"An understatement if I ever heard one! Your twin sons—I bet they're good solid Liberals by now! Do they—do they ever question, Doug? I've often wondered about kids, brought up in the family party from the time they're old enough to say 'Prelatinate'. Have Kurt and Ronal ever—do they ever show a streak of heresy—you know what I mean ... I should think kids'd rebel, try out some ideas of their own."
"Well, did you ever, when you were a child?"
"No—no I guess not. I see what you mean. If you come out with a really good question, there's always an answer for you right out of the Constitutional Commandments."
"And of course no one dares challenge them!"
"Doug!"
"Oh, don't misunderstand, Jane." Almost, that time. He could feel the sweat start under his arms again. Dammit what an organization. They worshipped government, they were scrupulously careful to keep a perfect check-and-balance on political spheres of influence, they had such well-oiled machinery that even war was impossible.
"Don't worry, I don't."
"I just meant that sometimes it really makes me realize what a wonderful balance we've achieved. Education, population."
"No form of birth control could ever have solved the problems of over-crowding and starvation and war as well as the games. You should know! Without work like yours, Doug, just think what the whole world could be like! There'd be the problem of enforcing the birth control laws again, knowing that every time they were violated the threat of unbalance would grow a little more."
The games again. What kind of magic, what kind of panacea were they? He thought of the teeming, overcrowded millions in Europe, Asia—World War I, World War II, Korea, the Puerto Rican revolution in 1955. New York and her East Side slums, Chicago, and—whatever it was he headed, it solved these things.