"Bowdler said that the funniest thing that happened when he was trying to make a rebel of you, was when you thought that the Fathers were really the fathers of all the children in the world." "Wass so funny?" Comstock wanted to know, bread filling his mouth. "Umm," Pat said. "I better backtrack a bit. As long as the scientists had a hand in running our world they were able to control the birth rate by mechanical means. But when they were killed, The Grandfather was left with the problem of trying to keep our world from being over-populated without using any mechanics." Comstock was completely confused but waited patiently, shovelling food into his empty belly while he waited for clarification. "The first thing that occurred to The Grandfather was to try to control completely the sex drive but ... that didn't work very well. Then he reasoned that if the sexual stereotype of women was changed to old women who could no longer bear children that he was then in a position to only have the proper number of women impregnated." All the obscenity that Pat was mouthing would, a few days ago, have made Comstock faint, or aroused him, but it didn't even occur to him to find it odd. She continued, "Then as soon as women who were past their menopause had become the love objects, The Grandfather set up a laboratory here in headquarters where the healthiest women in the population could come. Under hypnosis they were injected with live sperm, and lo and behold, the population curve was back under control again!" Comstock was sure that what Pat was saying was important, but at the moment all he could really think about was his curious duel the night before with The Grandfather. "With what little scientific gadgets were left after the last scientists were killed, The Grandfather set up a police force, which he called the Father's Right Arms, but not even the R.A.'s know how the radios they use, or the stun-guns, or the automobiles that they drive work, let alone knowing about the hypnosis that makes people see haloes around their heads. "Between his control of the birth rate, his police force, and the little science at his command, he has kept our world running ... after a fashion. But the point at which we rebels enter the picture is this." It was a sure thing that what Pat was saying was vital to her, to him, and to the whole world, but Comstock could not help remembering the outrageous things he had said, and thought about The Grandfather. What could it lead to? Why had the Grandfather called him the most courageous man.... Pat said, "But The Grandfather is only a man and therefore has made mistakes. He has frozen our culture at the same point for so long that humanity is in danger of drying up and dying out."