girl was sitting there, her back to him, looking out over the simmering city streets to the cool rise of mountains beyond. He recognized at once the slight figure, the sheen of the long curling auburn bob, the poise of her head and slim hand resting on the arm of the chair.
"Babs!"
She turned half around. "Hello, Rod."
He grinned and sank down in the next chair. "Here we are again."
"Knocked out by your own skunk oil?" she asked pointedly.
"No. Company copter man got me leaving Jeery Wade's. What happened to you? I thought you were walled up neatly for the declining years."
"The cosmetic man ambushed me in the hall. But I've got another fifty years to figure out something better ... if I still need it."
"What do you mean if you still need it? Are you changing your mind about rejuvenation?"
She smiled. "Well, you know it's always fun at first. But I'm having my lawyer come to this meeting. I've got an idea we can change the articles of agreement so that the process can finally become public property at the end of another fifty years instead of only after our deaths. Then if we want to go on and die, nobody" (she waved her hand around the great room at the little group of athletic men and glamorous, expensively gowned women moving in through the arch) "nobody will have any financial interest in rejuvenating us. Then, too, our own fat incomes will lapse; and since that's the reason we set up the articles the way they are—so we'd never be in danger of starving, that is—we'd have the more interesting choice of whether to die off or get young again and go back to work. Would you sign a fifty-year termination, Rod?"
"Would you marry me for the fifty years, Babs?" His voice was gentle, pleading.