Before him swept the expanse of Recidivist Gardens, on gently rolling hills, bordering the sea. Clearly though he remembered it, this was the first time he had seen it with full and immediate sensory impact. The moon silvered the foliage, cast a path upon the water. Here and there, lights were on in the cottages nestled among the foliage, the domed, transparent cottages that combined the psychological effect of living outdoors with the comfort of shelter. The sweet note of a bell buoy clove the night.
The beauty was almost unbearable, coming so sharply to long blanked-out senses. The return of immediate awareness, and the knowledge that Dickie Porter, the only human being with whom he had a kinship of experience, did not hate him, was too much happiness for one day. Slick breathed deeply of the salt air, and felt a catch in his heart. He raised a thin hand to his chest.
The young man who had spoken to Slick in the radial corridor found the obituary item in the newspaper he took from the chute with his breakfast next morning.
Louis G. Tennant, 65, known to his friends as "Slick," a resident of Recidivist Gardens, died of a heart attack about 2200 last night, while returning to his home after a visit to central Ellay.
Tennant was one of the first recidivists to benefit from the Porter socio-legal conditioning techniques, and was noted for his valuable contribution to science in volunteering in 1963 for a twenty-year blank. He was one of two men who have gone this far ahead, the other being Dr. Porter's son, Richard S. Porter, Jr., level 72, SSE, circle NA, apt. 1722.
The Tennant case did much to direct public attention to the Porter techniques, helping to pave the way for a drastic revision of the criminal statutes, and to establish the concept that punishment rather than treatment for anti-social acts is as barbarous as punishment rather than treatment for the insane.
When informed of the death, and asked whether subconscious fore-memories of these developments motivated Tennant to volunteer as a research subject, Dr. Richard Porter, U.C.L.A., said that the effect of subconscious fore-memories as a compulsion to action is as yet imperfectly understood. He stated, however, that in certain individuals, the fore-memory compulsive factor appears to operate closer to the conscious level than in others. He said that, before going into the blank, Tennant was noted for the strength and reliability of his "hunches." He also recalled that Tennant and Richard Porter, Jr., were the last two subjects treated in the original Metachronoscope, which was destroyed shortly thereafter in an explosion. Subsequent models have been modified and improved. Tennant's estate was willed to the Recidivists' Christmas Fund for Dependent Children. According to Dr. Claude Tyson of Recidivist Hospital, Tennant was still in the blank when he died.
The closing sentence of the item was wrong, Dick Porter thought. In his last hours, Slick had known how it felt to be alive again, after twenty years.
Dick Porter was the only human being who fully appreciated what that meant.