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Matt Wiley and Joshua F. Wiley

Advanced R Statistical Programming

and Data Models
Analysis, Machine Learning, and Visualization
Matt Wiley
Columbia City, IN, USA

Joshua F. Wiley
Columbia City, IN, USA

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the

author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the book’s
product page, located at www.​apress.​com/​9781484228715 . For more
detailed information, please visit http://​www.​apress.​com/​source-code
.

ISBN 978-1-4842-2871-5 e-ISBN 978-1-4842-2872-2

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-2872-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019932986

© Matt Wiley and Joshua F. Wiley 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the

Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned,
specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other
physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.

Trademarked names, logos, and images may appear in this book. Rather
than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked
name, logo, or image we use the names, logos, and images only in an
editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no
intention of infringement of the trademark. The use in this publication
of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if
they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of
opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights.

While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true
and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the
editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any
errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no
warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein.

Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer Science+Business

Media New York, 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013.
Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax (201) 348-4505, e-mail orders-
ny@springer-sbm.com, or visit www.springeronline.com. Apress Media,
LLC is a California LLC and the sole member (owner) is Springer
Science + Business Media Finance Inc (SSBM Finance Inc). SSBM
Finance Inc is a Delaware corporation.
Introduction
This book shows how to conduct data analysis using the popular R
language. Our goal is to provide a practical resource for conducting
advanced statistical analyses using R . As this is an advanced book, the
reader is assumed to have some background in using R , including
familiarity with general data management and the use of functions.
Because the book is primarily practical, we do not provide in-depth
theoretical or conceptual introductions to the various statistical models
discussed. However, to aid understanding and their appropriate
application, we do provide some conceptual background on each
analytic technique discussed.

Conventions
Bold lowercase letters are used to refer to a vector, for example, x . Bold
uppercase letters are used to refer to a matrix, for example, X .
Generally, the Latin alphabet is used for data and the Greek alphabet is
used for parameters. Mathematical functions are indicated with
parentheses, for example, f (·).
In the text, reference to R code or function will be in monospaced
font like this. R function names have parentheses included to
help indicate it is a function, such as mean() to indicate the mean
function in R .

Package Setup
Throughout the book, we will make use of many different R packages
that make tasks easier or provide more robust or sophisticated
graphing and analysis options.
Although not required for readers, we make use of the
checkpoint package to help ensure the book is reproducible [23]. If
you do not care about reproducibility and are happy to take your
chances that our code that worked with one version of R and packages
also works with whatever versions you have, then you can just skip
reading this section. If you want reproducibility, but do not care why or
how it works, then just create R scripts for the code for each chapter,
save them, and then run the checkpoint package at the beginning. If
you care and want to know why and how it all works, read on the next
few paragraphs.
Details on Reproducibility
The many additional packages available for R are one of its greatest
strengths. However, they also create some challenges. For example, as a
reader, suppose that on your computer, you have R v3.4.3 installed
and as part of that in January you had installed the ggplot2 package
for graphs. By default, you will have whatever version of ggplot2 was
available in January when you installed it. Now in one chapter, we tell
you that you need both the ggplot2 and cowplot packages. Because
you already had ggplot2 installed, you do not need to install it again.
However, suppose that you did not have the cowplot package
installed. So, whenever you happen to be reading that chapter, you
attempt to install the cowplot package, let’s say it’s in April. You will
now by default get the latest version of cowplot available for that
version of R as of April.
Now imagine a second reader comes along and also had R v3.4.3
but had neither the ggplot2 nor the cowplot package installed. They
also read the chapter in April, but they install both packages in April, so
they get the latest version of both packages available in April for R
v3.4.3 .
Even though both you and the other reader had the same version of
R installed, you will end up with different package versions from each
other, and likely different versions yet from whatever versions we used
to write the book.
The end result is that different people, even with the same version
of R, very likely are using different versions of different packages. This
can pose a major challenge for reproducibility. If you are reading a
book, it can be a frustration because code does not seem to work as we
said it would. If you are using code in production or for scientific
research or decision-making, nonreproducibility can pose an even
bigger challenge.
 The solution to standardize versions across people and ensure
results are fully reproducible is to control not only the version of R but
also the version of all packages. This requires a different approach to
package installation and management than the default system, which
uses the latest package versions from CRAN. The checkpoint
package is designed to solve this challenge. It does require some extra
steps and processes to use, and at first may seem a nuisance, but the
payoff is that you can be guaranteed that you are not only using the
same version of R but also the same version of all packages.
To understand how the checkpoint package works, we need a bit
more background regarding how R ’s libraries and package system
work.
Mainstream R packages are distributed through CRAN. Package
authors can submit new versions of their packages to CRAN, and CRAN
updates nightly. For some operating systems, CRAN just stores the
package source code, such as for Linux machines. For others, such as
Windows operating systems, CRAN builds precompiled package
binaries and hosts those. CRAN keeps old source code but generally not
old binary packages for long. On a local machine, when
install.packages is run, R goes online to a repository, by default
CRAN, finds the package name, downloads it, and installs it into a local
library . The local library is basically just a directory on your own
machine. R has a default location it likes to use as its local library, and
by default when you install packages, they are added to the default
library. Once a package is installed, when it is loaded or opened using
library(), R goes to its default library, finds a package with the
same name, and opens it.
The checkpoint package works by creating a new library on the
local machine, for a particular version of R for a particular date. Then it
scans all the R script files in R ’s current working directory—you can
identify this using the getwd() function—and identifies any calls to
the library() or require() functions. Then it goes and checks
whether those packages are installed in the local library. If they are not,
it goes to a snapshot of CRAN taken by another server setup to support
the checkpoint package. That way, checkpoint can install the
version of the package available from a specific date. In that way, the
checkpoint package can ensure that you have the same specific
version of R and specific version of all packages that we used when
writing the book. Or if you are trying to re-run some analysis from a
year ago, you can get the same version of those packages on a new
computer.
Assuming that you have the following code in an R script, you can
use the checkpoint package to read the R script and find the call to
library(data.table), and it will install the data.table
package, which is a great package for data management [29]. If you do
not want checkpoint to look in the current working directory, you
can specify the project path, as we do to the book in this example. You
can also change where checkpoint sets its library to another folder
location, instead of the default location, which we also do. We
accomplish both of these using variables set as part of our R project,
book_directory and checkpoint_directory . If you are using
checkpoint on your own machine, set those variables to the relevant
directories, for example, as book_directory <-
"path/to/your/directory" . Note that whatever folder you
choose, R will need read and write privileges for that folder.

library(checkpoint)
checkpoint("2018-09-28", R. version = "3.5.1",
project = book_directory,
checkpointLocation = checkpoint_directory,
scanForPackages = FALSE,
scan.rnw.with.knitr = TRUE, use.knitr = TRUE)

library(data.table)

options(
width = 70,
stringsAsFactors = FALSE,
digits = 2)

Data Setup
One of the datasets we will use throughout this book is a longitudinal
study, the Americans’ Changing Lives (ACL) [45]. This is publicly
available data and can be downloaded by going to
http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR04690.v7 .
The Americans’ Changing Lives (ACL) is a longitudinal study with
five waves of data, shown in Table I-1 .

Table I-1 ACL Study Collection Waves

Wave Year
W1 1986
W2 1989
W3 1994
W4 2002
W5 2011

All we need is the data file in R format, which should be called

04690-0001-Data.rda . You may also find it helpful to download
the PDF documentation of the dataset for more details about the study.
After you have downloaded the data, you should extract the zip folder.
After setting up our R session and necessary libraries, we load the
data. You will need to adjust the path to wherever you saved the data
file after extracting it from the zip folder. Because it is a RDA file,
loading it loads an R object into the workspace. Next we convert to a
data table, select just the variables we are going to use for this book,
and change the variable names to be a bit more intuitive. The suffix
(e.g., “W1”) indicates which wave the variable comes from. Finally, we
convert some variables to factor class and then save the dataset using
the saveRDS() function with compression. This will allow us to read
our cleaned dataset back into R in later chapters with ease and to
assign it to any object name we wish, rather than being stuck with the
object name in the RDA file.

load ("../ICPSR_04690/DS0001/04690-0001-
Data.rda")
ls ()
 ## [1]
"book_directory" "checkpoint_directory"
## [3]
"da04690.0001" "render_apress"

acl <- as.data.table(da04690.0001)

acl <- acl[, .(
V2, V1801, V2101, V2064,
V3007, V2623, V2636, V2640,
V2000,
V2200, V2201, V2202,
V2613, V2614, V2616,
V2618, V2681,
V7007, V6623, V6636, V6640,
V6201, V6202,
V6613, V6614, V6616,
V6618, V6681
)]

setnames(acl, names(acl), c(
"ID", "Sex", "RaceEthnicity", "SESCategory",
"Employment_W1", "BMI_W1", "Smoke_W1",
"PhysActCat_W1",
"AGE_W1",
"SWL_W1", "InformalSI_W1", "FormalSI_W1",
"SelfEsteem_W1", "Mastery_W1",
"SelfEfficacy_W1",
"CESD11_W1", "NChronic12_W1",
"Employment_W2", "BMI_W2", "Smoke_W2",
"PhysActCat_W2",
"InformalSI_W2", "FormalSI_W2",
"SelfEsteem_W2", "Mastery_W2",
"SelfEfficacy_W2",
"CESD11_W2", "NChronic12_W2"
))

acl[, ID := factor(ID)]
 acl[, SESCategory := factor(SESCategory)]
acl[, SWL_W1 := SWL_W1 * -1]

saveRDS(acl, "advancedr_acl_data.RDS", compress

= "xz")
Acknowledgments
To our dear family, who may not always understand everything we
write, yet are nevertheless content to place our books on fireside
mantels and coffee tables.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1:​Univariate Data Visualization
1.​1 Distribution
Visualizing the Observed Distribution
Stacked Dot Plots and Histograms
Density Plots
Comparing the Observed Distribution with Expected
Distributions
Q-Q Plots
Density Plots
Fitting More Distributions
1.​2 Anomalous Values
1.​3 Summary
Chapter 2:​Multivariate Data Visualization
2.​1 Distribution
2.​2 Anomalous Values
2.​3 Relations Between Variables
Assessing Homogeneity of Variance
2.​4 Summary
Chapter 3:​GLM 1
3.​1 Conceptual Background
3.​2 Categorical Predictors and Dummy Coding
Two-Level Categorical Predictors
Three- or More Level Categorical Predictors
3.​3 Interactions and Moderated Effects
3.​4 Formula Interface
 3.​5 Analysis of Variance
Conceptual Background
ANOVA in R
3.​6 Linear Regression
Conceptual Background
Linear Regression in R
High-Performance Linear Regression
3.​7 Controlling for Confounds
3.​8 Case Study:​Multiple Linear Regression with Interactions
3.​9 Summary
Chapter 4:​GLM 2
4.​1 Conceptual Background
Logistic Regression
Count Regression
4.2 R Examples
Binary Logistic Regression
Ordered Logistic Regression
Multinomial Logistic Regression
Poisson and Negative Binomial Regression
4.​3 Case Study:​Multinomial Logistic Regression
4.​4 Summary
Chapter 5:​GAMs
5.​1 Conceptual Overview
Smoothing Splines
5.2 GAMs in R
Gaussian Outcomes
 Binary Outcomes
Unordered Outcomes
Count Outcomes
5.​3 Summary
Chapter 6:​ML:​Introduction
6.​1 Training and Validation Data
6.​2 Resampling and Cross-Validation
6.​3 Bootstrapping
6.​4 Parallel Processing and Random Numbers
foreach
6.​5 Summary
Chapter 7:​ML:​Unsupervised
7.​1 Data Background and Exploratory Analysis
7.​2 kmeans
7.​3 Hierarchical Clusters
7.​4 Principal Component Analysis
7.​5 Non-linear Cluster Analysis
7.​6 Summary
Chapter 8:​ML:​Supervised
8.​1 Data Preparation
One Hot Encoding
Scale and Center
Transformations
Train vs.​Validation Data
Principal Component Analysis
8.​2 Supervised Learning Models
 Support Vector Machines
Classification and Regression Trees
Random Forests
Stochastic Gradient Boosting
Multilayer Perceptron
8.​3 Summary
Chapter 9:​Missing Data
9.​1 Conceptual Background
Multiple Imputation
9.2 R Examples
Multiple Imputation with Regression
Multiple Imputation with Parallel Processing
Multiple Imputation Using Random Forests
9.​3 Case Study:​Multiple Imputation with RFs
9.​4 Summary
Chapter 10:​GLMMs:​Introduction
10.​1 Multilevel Data
Reshaping Data
Daily Dataset
10.​2 Descriptive Statistics
Basic Descriptives
Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC)
10.​3 Exploration and Assumptions
Distribution and Outliers
Time Trends
Autocorrelation
 Assumptions
10.​4 Summary
Chapter 11:​GLMMs:​Linear
11.​1 Theory
Generalized Linear Mixed Models
Mixed Effects vs.​Multilevel Model Terminology
Statistical Inference
Effect Sizes
Random Intercept Model
Visualizing Random Effects
Interpreting Random Intercept Models
Random Intercept and Slope Model
Intercepts and Slopes as Outcomes
11.2 R Examples
Linear Mixed Model with Random Intercept
Linear Mixed Model with Random Intercept and Slope
11.​3 Summary
Chapter 12:​GLMMs:​Advanced
12.​1 Conceptual Background
12.​2 Logistic GLMM
Random Intercept
Random Intercept and Slope
12.​3 Poisson and Negative Binomial GLMMs
Random Intercept
Random Intercept and Slope
12.​4 Summary
Chapter 13:​Modelling IIV
13.​1 Conceptual Background
Bayesian Inference
What Is IIV?​
Intra-individual Variability as a Predictor
Software Implementation:​VARIAN
13.​2 R Examples
IIV Predicting a Continuous Outcome
13.​3 Summary
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors and About the Technical
Reviewer

About the Authors

Matt Wiley
is a tenured, associate professor of
mathematics with awards in both
mathematics education and honors
student works. He earned degrees in
pure mathematics, computer science,
and business administration through the
University of California and Texas A&M
University Systems. He serves as director
of quality enhancement at Victoria
College, facilitating comprehensive
assessment programs, key performance
indicator dashboards and one-click
reports, and data consultation for
campus stakeholders. Outside academia, he is managing partner at
Elkhart Group LLC, a statistical consultancy. With experience in
programming R , SQL , C++ , Ruby , Fortran , and JavaScript , he
has always found ways to meld his passion for writing with his joy of
logical problem solving and data science. From the boardroom to the
classroom, Matt enjoys finding dynamic ways to partner with
interdisciplinary and diverse teams to make complex ideas and projects
understandable and solvable.

Joshua F. Wiley
is a lecturer in the Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical
Neurosciences and School of Psychological Sciences at Monash
University. He earned his PhD from the University of California, Los
Angeles, and completed his postdoctoral training in primary care and
prevention. His research uses advanced quantitative methods to
understand the dynamics between
psychosocial factors, sleep, and other
health behaviors in relation to
psychological and physical health. He
develops or codevelops a number of R
packages including varian , a package
to conduct Bayesian scale-location
structural equation models, and
MplusAutomation , a popular package
that links R to the commercial Mplus
software, and miscellaneous functions to
explore data or speed up analysis in
JWileymisc .

About the Technical Reviewer

Andrew Moskowitz
is an analytics and data science
professional in the entertainment
industry focused on understanding user
behavior, marketing attribution and
efficacy, and using advanced data science
concepts to address business problems.
He earned his PhD in quantitative
psychology at the University of
California, Los Angeles, where he
focused on hypothesis testing and mixed
effects models.
© Matt Wiley and Joshua F. Wiley 2019
Matt Wiley and Joshua F. Wiley, Advanced R Statistical Programming and Data Models
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-2872-2_1

1. Univariate Data Visualization

Matt Wiley1 and Joshua F. Wiley1

(1) Columbia City, IN, USA

Most statistical models discussed in the rest of the book make

assumptions about the data and the best model to use for them. As data
analysts, we often must specify the distribution that we assume the
data come from. Anomalous values, also called extreme values or
outliers, may also have undue influence on the results from many
statistical models. In this chapter, we examine visual and graphical
approaches to exploring the distributions and anomalous values for
one variable at a time (i.e., univariate). The goal of this chapter is not
specifically to create beautiful or publication quality graphs nor to
show results, but rather to use graphs to understand the distribution of
a variable and identify anomalous values. This chapter focuses on
univariate data visualization, and the next chapter will employ some of
the same concepts but applied to multivariate distributions and cover
how to assess the relations between variables.

library(checkpoint)
checkpoint("2018-09-28", R.version = "3.5.1",
project = book_directory,
checkpointLocation = checkpoint_directory,
scanForPackages = FALSE,
scan.rnw.with.knitr = TRUE, use.knitr = TRUE)

library(knitr)
library(ggplot2)
library(cowplot)
library(MASS)
library(JWileymisc)
library(data.table)

options(width = 70, digits = 2)

The ggplot2 package [109] creates elegant graphs, and the
cowplot package is an add-on that makes graphs cleaner [117]. The
MASS package provides functions to test how well different
distributions fit data [98]. The JWileymisc package is maintained by
one of this text’s authors and provides miscellaneous functions that
allow us to focus on the graphics in this chapter [114]. The
data.table package will be used a lot for data management [29].

1.1 Distribution
Visualizing the Observed Distribution
Many statistical models require that the distribution of a variable be
specified. Histograms use bars to graph a distribution and are probably
the most common graph used to visualize the distribution of a single
variable. Although relatively rare, stacked dot plots are another
approach and provide a precise way to visualize the distribution of data
that shows the individual data points. Finally, density plots are also
quite common and are graphed by using a line that shows the
approximate density or amount of data falling at any given value.

Stacked Dot Plots and Histograms

Dot plots work by plotting a dot for each observed data value, and if
two dots would fall on top of each other, they are stacked up [118].
Compared to histograms or density plots, dot plots are unique in that
they actually plot the raw individual data points, rather than
aggregating or summarizing them. This makes dot plots a nice place to
start looking at the distribution or spread of a variable, particularly if
you have a relatively small number of observations.
The granular approach, plotting individual data points, is also dot
plots limitation. With even moderately large datasets (e.g., several
hundred), it becomes impractical to plot individual values. With
thousands or millions of observations, dot plots are even less effective
at visualizing the overall distribution.
We can create a plot easily using ggplot2, and the results are
shown in Figure 1-1.

ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg)) +
geom_dotplot()

## 'stat_bindot()' using 'bins = 30'. Pick

better value with 'binwidth'.

Figure 1-1 Stacked dot plot of miles per gallon from old cars

As a brief aside, much of the code for ggplot2 follows the format
shown in the following code snippet. In our case, we wanted a dot plot,
so the geometric object, or “geom”, is a dot plot (geom_dotplot() ).
Many excellent online tutorials and books exist to learn how to use the
ggplot2 package for graphs, so we will not provide a greater
introduction to ggplot2 here. In particular, Hadley Wickham, who
develops ggplot2, has a recently updated book on the package,
ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis [109], which is an excellent
guide. For those who prefer less conceptual background and more of a
cookbook, we recommend the R Graphics Cookbook by Winston Chang
[20].

ggplot(the-data, aes(variable-to-plot)) +
geom_type-of-graph()
 Unlike a dot plot that plots the raw data, a histogram is a bar graph
where the height of the bar is the count of the number of values falling
within the range specified by the width of the bar. You can vary the
width of bars to control how many nearby values are aggregated and
counted in one bar. Narrower bars aggregate fewer data points and
provide a more granular view. Wider bars aggregate more and provide
a broader view. A histogram showing the distribution of sepal lengths
of flowers from the famous iris dataset is shown in Figure 1-2.

ggplot(iris, aes(Sepal.Length)) +
geom_histogram()

## 'stat_bin()' using 'bins = 30'. Pick better

value with 'binwidth'.

Figure 1-2 Histogram of sepal length from the iris data

 If you know the shape of a distribution (e.g., a normal distribution),
you can examine whether the histogram for a variable looks like the
shape of a distribution you recognize. In the case of the sepal length
data, they appear approximately normally distributed, although they
are clearly not perfect.
If data do not appear to follow the distribution we hoped for (e.g.,
normal), it is common to apply a transformation to the raw data. Again,
histograms are a useful way to examine how the distribution looks after
transformation. Figure 1-3 shows a histogram of annual Canadian lynx
trappings. From the graph we can see the variable is positively skewed
(has a long right tail).

ggplot(data.table(lynx = as.vector(lynx)),
aes(lynx)) +
geom_histogram()

## 'stat_bin()' using 'bins = 30'. Pick better

value with 'binwidth'.
Figure 1-3 Histogram of annual Canadian lynx trappings
For positive skew, a square root or log transformation can help to
reduce positive skew and make variables closer to a normal
distribution, assuming that there are no negative values. This histogram
of lynx trappings after a natural log transformation is shown in Figure
1-4.

ggplot(data.table(lynx = as.vector(lynx)),
aes(log(lynx))) +
geom_histogram()

## 'stat_bin()' using 'bins = 30'. Pick better

value with 'binwidth'.
Figure 1-4 Histogram of annual Canadian lynx trappings after a natural log
transformation

Density Plots
Another common tool to visualize the observed distribution of data is
by plotting the empirical density. The code for ggplot2 is identical to
that for histograms except that geom_histogram() is replaced with
geom_density() . The code follows and the result is shown in Figure
1-5.

ggplot(iris, aes(Sepal.Length)) +
geom_density()
Figure 1-5 This is the density plot for our sepal lengths
Empirical density plots include some degree of smoothing, because
with continuous variables, there is never going to be many observations
at any specific value (e.g., it may be that no observation has a value of
3.286, even though there are values of 3.281 and 3.292). Empirical
density plots show the overall shape of the distribution by applying
some degree of smoothing. At times it can be helpful to adjust the
degree of smooth to see a coarser (closer to the raw data) or smoother
(closer to the “distribution”) graph. Smoothing is controlled in
ggplot2 using the adjust argument. The default, which we saw in
Figure 1-5, is adjust = 1. Values less than 1 are “noisier” or have less
smoothing, while values greater than 1 increase the smoothness. We
compare and contrast noisier in Figure 1-6 vs. very smooth in Figure 1-
7.

ggplot(iris, aes(Sepal.Length)) +
geom_density(adjust = .5)
 ggplot(iris, aes(Sepal.Length)) +
geom_density(adjust = 5)

Figure 1-6 A noisy density plot

Another Random Scribd Document
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While he was saying this, the R.A.'s were driving away with
Comstock, Pat and the Picaroon.
"Then we can wait no longer?" Helen asked.
Shaking his head, Bowdler said, "No."
Grundy rose to his feet as he murmured, "I'm glad. This waiting has
been worse than anything that the Board of Fathers can mete out to
us."
Helen and Grundy paused at the door of the house and looked back
regretfully, Grundy spoke, "It's been a wonderful month we had, we
can remember that, darling."
She kissed him and they walked out into the darkness with Bowdler
close behind them.
He said, "I shall be with you, and you can depend on my helping in
any way that I can."
"To face the Board of Fathers!" Grundy's face was set. "I'll tell them a
few home truths no matter what they finally decide to do to us."
"You're so brave, sweetheart," Helen said. And looked at him
admiringly.
"But it's still The Grandfather whom I fear the most." Grundy was
honest enough to add.
Bowdler laid his heavy hands on each of them and said, "Courage."
Then they started on the way to their fates.

In the R.A.'s car, Pat sat between the lump of unresisting flesh that
Comstock had become and the cocoonlike figure of the philosopher.
The man who was a criminal in spite of himself observed the way Pat
looked down at Comstock and his harshly handsome face softened.
"My dear, perhaps it is better that he be the way he is, if what you
have told me is true and you are both rebels against the bonds that
chain all of us on this sorry world of ours. I fear what the Board of
Fathers or The Grandfather may decide may be much worse than this
condition that my question has caused."
"To die is hard, but to die without knowing that you are dying, is
horrible," Pat said through clenched teeth.
"It is unmanly, I will not gainsay that." Then the man was silent.
Ahead of them the odd buildings that housed the Board and The
Grandfather rose up in their way. The globular buildings inside of
which were both the Elders and the Fathers were dwarfed by the
height of the shaft of The Grandfather's residence.
The R.A.'s were as silent and seemingly unthinking as machines.
Their first visible emotion had been one of jubilance at having caught
Pat and Comstock but that had faded under the fear of punishment
for not having caught them sooner.
They sat statue still, their hands on their guns as the car drove up to
the entrance of the buildings.
One of the R.A.'s left the machine to go for further orders from his
superior officer.
In the car the last philosopher said softly, "Perhaps whatever little
nobility there is in man is best served by dying with one's eyes open. I
shall not again retreat into the lie of the Picaroon." He smiled gently at
Pat, and said, "I think I will like dying as one of you, as a rebel."
But all Pat's attention was on her beloved who had never stirred from
the curled up position into which his thoughts had forced him.
Seeing this, the last philosopher said, "There is one chance, and only
one that I can think of that may revive him. Perhaps love, an emotion
of which I know very little, may be strong enough to pull him out of
that place to which he has run for safety."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"To me," the man said, "as a philosopher, the charms of love and sex
were never very strong. But I should imagine, just as pure
speculation, that the two must be very tightly entwined."
Deep, deep down inside the thing that Comstock had become he felt
a stirring of some kind of interest. He did not yet know what was
causing the sensation, he could not hear the love words that Pat was
whispering in his ear, he was not really conscious of her soft hands
caressing him, but something was taking place, something that
seemed to have reality in a place where there was no such thing.

So it was that the guards of the R.A. were as shocked by her

behavior as earlier the waiting crowd had been when Comstock and
Pat had broken the deepest, strongest held taboo of their culture.
At their side, the last philosopher chuckled as he saw the guards
blanch, then turn their eyes away.
Their livid faces were turned from the scene as Pat literally drew
Comstock back from the bourne to which he had retreated.
Gasping, astounded, Comstock came back to reality. He was terribly
shocked when he saw what Pat had done, but this shock gave place
to an even bigger one when he realized that they had been captured,
that they were in front of The Grandfather's Retreat, and that there
was no longer any chance for escape.
None at all.
Gasping, he asked, "What happened? Where have I been? How did
we get here? Why don't I remember coming here?"
"Don't repeat my question," the last philosopher said, "or he may be
trapped by it again."
Slurring over the crux of the matter, Pat gently tried to bring
Comstock up to date.
The guards recovered some of their equanimity and brutally shoved
all three of them out of the car. The last philosopher, still bound,
crashed to his face as they evicted him. Pat hurried to untie him, and
help him to his feet.
Then, inside a living square formed by the R.A.'s they were ushered
back into the ante-room which Comstock, Grundy and Helen had
escaped from a month earlier.
Surprise was piled on surprise for Comstock. When the R.A.'s shoved
him into the room he saw, waiting, sitting in chairs, Helen and Grundy.
Standing, pacing back and forth was Bowdler, his heavy face set with
thought.
Helen cried, "We thought you were dead!"
Then there were introductions, and explanations, and it was only
when Bowdler finally interrupted and said, "Hold everything. You
realize it is late at night, and it is only because of the uniqueness of
the situation that the Board of Fathers is sitting in extraordinary
session, in order to decide what to do with you all, that I am here."
This sufficed to let Comstock and Pat know that Bowdler was still
playing his double game.
Helen whispered in Comstock's ear. "Bowdler pretended that he had
captured us and brought us here and then invoked the special
session of the Fathers."
Just as the door that led into the Board of Fathers began to open,
Bowdler said, his voice harsh with urgency, "I want you to go in there,
not as prisoners come to judgment, but as stalwarts who demand a
fitting place in the government of our world.
"Audacity, my little ones, audacity is the order of the day!" Bowdler
smiled as he saw the puzzlement spread over Comstock's and Pat's
faces. "Follow the lead of Grundy and Helen. I've had time to tell
them a little more than I have told you two!"
The door was open wide now, and as Comstock girded his loins
preparatory to what he was sure would be a battle to the death
against impossible odds, the R.A. who had entered, bowed to
Bowdler and said, "The Fathers request your presence, Father
Bowdler."
Then their last prop was gone, and they just sat and waited, staring at
the door which had closed behind Bowdler.
The three who had endured so much sat and waited. The three plus
Pat and the last philosopher. When you have fought for as long as
they had against forces strong almost beyond imagining, when you
have struggled in despair, lived without daring to think, hope, when it
finally comes is almost anti-climactic. At least Comstock found it so.
Despite the traps, the violence, the hurts, the fear, they were now
where they wanted to be.
They sat quietly, their hands folded, and if any feeling of triumph was
in them, it was so muted as not to be observable. At that precise
moment, when they sat in the ante-room, waiting for their reward, if
reward it were to be, the only common emotion they shared was that
they had fought a good fight. Fought as hard as it is in a person to
fight for what they consider right.
Then the door opened and instead of the summons to come before
the Board of Fathers which they had expected, The Grandfather
entered the room. The Grandfather, with his high hooked nose, his
broad forehead, deep set harsh old blue eyes, focussed on the
middle distance, his strong old hands crossed on his stomach just
below his patriarchal beard, his tremendous height forcing him to look
down at them.
It was hard to believe.
Hard to believe that they, or anyone below the rank of Father would
ever actually behold Him in the flesh.
When He spoke His voice was all the things they had known it would
be... Deep as an organ base, calm, full of authority, stern, yet with a
leavening of those other things that make up the whole man, his
voice was almost gentle as he said, "Follow me, please."
They rose, and feeling like little children, followed his preposterously
tall, spare back, out of the ante-room, into that other room where the
Board awaited them.
There was no fear in them now as there would have been earlier. For
they were not coming before the Board for judgement, but to be
rewarded. At least that's what Grundy and Helen had been told by
Bowdler.
The Grandfather pointed out Comstock, Helen and Grundy, and said,
"These three are the original ones. The other two," his gesture
pointed out the last philosopher and Pat, "are the newer recruits."
There was silence.
"They have come to join us," The Grandfather said.
The silence expanded.
"Gentlemen, Fathers all, these are three new Fathers." The
Grandfather's voice faded away and there was no other sound. Some
of the men who made up the Board of Fathers said a word.
But the ones who had fought their way up to this eminence stood in
silence and looking about them, examined the men with whom they
would now share the control of their whole world.
This was the moment of their triumph.

CHAPTER 13
When Bowdler and Grundy had first sounded out Comstock and had
asked him the questions that had led him so far from the normal law-
abiding life that had been his, one of the mainsprings of his conduct
had been envy mixed with disgust that the Fathers whom formerly he
had so revered had become monsters in his mind. Monsters who had
used the whole planet as a breeding ground for their harems. For
when the thought that only the Fathers were really fathers had struck
Comstock he had resolved that he too would like to take part in such
noble work.
Along with the sexual motive, Comstock had decided that if the
Fathers controlled the world, he too would like to have a share in
either controlling the world as it was, or perhaps with luck, helping to
change the control in such a way that their world would be a better
place to live in.
This mixture of ideas had resulted in his mental picture of the Fathers
becoming an amalgam of monsters of pride, venery and power.
Looking about the room Comstock decided that he could not possibly
have been further wrong in the way he had pictured the Fathers.
For his first feeling as his unbelieving eyes swept around the table at
which the Fathers sat, was one of pity.
Far from being the creatures with inflated egos, the monsters of
uxoriousness that his inflamed imagination had painted, these men
who guided the affairs of his world were invalids... The lame, the halt
and the blind.
Each face was torn by pain, every body bore the stigmata of some
fatal disease.
Only the Grandfather, ridiculously tall and spare, standing at the far
end of the gigantic room was as his imagination had foretold He
would be.
In the silence that greeted them Comstock finally turned to Grundy
and said, "I ... I don't understand."
The Grandfather walked to the head of the table and prepared to
speak. While they waited, Grundy whispered, "Think a moment. The
only cure for disease that our people know is vice. Right?"
Nodding, Comstock waited.
"But the only people on the whole planet who know how this cure
works, what psychic machinery is involved, are the Fathers."
Comstock gulped and thought of his heart.
"To become a Father," Grundy added hurriedly as The Grandfather
raised his hand for silence, "is a sentence of death. For once you
know how sin cures sickness, it can no longer cure you."
"Fathers," The Grandfather said, and involuntarily, Comstock felt his
heart fill with awe, so imbued had his upbringing been with respect
and worship of the figure called The Grandfather; he tried to control
the emotion that threatened to unman him, for his temptation was to
fall down before The Grandfather.
"Fathers," the deep organ bass went on, "you know why we are
gathered in this extraordinary conclave. So successful has been the
regime that I have caused to come into being, that no longer can we
hope to recruit new Fathers from amongst those brave souls who
rebel against the government we have set up. Not for fifty years has a
new rebel appeared to challenge our power. Therefore, as you all
know, Father Bowdler, because he is the healthiest appearing of any
of you, was empowered to go out into the world and find rebellious
souls whom we may be able to use as leaders.
"I feared when first I caused the apparatus of power to be set up as I
have done, that there would be instant and successful rebellion. It did
not then occur to me that I would be too successful and that rebellion
would be bred out of the blood of our people.
"We have, as you know only too well, arrived at a period of stasis
from which our world may never recover.
"It therefore devolves upon the men who stand before you as well as
the women who have made common cause with them, to come to our
aid.
"Now that aid is to be given, what these new Fathers will be able to
do before death claims them, I do not know. All that I can say with
any assurance, is that if something is not done and done quickly, our
world will go down the road to static death, never knowing what has
toppled it from the high estate it held."

Comstock's mind was almost incapable of digesting what The

Grandfather was saying. It had all happened much too quickly. To be
raised in a matter of moments from a position where death seemed
imminent first to a position on the Board of Fathers, and now, if he
understood correctly, to be told that the future of the world was
somehow his responsibility, was just too much.
His first instinctual response was to desire escape. Turning around he
saw, directly behind him, a door which was ajar. Not that he wanted to
escape very far, he just wanted to go off in a dark corner and sit and
think the whole thing out.
The Grandfather was still speaking, as Comstock, unobserved, began
to step backwards. The others, Comstock's fellow rebels were leaning
forward, greedily drinking in what The Grandfather was saying.
"You will, in the next day or two," The Grandfather was saying as
Comstock backed closer to the door, "be told just how our
government operates. You will be told how, when the last scientists
were martyred by an unreasoning mob, they tried, before death
claimed them, in their wisdom to set up non-mechanical devices that
would cure the sick. They knew that in the period of dark reaction by
which they were swept to death, anything that smelled of machinery
was doomed to destruction.
"You will then understand why I was in effect forced to cause this
world of ours to enter a period of the strictest moral upbringing. Only
under such a regime could the psychosomatic mechanisms that the
scientists had explained, be able to work.
"I have been only too successful as you know. I have, by the
restrictions I set up, brought into being a world where people fear
sickness not because of the pain it brings, but because of the shame
the sins which cure it bring in its path."
Then the door was near enough so that Comstock was able to duck
through it. There was a hard bench just outside and as Comstock sat
down on it, his brain awhirl, he heard the deep voice of The
Grandfather say, just as Comstock pushed the door closed, "But
enough of the way our world works now. I think the next subject under
discussion will be just what we can do to make our world take the
step from an inner-directed culture with ancestor-directed overtones,
on and up to the next normal step which is an other-directed culture."

Inasmuch as the last thing that Comstock remembered clearly was

when he brought the "car" under control and then tied up the man he
knew as the Picaroon, he sat on the hard bench, his buttock muscles
sore from lack of sleep, his stomach gurgling loudly from lack of food
and water, and tried to reconstruct just what had been happening to
him.
It was no use. There was a lapse he could not account for. He
remembered that the Picaroon had asked him a question, but luckily
he could not remember how it was phrased, and then the next thing
he knew he was getting out of the R.A.'s car, being guided into the
fearful sanctum of the Fathers, and then, first fearing instant death,
he had then been apprised of his accession to power. Then the
membership of the Board of Fathers had been revealed to be a
sentence of death, and before his weary, battered brain could recover
from that, The Grandfather had made it clear that the world's future
was somehow his responsibility.
Comstock was only too aware of his mortality, as everyone is when
fatigue has lowered one's defenses. He slouched down on the bench
and tried to rationalize some of the recent events.
Aside from Pat, he would be only too grateful if the whole benighted
affair had never been and he could once more awaken in bed with his
mother near to comfort him.
The door on the far side of the room opened and an R.A. entered.
Comstock was sunk too far down in a welter of self-pity to do more
than raise his head tiredly and look at the R.A.'s stern face. The
uniformed man produced a stun-gun and said, "You are under arrest."
Before Comstock could bother to tell the man that he was a little
behind in his knowledge of what had been happening, the gun did its
work.
Stunned, Comstock fell off the bench and crashed onto the floor. His
head landed so hard that the result was instant unconsciousness.
The effect of the gun's energy bolt would merely have been to
immobilize his bodily functions. But the blow knocked him out.
When he opened his eyes and was again aware of life and its
processes, he had been moved. He did not know it immediately but
he had been transferred to The Grandfather's aerie.
The first thing that Comstock was aware of was the fact that he was
seated in a chair unlike any he had ever seen before. It was big, and
comfortable in a way, except that from the arms of it came metal
bands that encompassed his forearms preventing the slightest
movement. Around his legs, similar bands held his calves against the
legs of the chair.
Directly in front of him was the most tremendous desk he had ever
seen. Around the walls of the room which was completely circular
were little holes, just big enough for the muzzles of stun-guns to
project through. The port holes were no more than ten inches apart
so that every inch of his body was being menaced at all times.
As intelligence returned to him, he looked dully at the too tall figure of
The Grandfather who sat behind the desk. The long beard curved
gracefully down the giant chest. More tired than he had ever been in
his life, Comstock thought in woolly fashion of how nice it would be to
curl up in The Grandfather's lap, as he had been taught by his
mother, and forget all his cares.
Thinking of The Grandfather's lap made him remember, with a guilty
start, that he had no idea of what had happened to Pat.
Before he could ask, The Grandfather said, "You have managed to do
something that no one has done in more years than I like to think
about. Why did you sneak away from the Board room, Comstock?"
The omnipresent muzzles of the circle of stun-guns preyed heavily on
Comstock's muddled mind. He did not answer the question.
The Grandfather said, "I am not used to having to ask a question
twice. Why did you leave when I was speaking? Did you not believe
what I was saying?"
There was a curious expression, Comstock realized, on The
Grandfather's face. Was it possible that what The Grandfather had
said, down below, was not the truth? Could it be that Bowdler was as
befuddled as the rest of them? Was some tremendous game, so
complicated as not to be understood being played?
"I am waiting," The Grandfather said.
Comstock's slack face betrayed nothing. He was too tired, too
confused, too upset to even hazard an opinion. Finally he croaked,
"The only reason I left, was because I wanted to think."
"To think?" The tone was satirical. "Curious, most of my people are
content to allow me to do all the thinking."
How despairingly Comstock wished that he too could let The
Grandfather do all his thinking, but it was much too late for that.
Hunching over his desk, The Grandfather leaned forward and said,
"Speak up, man, don't force me to employ certain methods which I
have used on occasion."
Speak up! When all he wanted to do was lay his weary head on that
comforting beard and forget everything? Speak up when his tongue
was thick with thirst and his stomach growling with hunger? Speak up
when his sleepless head was involuntarily dropping from time to time
from sheer fatigue?
Why didn't the old fool leave him alone? How far could a man be
pushed? What did he have to lose now that he knew that
membership on the Board of Fathers meant a lingering death by
heart disease? A wave of adrenaline shot through his system as
anger burned brightly.
He almost snarled as he asked, "Suppose you do some answering?
Suppose I ask the questions for a change?"
Leaning back in his chair The Grandfather's face reflected no emotion
at all.
Comstock snapped. "Suppose you tell me how you've stayed in
power so long! Some of those earth books I read in Bowdler's library
made me wonder about a lot of things, Grandfather. And I'd like to
know some of the answers!
"Tell me, how have you stayed in power so long?"
"Because," The Grandfather said, "since you ask, because of fear."
Of that emotion there was none in Comstock. He was beyond any
ordinary feelings at all. They had all been washed away.

CHAPTER 14
"Fear?" Comstock hazarded, for at the moment the word meant
nothing to him. Nothing at all.
"Fear," The Grandfather said, repeating the word again, "is my
bulwark. Cowardice my armor. I am the most frightened man in our
world. That is the reason I am The Grandfather. Until the day comes
that a more frightened man, a more cowardly human being arises, I
shall rule. No brave man can ever breach my defenses, because no
brave man can ever know the things I fear. Since I am always fearful
my mind is filled with ideas as to where and how I may be attacked.
Since this is so, I spend all my waking hours building up my guard
against any such attacks.
"The nights," he said thoughtfully, "I spend in nightmares in which all
my defenses crumble."
Comstock sat across the room from The Grandfather, his arms
enclosed in the cage like affair that immobilized him. Through
apertures in the walls at shoulder height he could see the stock-still
muzzles of the stun-guns that were trained on him. He brought his
attention back to The Grandfather. The man's long, thin face was
raddled with what seemed like fear. Tics jerked monstrously at the
corners of his mouth and at his hag-ridden eyes.
"How," Comstock asked, "can you sit under the menace of the guns
that surround us? Aren't you afraid that one of the gunners may shoot
you?"
"You see," the lean, bearded face was full of envy, "You see, you think
like a brave man and that is why you will never be able to overcome
me. Only a brave man could sit under the guns ... unless, he had the
foresight to have done what I have. Behind the gunners of which you
are aware, there is another set of gunners, each of whom has a gun
pointed at the head of the gunner who has been honored by being my
guard."
Comstock thought of this for a while and then he said, "And do the
secondary gunners have tertiary gunners menacing them?"
The Grandfather smiled delightedly, "There! You see, you are
beginning to think like a coward. Fear like mine is infectious. Of
course there are tertiary and quaternary and quinternary gunners!"
In the lengthening pause that followed this statement of The
Grandfather's, Comstock wondered if this was right, was fear the
thing that held him on the pinnacle he had made his own?
The Grandfather said, "I am not sure that I have convinced you.
Observe my face, the way fear tears at it. Consider that I am so
cowardly that my stomach digests itself rather than the food I force
into it. Realize that the only pleasure my fear allows me to enjoy is
that of power and then try to realize how helpless a brave man like
you who spreads his pleasure between the table and the bed must be
in the face of my one, all-consuming pleasure.
"You can eat for perhaps three hours a day," The Grandfather went
on, "depending on your sexual appetite and your years, you can
spend an hour, perhaps two in play at sex. But I can spend every
waking minute of every day on my pleasure."
He smiled. "You are helpless, bound by your bravery, you fool!"
And Comstock, considering the matter wondered if The Grandfather
was right. One Achilles heel alone remained to attack. Could a
coward foresee rashness, foolhardy bravery? Or would a coward be
unable to intuitively foresee such an action, to grapple with it; not that
he, Comstock, was brave.
Only one other way occurred to Comstock in which the matter could
be tested.
Leaning his upper trunk as far forward as his bonds would allow, he
said slowly, throwing his words into the teeth of the bearded man who
faced him, "You are a liar."
It is an understatement to say that The Grandfather was surprised.
His face was absolutely blank as he repeated the word, "Liar?"
questioningly.

Comstock was aware in the lengthening silence of the immobility of

the single-eyed muzzles of the stun-guns which surrounded him. Not
since he had opened his eyes in that singular room had one of the
guns so much as twitched.
"Surely," Comstock said. "For instance, there is no one behind any of
the guns that seem to menace me."
Lean fingers were busy caressing the silken hairs of the beard that
cascaded down The Grandfather's chest. The gaunt face surrounded
by the aureole of hair was intent. "How?" he asked, "could you tell
that?"
"Because I am really a coward." Comstock said almost boldly. "And I
know that no coward could really take the chance that an involuntary
tightening of a trigger finger, caused, perhaps by a sneeze, could and
would mean death. And I know too that it takes courage of a sort to
talk about one's own cowardice. For instance, I find this that I am
saying very difficult. That little prepared speech you delivered
convinced me of only one thing. You are not afraid of anything."
The Grandfather's hand reached out to his desk and his almost too
long index finger darted out and pressed a button. Instantly the bonds
that had held Comstock immobile in the chair loosened.
The Grandfather said slowly, "Bowdler chose wisely when he
selected you as a rebel. Perhaps more wisely even than he knew."
Comstock moved his arms about in the chair, having no desire now
that the bonds were no longer holding him, to get to his feet. He was
afraid that his wobbling knees would fail to support him. Massaging
his arms where the metallic bonds had bitten deep, he waited with
some trepidation for what might happen. Whatever it was, he feared it
would be highly unpleasant.
It was.
The Grandfather rose from behind the desk and looking down at
Comstock from his not inconsiderable height of six feet ten inches,
said, "Since, as you have so truly pointed out, the secret of my
continued power is not fear, what then, is my secret?"
Comstock had devoted a great deal of cerebration to just this point,
but that did not make it any easier to say it aloud.
In the lengthening silence, The Grandfather bent down from his great
height till his gaunt, strong face was on a level with Comstock's.
"Well?"
"The secret," Comstock said, "is the exact opposite of what you
claimed."
"Ahh?" The exclamation was almost jubilant.
"Yes," Comstock hurried on, fearing that if he didn't say it in a rush he
never would get out the words, "You don't rule because you are afraid
but because there is nothing that you fear."
"Come, come," The Grandfather smiled thinly, "each man, no matter
how brave, has some secret fear. For instance fat people fear death."
The change of subject was so sudden that it thew Comstock off his
mental stride. "Fat people?" he queried.
"Surely," The Grandfather said, "the thought must have occurred to
you. Fat people are fat because they fear dying. Did you ever see a
very thin person naked?"
To think, Comstock's veering brain thought, that the day would ever
come when he'd hear The Grandfather of all people use a dirty word
like n...d!
"If you've ever seen a thin person nude, you can realize that their
skeleton is omnipresent. This, to a fat person, is detestable. They
want to hide their ever present memento mori decently. They don't
want always to be reminded of that which is hidden inside of all of us,
waiting for us.... That's why they get fat. Padding. That's all it is,
padding to hide the grisly skeleton who sits with us at every feast."
Struggling to get his attention on to this new vagary of The
Grandfather, Comstock said, "But fat people die sooner than skinny
ones."
"Certainly," The Grandfather nodded, "but what's that got to do with
it? That's reality. The statistic that obesity shortens life is hard and
true. But that reality only comes once, at the end of the line. To the fat
person the important thing to hide from is the ever-present reminder
that the day he is born he begins to die. That's the big trick they try to
employ. To forget that fact. But I digress. You were saying?"

What had he been saying? This maundering of the Grandfather,

could it be that like the Elders, The Grandfather was senile?
Comstock looked down at his own beginning paunch and wondered if
this was why the Grandfather had brought up the subject of fat, then
he said, "I was saying that the reason you rule is because you have
no fears."
"Yes. That was the subject under discussion, wasn't it?" Again The
Grandfather stroked his beard. "Now then, just how did you arrive at
that rather startling idea? Remember I don't agree with you, for as I
said, every human being fears something."
"I am sure you are right," Comstock said tensely. "I am sure that
every human being fears something ... or someone."
"I find your remarks contradictory."
"Not at all," Comstock felt a little bolder. Crossing his arms, he dared
the thunderbolts of The Grandfather's wrath. "I don't think you are a
human being, grandpa."
The silence that followed his pronouncement seemed to last for all
the years of Comstock's life.
When The Grandfather spoke, his words came as a withering shock
to Comstock.
"You are a very brave man, Comstock. The bravest this world of ours
has produced in five centuries...."
It was, after all, one thing to have an hypothesis, it was an astrobat of
a far different color to have that hypothesis substantiated. And right
from the astrobat's mouth at that!
Looking down at his hands, Comstock was incuriously aware that
they were trembling violently. He, brave? The idea was ludicrous. He
was more badly scared than he had ever been in his whole life. Fear
jumped and jolted through his body as he waited for The Grandfather
to continue.
"But," The Grandfather said, "I can see that you are on the very brink
of nervous exhaustion. I will speak to you more fully when you are fed
and rested."
Comstock was too tired to do more than pick at the food that was
provided for him in the bed-chamber to which an R.A. guided him. As
a matter of fact, seated on the edge of the bed, his head whirling, he
was barely aware of Pat's entrance. She had evidently been fed too,
for her only concern was Comstock. Going to him, she forced him to
lie down, then, as he closed his eyes blissfully at the feeling of ease
that welled up in him, she gently spooned food into his mouth till his
eyes closed completely.
She slept all that night right next to him, but so deep was his fatigue
that it was not till the following night that he awoke and by that time
Pat had been up and about for hours. She came out of the bath in a
swirl of soft cloth. Comstock felt excitement well up in him and knew
instantly that he was almost all recovered from the slings and arrows
that had assailed him.
Drawing her to him, he was very much aware of her presence this
time.
When they had finished making love she said, gently, "I almost forgot,
and it's your fault," but her smile proved that she shared the fault if it
could be called that, "The Grandfather wants to see you as soon as
you rise."
Feeling prepared to tackle legions let alone The Grandfather,
Comstock showered, shaved and dressed, whistling all the while.
"Any chance of getting some food?" He had yelled through the
pouring water so that when he finished dressing, a tray was all set up
for him.
Wolfing down the food he listened intently to what Pat had learned
during his sleep.
"And the most remarkable thing," Pat said, "is the artificial
insemination laboratory downstairs!"
"Wait a minute," Comstock said through a mouthful of food, "what's a
laboratory, what's insemination and what's artificial insemination?"
"Bowdler said that the funniest thing that happened when he was
trying to make a rebel of you, was when you thought that the Fathers
were really the fathers of all the children in the world."
"Wass so funny?" Comstock wanted to know, bread filling his mouth.
"Umm," Pat said. "I better backtrack a bit. As long as the scientists
had a hand in running our world they were able to control the birth
rate by mechanical means. But when they were killed, The
Grandfather was left with the problem of trying to keep our world from
being over-populated without using any mechanics."
Comstock was completely confused but waited patiently, shovelling
food into his empty belly while he waited for clarification.
"The first thing that occurred to The Grandfather was to try to control
completely the sex drive but ... that didn't work very well. Then he
reasoned that if the sexual stereotype of women was changed to old
women who could no longer bear children that he was then in a
position to only have the proper number of women impregnated."
All the obscenity that Pat was mouthing would, a few days ago, have
made Comstock faint, or aroused him, but it didn't even occur to him
to find it odd.
She continued, "Then as soon as women who were past their
menopause had become the love objects, The Grandfather set up a
laboratory here in headquarters where the healthiest women in the
population could come. Under hypnosis they were injected with live
sperm, and lo and behold, the population curve was back under
control again!"
Comstock was sure that what Pat was saying was important, but at
the moment all he could really think about was his curious duel the
night before with The Grandfather.
"With what little scientific gadgets were left after the last scientists
were killed, The Grandfather set up a police force, which he called
the Father's Right Arms, but not even the R.A.'s know how the radios
they use, or the stun-guns, or the automobiles that they drive work,
let alone knowing about the hypnosis that makes people see haloes
around their heads.
"Between his control of the birth rate, his police force, and the little
science at his command, he has kept our world running ... after a
fashion. But the point at which we rebels enter the picture is this."
It was a sure thing that what Pat was saying was vital to her, to him,
and to the whole world, but Comstock could not help remembering
the outrageous things he had said, and thought about The
Grandfather. What could it lead to? Why had the Grandfather called
him the most courageous man....
Pat said, "But The Grandfather is only a man and therefore has made
mistakes. He has frozen our culture at the same point for so long that
humanity is in danger of drying up and dying out."
If, Comstock thought, The Grandfather had been only a man, then all
this trouble would not have started, but there was no point in
frightening Pat, she was too happy, too bubbling over with
excitement, with the news of what a brave new world they were soon
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