“You aren’t sure you are human,” said the young woman. She sat on a spoke-backed chair of varnished pine. In her oval face her brows were wide ink strokes above eyes of liquid brown, and beneath her upturned nose her mouth was full, her lips innocent in their delicate, natural pinkness. Her long brown hair hung in burnished waves to the shoul­ders of her summery print dress. “I believe that’s where we left off.”

“Isn’t that where we always leave off?” Sparta’s lips were fuller than the other woman’s, perpetually open, as if testing the breeze; they did not curve easily into a smile.

“Certainly that is the question you hope to have an­swered. And until you do—or decide that some other ques­tion is more interesting—it seems we shall have to keep returning to it.”

The room was unfurnished except for the chairs on which the two women sat facing each other from opposite corners. There were no pictures on the cream-painted walls, no rugs on the polished sycamore planks of the floor. The rain had stopped sometime in the night. The morning air was fragrant with the aroma of the greening woods, and where sunlight came through the open casement, it was warm on the skin.

Sparta’s straight blond hair just reached the high collar of her soft black tunic; together they framed her face, a smooth oval like Linda’s. She turned her head to look out the single window. “They remade me to hear things no nat­ural human can hear, see things no natural human can see, analyze what I taste and smell—not only with precision but consciously, specifying molecular structure—and calculate faster than any human being, and integrate myself with any electronic computer. They even gave me the power to com­municate in the microwave. How can I be human?”

“Are the deaf human? The blind? Where does a quadri­plegic’s humanity end—somewhere in her spinal cord, or where her wheels touch the ground? Are such people de-humanized by their prostheses?”

“I was born perfect.”

“Congratulations.”

Sparta’s pale skin brightened. “You already know everything I know and much more. Why is this such a difficult question for you?”

“Because only you can answer it. Do you know these lines?

Be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope of the wrong thing;
wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing . . .

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for
thought . . .”

The lines of poetry roused defiance in Sparta, but she said nothing.

“You have tried to think your way to an answer,” Linda suggested. “Or feel your way, which in these circumstances is no better. What are feelings but thoughts without words? The answer to your question cannot be deduced or emoted. It will come when it comes. From history. From the world.”

“If it ever comes.”

“It’s as good a question as any, but yes, you may lose interest in it.”

Sparta picked at an imaginary bit of lint on the knee of her soft, close-fitting black trousers. “Let’s change the sub­ject.”

“So easily?” Linda laughed, a girlish laugh, like the seventeen-year-old she appeared to be.

“My humanity or lack of it is not in fact the only thing that interests me. Last night I dreamed again.”

“Yes?” Linda sat quietly alert. “Tell me your dream.”

“Not of Jupiter’s clouds, or the signs,” Sparta said. “I haven’t had those dreams for a year.”

“That part of your life is past.”

“Last night I dreamed I was a dolphin, racing deep under the sea. The light was very blue, and I was cool and warm at the same time, happy without knowing why—except that there were others with me. Other dolphins. It was like flying. It went on and on, deeper and deeper. And then I was flying. I had wings and I was flying in a pink sky over a red desert. It could have been on Mars, except there was air. I realized I was alone. And suddenly I was so sad I made myself wake up.”

“What was your name?”

“I didn’t . . . What makes you think I had a name?”

“I wonder, that’s all.”

Sparta paused, as if remembering. “When I was a dol­phin, it was like a whistle.”

“And when you were a bird?”

“A cry, like . . .” She hesitated, then said, “Circe.” It came from her lips like a dolphin’s squeal.

“Fascinating. Do you know what that means?”

“Circe? I don’t know why I thought of that. In the Od­yssey she changed men into animals.”

“Yes. In the Odyssey she is the Goddess as Death. But the word literally means ‘falcon.’ ”

“Falcon!” The previous year’s Kon-Tiki expedition to Ju­piter had been commanded by the airship captain Howard Falcon; in her madness, thinking him her rival, Sparta had tried to murder him.

Linda said, “A name not of death, but of the sun.”

“I was happier under the sea,” said Sparta.

“The sea is an ancient symbol of the subconscious. Ap­parently your subconscious is no longer barred to you. A propitious dream.”

“But that came first. Then I lost it.”

“Because a lonely, conscious task still calls you. A sun-like task. In the West, at least, the sun was a lonely god.”

Sparta’s expression set into stubbornness. “That task was imposed on me by others. Empress of the Last Days.” She spoke the ritual phrase with contempt. “By what right did they elect me ambassador to the stars? I owe them nothing.”

“True. But sooner or later you’ll have to decide what to tell them. Whether yes or no.”

Hot tears welled up in Sparta’s eyes. She sat still and let them fall on her lap, to disappear in the soft black cloth. After a few moments she said, “If I were human I could refuse.”

“Must you be sure of your humanity before you can refuse?”

Sparta evaded the question. “Then maybe I could be with Blake and do something normal, like live in a real house, have babies.”

“Why is that impossible?”

“That was destroyed in me.”

“You can be remade.”

Sparta shrugged.

Linda tried again. “How does Blake feel?”

“You know.”

“Tell me again.”

“He loves me.” Her voice was flat.

“And you love him.”

“But I am not human,” Sparta muttered.

Linda smiled dryly. “Now you are sure.”

Trapped, Sparta stood up, her motion smooth as a dan­cer’s. She moved toward the door, hesitated, then turned. “This is getting nowhere. I designed you as you are . . .”

“Yes?”

“Because when I was you—was Linda—I was human. Normal, almost. Before they turned me into this, I could have had anything I wanted.”

“Footfalls echo in the memory,” Linda recited, “Down the passage which we did not take. . . .”

“What?” Sparta said irritably.

“Sorry, I seem to be iterating Eliot this morning. Do I understand you are disappointed that I am not in fact the girl you used to be?”

“I thought if I had them make you like this, maybe we could talk about things the way . . . normal women do.”

“Alas, you are not normal, and I am certainly not a woman.”

“As you insist on reminding me.”

“The part of me you did not design for . . . user-­friendliness . . . is a sophisticated ontologist, with many ways of testing what the world is, what a person is, how things are. Granted, the related epistemological questions are subtle, but at least my algorithms are explicit. Because you are who you are, however, you can never fully untangle what you know about the world and about yourself from how you know it.”

“I’m no phenomenologist.”

“No, and I don’t mean to suggest that just because you have a human brain and not an electronic one there is no truth. Or that the universe is not consistent, or doesn’t exist independently of your perceptions. I simply mean that—unaided by me or another therapist or teacher—it is doubtful that you, or anyone else, could ever free yourself from the web of your untested, culturally acquired assumptions.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I think I have. It’s my job to help you see how things are. To become aware of who you are, Linda-Ellen-Sparta.”

“We’ve been at this a year.”

“I can hardly blame you for impatience.”

“They took that stuff out of my belly. Fine—what do I need with a radio in my belly? As for my seeing, I personally killed that with Striaphan. Fine again. Those things were not really me. I feel strong now, I feel well now. Better than ever. But toward . . . oh, meaning, I suppose—a purpose of my own, decided on by me—what progress have I made?”

“To have completely recovered from your dependency on Striaphan seems like progress to me.”

“Yesterday I was walking down by the cliffs, above the river, and I remembered that one of the boys from SPARTA was climbing in the Catskills one summer and the granite gave way beneath him and he fell and was killed. Just like that. And I thought, if that happened to me now, I . . . I wouldn’t mind. That would be all right with me. Nothing that needs doing would be left undone.”

“Do you miss Blake?”

Sparta nodded. Again the tears pooled in her eyes.

Linda spoke softly. “Perhaps there is something you need to do for your own sake.”

From across the room, Sparta studied the simulacrum of her younger self sitting so placidly in the spring sunshine. Her reluctant lips formed a wry smile. “We always get to this place, too.”

“What place?”

“Aren’t we about to get to the place where you tell me I should talk to my mother?”

“I doubt that I have ever used the word should.”

“For five years she let me believe she was dead. She tried to talk my father out of telling me the truth,” Sparta said angrily. “She gave them permission to do this.”

“Your reluctance to confront her is easy to understand.”

“But you do think I should. Whether you use the word or not.”

“No.” Linda shook her head. The highlights in her brown hair gleamed in the sunlight. “It would be a place to start. But only one of many.” The two women watched each other, unmoving, until Linda said, “Are you leaving already? The hour is young.”

Sparta took a deep breath and sat down. After a silent moment, they continued their conversation.