"Yeah." Perfectly. "Thanks for the offer, but I think I'll hold off on the vacation for a while."

"You sure? It'd do you good."

"I'm sure." Forester got to his feet. "But thanks for your concern. I'd better get back to the control room now; the doctor might need my help."

"All right." Kincaid fixed him with a hard look. "But keep your feelings on 'simmer,' okay? For your blood pressure's sake as much as the Project's."

"Sure."

Yes, he would avoid public displays, Forester decided as he strode down the hall. But private voicing of his concern was another matter—and if Kincaid was wholly at peace with his conscience, Dr. Barenburg was almost certainly not. With a little persuasion from Forester, maybe Spoonbender Twenty-Seven wouldn't be sacrificed. At least not quite so quickly...

—

I am learning faster than I ever have before. It is frightening, but it is also exciting.

The thing—the "person"—that I touch knows so much more than I do that I know I will never fully understand him. But somehow his knowledge is... flowing... into me, just as other things flow into me through the tubes in my body.

(I had never known before what those things were or what they did. I understand only a little even now, but I will learn more.)

The person knows much about the box where the movement/flow ("current") from my box ended, but it only makes me realize there was more about it to understand than I thought. The other things ("instruments") where currents flow are perhaps less different than I expected; there is a similarity between them, somehow, though I do not yet understand it.

The is so much I do not understand!

But the strangest part of all is in the person itself. The thoughts I can touch are thoroughly mixed with feelings I can sense but not understand. Some—a very