struggled with his emotions.

“Yes, through implantation,” the Major said, his voice lowering again as he watched the doctor’s reaction with an understanding nod. “At this very moment you’re seeing it work. By punishing these negative tendencies in their earliest stages—with a very mild punishment, I might add—we teach an individual to give way only to his best impulses. We don’t change him by force, only teach the better part of his nature to surface.”

“It’s obvious,” Cameron said, wiping at the sweat on his forehead, “that your definition of force is very different from mine.”

But it was like putting out one’s hand to stop an avalanche. The Major rolled on without any detectable deflection from his course. He turned to Nicole, his eyes shining with excitement. “Just ask Miss Lambert. She’s spent nearly all her life in Shalev. Is it so monstrous, Nicole?”

“Monstrous?” she responded, meeting and holding Eric’s disdainful glare. “What is monstrous to me is what people tolerated before Termination. When I read what it was like then, or see the old movies, I find it difficult to comprehend that people could say that was an acceptable way to live.”

Dr. Cameron’s eyes held no condemnation like Eric’s, only sorrow. “How old were you at Termination, Nicole?”

“Six.”

“And your parents? Did they find life before so terrible?”

She lifted her head, her green eyes flashing fire. “My father, a Seattle policeman, was killed by six hoodlums when he tried to help an old woman they were beating up. My mother was eight months pregnant at the time. The shock caused her to go into labor. She died giving birth to me.”

Dr. Cameron’s face was suddenly very old and very tired. “I see.”

“Do you, Dr. Cameron?” the Major broke in. “Do you really see what we have accomplished here?”

“Yes, I see very clearly. I lived in Los Angeles for thirty years. I’ve walked the streets at night and feared for my life. I’ve read in the papers and watched on television the incredible evil of man’s dealings with his fellowman. And I watched as the world took the ultimate plunge and destroyed the work of a thousand years.”

His head came up, and he stared directly into the Major’s eyes. “But I don’t think I have ever felt deeper horror, that I have ever been more thoroughly terrified, than I am at this moment.”