I wondered where’d my tribesmen’s souls be reborned now Valleyswomen’d not be bearin’ babbits here. I wished Abbess was there to teach me, ’cos I cudn’t say an’ nor could Meronym. We Prescients, she answered, after a beat, b’lief when you die you die an’ there ain’t no comin’ back. But what ’bout your soul? I asked. Prescients don’t b’lief souls ex

How did they impose hierarchy?

Wideway I’d heard o’ from storymen an’ here it was,

If we obeyed, our Papa would love us forever. If we failed to obey, Papa would zerostar us year after year and we would never get to Xultation.

Don’t be too cross at my role. You couldn’t understand, no matter how much I explained. You’re a brilliant physicist, your Rutherford chap et al. agree you’ve got a brilliant future, quite sure they’re right. But in some fundamentals you’re a dunce. The healthy can’t understand the emptied, the broken. You’d try to list all the reasons for living,

Poor England. Too much history for its acreage. Years grow inwards here, like my toenails.

Folks asked her where she’d got that learnin’ an’ her answer was always It ain’t learnin’, bro, jus’ practice is all.

People are obscenities. Would rather be music than be a mass of tubes squeezing semisolids around itself for a few decades before becoming so dribblesome it’ll no longer function.

Behold your future, Cavendish the Younger. You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you. Your present will not keep pace with the world’s.