The Mind Pool

Chapter 17

These are the Seven Wonders of the Solar System:

• The Vulcan Nexus

• The Oort Harvester

• The Sea-farms of Europa

• The Uranian Lift System

• The Mattin First Link

• The Venus Superdome

• The Tortugas’ Tetrahedra

• The Persephone Fusion Network

• The Vault of Hyperion

• Oberon Station

• The Jupiter Bubble

• Marslake

There are a dozen items on the Seven Wonders list. That is not an error. For although everyone agrees on the first four, all the rest are a source of argument. Is the Hyperion Vault more impressive than Oberon Station, merely because it is bigger? Is the Jupiter Bubble more deserving of inclusion than the Venus Superdome, because it is far more difficult to maintain? How does technical sophistication trade off against beauty or elegance — or, for that matter, against importance to the human race? Why are visiting aliens all so taken with the Harvester, and so bored by the Sea-farms? And is it at all fair to include the metal tetrahedra of the Dry

Tortugas on such a list, since they are not the result of human efforts?

For some reason no one ever puts the reconstruction of Ceres anywhere on a catalog of marvels. Yet a minor planet, less than one thousand kilometers across, has become the most populous and influential body in the solar system. Should not that be regarded as a major miracle?

Ah, but the work was done long ago, using the same simple and ages-old technology that built the Earth-warrens and tunneled out the Gallimaufries. No one is impressed by that. And whatever the technology, the results are too familiar. Ceres is on no one’s list.

But it should be. After centuries of steady work, modern Ceres possesses less than half the mass of the original. Instead of a body of solid rock with minor intrusions of organic material, Ceres is now a sculptured set of concentric spherical shells. One within another, varying in roof height from less than four meters to nearly a kilometer, the internal chambers extend from the center of the planetoid all the way to the surface.

The original body offered less than two million square kilometers of available surface area. The honeycomb of modern Ceres provides a thousand times as much — more than ten times the original land area of Earth. And if Ceres itself does not qualify as a major wonder, then what about its transportation system? It had to be designed to carry people and goods efficiently through the three-dimensional spherical labyrinth of tunnels and chambers. It is a topological nightmare, a complex interlocking set of high-speed railcars, walkways, drop-shafts, escalators, elevators, and pressure chutes. A trip from any point to any other can be made in less than one hour — if you have the help of a computer route guide. And few people would attempt any trip without such assistance. An unguided journey, if it could be done at all, would take days.

After a few sessions of coaching by Kubo Flammarion, Tatty had reached the point where she could handle the route instructions provided by the transit computer. She always went cautiously, checking each interchange that she had to make on the way.

Now it was time to introduce Chan to the system. On their first brief visit, before they went to Horus, she had been obliged to lead him everywhere. This time he took one look at the overall plan, listened impatiently to Flammarion’s lecture on route selection strategy, and disappeared as soon as he was free to leave.

He was gone for many hours. When he came back he seemed to have been all over the planetoid, and he knew the internal layout of Ceres in far more detail than either Tatty or Kubo Flammarion. The next morning, as soon as the training session was over, he was off again.

He seemed to be avoiding Tatty. It was a surprise to her when he came wandering into her living-quarters as she was dressing before going off for dinner with Esro Mondrian.

Chan flopped into a seat in the middle of the room. Tatty looked at him warily. On Horus, before the change in Chan, she had been quite casual. She had thought of him as a child, and allowed him to see her in a nightgown and in random stages of partial undress. Now she closed her bedroom door firmly as she went in and locked it behind her.

She was gone for half an hour. Uncharacteristically, Chan stayed. She could hear him pottering about in the kitchen while she was bathing and dressing, and he was still there when she came out.

Tatty walked to the full-length mirror near the door. Chan came to stand behind her, examining her appearance closely. She was wearing a white dress, sleeveless and off the shoulder, with pale mauve accessories. The purple marks of old Paradox shots were slowly fading from her arms, a curiously apt match to the clothes that she wore.

Chan caught her eye in the mirror as she studied the sweep of her hair. “Very — elegant. Is that the right word to use?”

“It is. Thank you.”

“You look very beautiful. I thought you would rather go to hell than to dinner with Esro Mondrian.”

“All right, Chan.” She turned to look at him directly. “That does it. What do you want? I’ve got enough on my mind without you adding to my worries.”

He shook his head and said nothing. But shortly before Mondrian was due to arrive, Chan left the apartment.

Tatty continued her careful application of makeup. At one minute to seven she went to the apartment door and opened it. She smiled in satisfaction. As she had expected, Mondrian was in the corridor, walking toward the apartment. Whatever his faults, he was precisely punctual. As though they had planned it together, he was dressed in a formal uniform, a plain black that was trimmed with just the same pale mauve that she was wearing.

She studied his face. He looked better, full of suppressed energy. He bowed formally as he came closer, and kissed her hand.

“You look magnificent. The Godiva Bird will be envious.”

Tatty shook her head. “Godiva is never envious of anyone. She never needs to be.”

She stepped outside quickly and closed the door, to make it clear that she did not propose to invite Mondrian into her living-quarters. He stood for another moment looking at her, then took her arm and led her away along the corridor.

“You seem upset, Princess,” he said softly. “I hope this evening will relax you.”

Tatty did not reply at once. She thought she had caught sight of Chan, dodging away along the walkway in front of them.

“What do you think I am, Esro?” she said at last. “Some sort of Artefact, or an extra royal, that you can put into cold storage when you don’t need, and pull out when it can be useful to you?”

“I don’t like to hear you talk like that, Princess. You know I never think of you that way.”

“I don’t know it at all. Not when you leave me to rot on Horus, and never visit, and never call, and never even send a message. You say this evening will relax me — when I never know what to expect from you. You treat me worse than somebody put away in cold storage. At least they are unconscious. They don’t sit there watching their lives tick away, wasting months and months just waiting.”

She tried to shake her arm free. Mondrian would not release his hold.

“Wasted months.” He sighed. “Ah, I know. A week on Horus can seem like a year anywhere else. But do you really think the time was wasted? Chan Dalton is a full person now, instead of being a baby. That couldn’t have happened without you. Was it time wasted?”

He stopped walking. He was still holding her arm, so that she had to swing around to face him. She stared angrily into his calm eyes, and refused to answer. After a few seconds he shook his head.

“Princess, if you think that badly of me, you should never have agreed to come to dinner.”

“I thought I might get an explanation of why you deserted me out there — or at least an apology. You’ve no idea what I had to go through.”

“I know exactly what you were going through. It was terrible. But as I told you at the beginning, I couldn’t do it myself, and I needed somebody that I trusted completely — somebody I could rely on even if I couldn’t be there to keep an eye on things. Do you know why I didn’t come to see you on Horus? Because I couldn’t. I wasn’t off somewhere having fun. I was busy — busier than I’ve ever been in my whole life.”

“You found time to go galloping off to Earth. What were you doing there?”

Tatty expected any reply but the one she got. Mondrian merely shook his head.

“I can’t tell you. You’ll have to take my word for it, Princess, it was business, not pleasure. And I didn’t enjoy it one bit.”

She was starting to feel the guilt that only Esro Mondrian could create within her. Was she the unreasonable one, the cruel one, the woman who carped and whined at a desperately busy man when he could not find time to call her? She knew how hard he worked. How many times had she awakened in the early morning, to find Mondrian gone from her side? Too many to count. But he was not being unfaithful to her. He had tiptoed away in the dark into the next room. He was pacing up and down there, writing, dictating, making calls, worrying. Her rival was his work. And she had known that for years.

Mondrian reached out to touch her cheek. “Don’t be sad, Princess. I thought tonight could be a really happy occasion — the chance to see Godiva again, just like old times. Can’t we try to enjoy ourselves — just for a few hours?”

Tatty put her hand on his. They turned and began to walk again, side by side. “I’ll try. But Essy, everything is so strange here. It’s not like Earth, and I’m never relaxed. I couldn’t believe it when I heard that Godiva had left Earth to live out here with Brachis.”

Mondrian slipped his arm through hers. “You’re forgetting something — how many times you asked me to take you away from Earth with me. Maybe she did the same. It’s odd, you know, but we put Godiva onto Luther Brachis in the first place. Remember, she was supposed to bring me information?” He laughed. “Not a great idea. After the first few weeks she said she couldn’t tell me any more, and the next thing I knew she was up here with him.” He glanced sideways to Tatty. “Did I misjudge Godiva? I thought it was all money that made her tick. Now, I’m not so sure.”

“She’s a hard person to know.” For the first time, Tatty focused on her own feelings about Godiva. “I met her four years ago, at Winter Solstice. We both attended the Gilravage, the big party down on the lower levels. She gave a performance, and danced as Aphrodite. It was a sensation. After that we ran into each other all the time.”

“Where did she come from?”

“Nowhere special. Somewhere down in the Gallimaufries. I suppose she must be a commoner — at least, I never heard her say a word about her family.”

“You like her, Princess, even if she is a commoner.”

“I didn’t. The first few times we met I hated her. I think most women do, instinctively. We feel as though she can take whatever she wants, or whoever she wants, and we have no defenses. But after a while I did start to like her. She’s really a nice person.”

“The whore with the heart of gold?”

“Close to it. You see, I don’t think Godiva is bright, like me or you.” Tatty spoke quite unselfconsciously. “So she just does what she can with what she has. She happened to be born with unusual assets, and she uses them. Sex for money, I can’t see that as a big sin. Anyone who ever went with Godiva seemed to have a wonderful time. She never had a man under false pretenses, and so far as I can tell she never hurt anyone.”

“Not even when she was spying on them?” They were approaching the restaurant, and Mondrian had deliberately slowed his steps. “Her actions might have hurt Luther Brachis.”

“She stopped them before they did. Anyway, that was your action, not hers. Even when she was watching him for you, I feel sure she didn’t mean to harm him. She doesn’t think that way.”

“What happened when a man fell in love with her?”

“That’s a funny thing. No one ever did. She handled everything on a commercial basis, and she parted friends with all her men. They recommended her to others. She must have made a fortune, but she never seemed to fall into any permanent relationship. Until she met Luther Brachis.” Tatty turned to look at Mondrian. They had halted, and were standing outside the restaurant door. Over his shoulder she caught another glimpse of a tall figure, ducking back into the shadow at the side of the corridor. Was it Chan, still following?

She took another swift glance in mat direction. “Look, if you want to interrogate me about Godiva, do it after dinner. I’m hungry, and all you’ve done is plague me with questions. Why are you so interested in her?”

“Sorry.” Mondrian moved forward, and the frosted glass doors opened before them. “I’m just being nosy. You say you’ve never seen Godiva Lomberd like this before? Well, I’ve never seen Luther Brachis like it either. There’s two mysteries at once. But I promise you: not another question about Godiva.”

“There’s no need for any.” Tatty inclined her head to the left as they entered the foyer. “There she is. You can ask the real thing.”

They were exactly on time, but Luther Brachis and Godiva Lomberd must have arrived a few minutes early. Stepping out of a communication booth and heading back to the table area was a full-figured blond woman. She was in half-profile to Tatty and Esro Mondrian, and they could see that she had a dreamy and absent-minded smile on her face.

“The cat that ate the cream,” said Tatty. “Look at that walk. It shouldn’t be allowed. It’s totally natural, and Godiva never thinks twice about it — but ten billion women would kill to have it.”

Godiva Lomberd was dressed in a gown of palest yellow. It was high-necked, full-length, and full-sleeved. Not an inch of arm, legs, or shoulders was visible, but as she walked the material of the dress undulated with its own rhythm. It was impossible to ignore the exotic body within, the warm and pliant flesh that rippled beneath the decorous clothing.

Mondrian followed that movement, a puzzled look on his face. “You don’t know this, Princess, but a walk like that should be impossible in a quarter-g field. I can’t think how she does it. She moves just the same here as she did down on Earth. And she looks exactly the same, too.”

“She probably always will. She certainly hasn’t aged a day since I first met her. Remember what I told you, before I ever introduced you? It’s true, isn’t it?”

“You said that nobody could watch the Godiva Bird walk, without being aware that she was naked underneath her clothes. I laughed at you. But you were right.”

They had not called out to Godiva, but simply followed her back towards their table. It was located in a dim-lit area at the rear of the restaurant, a quiet quarter reserved for small, intimate parties who wanted discreet service and no public attention. None of the other tables was occupied. Luther Brachis sat alone, examining a menu. As they reached the table he stood up and greeted Tatty with an odd formality.

She had not seen him since they were all on Earth together, and she was astonished by the change in him. He was still in superb physical condition, but his face had lost the severe and brooding look. He was more cheerful and animated, he had lost five to ten kilos, and his eyes glowed with health and physical well-being.

He was studying Tatty just as seriously. “Congratulations, Princess Tatiana. It is an unusually strong person who can ever break the Paradox addiction.”

“You never break the addiction, Commander. You only stop taking the injections.”

For, let us hope, the rest of your life.” Brachis helped Tatty to her seat. “I am not sure, Princess Tatiana, that I ought to have dinner with you, even though Commander Mondrian particularly requested it. I understand that it is thanks to you that I have lost a wager. I will be handing over a surveillance system to the Commander.” He sat down, and looked across the table at Godiva. “What do you think, my dear? Should I blame the Princess for her success with Chan Dalton?”

Godiva smiled, slow and dreamy. “I could never be annoyed with the Princess, or with Commander Mondrian. They are the people who introduced me to you.”

She gazed lovingly across the table at Brachis. Her mouth was wide and full-lipped, in a pink-cheeked oval face that was slightly too plump, and the wide-set blue eyes wore their usual trusting and contented expression.

An analysis of Godiva’s individual features would suggest no exceptional beauty. Her chin was a fraction too long, her nose slightly bobbed and asymmetrical, her forehead a shade too high. But the whole was somehow much greater than the sum of the parts. The totality of Godiva, face and figure, was stunning. She arrested the eye, so that in a crowded room she inevitably became the center of attention.

Brachis turned to Mondrian. “You see my problem. If I express annoyance with Princess Tatiana, Godiva will interpret it as a lack of esteem for her. I can’t afford to have that.” He gestured to the other man to sit down opposite Tatty, but Mondrian remained on his feet.

“In a moment.” He turned to Tatty and Godiva. “I promised everyone that this evening would not be business, and now I am breaking my promise. Could you give us just a few minutes for private security talk? Then I give you my word that will be the last business discussion tonight.

Godiva merely smiled and said nothing. Tatty at once got to her feet. “Come on, Goddy. You don’t want to hear their boring business. You can show me around this place.

She sounded cheerful enough. Mondrian knew better. He was frowning when he sat down opposite Luther Brachis.

“You’re in the dog house, Commander,” said Brachis. “With both of them. It was supposed to be dinner tonight, and no work. I agreed only on that basis.”

“I know. This is new, it’s urgent, and we can handle it in two minutes if you’ll give me a straight reply to one question: Have you been getting a lot of trouble recently from Dougal MacDougal?”

“I have.” Luther Brachis’ expression became murderous. “Constant interference. I can’t do one thing now without him sticking his big nose in. And he’s the Stellar Ambassador, so I can’t tell him to go away. That man’s a total bonehead.”

“We’ve not reached the difficult part yet. If he’s like that now, how will he be when the Anabasis begins to tangle with the Morgan Construct?”

“Hysterical.”

“So what’s the answer?”

“No answer — unless you’ve got one.”

Mondrian nodded. “I do. We have to get him out of the way, so he can’t be always second-guessing us.”

Brachis regarded him skeptically. “Easy to say. But how do you do it? He’s certainly immune to hints. You’d have to kill him to get rid of him.”

“It might come to that — but not yet. I know a better way. Dougal MacDougal would stay out of the way if the Stellar Ambassadors told him to. You know how he grovels to them.

“He does. But dictating to the Stellar Ambassadors is harder than controlling MacDougal. They won’t get him out of our hair, just because we’d like them to.”

“They might.” Mondrian lowered his voice. “I’ve got clout now with the Pipe-Rillas. I can get them to suggest something to the Angels and the Tinkers: Our complete independence from MacDougal in operating the Anabasis.”

“I d give a lot to get rid of him. But what’s the other half? Pipe-Rillas don’t operate from charity, any more than you do. What do they want in return?’

“Something I can’t give them alone. That’s why we’re talking now. The Pipe-Rillas have made it very clear what they’re after. They want the secret plans for human expansion beyond the Stellar Group.”

“The what?” Brachis snorted in disgust. “Secret expansion plans? There’s no such thing — or if there is, no one bothered to tell me.”

“I know. And you know. But the Pipe-Rillas don’t believe that. They think we have plans to expand the Perimeter without telling them, and are keeping our schemes secret. You have to remember the way they think of humans. In their eyes we’re madmen — aggressive, rash, and dangerous.”

“And they’re not far off the truth, for some of us.” Brachis laughed. “Oh, we can be dangerous enough. But how do we give them secret expansion plans, when we don’t have any?”

“We make them up — you and me. Between us we have shared security responsibility from Sol to the Perimeter. We can produce something that’s consistent and plausible.”

“What if we can? Nobody believes there’s any such plans.”

“Not now they don’t. But we can drop hints in a few places, suggesting they exist. For a start, you could plant it around MacDougal’s office. That place leaks information out faster than it goes in. When rumors get back to the Pipe-Rillas, it will confirm their ideas. And then after a while we give them the plans themselves.”

“How?”

“You leave that to me. I have a delivery system already in place. They’ll accept what I give them.”

“The Pipe-Rillas think you’re a traitor?”

“That concept is not in their vocabulary. In their view, I will be allowing the better side of my nature to triumph over natural human wickedness. They don’t seem to understand cheating.”

“But I do. And so do you.” Luther Brachis leaned across the table. “How do I know this whole thing isn’t just some game of yours, setting me up for something?”

“I realize I’ve got to prove that to you. I will.” Mondrian motioned slightly with his head. “Later. For now, it’s a truce. Here come Tatiana and Godiva.”

The two woman had appeared in the doorway and were threading their way through the tables. A tall waiter was in front or them, carrying a broad covered dish. He placed the silver tureen between Brachis and Mondrian and straightened up.

“With the compliments of the management,” he said stiffly. “I will return shortly to take your order.” He hurried away, bowing his head deferentially to Godiva and Tatty as he passed them.

“That’s peculiar,” said Brachis. “I’ve been here a dozen times, and I’ve never before had free appetizers.”

He reached out and took hold of the cover, lifting it from the dish. As he did so the fire opal at Mondrian’s collar changed color. It pulsed with a vivid green light, and a high-pitched whine came from it.

“Drop that!” Mondrian leaped to his feet, glanced around him, and grabbed the tureen off the table. He hurled it away to his left. “Get down, all of you!”

He grabbed the end of the table and tilted it upwards so that it served as a shield. At the same moment Luther Brachis dived at Tatty and Godiva, gathering one in each arm and knocking them off their feet. He dropped on top of them.

There was a hollow, deep whomp and a bright flash of white light. The table that Mondrian was holding flew violently backwards, smashing into him and throwing him down on top of Brachis. A sound like violent hail rattled on the other side of the table. After it came a sudden and total silence.

Tatty found herself lying on her right side, ears ringing. Sharp pain tingled and stung all the way along her left arm. Brachis and Mondrian were on top of her, making it impossible to move. As she tried to wriggle out from under them she heard a curse and a pained grunt from above.

“Ahggh! Esro, for God’s sake get your head out of my guts. Esro?”

The weight on top of her rolled away. Tatty could move to one side, and finally crawl free. She stood up, dizzy and aware of the dull, padded feeling inside her skull.

She peered around her. The table, upside down, showed a cracked, splintered surface. The plastic was pocked and cratered, with metal splinters embedded all over its surface. Off to the right the whole wall showed a similar pattern of shrapnel impact. Godiva stood at the other side of the table. She looked astonished, but unharmed.

“Help me.” Tatty nodded to Godiva to take hold of the other end of the overturned table. Between them they lifted it off the two men. Mondrian was unconscious. Tatty dropped to her knees, looking first at his face and then feeling for his pulse. It was slow and steady. She noticed in a detached way that her own left arm was punctured and bleeding and marked by scores of metal fragments.

Luther Brachis had finally made it to his feet. He was holding his head in his hands and staring vacantly around him. His right shoulder and neck were riddled with metal fragments and bleeding profusely. The restaurant staff had finally appeared and stood looking helplessly on.

“Medical care,” said Brachis gruffly. “Did anyone send for help?”

One of the waiters nodded.

“All right, then.” Brachis motioned to Esro Mondrian. “Take him outside. I don’t want him in here a second longer than he has to be.”

“But moving him — ” began Tatty.

“He’ll live, but we have to get him to a hospital. Don’t worry, Princess Tatiana, I’ll see to that. And well get you patched up, too. And then” — Brachis shivered, and his voice dropped to a whisper — “and then I’ll get after the bastard who did this.”

He shook his head as though to clear it, reached for his shoulder, and gasped. He tilted, straightened, and started a slow crumpling. Tatty and Godiva reached out for him together. They lowered him gently to the floor. Their hands came away from his uniform covered with fresh bright blood.

Tatty wiped her palms absently on the front and side of her white dress. As she did so she suddenly thought of Chan. Where was he, what had he been doing?

A lot of things were beginning to make sense. The picture of Mondrian, back on Horus — it had been the spur that drove Chan towards intelligence. She had used it that way on purpose, to relieve her own feelings. And then the way that Chan had looked at Mondrian’s image when he came onto the display screen to ask her to go to dinner with him.

She had created Chan’s feeling deliberately, a focused and intense hatred. Was this the terrible result?

Please God, no.

But Tatty felt sure that she was right. It was her fault, she was the one who had caused this carnage. She dropped to her knees, cradled Esro Mondrian in her arms, and hid her face against his dark tunic.

First there had been that sudden, terrible moment when the whole world rushed in on him. It had created nausea, pain, and disorientation. At the time Chan would have said that nothing could ever be worse than those final few minutes in the Tolkov Stimulator. And it could never happen again. Self-awareness and loss of innocence occur at a unique moment in a life.

But there are degrees of torture, refinements of pain beyond the simple and the immediate. A more complex animal can admit more subtle agonies. Those came later, and more gradually.

Even now, when he could speak perfectly well, Chan could not put his suffering into words. All he had was analogy. It was as though the illumination level of the world around him had been increasing, hour by hour and day by day. The light had been constant and dim for many years, until the Tolkov Stimulator produced that first flood of light. Ever after that the radiance level had risen, little by little. More and more detail became visible — and the brightness reached the point of discomfort, and far beyond.

Occasionally a single event would produce a flare, a quantum change in the brightness around him. The sight of Esro Mondrian, earlier in the day, had been a supernova. It brought in a torrent of new sensation. He knew Mondrian — but how, and when, and where?

Chan brooded on the question. Mondrian’s drawn, aristocratic features were utterly familiar, more familiar to Chan than his own face. The memory was there in his brain, it had to be — but he was denied access. Thinking about it only made his mind regress along an endless loop.

Finally Chan had wandered over to Tatty’s apartment. He had no particular reason for going there, no explicit goal in mind, but he wanted to talk to her. Maybe she could help him; if not, she might be able to comfort him.

It was a shock to find Tatty preoccupied with her own affairs, rather than being wholly devoted to Chan’s. He found her cold, remote, and unsympathetic. She was obviously far off on her own mental journey, and she did not want company.

When she went into the bedroom it was a clear hint for Chan to leave. He didn’t. Instead he hung around the apartment, convinced that he had nowhere else to go.

Finally Tatty had come out again, dressed for her dinner appointment. She had checked her appearance in the full-length mirror on the living-room wall. And it was then that Chan, looking over her shoulder and also seeing his own reflection, became disoriented and faint. For the first time in his life he experienced the most intense form of self-awareness. That tall, blond figure staring back at him with eyes of sapphire blue was him — Chancellor Vercingetorix Dalton, a unique assembly of thought, emotions and memories, housed in a single and familiar frame. There he was. There was his identity.

Chan felt like screaming aloud with revelation. But that was what children did. Instead he left the apartment — quickly, so that the great flood of thoughts would not be lost or diverted by conversation with others. In the corridor he saw the approaching figure of Esro Mondrian. That had set up its own resonance within him, adding to the internal storm.

Chan did not want to speak — to anyone. He hid until Mondrian had passed by and gone to Tatty’s door, and then he watched from the shadows. When the pair left he followed them along the walkway. He had no objective, beyond an unarticulated urge to keep both of them within his sight.

At the restaurant Chan was greeted by a waiter who politely barred his way. Did Chan have a reservation?

Chan shook his head dumbly and retreated. He wandered away along the corridor. His head was throbbing, stabs of pain shooting across his eyes. At each intersection he made a random choice of direction. Up, down, east, west, north, south, on through the convoluted interior paths of Ceres.

At last, quite by accident, he found that he had traveled all the way to the surface chambers. Great transparent viewports opened out on to the jumble of ships, gantries, landing towers, and antennae that covered the outer levels of the giant asteroid. Ceres was the power center of the solar system, and as such it had a surface that bustled with activity twenty-four hours a day.

Beyond that surface stood the quiet stars. Chan settled down to stare at them.

What was he? A month ago, anyone could have answered that question: he was a moron. A misfit, a folly of nature, the brain of an infant in the body of a grown man. Just a few days ago, Chan had asked Kubo Flammarion a question. Before the Stimulator, his brain had not developed. Chan understood that — but why had it not developed? Had the cause been chemical, physiological, psychological, or what?

Flammarion had shook his head. He had no idea; but he would ask the experts.

In a few hours he was back. They did not know the answer, either. Chan had always possessed what appeared to be a perfectly normal brain; and now, after the treatment, Chan had a normal brain — or one that was rather better than normal, according to the latest tests. But as to why — Flammarion’s experts had offered nothing. Why was Einstein, why was Darwin, why was Mozart, all with brains no difference in appearance from yours or mine?

Kubo Flammarion was content with that answer. He did not realize how totally unsatisfying it was to Chan. For if no one could explain the source of his earlier abnormality, what assurance was there that Chan would not regress? And in how many other ways, less easy to measure, might he still be abnormal?

How would he even know he was abnormal? Maybe he was still a total misfit, still a freak of nature — just a rather smarter one.

Without even realizing it, Chan was exploring his own sanity and normality. The process was natural for all maturing humans above a certain intelligence. But Chan did not know that — and he was doing it on an accelerated time scale, struggling to make in weeks the adjustments of outlook that normally take years. He had no time to examine the libraries or talk to older friends, to cull from their millions of pages and ten thousand years of shared human experience the reassurances he needed.

So Chan stared at the stars, pondered, and could find no acceptable answers. He was overwhelmed by uncertainty and sorrow and pain.

The easiest way to avoid that pain was to retreat from it, to hide in mindlessness. He gazed far out, looking beyond the starscape for the edge of the universe. He was exhausted, and after a few more minutes his eyes closed.

Seven hours later he awoke in his own bed. He was still exhausted and empty-headed, and he could not say where he had been or what he had done. His last memory was of Tatty, staring with her in the mirror at the reflection of her evening gown.

Chan did not have the energy or resolve to rise from his bed. He was still there when Tatty came to him. She was wearing the same white dress, stained now with dried blood.

She was not sure, but she had to talk to Chan. He looked at her pellet-riddled arm and listened in horror. He was ready to believe her worst worries and suspicions. It was just as he had feared. He was a monster. Before Tatty even finished talking, Chan had decided what he must do.