r, he was suddenly face to face with his new
enemy. A large flat park stood before him and there in the middle was a
hundred-story tower of smooth seamless material, the home of the Central
System's brain. There were smaller towers at many points in the world
but this was the most important, capable of receiving on its mile-long
axons, antennas of the very soul itself, every thought projected at it
from any point in the solar system. The housing gleamed blindingly in
the sun of high noon, as perfect as the day it had been completed. That
surface was designed to repel all but the most unusual of the radiation
barrages that could bring on subtle changes in the brain within. The
breakdown, he thought bitterly, would take too many centuries to
consider.

He turned away and headed into an Employment Exchange. The man behind
the desk there was a Suspended, too, and showed himself to be
sympathetically understanding as soon as he studied the application
form. "ParaNormal until a few months ago," he nodded. "Tough change to
make, I guess."

Connor managed a little grin. "Maybe I'll be grateful it happened some
day."

"A curious thought, to say the least." He glanced down the application
again. "Always some kind of work available although there do seem to be
more Suspendeds all the time. Robot repair--that's good! Always a
shortage there."

So Connor went to work in a large building downtown along with several
hundred other men whose principal duty was overseeing the repair of
robot servitors by other servitors and rectifying any minor errors that
persisted. He was pleased to find that, while some of his fellow workmen
knew much more about the work than he did, there were as many who knew
less. But the most pleasing thing of all was the way they cooperated
with one another. They could not reach directly into each other's minds
but the very denial of this power gave them a sense of common need.

* * *

He visited Newbridge once a week and that, too, proved increasingly
helpful. As time went on, he found he was spending less of it regretting
what he had lost. But once in a while a paraNormal came through the
workshop, eyes moving past the Suspendeds as if they did not exist and
the old resentment would return in all its bitterness. And when he
himself did not feel this way he could still sense it in men around him.

"Perfectly natural way to feel," Rhoda said, "not that it serves any
purpose."

"It's