"I'd often heard him speak of you—that's one of the reasons I wanted to meet you. He's responsible for encouraging me to go ahead with my plans, despite my handicap."
Render stared at her. She was wearing a dark green dress which appeared to be made of velvet. About three inches to the left of the bodice was a pin which might have been gold. It displayed a red stone which could have been a ruby, around which the outline of a goblet was cast. Or was it really two profiles that were outlines, staring through the stone at one another? It seemed vaguely familiar to him, but
he could not place it at the moment. It glittered expensively in the dim light.
Render accepted his drink from the waiter.
"I want to become a neuroparticipant therapist," she told him.
And if she had possessed vision Render would have thought she was staring at him, hoping for some response in his expression. He could not quite calculate what she wanted him to say.
"I commend your choice," he said, "and I respect your ambition." He tried to put his smile into his voice. "It is not an easy thing, of course, not all of the requirements being academic ones."
"I know," she said. "But then, I have been blind since birth and it was not an easy thing to come this far."
"Since birth?" he repeated. "I thought you might have lost your sight recently. You did your undergrad work then, and went on through med school without eyes... That's— rather impressive."
"Thank you," she said, "but it isn't. Not really. I heard about the first neuroparticipants—Bartelmetz and the rest-when I was a child, and I decided then that I wanted to be one. My life ever since had been governed by that desire."
"What did you do in the labs?" he inquired. "—Not being able to see a specimen, look through a microscope... ? Or all that reading?"
"I hired people to read my assignments to me.