Joe Allred - When I Was In Your Mind [ss]

Telepathy should be a great boon to a brain surgeon, though not necessarily to the telepath. Especially since nature seems to be arranged so that for every advantage, there's a disadvantage.

Barr F. Ansen, Dr. Ansen M.D., Ph.D., and on and on with the academic initials, professor and chief of Psionic Surgery, lay in the grass by the fish pond and slept. The November sun was warm on his tanned cheeks as the cool wind tossed his blond hair; a pleasurable dichotomy. With one arm over his eyes to protect them from the sun and his long white lab coat brilliant in the noonday light, he was a Norse god resplendent on his cloud of green grass. A wintering drake and two ducks chased about in the water near his feet looking for the last bits of the bread he had shared with them from his lunch.

Ding. A sterile tone sounded in his head and the voice of his secretary, a young mother type, said, "Dr. Ansen." The words rang in his mind from wall to wall. The message was the telepathic equivalent of a shout in the ear.

"Please, Marcie, you needn't be so loud. I'm only at the pond. What is it?"

"I'm sorry, Dr. Ansen, but the Autotelepath is acting up. You asked me to contact you when your lunch time was up."

"Is it? So soon? Do we have anything scheduled immediately? If not, call me again in a half hour."

"We have the feel-through for the first-year surgery fellows in an hour. It's the cerebral tumor excision."

"Oh. Yes, yes, of course. Mr. Lichen. I'll be there shortly. Thank you, Marcie. It may please you to know that you are the epitome of efficiency in a secretary but a damned nuisance to a serious loafer like me."

"Thank you, Doctor. Oh, Joan Lichen called to thank you for talking to her about the operation. Especially, she said, for being so honest."

"Thank you, Marcie."

The trip back to surgery wasn't unpleasant. The moving pathways through the woods seemed a natural inclusion in the environment and the transparent overhead obscured nothing from view. The trees shaded out the sun, however, and though it wasn't cold enough for the automatic temperature control to start the heaters, it was cold. Ansen pulled his white coat together and fastened a couple of buttons. He didn't mind the chill. Those who wanted complete protection and speed rode the underground paths. Those who rode the aboveground paths did so because they liked the weather however it was, enjoying the variety.

For several meters a squirrel ran along the clear path-cover, keeping pace with Ansen until it lost interest in the game just before the path carried Ansen into the monolithic building that was marked simply Psionic Surgery in weathered brown letters on a small bronze plaque by the entrance.

His glass-walled office offered a view of the operating room and the efficient preparations for surgery being completed. Nurses were counting things, everything. The orderlies were pushing in equipment and pulling equipment out. The psionic technician was checking out the psi-computer and all of the peripheral sensors. She sat at her console running through the five-hundred-and-forty-point check list to assure that all functions of the gigantic brain-brain, as it was called, were perfect. Cy, both the formal and familiar name for the psionic-cybernatron, was not more than a machine. But, as a machine it would become an extension of Ansen. Just as a pair of pliers is an extension of a human hand, so the machine would become part of the mind of Barr Ansen, amplifying his infinitesimal human psychic powers into useful functions.

The gallery was already filled with eager students who were seeking a specialty in psionic surgery. Since this was their first real experience in an operating room, they were watching intensely.

Dr. Ansen walked into the scrub room, made his preparations and then walked into the operating room. He thought to himself that all operating rooms tasted the same, and the gowns were always a shapeless wrap of sterile green wrinkles but, oddly enough, never failed to feel like home. Comfortable smoking jackets - no, that wasn't it. You wanted to do something efficient when you put them on. The urge to accomplish something. Psionic chemists had undoubtedly spent months testing the effects of various sensation stimulants on operating-room personnel. So, operating rooms had a taste and rags felt like home. Packaging, Ansen thought.

As he walked across the floor of the operating theater, he gazed up at the full gallery which was looking down at him. He thought back to when he had been a student at his first feel-through. It was different somehow, watching the surgery happen rather than psi-ing through some old playback. Playbacks seemed real enough at first, but you always knew that the outcome was decided. If the patient died in the playback then he'd been dead for a long time. But today, nobody knew whether the patient would be dead or alive, healthy or a cripple after the operation. This was the real thing. Ansen mumbled to himself about it being an even bet this time as he walked to the psi console to get his halo.

The tech placed the translucent green plastic band around the surgeon's head and checked reception from the halo on the console. As the psi-tech gave the O.K. sign, Ansen quit thinking the standard "1-2-3 testing" and turned to address the upstairs group. They were behind the glass ceiling and couldn't hear Ansen, but with their own halos operating through the remote terminal knobs sticking up from the left arms of the seats the students heard Ansen speak as surely as if he was sitting next to each of them.

"Good afternoon, Doctors. Today is the first feel-through for most of you and I wish to offer my congratulations. This is more than just another how-to session in Psionic Surgery. It's really a significant milestone in the pursuit of your chosen specialty.

"Our task today is to remove a microscopic, malignant tumor from somewhere in the central, left frontal lobe of the brain. Unfortunately, that's about as close as we can locate it until we are inside and the vital-field sensors penetrate the brain-cover layers in several places to give us a good three-dimensional determination.

"The patient is fifty-two years old and in reasonably good health, physically. The psychologists seem to have some doubts about him, but they are vague and unsure as to the problems that seem to be hidden. His will-to-live index is a satisfactory eighty-nine so we can only hope that there are no surprises waiting in there. At best we will be in and out in twenty minutes and he will be home tomorrow afternoon." He paused, then repeated, "At the very best."

"You will have the opportunity to ask questions after the operation but, since you are the group of starry-eyed young doctors that you are, I will ask the one question that you should be asking yourselves but are probably not. You are too enamored with the - and I quote - Importance Of Surgery. That question is, why are we operating on this man for a simple, early-development tumor when there are so many other ways of destroying malignant tissue?

"I'm so glad you asked," Ansen said dryly. The students, not knowing how to react, snickered; self-conscious ripples spread across the gallery.

"Unfortunately, this thing we're after is in the worst possible position for Psionic Therapy. If we used PT fields, we would be indiscriminately interfering with the most delicate psi structure existent: the human brain. That would be as crude as if we used X-ray treatments or some other nonspecific method. But believe me, if there were any other way, any way at all, we would get rid of the knife. Forgive me if I insult your intelligence, but this, what I have told you, you must never forget. Never!

"Occasionally we have a group of dignitaries watching. They are usually surprised that we don't practice the arcane arts and simply cast some generalized anti-cancer spell." The laughter was heartier this time.

"Oh, you find that amusing, do you? When the X-ray phenomenon was discovered and publicized, there were laws passed that X-ray devices could not be applied to opera glasses to preserve maidenly modesty. Next thing you know they will try to repeal the law of universal gravitation." The students, more at ease now, pealed laughter that was heard even through the glass partition.

"So much for the nonsense. We will be using the latest P.S.I. psioelectronic computer, or if you wish, p-cybernatron, available." He pronounced the p to avoid confusion. "So during this operation we will have a continuous vital-field view of the tumor. It will be fuzzy at first but it should clear up as the v-field sensors get closer to the lesion. You may query any information from the computer at any time without interfering with each other. You will get the same response that I would have.

But with this machine, which is far more advanced than the one you were using for the playback simulations, you will not have to phrase the question. It will be merely necessary to image the question and our mechanical omniscient will tell you anything you want to know except for those things I am thinking sub-telepathically, or the names and addresses of my nurses. That, you must get in the conventional manner.

"As always, you will feel as if you are controlling the scalpel. I encourage you to anticipate the moves. It can do no harm since I will be in control and your commands won't have a damned bit of influence.

"Good luck and be sure to record this one in permanent mode. This is one you will want to play back twenty years from now. It will be embarrassing, then. They always are."

Ansen turned from the students and began to get into the psionic control chair behind the operating table. Meanwhile, the patient was rolled in and prepared for the incision. The skin blade, in the hands of the assisting surgeon, slipped silently through the pink flesh leaving a line which immediately beaded, then filled with blood which found worry wrinkles to race through onto the towels below. The nurse sopped the red fluid into gauze pads, turning the pastel green to black where the blood soaked in.

Tissue spreaders pulled back the skin to reveal the skull-plate bone, but looking very unbonelike. As a small drill hummed its way through the skull, the bits of bone and blood were efficiently sucked into a vacuum line, unemotionally disposing of the slurry.

Ansen was retiring from his body and into the mechanism of the psionic probe, a pilot checking out his highly sophisticated craft before launch. The chair was not merely a resting place for the surgeon, but a complex psionic device in itself, containing many servobrains functioning like the hands of a dozen assistant surgeons. They could hold and move and wipe and scrape, each in a well-rehearsed microscopic choreography. It was an integral part of the psi-com and both were part of the surgeon during the crucial phases of the operation. It was small enough armor for the doctor, whose entire consciousness would be traveling into the damaged and diseased brain of another human being.

Floating into a galaxy of six-dimensional space, vertigo, weightlessness, euphoria, claustrophobia - all were experienced by the novice. For that reason, playback feelthroughs were used to orient the beginner, and yet there were not many who could adjust, even through the filtration of the computer. The students in a live feel-through were subject to sensing through the filter of the psi-com, but the surgeon was unprotected. A surgeon couldn't operate through gardening gloves. The psi-surgeon had to feel the pressure of the blade against the tissue, the disruption of order, the dying struggle of once-living cells cauterized with an infrared coup de grace.

The stainless steel inserter, with the tiny psionically controlled micro-scalpel on one end and its multiplicity of sensors, was lowered gently into the brain through the tiny drill hole. Secondary sensors extruded from the base of the internal part of the inserter and began seeking their way around the outside of the brain cover to preprogrammed positions. There they began taking data to update the psi-com.

Carefully, Ansen began to take control of the cutting edge of his scalpel, testing it for movement in all directions without moving it more than a micron. He tested the destructive devices by selectively destroying several fiber cells in the connective tissue. The spindle-shaped cells did not so much die as terminate. They ceased function, the warm sunlight hues of living matter darkening to dusk as with the flick of a switch. Cattle succumbing indifferently to sledgehammer blows; perfunctory execution. He could eat beef, therefore he could clear his guns. There was higher work to do. He ordered the inserter lowered into a deep trench, furrowing into the brain.

Descending deeper into the living tissue, the white sounds from the distant waterfall of the surface cells living and dying, faded into busy silence. The v-field sensors projected a gray nebulosity farther down and to the left. With automatic guidance the scalpel began moving toward the mass. Ansen knew better than to trust his senses to fly in. Down and to the left was never really down nor to the left. It is easier to play pick-up sticks looking through mirrors and prisms with an undetermined number of reflections and inversions that are always changing than to fly straight lines in the mind. The computer can translate intended motion into real motion but at a distance it was unnecessary and time consuming. The communication line payed out behind, back upward toward the tip of the inserter; the launch site, the power supply. This was the line of command, the diver's hose to the surface of reality.

Ansen sank deeper. The sensor package deployed close-range vital-field sensors and immediately the view of the tumor cleared. The nebulosity resolved into a sphere, a pin cushion, a central body with extrusions reaching out in all directions. Checking sensors from the other side of the tissue mass showed the simple description to be inaccurate. Not a sphere but a basketball, deflated and pushed in on one side. The extrusions in the concavity reached across the hollow toward each other. The brain cells so entrapped were slowly dying. Whimpering children, they were being strangled. The succubus cells were sucking the life from them, stealing their breath.

Begin close approach. Enter concavity. Prepare to ligate blood supply from tumor. Ansen drew the battle lines.

The computer responded overtly: . . . Initiating commands ... ready to ligate on completion of relocation of scalpel ...

Ansen watched from the scalpel as it moved around the tumor. Glowing red-brown, the extrusions from the tumor undulated among the passive brain cells. Occasionally a tumor cell would divide and push into a normal cell, rupturing its victim like a hobnailed boot exploding an infant's guts and twisting in the slosh. Brain cells don't die like simple fiber cells. Brain cells scream like dying rabbits.

Nearing the tumor's hollow side the scalpel floated through a canyon of the brain, but when that came to an end, Ansen entered the brain tissue through the wall of the chasm, staying with the connective tissue and the blood flow. He avoided collisions with the nerve cells, the tumor was doing enough damage of its own.

... Relocation complete ... Begin ligation of primary sources... . Initiating sequence ...

The programmed servobrains began to issue tendrils, which encompassed the tumor mass seeking out tiny blood vessels and fusing red cells and plasma into clots. Every blood stream plugged, deprived the malignancy of more oxygen and nutrients. The siege had begun. The enemy city was isolated. Quivering and convulsing, the tumor began to wall off the cells entrapped in the cavity in its side. It needed them now that its food supply was blocked.

Burn infiltrating cells. Cavity must remain open.

... Destruction of advancing tissue initiated ... ligation of vessels continuing ...

Ansen allowed the automatic functions to operate. This much was programmed for a number of contingencies. As long as things went normally he would be subliminally aware of it. Any encounter of difficulty and the psi-com would notify him in the overt mode. Here then, he began to perform the real function of the psi-surgeon. He monitored the reflex thoughts. Memories and actions dredged from the morass of the subconscious, stimulated to recall by the scalpel and by the tumor, but the tumor could do worse things in the victim's mind.

A spot of sunlight filtered through the leaves of the oak tree and shone on the long golden hair falling down Joan's smooth cheek. Sam watched the spot move as the breeze blew the leaves. She noticed his stare and returned it. He pretended to look past her at the children near the monkey cages and concentrated on the sandwich he was eating. She continued to look at him and he knew she wasn't fooled. He looked back into her eyes and smiled.

"I think I like you more and more these days," he said.

She sipped her soft drink, then said. "I think I'm Lichen you too." They laughed over the play on his name.

A dewy morning and fog swirling behind the shay. The horse clop, clop, clopping - muffled sounds puffing through the grass from the horse path. He and she joggling across the meadow on the carriage seat in rhythm with the wheels bumping over stones in the path. Out of the meadow and through a long archway of willows. A leaf, dropped by a mischievous jay, landing in her lap. She with overwrought pomp places the leaf behind his ear, tangling the stem into his thick dark hair, a serious ceremony, complete with a kiss on each cheek and then - a kiss. Slack reins. The horse knows where it is going. So do they, really.

Soft spring grass and a warm blanket of air wisping up the hillside. Love has a way of condensing hours into minutes and minutes into heartbeats. Forever is never long enough when heartbeats race, tumbling upon each other like scintillations streaming across the sky from a falling star.

... Ligation of all blood supply to tumor complete ... tumor shifting to anerobic function ... ready to begin malignant tissue destruction - direct contact ... will-to-live index ninety-five and rising...

The will-to-live index was going up significantly. Ansen didn't wonder. This man had much to live for.

Begin direct contact tumor tissue destruction.

... Initiating sequence ...

The scalpel advanced farther into the center of the tumor's cavity. Then it began to cut tissue out of the tumor, isolating sections from the normal tissue. Heat and psionically generated, close-range, entropic fields created chaos in the malignant cells, turning them into sacks of chemicals, disorganized, devoid of life.

Designate the previous memory sequences SI and S2 - subject to recall input on command.

... Sequences so designated ready for recall on command ...

The sky was gaining color. The horizon did not exist. The sky and the water merged at the edge of the earth. Somewhere above the emerging sun, a handspan above the sand of the beach, there being no other useful measure, a small cloud turned silver white hot, glowing with foretaste of the new day. It was a day star in the east announcing the birth of a new sun, made especially for St. Valentine's day, and them.

She nestled into his arm, warm from the chill. When it seemed that the little cloud could bear no more of its burden, he said, "Joanie, will you marry me?" The sun rose.

... Completion of tumor destruction ... blood flow now returned to normal ...

Ansen was jerked back to the problem at hand. Designate previous memory sequence S3.

... So designated ...

He was about to issue the command to begin withdrawal preparations, but no. There was still something, something somewhere. It was not yet right, so he began a formal search. The psi-com was only a machine and told him in the overt mode only those things it was programed to tell. But there was something wrong. Somewhere the machine possessed information that was hidden but important. The man-machine interface was strong, but man knows not the entirety of even his own mind. Ansen sensed something incomplete. That was the value of experience.

Cy - condition scan. Report anomalies on all parameters.

... Initiating scan for anomalies on all measurable parameters ...

Carefully, Ansen absorbed all the information given to him covertly by the machine and that which served as his vision, the vital-field image. Like a kaleidoscope in six dimensions racing through his mind, the image shifted focus through the brain of Sam Lichen. Colors, smells, sights, sounds, senses otherwise indescribable, floating dreams of voids, worlds unfulfilled. There! There where there should have been light there was muddiness. Tiny, a speck of darkness within the light, but it was there.

... Anomaly discovered ... vital-field sensors now repositioning to obtain update information ... ready to begin position shift of scalpel for attack on possible secondary tumor ...

Do not begin position shift until update confirmation.

Ansen watched the vital-field image resolving as the sensors extruded toward the dark spot. He knew that the probability of a secondary tumor developing from an original tumor of such an early stage was vanishingly small, but with each improvement in the picture he lost more hope that it was not a transplanted tumor. Even before the overt mode of the psi-com told him, he knew that there would be a second battle, but this one would be worse.

Evolution has given tumors defenses, psionic powers different from those in normal tissues. Primary tumors are too closely related to the host tissue to kill indiscriminately. Death of the host is death of the tumor, but a secondary tumor, a metastasis, has no such restraints. It is wild cells gone even wilder. Like the imprisoned pickpocket turned murderer or the child of the insane leaping deeper into insanity than even his parents, the metastasis is vicious.

... Anomaly determined to be metastasis, ninety-seven percent confidence ... position shift begun ...

Prepare to begin ligation of blood supply to metastasis.

... Not possible ... blood supply critical to normal brain function ...

Ansen watched and saw why the tumor's blood supply could not be cut off. It was located near the wall of a major artery supplying a brain region of high psionic intensity. He recognized the area - the area of imaginative control - a nonlabel supplied by the anatomists. If they had been completely honest it would have been named terra incognita, but imaginative control, whatever that is, was located there, somehow.

Begin direct contact tissue destruction.

... Initiating command ... approaching tumor ...

The first wave hit him. Fear washed through his mind, grabbing and pulling him back. Ansen intensified his will. The scalpel was beginning to approach the tumor and the tumor was fighting back. The contingency program in the psi-com could ignore the illusions, but not Ansen. The students could be protected from the battle, the computer reducing them to observers, but Ansen had to enter the fight naked, depending not on armor but on his own weapons to defend him and Sam, in whose place he was doing battle.

Joan tossed her hair and smiled. Sam leaned in the window of her car and kissed her. He squeezed her hand and she drove off, he following in his own ground skimmer. The early evening birds sang their summer soliloquies in the branches of the live-oak trees.

... Will-to-live index decreasing, now eighty-five ...

Why? Ansen could find nothing to cause this. Lichen's induced dream seemed happy enough.

Continue destruction of tumor.

Up ahead, Joan's skimmer was approaching a railroad crossing. The grass of the skimmerway reflected turquoise in the lights of the two vehicles. Through the trees the train came rushing out of the silence. The warning signals were not working and Sam's heart began pounding.

Ansen's mind leaped. He saw that the tumor had not resigned to death. It was fighting back through the brain it lived in.

Replay sequence Sl.

The spot of sunlight filtered through the leaves of the trees. The children played in the zoo's playground as the train rushed through the darkness.

NO! shouted Ansen. Intensify replay.

The turquoise sunlight filtered through the live-oak trees of the zoo, as the night birds screeched their banshee wail.

Intensify replay to override dream thoughts. Sequence S2 replay.

The dewy morning fog swirling behind the shay. The horse clop, clop, clopping as Joan's carriage flew toward the railcrossing, skimmingless than a meter above the ground. Sam saw the train hurtling toward the path and Joan waving back at him, oblivious of the dragon.

Restart - restart - replay S3. Intercept dream line.

A powerful surge of simple electrical current shocked outward from the scalpel. Ansen had to stop the nightmare the tumor was building in Lichen's mind. In a frenzy of passion the tumor was trying to kill and it was unleashing the harpies of imagination and the demons of fear to perform the sack.

... Will-to-live index fifty-two and continuing to decrease at an accelerating rate ...

The sky was gaining color. The horizon did not exist. The sky and the water merged at the edge of the earth. Somewhere above the emerging sun the image of the dark train came screaming across the water. The turquoise waves blew spray on Sam's skimmer as he watched Joan wave back to him. The signals weren't working and she didn't see. She didn't see! The hurtling beast smashed into the flying skimmer. Sam's skimmer stopped reflexively but he had to watch. His eyes were taken from his control and he had to watch. Joan's limp body came pin-wheeling through the air throwing blood like sparks from a catherine wheel.

Sickeningly, she landed on the windshield of his skimmer. Her scalp was ripped half over her head, brains spilling out onto the glass, mucus and blood streaming from her mangled nose. Where her sky-blue eyes had been there was green exploding liquid and her tongue which had caressed his so many times in the height of love hung only by a shred. As she slid to one side on the glass, her chest ripped open and tore into bits which were brushed aside by the impersonal windshield wipers, activated automatically by the presence of moisture. A piece of flesh was trapped maddeningly under the oscillating rubber blade, wiping a bloody smear across the windshield. The automatic washer started, flushing the tissue from the glass. The foul odor of death filled the air but Sam never smelled it. He neither saw the ripped skirt of her white dress nor the shredded stumps that had been her legs. He was drowning in his own vomit.

... Will-to-live index twenty ... dropping below level of measurability ... heart function deteriorating ... beginning automatic cardiac stimulation ...

Ansen was fighting for reality. His mind was screaming at him like the burning lungs of a drowning man to get out of the insanity. Waves of fear once more came rushing over him, not the timid feelers of before but tidal waves smashing at him. He was lying on the rails of a train track and the engine was lunging toward him, like a starving animal leaping on its prey. He was trapped. Nothing held him but he couldn't move. Closer and closer, the wheels grinding toward him ...

He was running through wet, knee-deep snow. The avalanche roared like a prolonged cannon shot, screaming with all the furies of hell. His legs were getting heavier and larger, sinking deeper and deeper in the slushy snow. Trees and boulders came flying past and over him. He was ...

REFIX,. CY. GOD HELP ME. REFIX MY MIND - MECHANICAL REFIX - HELP ME, CY HELP ME REFIX.

... Mechanical refix ... patient's electrolyte balance deteriorating rapidly ... psio-mechanical blood pumping initiated ... muscle tone depleting ... attempts at electrolyte restoration failing ... estimated time until completion of tumor excision twenty seconds ... probability of patient survival nearing zero... preparing to begin pull-out ... mandatory abort in five seconds if no improvement...

Ansen absorbed the information instantaneously. No - God damn it, no - no abort.

Ansen was now concentrating on the edge of the scalpel. His mind had been refixed on a tangible object to drive out the defensive horrors flung at him by the dying tumor.

Quickly, he brought his entire concentration to bear on the mind of Sam Lichen.

Sam - Sam, you've got to listen to me. This is a dream - a nightmare - a will-o'-the-wisp - a poltergeist. Sam, Joan's not dead - I talked to her today. You hear me? Sam, she's not dead - it's only a dream. You must live, you have everything to live for.

The steel teeth of the many-legged beast were ripping at his entrails, pulling out his intestines and mixing them with his liver. Blood dripping. Bits of viscera squashing past its horny lips retrieved by the rasping tongue. Ansen beat at it frantically, trying to tell himself that it was only his imagination, that it was not real.

SAM - SAM, THROW IT OFF SAM - FOR GOD'S SAKE, SAM

Black velvet a mile deep spun of godshair. Soft. Sooofft. He was weightless but his mass was twice that of the whole earth and turning. Turrrnnniiinnggggg. Forever falling. He was angry, fighting against the forces stuffing him back into the womb. He knew that Sam was now dead and that the operation had been aborted by Cy. Like a father struggling to save his burning son from a fire, but being knocked unconscious by a fireman and thrown out a window, he was falling angrily a million miles and he could do nothing but want to die. The computer was fighting for his life now. And he was ashamed that he had lost the fight for Sam's.

Slowly, he opened his eyes. His mind began the journey down the tunnel through his eyes and gradually he reoccupied his body. He felt the sweat and smelled the musk of his body which had responded to the emotions of the past hour. It hadn't been a twenty-minute operation. The sore aching in his joints testified that even his muscles had been affected by the tension. He began to get up from the psi-chair as the technicians released the restraints. His right forearm was bruised from a strap.

He walked on shaky legs to the center of the room and with intense concentration, released his teeth from their clench on his mouth protector. He pulled the soft plastic mouthpiece out and looked at the bite marks. He had mutilated it but it spared his tongue and he hadn't chipped his teeth.

"Doctors," he telepathed to the confused and disoriented group above the glass. "Please, no questions until tomorrow."

He didn't bother to change from the operating room greens. He rushed through his office and past his secretary. She stopped him with a shouted, "Dr. Ansen."

He turned to look at her. She said, "I've canceled the rest of today's appointments." He almost smiled, said nothing but nodded his head one small nod. She knew.

He took the fast underground path and walked up the exit by the fish pond. The day he now walked into had changed from the one he had left only two hours ago. The sky was gray with rolling and rumbling clouds. November had taken on its winter character. The wind was cold and wet. Ansen sat by the pond at his lunch place, the icy wind slicing through the thin cotton pants and tunic.

The drake that had shared Ansen's lunch, waddled up the grassy slope and inquired, "Quack?"

"Hello, friend," said Ansen. "Want more bread, do you? Sorry, I haven't any. Fresh out." He paused to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Fresh out of everything, now."

"Quack," the duck insisted.

"Very well," said Ansen, waving his hands like an amateur magician. "I'll conjure up some bread for you. Abracadabra! See, duck? No bread. No magic. Sorry. Believe me, I am sorry."

The wind ruffled the duck's feathers. It turned and waddled back to the pond, leaving with a final quack.

Ansen stood up, helping himself with a nearby tree. He walked slowly, with resolve, to the slow-moving aboveground path. The wind whipped across the pond, fresh, even colder, and large drops of winter rain began thumping down, slowly at first, then with increasing rapidity. Just as he stepped on the conveyer, the rain came heavily and soaked his green pants from his knees down. The spattering drops raised a mist which the wind blew along the ground. Ansen turned to watch the duck splash into the pond and swim toward the protected shoreline on the far side.

"Fresh out," he whispered.