Peccary studied her more closely, then straightened with a start.
"I'll be damned," he said. "That's Jenny Cheever!"
Staghorn continued to leer at the girl. "So you know her?"
"I know her father. He owns the local variety store. She's only twenty today, and there she is a hundred years from now, not a day older."
"Only her image, Dr. Peccary," Staghorn murmured. "Only her image. But a very pretty one."
Peccary came to his feet, unable to control his irritation any longer. "I won't believe it!" he said. "Somehow a piece of misinformation has been fed into that machine. Its calculations are all wrong!"
Staghorn refused to be perturbed. "But you just said you recognize the girl on the bench. I'd say that Humanac has to be working with needle-point accuracy to put recognizable people into a prediction."
"Then shift the scene! For all I know this part of town was turned into an insane asylum fifty years from now." The use of the past tense when speaking of a future event was not ungrammatical in the presence of Humanac. "Do you have the volume up?"
"Certainly. Can't you hear the birds twittering?"