"I think that if something's going to happen, it's going to happen."
"I don't. I happen to think that the human will, backed by a sane mind can exercise some measure of control over events. If I didn't think so, I wouldn't be in the racket I'm in."
"The world's a machine—you know—cause, effect. Statistics do imply the prob—"
"The human mind is not a machine, and I do not know cause and effect. Nobody does."
"You have a degree in chemistry, as I recall. You're a scientist, Doc."
"So I'm a Trotskyite deviationist"—he smiled, stretching— "and you were once a ballet teacher." He got to his feet and picked up his coat.
"By the way, Miss Deville called, left a message. She said: 'How about St. Moritz?' "
"Too ritzy," he decided aloud. "It's going to be Davos." Because the suicide bothered him more than it should have, Render closed the door of his office and turned off the windows and turned on the phonograph. He put on the desk light only.
How has the quality of human life been changed, he wrote, since the beginnings of the industrial revolution?
He picked up the paper and reread the sentence. It was the topic he had been asked to discuss that coming Saturday. As was typical in such cases he did not know what to say because he had too much to say, and only an hour to say it in.
He got up and began to pace the office, now filled with Beethoven's Eighth Symphony.
"The power to hurt," he said, snapping on a lapel microphone and activating his recorder, "has evolved in a direct relationship to technological advancement." His imaginary audience grew quiet. He smiled. "Man's potential for working simple mayhem has been multiplied by mass-production; his capacity for injuring the psyche through personal con-
tacts has expanded in an exact ratio to improved communication facilities.