"You'll have Veronica and Ronald and me forever now. We'll never change. You'll get older, and we'll never change. You'll lose your interest in New York swing and jet combat and Daniel Boone, and we'll never change. We don't change and you can't change us for others. I've made the worst thing happen to you that can happen to any man. I've seen that you will always keep your friends."
The prospect was frightful.
Victor smiled. "Aren't you going to denounce me for a fiend?"
"Yes, it is time for the denouncement. Tell me, you feel that now you are through? You have fulfilled your function?"
"Yes. Yes."
"Now you will have but to lean back, as it were, so to speak, and see me suffer?"
"Yes."
"No. Can't do it, old man. Can't. I know. You're too human, too like me. The one thing a man can't accept is a passive state, a state of uselessness. Not if he can possibly avoid it. Something has to be happening to him. He has to be happening to something. You didn't kill me because then you would have nothing left to do. You'll never kill me."
"Of course not!" Victor stormed. "Fundamental safety cut-off!"