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letting him work on material related to the bacterial process?'

'Yes, Laura told me.'

'Ah! Well, he is important. But because of Donnell's youth, his human focus, it's possible he's going to give us a clearer look into the basis of consciousness than even Magnusson. Now that he's in harness it's time to lay off the whip and break out the sugar, although' - Edman fussed with papers - 'although I wonder if it isn't time for another forced interaction.'

'He's working so smoothly now, I'd hate to disrupt him... and besides, he didn't react well to Richmond.'

'None of them react well to Richmond!' Edman laughed. 'But I keep thinking if we could override this fear reaction of theirs, we might proceed by leaps and bounds. Even Richmond seems reluctant for intimate confrontation. He enjoys facing down his own fear, but his contacts are kept on the level of ritual aggression.'

Edman rambled off onto other matters, talking mainly to himself as he dealt with his files; he admitted to using his sessions with the therapists as a means to order his thoughts, and Jocundra knew her active participation was not required. She wondered how he would wed his latest theory to his previous one: that of cellular wish-fulfilment. He considered Richmond weighty evidence in support of the latter because, unlike the rest of the slow-burners -all of whom had murky backgrounds - the body had a thoroughly documented past. Richmond, born Eliot Vuillemont, had been the heir of a prominent New Orleans family, disinherited for reasons of drug abuse. This young man, Edman argued, who had lived a life of ineffectual rebellion, whose college psychiatric records reflected a history of cowardice and repressed violence, had chosen as his posthumous role the antihero, the apocalyptic lone wolf; the new personality was a triumphant expression of the feebly manifested drives which had led to his death by overdose. Edman posited that the workings of memory chemically changed portions of the RNA - those portions containing the bioform of our most secret and complex wish, 'the deepest reason we have made for being' - and intensified their capacity for survival. It was, Jocundra thought, a more viable theory than his latest, but she had no doubt both would soon appear in published form, welded together into a rickety construct studded with bits of glitter: a Rube Goldberg theory of the personality.

'I believe I'll bring it up in staff tonight.' Edman reached inside his lab coat and pulled forth a red memorandum book. "The seventeenth looks free.'

Jocundra looked at him questioningly, realizing she must have missed something. Edman smiled; he slipped the book back into his pocket, and it seemed to her he had reached deep within his body and fed his heart a piece of red candy.

'I won't take any more of your time, Ms Verret. I was saying that I thought this fear reaction needed to be examined under group conditions, and I proposed we have a party for our green-eyed friends. Invite the staff from Tulane, arrange for some sort of music, and just see if we can't get the patients to pass off their fear as another side effect of the process. At the very least it should be a memorable social occasion.'

The main hall was thronged with doctors, technicians, students and administration people wearing sport jackets and summer dresses, most gathered around the groupings of sofas which roughly divided the room into thirds; and scattered throughout the crowd were the five patients -Richmond had not yet arrived. A three piece band played cocktail jazz on the patio, and several couples were dancing. The room was huge. Carved angels flowed from the molding, spreading their wings in the corners of the ceiling, and the space whose sanctity they guaranteed was the size of a country church, filled with the relics of bygone years. Gilt chairs and statuettes and filigreed tables occupied every spare nook, and every flat surface was cluttered with objets d'art, the emphasis being upon ceramic figurines of bewigged lords and ladies. The French doors were flanked by curio cabinets, except for those beside which stood a grand piano, its finish holding a blaze of sunlight. Paintings and prints and photographs hung in rows to the ceiling, presenting scenes of the countryside, historical personages, hunts, groups of shabbily dressed blacks. One print depicted a masque whose participants were costumed as demons, beasts, and fanciful birds. Passing it on the way to the punch bowl, Jocundra decided that this masque had much