“What are you leading up to, Edie?” he asked.

She eyed him compassionately. “Jule, when you went into stasis, human knowledge was sixteen times what it had been in 1940. Do you remember 1940?”

“Vaguely; I was a young child.”

“When you went into stasis, to what degree were you up on the latest scientific and technological breakthroughs?”

He snorted in self-depreciation. “I had already been left far behind. Half the time I couldn’t even follow the science, medical, and space articles in Time and Newsweek, though they were written for the layman. I never did figure out what lasers were, and the workings of computers simply floored me; I recall reading about one fellow programming a computer to play chess and it beat a chess buff. Space travel was all very interesting to watch on TV but when I tried to read a bit about it, I was at sea instead of in space. The simplest articles on the subject were too technical for me. The data banks, which were just beginning to start up in earnest… I read of a new storage device which would allow for every book in the Library of Congress to be stored in an area a couple of square feet in size. Things like that simply boggled my mind. I gave up trying to keep up. But what’s the point, Edie?”

“Your studying, Jule. Oh, I admire your spirit—trying to catch up, at least to the point where you can conduct your daily life rationally in this world of the twenty-first century, as it would have been called under the old calendar. Most important, of course, is learning Interlingua, and there is no reason you can’t do that. But the magnitude of the rest of your problem is appalling.”

It was unreasonable, he knew, but nevertheless he was irritated. “Why? I’m only a bit more than a generation behind you. There is no difference between my brain and yours. I’m not stupid. I can take the same classes your young people take. I can catch up.”