“I know all that, Granthr,” Ronnie cried impatiently. “We have it in school on ever so many _edutapes_. They say that the memorium is the greatest deterrent to crime and vicious thinking. “But I want to hear about the olden times--when there were wars and singing commercials and big ugly cities.” “It was not so wonderful, Ronnie. Today is much nicer, and safer. When I was a boy we worshipped cowboys and pirates. Today it is the G.I. and the city gangster.” “Tell me about how you and Gramr Eldris Arovvack were caught in the vehicular subway for three days after that earthquake, Granthr.” “You know that by heart, Ronnie,” Norall protested, “but if you insist...” Eldris Arovvack was in his mind’s eye even as his voice went on speaking. Eldris, so slight, so daintily feminine and so girlishly blonde and beautiful despite her forty years and her grown engineering son. They had been trapped together for three days in a subway shuttle and he had fallen in love despite the twenty-five years between their ages. For her, he had realized, this was a marriage of companionship and luxury. She had always known poverty. His two previous marriages had given him an insight into why women marry, but so deep was his love for Eldris that he wanted to be with her under any conditions. And they had been happy. Despite the continual gnawing realization that only his money and position had drawn them together, Norall had enjoyed a long sixty-three years of life with Eldris. She had died but two years before... “Granthr, I think I liked Gramr Eldris better than either of my other gramrs,” Ronnie was saying. “Of course she’s the only gramr I knew.” Norall squeezed the little boy’s shoulder, hard. It had been harder to accept the memorium tapes of Eldris than it had been to see her body disappear into the crematorium. For days he had refused to open the small sealed packets and insert the tapes into the reproducer. He felt that he could not endure to contact that beloved mind and feel there hatred, distaste and hidden foulness that humans too well know. And when, in his great loneliness, he finally did renew contact with the recorded memories of Eldris, he was astounded--and humiliated. For Eldris, through all the years of their marriage, had loved him. Her first marriage had ended in hatred, yes, and in pity for a weakling, but for Norall there was only a deepening respect and sincere affection. And he had returned that love with a never-ending mistrust and cynical suspicion of her motives! But he was happy now. After Ronnie left he would be alone again with her memorium tapes. Together they would relive the long happy years of their marriage. He would share her sadness as she felt that Norall did not care enough and he would feel her joy as their grandchildren, and _their_ children, came to visit and to be married in the old family dome. He must have been napping for the fraction of a second...