“You were right. I can’t leave Blake and the others out there floundering. I’m probably the only one alive who knows what to do.”
“I was right?” Amusement touched Linda’s calm features. “Did I tell you all that?”
“You got me to think it, and then to say it. Which is the same thing.”
Linda nodded. “I suppose so.” The faint smile remained.
Sparta nervously paced her end of the room, her boot heels knocking softly on the bare polished boards. “Maybe I gave you the wrong impression. I’m not here for our regular session.”
“Somehow I sensed that. For one thing, you haven’t sat down.”
“I wanted to tell you what I’ve decided.”
“And I’d like to hear it.”
“Yes . . . Yes.” Sparta stopped pacing and stood at something resembling parade rest, her feet spaced apart, her hands clasped behind her. “I’ve made arrangements to join Forster. A fast cutter will take me to Ganymede. Planetary alignments are almost ideal. It should take a little over two weeks.”
Linda said nothing, only sat upon her plain pine chair and listened. The light from the window was fitful, brightening and dimming with the swift passage of clouds before the sun, causing Linda’s and Sparta’s shadows to shrink and swell on the polished floorboards and enameled walls.
“And there are some other . . . details,” Sparta said.
“Which you wish to discuss with me.”
“That’s right. What we talked about before.”
“We’ve talked about a lot of things.”
“Specifically about . . . humanness. What it is to be human.”
“Oh.”
“Well, I don’t think I can define it for you—for myself—any better than I ever could.” In struggling to express concepts that seemed self-evident to the majority of those who ever thought of them at all, Sparta seemed younger than her years. She swiped at the short blond hair that fell below her eyebrows. “But I think I know now that . . . I mean, I don’t think it has anything to do with what’s done to the body. After a person is born, anyway.” Quickly she added, “I’m speaking generally.”
“Of course.” Linda showed no amusement; Sparta’s statement, which in the abstract was so general as to be virtually without content, coming from her was a major concession. “Do I take it you no longer feel that you were robbed of your humanity by those who altered you?”
“More than that,” Sparta said. “I think . . . I mean, I’ve decided that nothing others do to me can rob me of my humanity.”
“Say more about that.”
“Nothing done to me, that is, so long as I can remain conscious of my own feelings.”
Linda smiled. “To hear you say so makes me feel very good.”
Sparta, startled, laughed abruptly. “You claim you can feel?”
“Oh yes. You’re the one who taught me that feelings are thoughts that need no words. Granted I’m not human; I’m the projection of what we agree is a machine. Nevertheless I have both thoughts and feelings.”
Sparta was momentarily confused. She had come here to tell Linda about matters of profound importance and intimacy; Linda seemed to be confusing the issue with these remarks about herself . . . itself.
But perhaps Linda had anticipated the rest of what Sparta intended to reveal. Sparta pushed on. “What they did to me wasn’t arbitrary. Some of it was a mistake; still they . . .” But she quickly floundered again; it was difficult to find straightforward language for what she was trying to express.
Linda tried to help her. “We’ve talked about the mission they planned for you.”
“The mission remains.” Sparta took a sharp breath. “To fulfill it I will require certain modifications. Some that they anticipated, but that I . . . that have been . . . damaged. I need to restore the capacity to see, microscopically and telescopically—and the capacity to image the infrared. And other modifications, specific to the anticipated environment . . .”
Linda interrupted her before she could begin busily listing them. “You intend to change yourself?”
“The arrangements have been made.” Sparta seemed edgy, defensive. “The commander is cooperating. I haven’t said anything to my mother and father . . . yet. But I will, really.”
Linda was still; she gave the impression that she was lost in thought.
She was quiet so long that Sparta sniffed noisily and said, “I don’t have a lot of time before . . .”
“You have made vital progress,” said Linda, abruptly cutting her off. “I applaud and admire your courage in deciding to choose this difficult task, which others tried to thrust upon you without your consent, but which nothing now compels you to undertake. You have mastered your groundless fears and faced up to one or more fundamental questions that must eventually confront all people of sensitivity and imagination.” She paused only a moment before she added, “I worry about only one thing.”
“What?”
“No one can make progress by running away.”
“Meaning?” Sparta demanded.
“You must interpret what I say in your own words. You are aware by now that I am little other than what is potential in you.”
With that, as if to underscore her Sibylline message, a blue flash of light and a soft “pop” emanated from the center of Linda’s persuasively solid body, and she vanished. Sparta stared at the empty room, shocked and a little offended.
Then she smiled. Linda really was—had been—the perfect psychotherapist. One who knew when it was time to stop.