They came from every part of the earth to work at the World Planning Center or to look at it, from Thailand, Argentina, Ghana, China, Ireland, Tasmania, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Honduras, Lichtenstein. But they all wore the same clothes, trousers, tunic, raincape; and underneath the clothes they were all the same color. They were gray.
Dr. Haber had been delighted when that happened. It had been last Saturday, their first session in a week. He had stared at himself in the washroom mirror for five minutes, chuckling and admiring; he had stared at Orr the same way. "That time you did it the economical way for once, George! By God, I believe your brain's beginning to cooperate with me! You know what I suggested you dream--eh?"
For, these days, Haber did talk freely and fully to Orr about what he was doing and hoped to do with Orr's dreams. Not that it helped much.
Orr had looked down at his own pale-gray hands, with their short gray nails. "I suppose that you suggested that there be no more color problems. No question of race."
"Precisely. And of course I was envisaging a political and ethical solution. Instead of which, your primary thinking processes took the usual short cut, which usually turns out to be a short circuit, but this time they went to the root. Made the change biological and absolute. There never has been a racial problem! You and I are the only two men on earth, George, who know that there ever was a racial problem!
