room. "Dr. Minton--"

The door opened. A brisk young man, carrying a small valise, appeared.

"All set downstairs," he said.

"Good," the Ron-body answered. "Then get it over with."

Ron struggled for a moment in the young man's grip, but he found it iron.

"Please, Ron." Doctor Minton's eyes were moist. "Don't make any trouble. Please...."

The laboratory was in the basement of the building, an antiseptic room with the acrid odor of chemicals. Dr. Luther prepared something in a hypodermic syringe, while Dr. Minton strapped his former patient onto a padded examining table.

"Doctor ..." Ron whispered.

"Hush, Ron. It's all right...."

"But what is all this? Who am I?"

The doctor frowned. "You're Ronald Carver. You're the same Ronald Carver you always were. But you have made an exchange of bodies. That is all."

"But why? How?"

"I don't really know. God help us. It was his project from start to finish--that thing upstairs."

"Who is he?"

"A phenomenon. A mutation. A freak. A genius. A god. I can't explain him. He was born twelve years ago, to normal parents in the middle west. He was a recognized prodigy at the age of six months, a mathematical wizard at one, a scientific genius at three.... You've heard of this kind of thing, Ron. Once a generation, something like this. And once a millennium--a horror like this one."

"I don't understand! What is Project Scholar?"

"He is. All by himself. The government has taken charge of his abilities, at least for the time being." He snorted. "He's already done things I wouldn't have believed possible in five thousand years of evolution. And yet he is still only twelve years old...."

"Only twelve?" Ron squirmed in the straps. "Doctor! This body--"

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