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this seems to be—uh—an optical illusion, so to speak. For one thing, the Acts don’t have enough teeth. One can apply for all kinds of postponements, exemptions, stays of execution, and of course companies which would have their profits shaved by complying with the new regulations use every possible means to evade them. And the other point is that we aren’t being as watchful as we used to be. There was a brief flurry of anxiety a few years ago, and the Environment Acts were introduced, as you said, and ever since then we’ve been sitting back assuming the situation was being taken care of, although in fact it isn’t.
    Page: I see. Now what do you say to people who maintain that publicizing these allegations of yours is—well, not in the best interests of this country?
    Quarrey: You don’t serve your country by sweeping unpleasant facts under the carpet. We’re not exactly the most popular nation in the world right now, and my view is that we ought to put a stop right away to anything that’s apt to make us even less well liked.
    Page: I guess there could be something in that. Well, thanks for coming and talking to us, Lucas. Now, right after this next break for station identification...

    IN SPITE OF HAVING CHARITY A MAN LIKE SOUNDING BRASS
    “I guess the nearest analogy would be with cheese,” said Mr. Bamberly. To show he was paying attention Hugh Pettingill gave a nod. He was twenty, dark-haired, brown-eyed, with a permanently bad-tempered set to his face—pouting mouth, narrowed eyes, prematurely creased forehead. That had been stamped on him during the bad years from fourteen to nineteen. Allegedly this was the first of many good years he was currently living through, and he was fair-minded enough to expose himself to the possibility of being convinced.
    This had started with an argument concerning his future. During it he had said something to the effect that the rich industrial countries were ruining the planet, and he was determined never to have anything to do with commerce, or technology, or the armed forces for which Mr. Bamberley retained an archaic admiration. Whereupon: this instruction, too firmly phrased to be termed an invitation, to go on a guided tour of the hydroponics plant and find out how constructively technology might be applied.
    “I don’t see why we shouldn’t improve on nature!” Mr. Bamberley had chuckled.
    Hugh had kept his counter to himself: “So what has to happen before you realize you haven’t?”
    Portly, but muscular, Mr. Bamberley strode along the steel walkway that spined the roof of the factory, his arms shooting to left and right as he indicated the various stages through which the hydroponically-grown cassava they started with had to pass before it emerged as the end product, “Nutripon.” There was a vaguely yeasty smell under the huge semi-transparent dome, as though a baker’s shop had been taken over by oil technicians.
    And in some senses that was an apt comparison. The Bamberley fortune had been made in oil, though that was two generations back and neither this Mr. Bamberley—whose Christian name was Jacob but who preferred to be called Jack—nor his younger brother Roland had ever stumped around in the slush below a derrick. The fortune had long ago grown to the point where it was not only self-supporting but capable of fission, like an amoeba. Roland’s portion was his own, greedily clung to, and destined to descend to his only son Hector (whom Hugh regarded on the strength of their sole meeting as a cotton-wool-wrapped snob ... but that couldn’t be his fault at fifteen, must be his father’s); Jacob had vested his in the Bamberley Trust Corporation twenty years ago, since when it had multiplied cancerously.
    Hugh had no idea how many people were involved in cultivating the funds of the Trust, since he had never been to the New York office where its tenders hung out, but he pictured a blurred group of several hundred pruning, manuring, watering.