Part 2

Steve stood up and pounded his head with his fist, trying to knock out the sound of his own thinking. There was something here, something threatening and frightful, and he couldn't understand. He let the thought augmenter idle on, emptily bouncing his own thought about the room in magnetic waves of meaningless content, and peered at the other strange machines. There was one, a cabinet where a person could stand, with buttons like a shower stall. He stepped in, pushed a button and waves of force washed over him, set his body to tingling and shaking with the force of it. But what it was supposed to be doing, he didn't know. Beside it was upended a bottle with a spigot and a paper cup. It looked like water, and without thinking he took the cup, filled it, tasted the "water". It was not water; it tasted like peppermint, like licorice, like mint leaves and whiskey ... like quite a drink, he decided and drank it down. He took another cup, and another. His head suddenly whirled, and he staggered slightly.

"Potent stuff to put in a water cooler," he grunted, putting out a hand to steady himself. For the stuff had set up a thrumming in his veins, a pumping in his heart, a rosy pulsation in his vision. If he wasn't drunk, what would you call it? he wondered. He tried a step, another, and after minutes his legs obeyed and he walked out the door. He stopped there, looking back. In this condition he would forget his own name.... He wondered what he had forgotten. Something he had left there.... He eased back, sliding his feet, bent over the augmenter to listen to his thinking. It beat up at him from the orifice like a strong wind in his face. It said, "You're going back, Steve, you are going back, to say goodbye properly to your host, the woman who waits and knits and waits and who wept when you left."

Steve decided he was going back. They would bring the fuel when they brought it, or they wouldn't. But somehow right now he had to see that "Vey fanis vu?" female again, to make sure about something that puzzled him.

Then his thought reminded him. "You forgot to switch off this thing, that's why you came back in." And he reached down and turned the knob; the pulse of his own strange deeper thought stopped, and he felt suddenly lost and his own mind blank. He moved back, turned, went out the door and heard a silvery laugh down the corridor as he staggered a little, trying to walk down the center of the corridor.

"Inhuman things," Steve muttered. "They treat me like I was a kid with no sense, or something," and he went to the elevator, down to the street level, and so along the street, some sense of direction guiding his whirling mind. He knew where he was going.

* * * * *

One of the driverless wheeled wagons stopped beside him, the machine-voice of it said, "You may ride, I am going your way."

Steve climbed on the back of the wagon, grumbling. "How'n hell do you know where I'm going? I don't."

The wagon rolled off, not fast, not slow, its wheels bouncing slightly with the weight of its bales and boxes of cargo. Along the wide serene avenues it rolled, quiet, sure, straight as a train on rails. Steve nodded, closed his eyes, fell asleep.

When he awoke, the wagon had stopped, someone brushed by Steve, took off one of the boxes. It was dark, the starlight was so vague he could not see where he was. The wagon started up again, rolled on. Steve slept, and dreamed that he had been changed into a glass statue, and placed on a pedestal in the square of his home town, back on Earth. People stopped and stared at the glass statue, giggling and smirking, and he hated it, but he could only stand there, his hand on his chest, smiling idiotically. He could hear the girls giggling, saying to each other, "Isn't he perfect? He doesn't know, he doesn't know."

Steve stood there in the square and the traffic turned and honked and braked; the people stood and waited for the traffic lights, and looked at the glass statue, and smiled, as if he were a joke, a permanent joke. "He doesn't know," they would laugh, and the light would change, and the traffic move again.

Hours later a hand touched his arm, but it wasn't a hard hand of steel. It was a soft human hand, and Steve's heart leaped with the guess: "Some of these people didn't undergo the change and formed their own community. So the crystallized people sent me to the natural people, and now I am among my own kind again!"

The soft pink-tipped fingers grasped his arm, shook him gently, so gently, and Steve opened his eyes. The face in the darkness was vaguely familiar, but somehow all these people were nice looking. He eased himself off the back of the wagon, leaned against the body that belonged to the hand. A soft body, a woman's real body of flesh ... he thrilled to the touch, a deep satisfying revelation of humanity, of love, of natural human life, a home-like feeling.

"So they didn't all change. There is a place here where they live like people ..." murmured Steve.

"U fanis hane, O tu!" said the voice, a sweet voice, from a fragrant-scented person, a soft bodied woman-person.... Steve smiled sleepily. She seemed glad to see him. He followed her up a path, and into the warm pink light.

A shock went through him. This was the same room! The same pictures built in the smooth wall, the same brown tile stove, sleek and clean as a new-washed baby. The same big comfortable leather chairs, and he grinned. "I'm hungry, Elvie," he said.

"A hane to u, is eat," she laughed, and he knew she had spoken two words of his own tongue.

He sat down, not weary, but somehow very glad to be back. "The thought machine," he asked, wishing he could ask her where they could find one; he wanted her to tell him something.

She switched on a button in the wall, a button he had not seen before. Her thought came to him then.

"I was so sorry I did not have one when you came. I ordered one, but they have to be made as there are not many in use. Now it has come, I can tell you. There is something you could not understand."

"There's a lot of things you could tell me, that's a fact. It's so puzzling. They take me for granted. No excitement...."

"That is because of prevision."

Steve started. A shiver went through him, or was it a pulse of delight at the sudden knowledge of what was to come?

"Prevision?" asked Steve, though he suddenly realized he knew the answer.

"After the change, people came to know by experience that they could foresee the future, when they willed to see ahead. When you came, I knew what would come to pass."

"Because they know what's coming, they didn't get excited?" Steve asked, his eyes on her sweet perfection, on her hands, setting the flowers straight in the bowl again, then going back to her eternal knitting.

"That's why we seem like robots to you. Robots don't have to think about what's coming next. They know. They know because they are machines. We know ahead, too, not because it's built in us, but because we can deduce precisely how things are going to turn out. The penalty of increased mental activity ... see?" Her voice was gentle, but there was awareness of something in it, something he ought to understand, something she couldn't say.

* * * * *

Suddenly Steve saw it and sat up straight, his heart doing flip-flops. He could hear his voice and his augmented thought shouting together--"There's no man! You're alone here!"

Her smile was heavenly, something like music that touched him inside.

"Now you know," she said, and held up the tiny garment she had just completed. "It's for our first one."

Steve leaned back, his worriment smoothing out into a strange beautiful prevision of their life, going on and on here.... He couldn't seem to get excited about Earth any longer. All the dreams of going back seemed to be dissolving in a warm flood of knowing--_he wasn't going back_!

"This prevision can be fun," mused Steve, looking into her eyes. "You knew...."

"I knew when your ship sounded overhead! It added up, because ... I don't know. When I saw you, then I saw the prevision had not been wishful thinking. It was you, the same man I saw ahead. So I began making the things...."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Steve asked.

"It wasn't that way. You had to go and see the city, undergo the change, want to come back. If you hadn't wanted to come back, why then I had made a mistake. But you came back, so ... but I knew all the time."

"I knew too, but ... there was your knitting. I thought you must have a mate, that he must be away."

"In the flesh state, people have prevision, but it isn't as accurate. Ours is usually accurate. Just a new faculty. One of several new faculties."

"I suppose they will treat me?" Steve asked, but he knew.

Gently she explained--. "In the city, the change is provided for. It is in the drinking water. Here, we have to take capsules. If we didn't we'd revert to the flesh state. No one wants to revert."

Steve stood up. She moved into his arms naturally, and he knew he was home. He kissed her sweet face ... again. Her laugh tinkled softly, and the edgy, glass-like quality was gone from it. He was happy and he knew she was happy. He switched off the thought augmenter.

"Let's pretend it's the first day ..." he said.

She went and stood by the door, and he went out the door. He closed it and knocked. She opened the door.

"Vey fanis vu?" she asked.

Steve stood, adoring her, his eyes warm. "How can a guy be so dumb, not to know when he finds his own home?" he asked in English.

"I wondered, Steve," she murmured, in English.

She opened the lower door....