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"Ten thousand years from now," Eliot predicted boozily, "the names of our generals and presidents will be forgotten, and the only hero of our time still remembered will be the author of 2BRO2B." This was the title of a book by Trout, a title which, upon examination, turned out to be the famous question posed by Hamlet.

Mushari dutifully went looking for a copy of the book for his dossier on Eliot. No reputable bookseller had ever heard of Trout. Mushari made his last try at a smut-dealer's hole in the wall. There, amidst the rawest pornography, he found tattered copies of every book Trout had ever written. 2BRO2B, which had been published at twenty-five cents, cost him five dollars, which was what The Kama Sutra of Vitsayana cost, too.

Mushari glanced through the Kama Sutra, the long-suppressed oriental manual on the art and techniques of love, read this:

If a man makes a sort of jelly with the juices of the fruit cassia fistula and eugenie jambolina and mixes the powder of the plants soma, veronia anthelminica, eclipta prostata, lohopa-juihirka, and applies this mixture to the yoni of a woman with whom he is about to have intercourse, he will instantly cease to love her.

Mushari didn't see anything funny in that. He never saw anything funny in anything, so deeply immured was he by the utterly unplayful spirit of the law.

And he was witless enough, too, to imagine that Trout's books were very dirty books, since they were sold for such high prices to such queer people in such a place. He didn't understand that what Trout had in common with pornography wasn't sex but fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world.

So Mushari felt swindled as he wallowed through the garish prose, lusted for sex, learned instead about automation. Trout's favorite formula was to describe a perfectly hideous society, not unlike his own, and then, toward the end, to suggest ways in which it could be improved. In 2BRO2B he hypothecated an America in which almost all of the work was done by machines, and the only people who could get work had three or more Ph.D's. There was a serious overpopulation problem, too.

All serious diseases had been conquered. So death was voluntary, and the government, to encourage volunteers for death, set up a purple-roofed Ethical Suicide Parlor at every major intersection, right next door to an orange-roofed Howard John-son's. There were pretty hostesses in the parlor, and Barca-Loungers, and Muzak, and a choice of fourteen painless ways to die. The suicide parlors were busy places, because so many people felt silly and pointless, and because it was supposed to be an unselfish, patriotic thing to do, to die. The suicides also got free last meals next door.

And so on. Trout had a wonderful imagination.

One of the characters asked a death stewardess if he would go to Heaven, and she told him that of course he would. He asked if he would see God, and she said, "Certainly, honey."

And he said, "I sure hope so. I want to ask Him something I never was able to find out down here."

"What's that?" she said, strapping him in.

"What in hell are people for?"

In Milford, Eliot told the writers that he wished they would learn more about sex and economics and style, but then he supposed that people dealing with really big issues didn't have much time for such things.

And it occurred to him that a really good science-fiction book had never been written about money. "Just think of the wild ways money is passed around on Earth!" he said. "You don't have to go to the Planet Tralfamadore in Anti-Matter Galaxy 508 G to find weird creatures with unbelievable powers. Look at the powers of an Earthling millionaire! Look at me! I was born naked, just like you, but my God, friends and neighbors, I have thousands of dollars a day to spend!"

He paused to make a very impressive demonstration of his magical powers, writing a smeary check for two hundred dollars for every person there.

"There's fantasy for you," he said. "And you go to the bank tomorrow, and it will all come true.