"You think he could be losing it entirely?" Kincaid asked, looking worried.

Barenburg shrugged. "I can't tell without further tests." He turned to Forester. "Ted, you said you saw his eyes open at one point. Did they seem to be focused on anything?"

It was Forester's turn to shrug. "I don't know. With the slant and epicanthic folds it's awfully hard to tell."

"Did they move around at all, or just look straight ahead?"

"Moved; I specifically remember him looking left at one point."

"Hmm." Barenburg looked thoughtful... and a little apprehensive.

Kincaid noticed it. "What do you think it means?"

"Well... it sounds very much like he's being distracted from his job."

"That's impossible," Kincaid said, a hair too quickly. "The Spoonbenders couldn't muster an IQ of 10 among them. What could possibly hold their attention when their every instinct is to yank neutrons out of radioactive nuclei?"

"The coded RNA is not as strong as an instinct," Barenburg pointed out. "And as for distractions, who knows? It's not like Spoonbender Twenty-Seven is completely confined to Cubicle Twenty-Seven. With telekinetic touch-and-grab he can reach into the next cubicle or examine the conveyer that moves the nuclear waste around. True, he's not strong enough to actually do much, but who knows how far his sense can reach?"

Kincaid glanced sideways at Forester. "Even if I grant you all that, there's still the low IQ and the lower attention span."

"Maybe his IQ's been improved," Forester suggested.

This time they both looked at him. "How?" Kincaid asked.

"A lot of highly radioactive material has passed over him the last eighteen months," Forester said. "I know there's a lead wall between it and the Spoonbenders, but isn't it possible the radiation that got through altered his brain somehow?"

"And made him smarter?" Kincaid shook his head. "No way."