said. "If it was inevitable."

"An excellent point," the Investigator said warmly. "But in this instance irrelevant, of course. Aren't you willing to admit that freedom is good? That it has always been, in different guises, man's real dream? That an Organization which makes this possible for all men is the true fulfillment of that ageless dream?"

The Investigator's eyes glinted with a zealot's fever. He was so close to Freeman status, Hendley thought, so close to the goal. How could he believe anything which might stain or vitiate that prospect?

"Consider the record of history," the gray-haired man said, his broad hand emphatically slapping the smooth white top of his desk. "The development of the Eastern and Western Organizations was a natural evolution. The very fact that in the end each arrived at the same concept of society's structure and purpose is proof enough! Why should the two forms of Organization remain separate when the unalterable pressure of man's own desires had made them finally the same in everything but name? Why shouldn't they merge into one great and final Organization, one supreme affirmation of man's right to freedom!"

Hendley was silent. The truth was that he had no clearly formulated answers. Even in his own mind he was divided. The lure of freedom could not be shaken off. And he could not argue with the fact that, along their separate routes over the years, East and West had arrived at the same social and economic structure, the same ordered relationship between the individual and the mass of society, the same ultimate goal of freedom. War between the two had ended not because weapons and opportunities ceased to exist, but because, during the century of recovery after the great atomic war which had left both societies weak and vast areas of the earth barren and uninhabitable, differences had gradually eroded until they ceased to be a source of conflict.

"How much do you really know of our history?" the Investigator demanded. "How much do you know, for instance, about the tax debt and how it all began?"

"Not very much," Hendley admitted. "The general facts—"

"But you must go beyond the general facts, TRH-247!" the Investigator declaimed. "Consider the brilliance of that single concept—the very foundation of the Organization as we know it today!"

With animation the gray-haired man launched into a discourse on the stroke of genius which had 

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