"What is the Decapitation Draft?" Downey could not help breaking out.
The Councillor's fist came down angrily, pounding at the vacant air.
"Do not think to save your head," he shrilled, "by pretending ignorance of one of our most honored customs! As I was about to say, unless you can satisfactorily show where you come from, you will be sent to the body-testing rooms; and if you pass, as I believe you will, judging from your sturdy-looking frame, you will be put on the list for early decapitation. Such is the law of Nuamerica, of which I am the local administrator."
Downey gasped. Could it be that every one in the twenty-third century was mad?
"Well, are you going to speak or not?" piped the Councillor, leaning down from his throne until Downey thought he was about to fall off. "I'm giving you your chance to prove where you come from!"
As simply as he could, Downey attempted to state the facts of his origin; although he felt convinced that there would be little gain in arguing with a lunatic. And, as he foresaw, his words evoked only merriment. "Truly, stranger," said the chief tormentor, after he, the courtiers and the guards had all rocked back and forth with laughter, "you have little imagination, if you cannot think of a better story! So you were born in the year 1915! That is, 1915 by the old reckoning! Why, that would make you older than I! And I'm the most elderly man in this district, even though I won't celebrate my two hundred and seventy-fifth birthday till next year!"
Downey stared, and said nothing, more convinced than ever of the Councillor's madness.
"Of course, if it were not for you young man," the leader went on, meditatively, "I would have been in my grave two centuries ago. It is you who supply us with the robust young bodies to keep our old heads alive. I well remember how, just two hundred and nine years ago, I was pronounced at the point of death from heart disease--and the transfusion to a young body was performed barely in the nick of time. Since then, I've had the operation repeated once every thirty years--which accounts for my present good health."
From amid these rambling phrases, Downey had begun to catch a gleam of horrible meaning. Was the old man really mad after all? Or had he and his followers been kept alive through some dread process of grafting new bodies on to old heads?
