Winslow says he asked for work, any kind of work. The man said he could do anything, fix anything. Do you understand what that means?”

“No,” Dixon said. “What does it mean?”

“Can any of us fix anything? No. None of us can do that. We’re specialized. Each of us has his own line, his own work. I understand my work, you understand yours. The tendency in evolution is toward greater and greater specialization. Man’s society is an ecology that forces adaptation to it. Continual complexity makes it impossible for any of us to know anything outside our own personal field—I can’t follow the work of the man sitting at the next desk over from me. Too much knowledge has piled up in each field. And there’s too many fields.

“This man is different. He can fix anything, do anything. He doesn’t work with knowledge, with science—the classified accumulation of facts. He knows nothing. It’s not in his head, a form of learning. He works by intuition—his power is in his hands, not his head. Jack-of-all-trades. His hands! Like a painter, an artist. In his hands—and he cuts across our lives like a knife-blade.”

“And the other problem?”

“The other problem is that this man, this variable man, has escaped into the Albertine Mountain range. Now we’ll have one hell of a time finding him. He’s clever—in a strange kind of way. Like some sort of animal. He’s going to be hard to catch.”

Reinhart sent Dixon out. After a moment he gathered up the handful of reports on his desk and carried them up to the SRB room. The SRB room was closed up, sealed off by a ring of armed Security police. Standing angrily before the ring of police was Peter Sherikov, his beard waggling angrily, his immense hands on his hips.

“What’s going on?” Sherikov demanded. “Why can’t I go in and peep at the odds?”

“Sorry.” Reinhart cleared the police aside. “Come inside with me. I’ll explain.” The doors opened for them and they entered. Behind them the doors shut and the ring of police formed outside. “What brings you away from your lab?” Reinhart asked.

Sherikov shrugged. “Several things. I wanted to see you. I called you on the vidphone and they said you weren’t available. I thought maybe something had happened. What’s up?”

“I’ll tell you in a few minutes.” Reinhart called Kaplan over. “Here are some new items. Feed them in right away. I want to 

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