Even in a water seal envelope, CURE took precautions to break links.

"A) What we're doing is taking traditional parts to make a new sum. An interdisciplinary approach to an old situation, the dynamics of conflict.

"B) You're trying to find out why people have conflicts with other people, correct?

"A) In a way, perhaps. You see, man as an animal has conquered the world. Conquered other animals. With ease, as a matter of fact, even though today individual man isn't sure of it. With that out of the way, man has turned to the only challenge left. Conquering other men. The history of war shows that. Well, why should some men conquer and some be conquered? What are the dynamics of that? That's our problem. If you knew, you could defeat any army in the world today with a smaller army. You might say a simple little plan to conquer the world, which I'm sure some politician or militarist would just delight in. But you see the plan is really irrelevant, because conquest is meaningless until you define conqueror aria" conquered.

"B) You have a plan to conquer the world?

"A) Oh gracious, don't tell me you're one of those. If someone told you he unlocked the atom, would you run out right away to try to use it in a light bulb or a bomb?

"B) This little plan to conquer the world? Have you achieved it?

"A) What difference does it make? It's only a minor by-product of our basic work here at XXX.

"B) Would you explain that minor function?

"A) No, not now. Only when we're ready, and then as part of the full corpus of our work. Otherwise, you can imagine the sort of people we'd have running around here, I'd close the forum first."

End of Transcript.

Remo filled the basin with water again and let the transcript go the way of the pictures, first to whiteness, then particles, then dissolve.

That answered one of the why's. A was Nils Brewster, head of the Brewster Forum which had its hands on "a little plan to conquer the world." Brewster would stop everything if he thought the military or the government was moving in. That explained why the forum had been a CURE function. Probably because better than any other group in the world, CURE could watch something or someone without anyone knowing-neither those under surveillance nor those doing the surveillance.