"Ira, I accidentally told the truth. 'Why, no,' I admitted.

"'All right,' he said. 'I'll take care of it. But only this once. From here on always use Merry Widows, even if a sweet little darling tells you not to bother. Or haven't you found a drugstore that'll sell them to you?' Then, after swearing me to secrecy, he told me about the Howard Foundation and what it would pay if I married a girl on their approved list.

"And that was that, as I got this letter from a lawyer on my eighteenth birthday, just as Gramp had predicted, and it turned out that I fell madly in love with a girl on their list. We got married and had a slough of kids, before she turned me in on another model. Your ancestress, no doubt."

"No, sir. I'm descended from your fourth wife, Grandfather."

"My fourth, eh? Let me see-Meg Hardy?"

"I think she was your third, Lazarus. Evelyn Foote."

"Oh, yes! A fine girl, Evelyn. Plump, and pretty, and sweet-natured, and fertile as a turtle. A good cook and never a harsh word. They don't hardly make 'em anymore. Maybe fifty years younger than I was, but it barely showed; my hair didn't start to gray until I was a hundred and fifty. No secret about my age since birth date and track record and so forth were on file for each of us. Son, thank you for reminding me of Evelyn; she restored my faith in matrimony when I was getting a little sour on it. Do the Archives show anything else about her?"

"Just that you were her second husband and that she had seven children by you."

"I was hoping that there was a photograph. Such a pretty thing, always smiling. She was married to one of my cousins, a Johnson, when I met her, and I was in business with him a while. He and I, Meg and Evvie, used to get together Saturday nights for pinochle and beer, or such-and after a while we traded, legal and proper and through the courts, when Meg decided that she liked-Jack?-yes, Jack, that well, and Evelyn wasn't averse. Didn't affect our business relations, didn't even break up our pinochle game. Son, one of the best things about the Howard Families is that we got cured of the poisonous vice of jealousy generations ahead of the rest of the race. Had to-things being the way they were. Sure there ain't a stereopic of her around? Or a hologram? The Foundation started taking record pictures for marriage physical exams somewhere around then."

"I'll look into it," I told him. Then I had what seemed a brilliant idea. "Lazarus, as we all know, the same physical types show up time and again in the Families. I'll ask Archives for a list of Evelyn Foote's female descendants living on Secundus. It is highly probable that one of them will seem like her identical twin-even to the happy smile and the sweet disposition. Then-if you consent to full rejuvenation-I'm sure she would be as willing as Ishtar to dissolve any present contractual-"

The Senior chopped me off. "I said something new, Ira. There's no going back, ever. Sure, you might find such a girl, one who would match my memory of Evelyn to ten significant figures. But it would lack an important factor. My youth."

"But if you finish rejuvenation-"

"Oh, hush up! You can give me new kidneys and a new liver and a new heart. You can wash the brown stains of age out of my brain and add tissue from my clone to make up for what I've lost-you can give me a whole new clone body. But it won't make me that young fellow who took innocent pleasure in beer and pinochle and a pretty plump wife. All I have in common with him is continuity of memory-and not much of that. Forget it."

I said quietly, "Ancestor, whether you wish 'to be married to' Evelyn Foote again or not, you know and I know-for I've been through it, too, twice-we both know that the full routine restores youthful zest in life as well as restoring the body as a machine."

Lazarus Long looked gloomy. "Yeah, sure. It cures everything but boredom. Damn it, boy, you had no right to interfere with my, karma." He sighed. "But I can't hang a limbo either. So tell 'em to get on with it. The works."

I was taken by surprise. "May I record that, sir?"

"You heard me say it. But that doesn't get you off the hook. You still have to show up and listen to my maunderings until I'm so rejuvenated that I'm cured of such childish behavior- and you still have to go on with that research. To find something new, I mean."

"Agreed on both points, sir; you had my promise. Now one, moment while I tell my computer-"

"She's already heard me. Hasn't she?" Lizarus added, "Doesn't she have a name? Haven't you given her one?"

"Oh, certainly. I could not deal with her all these years without animism, fallacy though it is-"

"Not a fallacy, Ira, machines are human because they are made in our image. They share both our virtues and our faults-magnified."

"I've never tried to rationalize it, Lazarus, but Minerva- that's her formal name; she's 'Little Nag' in private because one of her duties is to remind me of obligations I would rather forget. Minerva does feel human to me-she's closer to me than any of my wives have been. No, she has not registered your decision; she's simply placed it in her temporaries. Minerva!"

"Si, Ira."

"Speak English, please. Retrieve the Senior's decision to undergo full antigeria, file it in your permanents, transmit it to Archives and to the Howard Rejuvenation Clinic for action."

"Completed, Mr. Weatheral. Congratulations. And felicitations to you, Senior. 'May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.'"

Lazarus looked suddenly interested-which did not surprise me because Minerva surprises me quite frequently even after a century of being "married" to her in all but fact. "Why, thank you, Minerva. But you startled me, girl. Nobody talks about love anymore; that's a major thing wrong with this century. How did you happen to offer me that ancient sentiment?"

"It seemed appropriate, Senior. Was I mistaken?"

"Oh, not at all. And call me 'Lazarus.' But tell me, what do you know of love? What is love?"

"In Classic English, Lazarus, your second question can be answered in many ways; in Lingua Galacta it cannot be answered explicitly at all. Shall we discard all definitions in which the verb 'to like' is as appropriate as the verb 'to love'?"

"Eh? Certainly. We aren't talking about 'I love apple pie'- or even 'I love music.' Whatever it is we are talking about, it's 'love' the way you used it in the old-style well-wishing."

"Agreed, Lazarus. Then what remains must be divided into two categories, 'Eros' and 'Agape,' and each defined separately. I cannot know what 'Eros' is through direct knowledge, as I lack both body and biochemistry to experience it. I can offer nothing but intensional definitions in terms of other words, or extensional definitions expressed in incomplete statistics. But in both cases I would not be able to verify such definitions since I have no sex."

("The hell she doesn't," I muttered into my scarf. "She's as female as a cat in heat." But technically she was correct, and-I've often felt that it was a shame that Minerva could not experience the pleasures of sex, as she was much more fitted to appreciate them than some human females-all glands and no empathy But I had never said this to anyone. Animism-of a particularly futile sort. A wish to "marry" a machine. As ridiculous as a little boy who digs a hole in the garden, then bawls because he can't take it into the house. Lazarus was right; I am not smart enough to run a planet. But who is?)

Lazarus said with deep interest, "Let's table 'Eros' for a moment. Minerva, the way you phrased that seemed to include the presumption that you could experience 'Agape.' Or 'can.' Or 'have.' Or perhaps 'do.'"

"It is possible that I was presumptuous in my phrasing, Lazarus."

Lazarus snorted, then chopped it off and spoke in such a fashion as to cause me to think that the old man was not quite sane-save that I am not sane myself, when the wind sets from that quarter. Or perhaps his long years had made him almost telepathic-even with machines.