"Then you probably will, boy—" the Psychologist sat down to fill in some forms—"but you'll have to go back three hundred years to do it. You'll have to learn from books!"
There the dream would simply end, for no fantasy of wish-fulfillment could have exceeded in satisfaction Joe's actual conquest of this problem. At eighteen he wore thick glasses—he preferred them to contacts or artificial irises. At twenty he took tests contrived especially for him by the members of Central Education assigned to his case. He was awarded equivalence degrees in Business Administration, Metatomics and Interplanetary Law. His marks were the highest of the year and Joe Caradac's name was briefly in the newsphones.
He started with the New Chicago offices of Mars Imports and Exports as a mercury. After six weeks of flying back and forth with memos he traded his anti-gravs for a desk.
And on June 32, 2401, the newly appointed Regional Buyer for M. I. and E. got married and was flown to Mars by a chartered spacer to take command of the regional office at Ofei, By the Great Canal....
He was putting the finishing touches on breakfast when he heard a groan and the sound of a stretch from the bedroom. When he turned around, Sarah was standing in the doorway.
Joe's sandy eyebrows went up. His wife was certainly not a modest woman, but considering even that, this morning was an agreeable surprise. Her eyes were still dull—he guessed that she'd worried about those whatyoucallits after going to bed—but she was smiling broadly. Joe began to have visions of missing work for half a day. He smiled back at her and she laughed a little.
"Hohn, Uarnl!" she said.
Joe was thrusting halved oranges into the juicer. He turned off the machine and grinned.
"You'll have to talk plainer than that, little monkey," he said. He held out a glass of juice. "Drink this—it'll wake you—up—" The last word faded into an astonished silence.