“I want to go up and see the aerial garden,” I responded, pointing. “You want to go up there?” he exclaimed, and then began to chuckle. He slapped first one knee and then the other. “Ho! Ho!” he roared. “That’s good. But listen! You don’t know who you’re talking to. My daughter lives up there. I’ll never see her again, but I like to walk here and look up and think about my luck. It gives me standing. I’ve got to earn a hektone and a quarter monthly, haven’t I? But I tell you I don’t earn fifty ones a month, and I lay off when I want to, and there’s not a Labor Boss dares say a word to me. And down I go on the register for my hektone and a quarter every month, as sure as the sun rises.” His hard, shrewd laughter convulsed him again, and he slapped his legs and leered at me. Then he drew closer to me and laid his hand on my arm confidentially. “You’ve heard of this new freedom the people are whispering about?” he asked, glancing apprehensively about him. “They’re never satisfied, the people aren’t. They want to get back to the old, bad ways of a hundred years ago, when there wasn’t food to go around, and the rich sucked the poor men dry. I’ve read about those days. But the people are forgetting. Sanson will crush them when they’re ready to break out. Do you know what they want? Do you? Do you? “They want God back again, after we’ve put him down. They want their heaven after their rotten hides are turned into fertilizer. I know. I know those Christians. London’s full of them today. The defective shops are full of them. They’re talking and planning for an uprising that will turn back the hands of the clock. But Sanson will oust them when he gets ready. He’ll give them the Rest Cure. “They say there’s a Messiah coming to mate the Temple goddess and bring back the old, bad days. Do you know what Sanson means to do? He’s going to mate her himself. And then he’s going to make us all immortal. We’ll have our heaven on earth then, and keep our bodies too. What’s the use of a heaven when you haven’t a body to enjoy it with? Sanson will make us all young again. We don’t want freedom, we want immortality.” I was so astonished by his gabbling that I remained silent after he had ended, not knowing how to answer him. He began scanning me slowly from my feet upward. “You’re a stranger,” he said, with slow suspicion. “Yes,” I replied. “Now tell me how I can go up to the Council garden.” “Garden,” he replied, in apparent stupefaction. “Don’t you know that’s Boss Lembken’s palace? That’s the People’s House, where Boss Lembken lives. People can’t go up there. Don’t you know that’s the People’s House? Who are you?” Suddenly he started back and a malignant look came over his face.