Laurace paused before continuing: “I can’t explain it much better than that, today. You’ll learn. Truth to tell, I’m learning too. I never laid out any grand scheme, I fumbled my way forward, and still do. Maybe this will crash to ruin, or decay. But maybe—I can’t foresee. Immortal leadership ought to make an important difference, but how to use it, I’m not yet sure. About all that I feel reasonably sure of is that we have to keep ourselves from being noticeable.”
“Can you?”
“We can try. ‘We’ includes you, I trust.” Laurace lifted her wine glass. “Here’s to tomorrow.”
Clara joined in the toast but remained troubled. “What are your plans for … for the near future?”
“Considerable,” Laurace answered. “And you can do a great deal. You save your money, right? Well, we, the society, we’re stretched thin. We badly need operating capital. Opportunities go begging. For instance, since the crash, stocks are at rock-bottom prices.”
“Because we’ve got a depression. I thought you said you left the market.”
Laurace laughed. “If I’d foreseen exactly what would happen two years ago October, I’d have sold short at the right point and now own Wall Street. But I am not a sorceress—nor do I claim to be—and I’ve learned to play cautious. That doesn’t mean timid or unthinking. Look, depressions don’t last forever. People will always want homes, cars, a thousand different good, solid things; and sooner or later, they’ll again be able to buy them. It may take fifty years to collect our profit, but immortals can wait.”
“I see.” Clara’s features came aglow. “Okay. With that to look forward to, I can stand another fifty years in the life.”
“You needn’t. Times are changing.”
“What men want won’t change.”
“No, though the laws may. No matter. Clara, shake free of that sordidness as fast as you can unload.”
“What for? What else can I do? I don’t know anything except—“ With forlorn determination: “I will not turn into a parasite on you. I won’t.”
“Oh, no,” Laurace answered. “We take no parasites in. Quite aside from the money you contribute, you’ll earn your keep. You may not appreciate it yet, but you have fourteen hundred years of experience behind you, with the insight, the intuition, that must have brought. Yours may well be a bitter wisdom, but we need it.”
“What for?”
“For the building of our strength.”
“Huh? Wait, you said—”
“I said I do not intend to overthrow the government, take over the country, anything stupid and ephemeral like that,” Laurace declared. “My aim is the exact opposite. I want to build something so strong that with it we can say ‘No’ to the slavers, the lynch mobs, and the lords of state.
“Men seized my father, bore him away in chains, and sold him. They hounded me when I escaped, and would have caught me if other men had not broken their law. A few years ago, they shot down the man I loved, for nothing worse than providing a pleasure they said nobody must have. At that, he was lucky. He might have died earner, in their damned useless war. I £ould go on, but why? You could tell more, as much longer as you’ve lived.
“What’s brought this death and misery, but that men have had power over other men?
“Don’t mistake me. I am not an anarchist. Human beings are so made that the few will always rule the many. Sometimes they mean well—in spite of everything, I believe the founders of the United States did—but that doesn’t long outlive them.
“The only partial security we who want to lead our own lives will ever have, we must create from within us. Oneness. Ongoing resolution. The means to live independent of the overlords. Only by guiding the poor and helpless toward this can we immortals win it for ourselves.
“Are you with me?”