stuffing lost and had shriveled and shrunk. And one
can easily love and pamper a teddy bear.

"Can you see the crowd all right, Mr. Symmes? This is a good place to
watch from, isn't it?"

Her words fell upon his ears, setting up vibrations and oscillations in
the basilar membranes. Nerve cells triggered impulses that sped along
neural pathways to the withered cortex, where they lost themselves in
the welter of atrophy and disintegration. They emerged into his
consciousness as part of a gestaltic confusion.

"Isn't it exciting, watching from here?" she asked, showing enthusiasm
at the sight of the crowd below. "You should be enjoying this immensely,
you know. Not all the people here have windows to look out of like
this." There, now, that should make him feel a little better.

His eyes, in their wandering, came to rest upon her uniform, so cool and
comforting in its greenness. A flicker of light gleamed from the
metallic insignia on her sleeve: "To Care for the Aged." Somewhere
inside him an association clicked, a brief fire of response to a past
event kindled into a short-lived flame, lighting the way through cobwebs
for another _shadow_....

* * * * *

How many years he had been waiting for the opportunity, he did not know.
It seemed like decades, although it might have been only a handful of
months. And all the time he had waited, he could feel himself growing
older, could sense the syneresis, the slow solidifying of the life
elements within him. He sat quietly and grew old, thinking the chance
would never come.

But it did come, when he had least expected it.

It was a treat--his birthday. Because of it, they had given him actual
food for the first time in years: a cake, conspicuous in its barrenness
of candles; a glass of real vegetable juices; a dab of potato; an
indescribable green that might have been anything at all; and a little
steak. A succulent, savory-looking piece of genuine meat.

The richness of the food would probably make him sick, so unaccustomed
to solid food was his digestive tract by now, but it would be worth the
pain.

And it was then that he saw the knife.

It lay there on the tray, its honed edge glittering in the light of the
sun. A sharp knife, capable of cutting steak--or flesh of any kind.

"Well, how do you like your birthday present, Mr. Symmes?"

He looked up quickly at the woman standing beside the tray. The yellow
pallor of her middle-aged