When she rejoined him, he urged her to have a drink. “Help you get a grip on yourself.”

She demurred, she didn’t drink very much, she said. But he insisted, and she gave in. “Just a liqueur. Anything. You order it, Mr. Balik.”

Fabian was secretly very pleased at her docility. No reprimanding, no back-biting, like most other girls—Although what in the world could she reprimand him for?

“You still look a little frayed,” he told her. “When we get back, don’t bother going to your desk. Go right in to Mr. Osborne and finish taking dictation. No point in giving the other girls something to talk about. I’ll sign in for you.”

She inclined her head submissively and continued to sip from the tiny glass.

“What was that last comment you made in the restaurant—I’m certain you don’t mind discussing it, now—about not being born, but being made? That was an odd thing to say.”

Wednesday sighed. “It isn’t my own idea. It’s Dr. Lorington’s. Years ago, when he was examining me, he said that I looked as if I’d been made—by an amateur. By someone who didn’t have all the blueprints, or didn’t understand them, or wasn’t concentrating hard enough.”

“Hm.” He stared at her, absolutely intrigued. She looked normal enough. Better than normal, in fact. And yet—

Later that afternoon, he telephoned Jim Rudd and made an appointment for right after work. Jim Rudd had been his roommate in college and was now a doctor: he would be able to tell him a little more about this.

But Jim Rudd wasn’t able to help him very much. He listened patiently to Fabian’s story about “a girl I’ve just met” and, at the end of it, leaned back in the new upholstered swivel chair and pursed his lips at his diploma, neatly framed and hung on the opposite wall.