As I once heard Andrew—that’s my disappearing brother—say: ‘Life consist in accommodating oneself to the Universe.’ Although the rest of our family h… - Robert A. Heinlein

I didn’t want him dead. Unless you are on a battlefield or in a hospital, a corpse is an embarrassment, hard to explain. The management was bound to be stuffy about it.

McIlvaine continued, “Take the amoeba—a more basic, and much more successful life form than ours. The motivational psychology of the amoeba—”
I switched off my ears; free speech gives a man the right to talk about the “psychology” of an amoeba, but I don’t have to listen.

I was polishing a brandy snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in. I noted the time — 10: 17 P.M. zone five, or eastern time, November 7th, 1970. Temporal agents always notice time and date; we must. The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty-five years old, no taller than I am, childish features and a touchy temper. I didn't like his looks — I never had — but he was a lad I was here to recruit, he was my boy. I gave him my best barkeep's smile.