'Your suggestion contains some merit, however,' Schruille said. 'We could restore the nerves behind our ministrations and carry on the punishment indefinitely. Exquisite pain forever!'

'A hell,' Nourse said. 'Appropriate.'

They're insane enough to do it,' Svengaard rasped. 'How can we stop them?'

'Glisson!' Lizbeth said. 'Do something!' But the Cyborg remained silent.

This is something you didn't anticipate, isn't it, Glisson?' Svengaard said.

Still, the Cyborg held to silence.

'Answer me!' Svengaard grated.

'They were just supposed to die,' Glisson said, voice dispassionate.

'But now they could sterilize all earth except Central and go on in their madness by themselves,' Svengaard said. 'And we could be tortured forever!'

'Not forever,' Glisson said. 'They're dying.'

A cheer went up from the Optimen at the rear of the hall. None of the prisoners could turn to see what had aroused the sound, but it added a new dimension to the sense of urgency around them.

Calapine lifted herself from the floor. Her nose and mouth throbbed with pain. She turned toward the tumbril, saw a commotion among the Optimen beyond it. They were leaping on benches to watch some excited activity hidden in their midst. A naked body lifted suddenly above the throng, turned over and went down again with a sodden thump. Again, a cheer shook the hall.

What're they doing? Calapine wondered. They're hurting each other - themselves.

She wiped a hand across her nose and mouth, looked at the hand. Blood. She could smell it now, a tantalizing smell. Her own blood. It fascinated her. She crossed to the prisoners, showed the hand to Harvey Durant.

'Blood,' she said. She touched her nose. Pain! 'It hurts,' she said. 'Why does it hurt, Harvey Durant?' She stared into his eyes. Such sympathy in his eyes. He was human. He cared.

Harvey looked at her, their eyes almost level because of the tumbril's position above the floor. He felt a profound compassion for her suddenly. She was Lizbeth; she was Calapine; she was all women. He saw the concentrated intensity of her attention, the here-now awareness which excluded everything except her need for his words.

'It hurts me, too, Calapine,' he said, 'but your death would hurt me more.'

For an instant, Calapine thought the hall had grown still around her. She realized then that noises of the throng continued unabated. She could hear Nourse chanting, 'Good! Good!' and Schruille saying, 'Excellent! Excellent!' She realized then that she had been the only one to hear Durant's hideous words. It was blasphemy. She'd lived thousands of years suppressing the very concept of personal death. It could not be said or conceived in the mind. But she had heard the words. She wanted to turn away, to believe those words had never happened. But something of the attention she had focused on Harvey Durant held her chained to his meaning. Only minutes ago, she had been where the seed of life spanned the eons. She had felt the wild presence of forces that could move with the mitochrondrial structures of the cells.

'Please,' Lizbeth whispered. Tree use. You're a woman. You must have some compassion. What have we done to harm you? Is it wrong to want love and life? We didn't want to harm you.'

Calapine gave no sign that she heard. There were only Harvey's words playing over and over in her mind, 'Your death... your death... your death... your death...'

Odd flickerings of heat and chill surged through her body. She heard another cheer from the crowd in the far benches. She felt her own sickness and growing awareness of the cul- de-sac in which she had been trapped. Anger suffused her. She bent to the tumbril's controls, punched a button beneath Glisson.

The carapaces of the shell which held the Cyborg began closing. Glisson's eyes opened wide. A rasping moan escaped him. Calapine giggled, punched another button on the controls. The shells snapped to their former position. Glisson gasped.

She turned to the controls beneath Harvey, poised a finger over the buttons. 'Explain your disgusting breach of manners!' Harvey remained frozen in silence. She was going to crush him!

Svengaard began to laugh. He knew his own position, the first-class second-rater. Why had he been chosen for this moment - to see Glisson and Boumour without words, Nourse and Schruille babbling on their bench, the Optimen in little knots and eddies of mad violence, Calapine ready to kill her prisoners and doubtless forget it ten seconds later. His laughter went out of control. 'Stop that laughing!' Calapine screamed.

Svengaard trembled with hysteria. He gasped for breath. The shock of her voice helped him gain a measure of control, but it still was immensely ludicrous.

'Fool!' Calapine said. 'Explain yourself.'

Svengaard stared at her. He could feel only pity now. He remembered the sea from the medical resort at Lapush and he thought he saw now why the Optimen had chosen this place so far from any ocean. Instinct. The sea produced waves, surf - a constant reminder that they had set themselves against eternity's waves. They could not face that.

'Answer me,' Calapine said. Her hand hovered above his shell's controls.

Svengaard could only stare at her and at the Optimen in their madness beyond her. They stood exposed before him as though their bodies had been opened to spill twisting entrails on the floor.

They have souls with only one scar, Svengaard thought.

It was carved on them day by day, century by century, eon by eon - the increment of panic that their blessed foreverness might be illusion, that it might after all have an ending. He had never before suspected the price the Optimen paid for infinity. The more of it they possessed, the greater its value. The greater the value, the greater the fear of losing it. The pressure went up and up... forever.

But there had to be a breaking point. The Cyborgs had seen this, and in their emotionless manner had missed the real consequences.

The Optimen had themselves hemmed in with euphemisms. They had pharmacists, not doctors, because doctors meant sickness and injury, and that equaled the unthinkable. They had only their pharmacy and its countless outlets never more than a few steps from any Optiman. They never left Central and its elaborate safeguards. They existed as perpetual adolescents in their nursery prison.

'So you won't speak,' Calapine said.

'Wait,' Svengaard said as her hand moved towards the buttons beneath him. 'When you've killed all the viables and only you remain, when you see yourselves dying one by one, what then?'

'How dare you!' she said. 'You think to question an Optiman whose experience of life makes yours no more than that!' She snapped her fingers.

He looked at her bruised nose, the blood.

'Optiman,' Svengaard said. 'A Sterrie whose constitution will accept the enzyme adjustment for infinite life... until destruction comes from within. I think you want to die.'

Calapine drew herself up, glared at him. As she did, she became aware of a sudden odd silence in the hall. She swept a glance around her, saw intent watchfulness in every eye focused upon her. Realization came slowly. They see the blood on my face.

'You had infinite life,' Svengaard said. 'Does that make you necessarily more brilliant, more intelligent? No, You merely lived longer, had more time for experience and education. Very likely, most of you are educated beyond your intelligence, else you'd have seen long ago that this moment was inevitable - the delicate balance destroyed, all of you dying.'

Calapine took a step backward. His words were like painful knives burning into her nerves.

'Look at you!' Svengaard said. 'All of you sick. What does your precious pharmacy do? I know without being told: It prescribes wider and wider variant prescriptions, more frequent dosages. It's trying to check the oscillations because that's how it's programmed. It'll go on trying as long as you permit it, but it won't save you.'

Someone screamed behind her, 'Silence him!' The cry was taken up around the hall, a deafening chant, foot stamping, hands pounding, 'Si-lence him! Si-lence him! Si-lence him!'

Calapine pressed her hands to her ears. She could still feel the chant through her skin. And now she saw Optimen start down off the benches toward the prisoners. She knew bloody violence was only a heartbeat away.

They stopped.

She couldn't understand why, and dropped her hands away from her ears. Screams rained down on her. The names of half-forgotten deities were invoked. Eyes stared at something on the floor at the head of the hall.

Calapine whirled, saw Nourse writhing there, foamy spittle around his mouth. His skin was a mottled reddish purple and yellow. Clawed hands reached out, scraped the floor.

'Do something!' Svengaard shouted. 'He's dying!' Even as he shouted, he felt the strangeness of his words. Do something! His medical training surfaced and spoke no matter what happened.

Calapine backed away, put out her hands in a warding gesture as old as witchcraft. Schruille leaped up, stood on the bench where he'd been sitting. His mouth moved soundlessly.

'Calapine,' Svengaard said, 'if you won't help him, release me so I can do it.'

She leaped to obey, filled with gratitude that she could give this hideous responsibility to another.

The restraining shells fell away at her touch. Svengaard leaped down, almost fell. His legs and arms tingled from the long confinement. He limped toward Nourse, his eyes and mind working as he moved. Mottled yellow in the skin - most probably an immune reaction to pantothenic acid and a failure of adrenalin suppression.

The red triangle of a pharmacy outlet glowed on the wall at his left above the benches. Svengaard stooped, picked up Nourse's writhing form, began climbing toward the symbol. The man was a sudden dead weight in his arms, no movement except a shallow lifting of the breast.

Optimen fell back from him as though he carried plague. Abruptly, someone above him shouted, 'Let me out!'

The mob turned away. Feet pounded on the plasmeld. They jammed up at the exits, clawed and climbed over one another. There were screams, curses, hoarse shouts. It was like a cattle pen with a predator loose in the midst of the animals.

Part of Svengaard's awareness registered on a woman at his right. He passed her. She lay stretched across two banks of seats her back at an odd angle, mouth gaping, eyes staring blood on her arms and neck. There was no sign of breath. He climbed past a man who dragged himself up the tiered benches, one leg useless, his eyes intent on an exit sign and a doorway which appeared to be filled with writhing shapes.

Svengaard's arms ached from his load. He stumbled, almost fell up the last two steps as he eased Nourse to the floor beside the pharmacy outlet.

There were voices down behind him now - Durant and Boumour shouting to be released.

Later, Svengaard thought. He put his hand to the door control on the pharmacy outlet. The doors refused to open. Of course, he thought. I'm not an Optiman. He lifted Nourse, put one of the Optiman's hands to the control. The doors slid aside. Behind them lay what appeared to be the standard presentation of a priority rack - pyrimidines, aneurin...

Aneurin and inositol, he thought. Got to counteract the immune reaction.

A familiar flow-analysis board occupied the right side with a gap for insertion of an arm and the usual vampire needles protruding from their gauges, Svengaard tripped the keys on the master flow gauge, opened the panel. He traced back the aneurin and inositol feeders, immobilized the others, thrust Nourse's arm beneath the needles. They found veins, dipped into flesh. Gauges kicked over.

Svengaard pinched off the return line to stop feed-back. Again the gauges kicked over.

Gently, Svengaard disengaged Nourse's arm from the needles, stretched him on the floor. His face was now a uniform pale white, but his breathing had deepened. His eyelids flickered. His flesh felt cold, clammy.

Shock, Svengaard thought. He removed his own jacket, put it around Nourse, began massaging the arms to restore circulation.

Calapine came into view on his right, sat down at Nourse's head. Her hands were clasped tightly together, knuckles white. There was an odd clarity in her face, the eyes with a look of staring into distances. She felt she had come a much farther distance than up from the floor of the hall, drawn by memories that would not be denied. She knew she had gone through madness into an oddly detached sanity.

The red ball of the Survey Globe caught her eye, the egg of enormous power that did her bidding even now. She thought about Nourse, her many-times playmate. Playmate and toys.

'Will he die?' she asked. She turned to watch Svengaard.

'Not immediately,' Svengaard said. 'But that final burst of hysteria... he's done irreparable damage to his system.'

He grew aware that there were only muted moans and a very few controlled commands m the hall now. Some of the acolytes had rallied to help.

'I released Boumour and the Durants and sent a plea for more... medical help,' Calapine said. There are a number of... dead... many injured.'

Dead, she thought. What an odd word to apply to an Optiman. Dead... dead... dead...

She felt then how necessity had forced her into a new kind of living awareness, a new rhythm. It had happened down there in a burst of memories that trailed through forty thousand years. None of it escaped her - not a moment of kindness nor of brutality. She remembered all the Max Allgoods, Seatac... every lover, every toy... Nourse.

Svengaard glanced around at a shuffling sound, saw Boumour approaching with a woman limp on his arms. There was a blue bruise across her cheek and jaw. Her arms hung like sticks.

'Is this pharmacy outlet available?' Boumour asked. His voice held that chilled Cyborg quality, but there was shock in his eyes and a touch of horror.

'You'll have to operate the board manually,' Svengaard said. 'I keyed out the demand system, jammed the feedback.'

Boumour stepped heavily around him with the woman. How fragile she looked. A vein pulsed thickly at her neck.

'I must concoct a muscle relaxant until we can get her to a hospital,' Boumour said. 'She broke her own arms - contra-muscular strain.'

Calapine recognized the face, remembered they had disputed mildly about a man once - about a playmate.

Svengaard moved to Nourse's right arm, continued massaging. The move brought the floor of the hall into view and the tumbril. Glisson sat impassively armless in his restraining shell. Lizbeth lay at one side with Harvey kneeling beside her.

'Mrs Durant!' Svengaard said, remembering his obligation.

'She's all right,' Boumour said. 'Immobilization for the past few hours was the best thing that could've happened to her.'

Best thing! Svengaard thought. Durant was right: These Cyborgs are as insensitive as machines.

'Si-lence him,' Nourse whispered.

Svengaard looked down at the pale face, saw the broken veins in the cheeks, the sagging, unresponsive flesh. Nourse's eyelids nickered open.

'Leave him to me,' Calapine said.

Nourse moved his head, tried to look at her. He blinked, having obvious trouble focusing. His eyes began to water.

Calapine lifted his head, slid under him until he rested on her lap. She began stroking his brow.

'He used to like this,' she said. 'Go help the others. Doctor.' 'Cal,' Nourse said. 'Oh, Cal... I... hurt.' Twenty

'WHY do you help them?' Glisson asked. 'I don't understand you, Boumour. Your actions aren't logical. What use is it to help them?' He looked up through the open segment of the Survey Globe at Calapine sitting alone on the dais of the Tuyere. The lights of the interior played a slow rhythm across her face. A glowing pyramid of projected binaries danced on the air in front of her. Glisson had been released from his shell of restraint, but he still sat on the tumbril, his arm connections dangling empty. A medicouch had been brought in for Lizbeth Durant. She lay on it with Harvey seated beside her. Boumour stood with his back to Glisson, looking up into the globe. His fingers moved nervously, clenching, opening. There was a streak of dried blood down his right sleeve. The elfin face held a look of puzzlement.

Svengaard came in from behind the globe, a slowly moving figure in the red shadows. Abruptly, the hall glared with light. The main globes had gone on automatically as darkness fell outside. Svengaard stopped to check Lizbeth, patted Harvey's shoulder. 'She will be all right. She's strong.'

Lizbeth's eyes followed him as he moved around to look into the Survey Globe. Svengaard's shoulders sagged with fatigue, but there was a look of elation in his face. He was a man who'd found himself.

'Calapine,' Svengaard said, 'that was the last of them going out to hospitals.'

'I see it,' she said. She looked up at the scanners, every one lighted. Somewhat more than half of the Optimen were under restraint - mad. Thousands had died. More thousands lay sorely injured. Those who remained watched their globe. She sighed, wondering at their thoughts, wondering how they faced the fact that all had fallen from the tight wire of immortality. Her own emotions confused her. There was an odd feeling of relief in her breast.

'What of Schruille?' she asked.

'Crushed at a door,' Svengaard said. 'He's... dead.'

She sighed. 'And Nourse?'

'Responding to treatment.'

'Don't you understand what's happened to you?' Glisson demanded. His eyes glittered as he stared up at Calapine.