"It's a good drug."
"Yes," said Roger. "It's a good drug. But look at them, Lionel. To stand here and choose them out."
"We are doing now what the scientist will one day do for every human race," said Lionel. "We are choosing for the future. As it happens we are choosing for the future of a fraction of a wretched little African tribe. The scientist will one day choose, just as finally, for the future of man. I didn't think you'd baulk, Roger. This is the beginning of the golden age. 'The golden age begins anew.' Here are the wise men choosing who are to inherit the earth."
A sleepy negro came unsteadily from a hut. He walked, as though not quite in control of his actions, towards the wise men. He was a fine, supple creature, dressed in crocodile's teeth. Parts of him shone with an anointment of oil. He drew up, dully staring. His jaw was hanging. Flies settled on his body. A tsetse with fierce, dancing flight, flew round him, and settled on his shoulders. He stood vacantly, gazing at the wise men. His mind could not be sure of anything; but there was something which he wanted to say; something which had to be said. He waited, vacantly, for the message to come back to him, and then drove slowly forward again, and again stopped. His lips mumbled something. His eyes drooped. One trembling hand weakly groped in the air for support. It rested on a hut. He slowly and very wearily collapsed upon the hut, and sat down. His head nodded and nodded. Another tsetse flew down. Roger noticed that the man was cicatrised about the body with old scars. He had been a warrior. He had lived the savage life to the full. He had killed. He had rushed screaming to death, under his tossing Colobus plumes, first of his tribe to stab, before the shields rattled on each other. He had been lithe, swift, and bloody as the panther. Now he was this trembling, fumbling thing, a log, a driveller, a perch for flies.
"Lionel," said Roger, "it will be awful if we lose our cases."
"Why? They will die in any case."
"But after choosing them like this. If we give them their chance, and they lose the chance. I should feel that perhaps one of the others might have lived."
"We shall choose carefully. We can do no more than that. There's that hideous old crone coming out again. Poor old thing. I dare say she has seen more of the world than either of us. She may be a king's wife and the mother of kings. How merciless these savages are to the old!"
"They're like children. Children have no mercy on the old."
"I wonder what good life is to her?"