Yes. He could remember now. He had needed no time to decide, had simply snapped, "Sell one share of Variable Basic at current market value."
The other eleven shares had taken the route of the first.
When it was finally all gone and he had looked around, it was to find that Natalie Paskov was gone as well.
Academician Lofting Gubelin, seated in his office, was being pontifical. His old friend Hans Girard-Perregaux had enough other things on his mind to let him get away with it, only half following the monologue.
"I submit," Gubelin orated, "that there is evolution in society. But it is by fits and starts, and by no means a constant thing. Whole civilizations can go dormant, so far as progress is concerned, for millennia at a time."
Girard-Perregaux said mildly, "Isn't that an exaggeration, Lofting?"
"No, by Zoroaster, it is not! Take the Egyptians. Their greatest monuments, such as the pyramids, were constructed in the earlier dynasties. Khufu, or Cheops, built the largest at Gizeh. He was the founder of the 4th Dynasty, about the year 2900 B. C. Twenty-five dynasties later, and nearly three thousand years, there was no greatly discernable change in the Egyptian culture."
Girard-Perregaux egged him on gently. "The sole example of your theory I can think of, offhand."