Roger Zelazny - He Who Shapes

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All science fiction writers know that reality is more fantastic
than any publishable fiction. Here is one proof. The story you
are about to read was tied on the first ballot with Brian W.
Aldiss's "The Saliva Tree." We accordingly held a second
ballot. The result? Another tie.
Feeling that it would be fruitless to pursue this any further (as
well as illegalthe rules made no provision for a third ballot),
we gladly awarded Nebulas to both authors.
Here is another story only Zelazny could have written: an
intricate and subtle marriage of reality and hallucination,
delicate eroticism, horror, all turning around a brilliantly
imagined new kind of psychialrist
Nebula Award, Best Novella 1965 (tied with "The
Saliva Tree," by Brian W. Aldiss)
HE WHO SHAPES
Roger Zeiazny
Lovely as it was, with the blood and all, Render could sense
that it was about to end.
Therefore, each microsecond would be better off as a minute,
he decidedand perhaps the temperature should be increased
. . . Somewhere, just at the periphery of everything, the dark-
ness halted its constriction.
Something, like a crescendo of subliminal thunders, was
arrested at one raging note. That note was a distillate of shame
and pain, and fear.
The Forum was stifling.
Caesar cowered outside the frantic circle. His 'forearm
covered his eyes but it could not stop the seeing, not this time.
The senators had no faces and their garments were spattered
with blood. All their voices were like the cries of birds. With an
inhuman frenzy they plunged their daggers into the fallen
figure.
All, that is, but Render.
The pool of blood in which he stood continued to widen. His
arm seemed to be rising and falling with a mechanical
regularity and his throat might have been shaping bird-cries,
but he was simultaneously apart from and a part of the scene.
For he was Render, the Shaper.
Crouched, anguished and envious, Caesar wailed his
protests.
"You have slain him! You have murdered Marcus Antonius
a blameless, useless fellow!"
Render turned to him, and the dagger in his hand was quite
enormous and quite gory.
"Aye," said be.
The blade moved from side to side. Caesar, fascinated by the
sharpened steel, swayed to the same rhythm.
"Why?" he cried. "Why?"
"Because," answered Render, "he was a far nobler Roman
than yourself."
"You lie! It is not so!"
Render shrugged and returned to the stabbing.
"It is not true!" screamed Caesar. "Not true!"
Render turned to him again and waved the dagger.
Puppetlike, Caesar mimicked the pendulum of the blade.
"Not true?" smiled Render. "And who are you to question an
assassination such as this? You are no one! You detract from
the dignity of this occasion! Begone!"
Jerkily, the pink-faced man rose to his feet, his hair
half-wispy, half-wetplastered, a disarray of cotton. He turned,
moved away; and as he walked, he looked back over his
shoulder.
He had moved far from the circle of assassins, but the scene
did not diminish in size. It retained an electric clarity. It made
him feel even further removed, ever more alone and apart.
Render rounded a previously unnoticed corner and stood
before him, a blind beggar.
Caesar grasped the front of his garment.
"Have you an ill omen for me this day?"
"Beware!" jeered Render.
"Yes! Yes!" cried Caesar. " 'Beware!' That is good! Beware
what?"
"The ides-"
"Yes? The ides"
"-of Octember."
He released the garment.
"What is that you say? What is Octember?"
"A month."
"You lie! There is no month of Octember!"
"And that is the date noble Caesar need fearthe non-
existent time, the never-to-be-calendared occasion."
Render vanished around another sudden corner.
"Wait! Come back!"
Render laughed, and the Forum laughed with him. The bird-
cries became a chorus of inhuman jeers.
"You mock me!" wept Caesar.
The Forum was an oven, and the perspiration formed like a
glassy mask over Caesar's narrow forehead, sharp nose, chinless
jaw.
"I want to be assassinated too!" he sobbed. "It isn't fair!"
And Render tore the Forum and the senators and the
grinning corpse of Antony to pieces and stuffed them into a
black sackwith the unseen movement of a single fingerand
last of all went Caesar.
Charles Render sat before the ninety white buttons and the
two red ones, not really looking at any of them. His right arm
moved in its soundless sling, across the lap-level surface of the
consolepushing some of the buttons, skipping over others,
moving on, retracing its path to press the next in the order of
the Recall Series.
Sensations throttled, emotions reduced to nothing. Repre-
sentative Erikson knew the oblivion of the womb.
There was a soft click.
Render's hand had glided to the end of the bottom row of
buttons. An act of conscious intentwill, if you likewas
required to push the red button.
Render freed his arm and lifted off his crown of Medusa-hair
leads and microminiature circuitry. He slid from behind his
desk-couch and raised the hood. He walked to the window and
transpared it, fingering forth a jgjfg~e.
One minute in the ro-womb, he decided. No more. This is a
crucial one . . . Hope it doesn't mow till laterthose clouds look
mean...
It was smooth yellow trellises and high towers, glassy and
gray, all smouldering into evening under a shale-colored sky;
the city was squared volcanic islands, glowing in the end-of-
day light, rumbling deep down under the earth; it was fat,
incessant rivers of traffic, rushing.
Render turned away from the window and approached the
great egg that lay beside his desk, smooth and glittering. It
threw back a reflection that smashed all aquilinity from bis
nose, turned his eyes to gray saucers, transformed his hair into a
light-streaked skyline; his reddish necktie became the wide
tongue of a ghoul.
He smiled, reached across the desk. He pressed the second
red button.
With a sigh, the egg lost its dazzling opacity and a horizontal
crack appeared about its middle. Through the now-transparent
shell. Render could see Erikson grimacing, squeezing his eyes
tight, fighting against a return to consciousness and the thing it
would contain. The upper half of the egg rose vertical to the
base, exposing him knobby and pink on half-shell. When his
eyes opened he did not look at Render. He rose to his feet and
began dressing. Render used this time to check the ro-womb.
He leaned back across his desk and pressed the buttons:
temperature control, full range, check; exotic soundshe raised
the earphone check, on bells, on buzzes, on violin notes and
whistles, on squeals and moans, on traffic noises and the sound
of surf; check, on the feedback circuitholding the patient's
own voice, trapped earlier in analysis; check, on the sound
blanket, the moisture spray, the odor banks; check, on the
couch agitator and the colored lights, the taste stimulants . . .
Render closed the egg and shut off its power. He pushed the
unit into the closet, palmed shut the door. The tapes had
registered a valid sequence.
"Sit down," he directed Erikson.
The man did so, fidgeting with his collar.
"You have full recall," said Render, "so there is no need for
me to summarize what occurred. Nothing can be hidden from
me. I was there."
Erikson nodded.
"The significance of the episode should be apparent to you."
Erikson nodded again, finally finding his voice. "But was it
valid?" he asked. "I mean, you constructed the dream and you
controlled it, all the way. I didn't really dream itin the way I
would normally dream. Your ability to make things happen
stacks the deck for whatever you're going to saydoesn't it?"
Render shook his head slowly, flicked an ash into the
southern hemisphere of his globe-made-ashtray, and met
Erikson's eyes.
"It is true that I supplied the format and modified the forms.
You, however, filled them with an emotional significance,
promoted them to the status of symbols corresponding to your
problem. If the dream was not a valid analogue it would not
have provoked the reactions it did. It would have been devoid
of the anxiety-patterns which were registered on the tapes.
"You have been in analysis for many months now," he
continued, "and everything I have learned thus far serves to
convince me that your fears of assassination are without any
basis in fact."
Erikson glared.
"Then why the hell do I have them?"
"Because," said Render, "you would like very much to be the
subject of an assassination."
Erikson smiled then, his composure beginning to return.
"I assure you, doctor, I have never contemplated suicide, nor
have I any desire to stop living."
He produced a cigar and applied a flame to it. His hand
shook.
"When you came to me this summer," said Render, "you
stated that you were in fear of an attempt on your life. You were
quite vague as to why anyone should want to kill you"
"My position! You can't be a Representative as long as I
have and make no enemies!"
"Yet," replied Render, "it appears that you have managed it.
When you permitted me to discuss this with your detectives I
was informed that they could unearth nothing to indicate that
your fears might have any real foundation. Nothing."
"They haven't looked far enoughor in the right places.
They'll turn up something."
"I'm afraid not."
"Why?"
"Because, I repeat, your feelings are without any objective
basis.Be honest with me. Have you any information whatso-
ever indicating that someone hates you enough to want to kill
you?"
"I receive many threatening letters . . ."
"As do all Representativesand all of those directed to you
during the past year have been investigated and found to be the
work of cranks. Can you offer me one piece of evidence to
substantiate your claims?"
Erikson studied the tip of his cigar.
"I came to you on the advice of a colleague," he said, "came
to you to have you poke around inside my mind to find me
something of that sort, to give my detectives something to work
with.Someone I've injured severely perhapsor some damag-
ing piece of legislation I've dealt with . . ."
"And I found nothing," said Render, "nothing, that is, but
the cause of your discontent. Now, of course, you are afraid to
hear it, and you are attempting to divert me from explaining my
diagnosis"
"I am not!"
"Then listen. You can comment afterwards if you want, but
you've poked and dawdled around here for months, unwilling
to accept what I presented to you in a dozen different forms.
Now I am going to tell you outright what it is, and you can do
what you want about it."
"Fine."
"First," he said, "you would like very much to have an enemy
or enemies"
"Ridiculous!"
"Because it is the only alternative to having friends"
"I have lots of friends!"
"Because nobody wants to be completely ignored, to be an
object for whom no one has really strong feelings. Hatred and
love are the ultimate forms of human regard. Lacking one, and
unable to achieve it, you sought the other. You wanted it so
badly that you succeeded in convincing yourself it existed. But
there is always a psychic pricetag on these things. Answering a
genuine emotional need with a body of desire-surrogates does
not produce real satisfaction, but anxiety, discomfort-because
in these matters the psyche should be an open system. You did
not seek outside yourself for human regard. You were closed off.
You created that which you needed from the stuff of your own
being. You are a man very much in need of strong relationships
with other people."
"Manure!"
"Take it or leave it," said Render. "I suggest you take it."
"I've been paying you for half a year to help find out who
wants to kill me. Now you sit there and tell me I made the
whole thing up to satisfy a desire to have someone hate me."
"Hate you, or love you. That's right."
"It's absurd! I meet so many people that I carry a pocket
recorder and a lapel-camera, just so I can recall them all . . ."
"Meeting quantities of people is hardly what I was speaking
of.Tell me, did that dream sequence have a strong meaning
for you?"
Erikson was silent for several tickings of the huge wallclock.
"Yes," he finally conceded, "it did. But your interpretation of
the matter is still absurd. Granting though, just for the sake of
argument, that what you say is correctwhat would I do to get
out of this bind?"
Render leaned back in his chair.
"Rechannel the energies that went into producing the thing.
Meet some people as yourself, Joe Erikson, rather than
Representative Erikson. Take up something you can do with
other peoplesomething non-political, and perhaps somewhat
competitiveand make some real friends or enemies, preferably
the former. I've encouraged you to do this all along."
"Then tell me something else."
"Gladly."
"Assuming you are right, why is it that I am neither liked nor
hated, and never have been? I have a responsible position in
the Legislature. I meet people all the time. Why am I so neutral
a-thing?"
Highly familiar now with Erikson's career. Render had to
push aside his true thoughts on the matter, as they were of no
operational value. He wanted to cite him Dante's observations
concerning the trimmersthose souls who, denied heaven for
their lack of virtue, were also denied entrance to hell for a lack
of significant vicesin short, the ones who trimmed their sails to
move them with every wind of the times, who lacked direction,
who were not really concerned toward which ports they were
pushed. Such was Erikson's long and colorless career of
migrant loyalties, of political reversals.
Render said:
"More and more people find themselves in such circum-
stances these days. It is due largely to the increasing complexity
of society and the depersonalization of the individual into a
sociometric unit. Even the act of cathecting toward other per-
sons has grown more forced as a result. There are so many of
us these days."
Erikson nodded, and Render smiled inwardly.
Sometimes the gruff line, and then the lecture . . .
"I've got the feeling you could be right," said Erikson.
"Sometimes I do feel like what you describeda unit, something
depersonalized..."
Render glanced at the clock.
"What you choose to do about it from here is, of course, your
own decision to make. I think you'd be wasting your time to
remain in analysis any longer. We are now both aware of the
cause of your complaint. I can't take you by the hand and show
you how to lead your life. I can indicate, I can commiserate-but
no more deep probing. Make an appointment as soon as you
feel a need to discuss your activities and relate them to my
diagnosis."
"I will," nodded Erikson., "anddamn that dream! It got to
me. You can make them seem as vivid as waking lifemore
vivid . . . It may be a long while before I can forget it."
"I hope so."
"Okay, doctor." He rose to his feet, extended a hand. "I'll
probably be back in a couple weeks. I'll give this socializing a
fair try." He grinned at the word he normally frowned upon.
"In fact, I'll start now. May I buy you a drink around the
corner, downstairs?"
Render met the moist palm which seemed as weary of the
performance as a lead actor in too successful a play. He felt
almost sorry as he said, "Thank you, but I have an
engagement."
Render helped him on with his coat then, handed him his
hat, saw him to the door.
"Well, good night."
"Good night."
As the door closed soundlessly behind him, Render recrossed
the dark Astrakhan to his mahogany fortress and flipped his
cigarette into the southern hemisphere. He leaned back in his
chair, hands behind his head, eyes closed.
"Of course it was more real than life," be informed no one in
particular. "I shaped it."
Smiling, he reviewed the dream sequence step by step,
wishing some of his former instructors could have witnessed it.
It had been well-constructed and powerfully executed, as weU
as being precisely appropriate for the case at hand. But then, he
was Render, the Shaperone of the two hundred or so special
analysts whose own psychic makeup permitted them to enter
into neurotic patterns without carrying away more than an
esthetic gratification from the mimesis of aberrancea Sane
Hatter. '
Render stirred his recollections. He had been analyzed
himself, analyzed and passed upon as a granite-willed,
ultrastable outsidertough enough to weather the basilisk gaze
of a fixation, walk unscathed amidst the chimaerae of
perversions, force dark Mother Medusa to close her eyes before
the caducous of his art. His own analysis had not been difficult.
Nine years before (it seemed much longer) he had suffered a
willing injection of novocain into the most painful area of his
spirit. It was after the auto wreck, after the death of Ruth, and
of Miranda their daughter, that he had begun to feel detached.
Perhaps he did not want to recover certain empathies; perhaps
his own world was now based upon a certain rigidity of feeling.
If this was true, he was wise enough in the ways of the mind to
realize it, and perhaps he had decided that such a world had its
own compensations.
His son Peter was now ten years old. He was attending a
school of quality, and he penned his father a letter every week.
The letters were becoming progressively literate, showing signs
of a precociousness of which Render could not but approve. He
would take the boy with him to Europe in the summer.
As for JillJill DeVille (what a luscious, ridiculous name!he
loved her for it)she was growing, if anything, more interesting
to him. (He wondered if this was an indication of early middle
age.) He was vastly taken by her unmusical nasal voice, her
sudden interest in architecture, her concern with the unremov-
able mole on the right side of her otherwise well-designed nose.
He should really call her immediately and go in search of a new
restaurant. For some reason though, he did not feel like it.
It had been several weeks since he had visited his club. The
Partridge and Scalpel, and he felt a strong desire to eat from an
oaken table, alone, in the split-level dining room with the three
fireplaces, beneath the artificial torches and the boars' heads
like gin ads. So he pushed his perforated membership card into
the phone-slot on his desk and there were two buzzes behind
the voice-screen.
"Hello, Partridge and Scalpel," said the voice. "May I help
you?"
"Charles Render," he said. "I'd like a table in about half an
hour."
"How many will there be?"
"Just me."
"Very good, sif. Half an hour, then.That's 'Render'?
R-e-n-d-e-rl"
"Right."
"Thank you."
He broke the connection, rose from his desk. Outside, the
day had vanished.
The monoliths and the towers gave forth their own light
now. A soft snow, like sugar, was sifting down through the
shadows and transforming itself into beads on the windowpane.
Render shrugged into his overcoat, turned off the lights,
locked the inner office. There was a note on Mrs. Hedges'
blotter.
Miss DeVille called, it said.
He crumpled the note and tossed it into the waste-chute. He
would call her tomorrow and say he had been working until late
on his lecture.
He switched off the final light, clapped his hat onto his head,
and passed through the outer door, locking it as he went. The
drop took him to the sub-subcellar where his auto was parked.
It was chilly in the sub-sub, and his footsteps seemed loud on
the concrete as he passed among the parked vehicles. Beneath
the glare of the naked lights, his S-7 Spinner was a sleek gray
cocoon from which it seemed turbulent wings might at any
moment emerge. The double row of antennae which fanned
forward from the slope of its hood added to this feeling. Render
thumbed open the door.
He touched the ignition and there was the sound of a lone
bee awakening in a great hive. The door swung soundlessly
shut as he raised thesteering wheel and locked it into place. He
spun up the spiral ramp and came to a rolling stop before the
big overhead.
As the door rattled upward he lighted his destination screen
and turned the knob that shifted the broadcast map.Left to
right, top to bottom, section by section he shifted it, until he
located the portion of Carnegie Avenue he desired. He
punched out its coordinates and lowered the wheel. The car
switched over to monitor and moved out onto the highway
marginal. Render lit a cigarette.
Pushing his seat back into the centerspace, he left all the
windows transparent. It was pleasant to half-recline and watch
the oncoming cars drift past him like swarms of fireflies. He
pushed his hat back on his head and stared upward.
He could remember a time when he had loved snow, when it
had reminded him of novels by Thomas Mann and music by
Scandinavian composers. In his mind now, though, there was
another element from which it could never be wholly dis-
sociated. He could visualize so clearly the eddies of milk-
white coldness that swirled about his old manual-steer auto,
flowing into its fire-charred interior to rewhiten that which had
been blackened; so clearlyas though he had walked toward it
across a chalky lakebottomit, the sunken wreck, and he, the
diverunable to open his mouth to speak, for fear of drowning;
and he knew, whenever he looked upon falling snow, that
somewhere skulls were whitening. But nine years had washed
away much of the pain, and he also knew that the night was
lovely.
He was sped along the wide, wide roads, shot across high
bridges, their surfaces slick and gloaming beneath his lights,
was woven through frantic cloverleafs and plunged into a
tunnel whose dimly glowing walls blurred by him like a mirage.
Finally, he switched the windows to opaque and closed his
eyes.
He could not remember whether he bad dozed for a moment
or not, which meant he probably had. He felt the car slowing,
and he moved the seat forward and turned on the windows
again. Almost simultaneously, the cutoff buzzer sounded. He
raised the steering wheel and pulled into the parking dome,
stepped out onto the ramp, and left the car to the parking unit,
receiving his ticket from that box-headed robot which took its
solemn revenge on mankind by sticking forth a cardboard
tongue at everyone it served.
As always, the noises were as subdued as the lighting. The
place seemed to absorb sound and convert it into warmth, to
lull the tongue with aromas strong enough to be tasted, to
hypnotize the ear with the vivid crackle of the triple hearths.
Render was pleased to see that his favorite table, in the
corner off to the right of the smaller fireplace, had been held for
him. He knew the menu from memory, but he studied it with
zeal as he sipped a Manhattan and worked up an order to
match his appetite. Shaping sessions always left him ravenously
hungry.
"Doctor Render . . . ?"
"Yes?" He looked up.
"Doctor Shallot would like to speak with you," said the
waiter.
"I don't know anyone named Shallot," he said. "Are you sure
he doesn't want Bender? He's a surgeon from Metro who
sometimes eats here . . ."
The waiter shook his head.
"No sir'Render.' See here?" He extended a three-by-five
card on which Render's full name was typed in capital letters.
"Doctor Shallot has dined here nearly every night for the past
two weeks," he explained, "and on each occasion has asked to
be notified if you came in."
"Hm?" mused Render. "That's odd. Why didn't he just call
me at my office?"
The waiter smiled and made a vague gesture.
"Well, tell him to come on over," he said, gulping his
Manhattan, "and bring me another of these."
"Unfortunately, Doctor Shallot is blind," explained the
waiter. "It would be easier if you"
"All right, sure." Render stood up, relinquishing his favorite
table with a strong premonition that he would not be returning
to it that evening.
"Lead on."
They threaded their way among the diners, heading up to
the next level. A familiar face said "hello" from a table set back
against the wall, and Render nodded a greeting to a former
seminar pupil whose name was Jurgens or Jirkans or something
like that.
He moved on, into the smaller dining room wherein only two
tables were occupied. No, three. There was .one set in the
corner at the far end of the darkened bar, partly masked by an
ancient suit of armor. The waiter was heading him in that
direction.
They stopped before the table and Render stared down into
the darkened glasses that had tilled upward as they approached.
Doctor Shallot was a woman, somewhere in the vicinity of
her early thirties. Her low bronze bangs did not fully conceal
the spot of silver which she wore on her forehead like a caste-
mark. Render inhaled, and her head jerked slightly as the
tip of his cigarette flared. She appeared to be staring straight up
into his eyes. It was an uncomfortable feeling, even knowing
that all- she could distinguish of him was that which her minute
photo-electric cell transmitted to her visual cortex over the hair-
fine wire implants attached to that oscillator-convertor: in
short, the glow of his cigarette.
"Doctor Shallot, this is Doctor Render," the waiter was
saying.
"Good evening," said Render.
"Good evening," she said. "My name is Eileen and I've
wanted very badly to meet you." He thought he detected a
slight quaver in her voice. "Will you join me for dinner?"
"My pleasure," he acknowledged, and the waiter drew out
the chair.
Render sat down, noting that the woman across from him
already had a drink. He reminded the waiter of his second
Manhattan.
"Have you ordered yet?" he inquired.
"No."
". . . And two menus" he started to say, then bit his tongue.
"Only one," she smiled.
"Make it none," he amended, and recited the menu.
They ordered. Then:
"Do you always do that?"
"What?"
"Carry menus in your head."
"Only a few," he said, "for awkward occasions. What was it
you wanted to seetalk to me about?"
"You're a neuroparticipant therapist," she stated, "a Shaper."
"And you are?"
"a resident in psychiatry at State Psych. I have a year
remaining."
"You knew Sam Riscomb then."
"Yes, he helped me get my appointment. He was my
adviser."
"He was a very good friend of mine. We studied together at
Menninger."
She nodded.
"I'd often heard him speak of youthat'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 outlined, 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 expres-
sion. 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'srather
impressive."
"Thank you," she said, "but it isn't. Not really. I heard about
the first neuroparticipantsBartelmetz and the restwhen I was
a child, and I decided then that I wanted to be one. My life
ever since has 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. I taped
everything. The school understood that I wanted to go into
psychiatry, and they permitted a special arrangement for labs.
I've been guided through the dissection of- cadavers by lab
assistants, and I've had everything described to me. I can tell
things by touch . . . and I have a memory like yours with the
menu," she smiled. " "The quality of psychoparticipation
phenomena can only be gauged by the therapist himself, at that
moment outside of time and space as we normally know it,
when he stands in the midst of a world erected from the stuff of
another man's dreams, recognizes there the non-Euclidian
architecture of aberrance, and then takes his patient by the
hand and tours the landscape . . . If he can lead him back to the
common earth, then his judgments were sound, his actions
valid.' "
"From Why No Psychometrics in This Place," reflected
Render.
'-by Charles Render, M.D."
"Our dinner is already moving in this direction," he noted,
picking up his drink as the speed-cooked meal was pushed
toward them in the kitchen-buoy.
"That's one of the reasons I wanted to meet you," she
continued, raising her glass as the dishes rattled before her. "I
want you to help me become a Shaper."
Her shaded eyes, as vacant as a statue's, sought him again.
"Yours is a completely unique situation," he commented.
"There has never been a congenitally blind neuroparticipant
for obvious reasons. I'd have to consider all the aspects of the
situation before I could advise you. Let's eat now, though. I'm
starved."
"All right. But my blindness does not mean that I have never
seen."
He did not ask her what she meant by that, because prime
ribs were standing in front of him now and there was a bottle of
Chambertin at his elbow. He did pause long enough to notice
though, as she raised her left hand from beneath the table, that
she wore no rings.
"I wonder if it's still snowing," he commented as they drank
their coffee. "It was coming down pretty hard when I pulled
into the dome."
"I hope so," she said, "even though it diffuses the light and I
can't 'see' anything at all through it. I like to feel it falling about
me and blowing against my face."
"How do you get about?"
"My dog, Sigmund1 gave him the night off," she smiled,
"he can guide me anywhere. He's a mutie Shepherd."
"Oh?" Render grew curious. "Can he talk much?"
She nodded.
"That operation wasn't as successful on him as on some of
them, though. He has a vocabulary of about four hundred
words, but I think it causes him pain to speak. He's quite
intelligent. You'll have to meet him sometime."
Render began speculating immediately. He had spoken with
摘要：

Allsciencefictionwritersknowthatrealityismorefantasticthananypublishablefiction.Hereisoneproof.ThestoryyouareabouttoreadwastiedonthefirstballotwithBrianW.Aldiss's"TheSalivaTree."Weaccordinglyheldasecondballot.Theresult?Anothertie.Feelingthatitwouldbefruitlesstopursuethisanyfurther(aswellasillegalthe...

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