long, seemingly endless curve into the depths of the gigantic plastic bowl. Roland stepped into the shaft. Dwarfed, Roland walked slowly across the gleaming expanse of floor toward the nakedly exposed rows of electronic brain cases. A few blows, a pull or two, and the circuit would be shattered. His sandals rustled softly.

But he hesitated.

There was a guilty feeling and a lost loneliness. Who was he, really? Taken in infancy from some birth center by the Underground. Conditioned precisely as they desired—a completely selective mentality. Had never had a name. But a label someone pulled out of a hat to satisfy a beautiful woman’s peculiar liking for nicknames. The amnesiac’s isolated fear of what he didn’t know and couldn’t remember, mustn’t remember, but what he must know—

But Frances waited for him back in the secret apartment. Warmth would replace a cold emptiness. Meaning and purpose would fill the lonely places in his heart.

He went forward—

Later, Roland paused outside their apartment door. He had come back. Frances had brought him back. World Brain was finished. He knew that. He could remember the subtle changes beginning to occur even as he came back through Worldcity. Soon the whole intricate structure would collapse.

The hall was still. He looked at the back of his hand against the wall. It shook a little. And the coldness came back. It crept into his muscles from his extremities, his hands and feet, and worked inward. He wondered why the loneliness should return here. There was a steady comfort, though, in knowing that behind that panel, Frances was waiting with her gigglings and her soft shoulders and promising eyes.

The photoelectric banks opened the panel and closed it behind him.

They were standing there together, looking at him. He stumbled back against the flat panel, resting his back against it. Something had happened to them. They made him feel alien and afraid. They—

And then Berti said, “Odd. It has come back. What went wrong with our charts, I wonder?”

Her voice wasn’t emotional now. It had never been, he knew that. Her giggling. The smile, the wet eyes. False. “Our calculations couldn’t have been off very much. It’ll die soon.”

Roland edged toward her. “Frances,” he said weakly. “Frances, you said—‘it’. You mean me? 

 Prev. P 13/16 next