Ann was scrabbling Herbie to her in the main room, feeling his arms, caressing his hair, pulling him in for a wild hug and crying out yet again. “Herbie! Herbie! Herbie!”

“I know you're gonna lick me, pop. I—I just want you to know that I think you ought to.”

“I'm not going to lick you, son.”

“You're not? But gee, I deserve a licking. I deserve the worst—”

“You may,” Plunkett said, gasping at the wall of clicking Geigers. “You may deserve a beating,” he yelled, so loudly that they all whirled to face him, “but I won't punish you, not only for now, but forever! And as I with you,” he screamed, “so you with yours! Understand?”

“Yes,” they replied in a weeping, ragged chorus. “We understand!”

“Swear! Swear that you and your children and your children's children will never punish another human being—no matter what the provocation.”

“We swear!” they bawled at him. “We swear!”

Then they all sat down.

To wait.

Afterword

For a long time (until I wrote “The Custodian”), “Generation of Noah” was my favorite among my stories. But the science-fiction magazines didn't want it: too hortatory. The general fiction magazines all said something on the order of “too fantastic.” Six years after publication, it was rejected by a movie producer who was interested in filming some of my work (“far too prosaic for today's audiences”).

Fred Pohl, the agent who finally sold the piece, liked it almost as much as I did. But he begged me and begged me to change what he called “the Greek chorus ending.” And I kept telling him that the goddam Greek chorus ending was why I had written the story in the first place. He would walk away from me muttering, “That's no excuse at all.”