Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net _It was a strange and bitter Earth over which the Chancellor ruled--a strange and deformed world. There were times when the Chancellor suspected that he really was a humanistic old fool, but this seemed to be his destiny and it was difficult to be anything else. Human, like all other organic life on Earth, was dying. Where it spawned, it spawned monsters. What was to be the answer?_ it's all yours _by ... Sam Merwin, Jr._ It was a lonely thing to rule over a dying world--a world that had become sick, so terribly sick.... The Chancellor's private washroom, discreetly off the innermost of his official suite of offices, was a dream of gleaming black porcelain and solid gold. Each spout, each faucet, was a gracefully stylized mermaid, the combination stall shower-steam room a marvel of hydraulic comfort and decor with variable lighting plotted to give the user every sort of beneficial ray, from ultraviolet to black heat. But Bliss was used to it. At the moment, as he washed his hands, he was far more concerned with the reflection of his face in the mirror above the dolphin-shaped bowl. With a sort of wry resignation, he accepted the red rims of fatigue around his eyes, the batch of white at his left temple that was spreading toward the top of his dark, well-groomed head. He noted that the lines rising from the corners of his mouth to the curves of his nostrils seemed to have deepened noticeably during the past few days. As he dried his hands in the air-stream, he told himself that he was letting his imagination run away with him--imagination had always been his weakness, and a grave failing for a head of state. And while he drew on his special, featherweight gloves, he reminded himself that, if he was aging prematurely, it was nobody's fault but his own. No other man or woman approaching qualification for the job would have taken it--only a sentimental, humanistic fool like himself. He took a quick sip from the benzedral fountain, waited for the restorative to do its work. Then, feeling moderately refreshed, he returned to his office, sank into the plastifoam cushions of the chair behind his tabletop mountain of a desk and pressed the button that informed Myra, his confidential secretary, he was ready.