thing ultimate. "Everyone's had the
experience. At some time in his life, everyone looks at a familiar
object and can't make any sense out of it. Momentarily, the _gestalt_
fails, but the true moment of sight passes. The mind reverts to the
superimposed pattern. Normalcy continues."

The voice was silent. Anders walked on, through the _gestalt_ city.

"There's something else, isn't there?" Anders asked.

"Yes."

What could that be, he asked himself. Through clearing eyes, Anders
looked at the formality he had called his world.

He wondered momentarily if he would have come to this if the voice
hadn't guided him. Yes, he decided after a few moments, it was
inevitable.

But who was the voice? And what had he left out?

"Let's see what a party looks like now," he said to the voice.

* * * * *

The party was a masquerade; the guests were all wearing their faces. To
Anders, their motives, individually and collectively, were painfully
apparent. Then his vision began to clear further.

He saw that the people weren't truly individual. They were discontinuous
lumps of flesh sharing a common vocabulary, yet not even truly
discontinuous.

The lumps of flesh were a part of the decoration of the room and almost
indistinguishable from it. They were one with the lights, which lent
their tiny vision. They were joined to the sounds they made, a few
feeble tones out of the great possibility of sound. They blended into
the walls.

The kaleidoscopic view came so fast that Anders had trouble sorting his
new impressions. He knew now that these people existed only as patterns,
on the same basis as the sounds they made and the things they thought
they saw.

_Gestalts_, sifted out of the vast, unbearable real world.

"Where's Judy?" a discontinuous lump of flesh asked him. This particular
lump possessed enough nervous mannerisms to convince the other lumps of
his reality. He wore a loud tie as further evidence.

"She's sick," Anders said. The flesh quivered into an instant sympathy.
Lines of formal mirth shifted to formal woe.

"Hope it isn't anything serious," the vocal flesh remarked.

"You're warmer," the voice said to Anders.

Anders looked at the object in front of him.

"She hasn't long to live," he stated.

The flesh quivered. Stomach and intestines contracted in sympathetic
fear. Eyes distended, mouth quivered.

The loud tie remained the same.

"My God! You don't mean it!"

"