ing his strayed thoughts. "I expected as
much. A quite normal first phase of treatment." He straightened a paper
on his desk. "I think that will be enough for today. Twice in one
sitting is about all we ever try. Otherwise some particular episode
might cause undue mental stress, and set up a block." He glanced down at
his appointment pad. "Tomorrow at two, then?"

Zarwell grunted acknowledgment and pushed himself to his feet,
apparently unaware that his shirt clung damply to his body.

The sun was still high when Zarwell left the analyst's office. The white
marble of the city's buildings shimmered in the afternoon heat, squat
and austere as giant tree trunks, pock-marked and gray-mottled with
windows. Zarwell was careful not to rest his hand on the flesh searing
surface of the stone.

The evening meal hour was approaching when he reached the Flats, on the
way to his apartment. The streets of the old section were near-deserted.
The only sounds he heard as he passed were the occasional cry of a baby,
chronically uncomfortable in the day's heat, and the lowing of imported
cattle waiting in a nearby shed to be shipped to the country.

All St. Martin's has a distinctive smell, as of an arid dried-out swamp,
with a faint taint of fish. But in the Flats the odor changes. Here is
the smell of factories, warehouses, and trading marts; the smell of
stale cooking drifting from the homes of the laborers and lower class
techmen who live there.

Zarwell passed a group of smaller children playing a desultory game of
lic-lic for pieces of candy and cigarettes. Slowly he climbed the stairs
of a stone flat. He prepared a supper for himself and ate it without
either enjoyment or distaste. He lay down, fully clothed, on his bed.
The visit to the analyst had done nothing to dispel his ennui.

[Illustration]

The next morning when Zarwell awoke he lay for a moment, unmoving. The
feeling was there again, like a scene waiting only to be gazed at
directly to be perceived. It was as though a great wisdom lay at the
edge of understanding. If he rested quietly it would all come to him.
Yet always, when his mind lost its sleep-induced lethargy, the moment
of near understanding slipped away.

This morning, however, the sense of disorientation did not pass with
full wakefulness. He achieved no understanding, but the strangeness did
not leave as he sat up.

He gazed about him. The room did not seem to be his own. The
furnishings, and the