Avelin sat on the lab stool, his head bowed. When Fabbre was done, he nodded. After a while, he said, "But I have to ask you if it’s realistic to separate the circumstances, as you put it, from the work."

"About as realistic as separating the body from the mind," Fabbre said. He stretched again and reseated himself at the computer. "I want to get this series in," he said, and his hands went to the keyboard and his gaze to the notes he was copying. After five or six minutes, he started the printer and spoke without turning. "You’re serious, Givan? You think it’s coming apart?"

"Yes. I think the experiment is over." The printer scraped and screeched, and they raised their voices to be heard.

"Here, you mean."

"Here and everywhere. They know it, down at Roukh Square. Go down there. You’ll see. There could be such jubilation only at the death of a tyrant or the failure of a great hope."

"Or both."

"Or both," Avelin agreed. The paper jammed in the printer, and Fabbre opened the machine to free it. His hand was shaking. Avelin, spruce and cool, hands behind his back, strolled over, looked, reached in, disengaged the corner that was jamming the feed.

"Soon," he said, "we’ll have an IBM. A Mactoshin. Our hearts’ desire."

"Macintosh," Fabbre said.

"Everything can be done in two seconds." Fabbre restarted the printer and looked around. "Listen, the principles— Avelin’s eyes shone strangely, as if full of tears; he shook his head.

"So much depends on the circumstances," he said.

It locks and unlocks a door, the door to apartment 2-1 of the building at 43 Pradinestrade in the Old North Quarter of the city of Krasnoy. The apartment is enviable, having a kitchen with saucepans, dislicloths, spoons and all that is necessary, and two bedrooms, one of which is now used as a sitting room, with chairs, books, papers and all that is necessary, as well as a view from the window between other buildings of a short section of the Molsen River.