voice was that of his aide and sometimes-lover, Joy Marcoe.
"No, thank you," he murmured.
She touched his shoulder. "The Committee would like to reconvene in quarters at eleven hundred hours. Should I tell them you're too ... ?"
"I'll be there." He kept his eyes closed and heard her start to leave. "Joy," he called, "have you ever thought how ironic it is that you, with your name, work for this Committee?"
She returned to his side and he felt her hand on his left arm. It was a trick of the boo that he felt the hand melt into his senses - more than a touch, she caressed a vital core of his being.
"Today is particularly hard," she said. "But you know how rare that is, anymore." She waited, he presumed, for his response. Then when none came: "I think Joy is a perfect name for this job. It reminds me of how much I want to make you happy."
He managed a weak smile and adjusted his head in the supports. He couldn't bring himself to tell her about his own medical reports - the final verdict. "You do bring me joy," he said. "Wake me at ten-forty-five."
She dimmed the light when she left.
The mobile device that supported his head began to irritate the base of his neck where it pressed into the chair's supports. He inserted a finger under the chair's cushions and adjusted one of the contraption's fastenings. Relief on his left side was transmitted to irritation on the right. He sighed and poured another short dash of boo.
When he lifted the slender glass, the dimmed overhead light shot blue-gray sparkles through the liquid. It looked cool, as refreshing as a supportive bath on a hot day when the double suns burned through the clouds.
What warmth the tiny glass contained! He marveled at the curve of his thin fingers around the stem. One fingernail peeled back where he had snagged it on his robe. Joy would clip and bind it when she returned, he knew. He did not doubt that she had noted it. This had happened often enough, though, that she knew it did not pain him.
His own reflection in the curvature of the glass caught his attention. The curve exaggerated the wide spacing of his eyes. The long lashes drooping almost to the bend of his cheeks receded into tiny points. He strained to focus on the glass so close in front of him. His nose was a giant thing. He brought the glass to his lips and the image fuzzed out, vanished.
Small wonder that Islanders avoid mirrors, he thought.
He had a fascination with his own reflection, though, and often caught himself staring at his features in shiny surfaces.
That such a distorted creature should be allowed to live! The long-ago judgment of that earlier Committee filled him with wonder. Did those Committee members know that he would think and hurt and love? He felt that the often-shapeless blobs that appeared before his Committee bore kinship to all humanity if only they showed evidence of thought, love and the terribly human capacity to be hurt.
From some dim passageway beyond his doors or, perhaps, from somewhere deep in his own mind, the soft tones of a fine set of water-drums nestled him into his cushions and drowsed him away.
Half-dreams flickered in and out of his consciousness, becoming presently a particularly soothing full-dream of Joy Marcoe and himself rolling backward on her bed. Her robe fell open to the smooth softness of aroused flesh and Keel felt the unmistakable stirrings of his body - the body in the chair and the body in the dream. He knew it was a dream of the memory of their first exploratory sharing. His hand slipped beneath her robe and pulled the softness of her against him, stroking her back. That had been the moment when he discovered the secret of Joy's bulky clothes, the clothes that could not hide an occasional firm trim line of hips or thighs, the small strong arms. Joy cradled a third breast under her left armpit. In the dream of the memory, she giggled nervously as his wandering hand found the tiny nipple hardening between his fingers.
Mr. Justice.
It was Joy's voice, but it was wrong.
That was not what she said.
"Mr. Justice."
A hand shook his left arm. He felt the chair and the prosthetics, a pain where his neck joined the massive head.
"Ward, it's wake-up. The Committee meets in fifteen minutes."
He blinked awake. Joy stood over him, smiling, her hand