trated on being brave.
Later, while Captain Thiel looked in her eyes with the bright
little light, Mary said calmly, "Do you know my hypoalter,
Susan Shorrs?"
The medicop drew back and made some notes on a pad
before answering. "Why, yes. She's in here quite often too."
"Does she look like me?"
"Not much. She's a very nice little girl..." He hesitated,
visibly fumbling.
Mary blurted, "Tell me truly, what's she like?"
Captain Thiel gave her his nice smile. "Well, I'll tell you a
secret if you keep it to yourself."
"Oh, I promise."
He leaned over and whispered in her ear and she liked
the clean odour of him. "She's not nearly as pretty as you
are."
Mary wanted very badly to put her arms around him and
hug him. Instead, wondering if Mrs. Harris, waiting outside,
had heard, she drew back self-consciously and said, "Susan
is the cause of all this trouble, the nasty little thing."
"Oh now!" the medicop exclaimed. "I don't think so,
Mary. She's in trouble, too, you know."
"She still eats sauerkraut." Mary was defiant.
"But what's wrong with that?"
"You told her not to last year because it makes me sick on
my shift. But it agrees in buckets with a little pig like her."
The medicop took this seriously. He made a note on the
pad. "Mary, you should have complained sooner."
"Do you think my father might not like me because Susan
Shorrs is my hypoalter?" she asked abruptly.
"I hardly think so, Mary. After all, he doesn't even know
her. He's never on her ego-shift."
"A little bit," Mary said, and was immediately frightened.
Captain Thiel glanced at her sharply. "What do you mean
by that, child?"
"Oh, nothing," Mary said hastily. "I just thought maybe
he was."
"Let me see your pharmacase," he said rather severely.
Mary slipped the pharmacase off the belt at her waist and
handed it to him. Captain Thiel extracted the prescription
card from the back and threw it away. He slipped a new
card in the taping machine on his desk and punched out a
new prescription, which he reinserted in the pharmacase. In
the space on the front, he wrote directions for Mary to take
the drugs numbered from left to right.
Mary watched his serious face and remembered that he
had complimented her about being prettier than Susan. "Cap-
tain Thiel, is your hypoalter as handsome as you are?"
The young medicop emptied the remains of the old pre-
scription from the pharmacase and took it to the dispensary
in the corner, where he slid it into the filling slot. He
seemed unmoved by her question and simply muttered,
"Much handsomer."
The machine automatically filled the case from the punched
card on its back and he returned it to Mary. "Are you taking
your drugs exactly as prescribed? You know there are very
strict laws about that, and as soon as you are fourteen,
you will be held to them."
Mary nodded solemnly. Great strait-jackets, who didn't
know there were laws about taking your drugs?
There was a long pause and Mary knew she was sup-
posed to leave. She wanted, though, to stay with Captain Thiel
and talk with him. She wondered how it would be if he were
appointed her father.
Mary was not hurt that her shy compliment to him had
gone unnoticed. She had only wanted something to talk about.
Finally she said desperately, "Captain Thiel, how is it pos-
sible for a body to change as much from one ego-shift to an-
other as it does between Susan and me?"
"There isn't all the change you imagine," he said. "Have
you had your first physiology?"
"Yes. I was very good..." Mary saw from his smile that
her inadvertent little conceit had trapped her.
"Then, Miss Mary Walden, how do you think it is possi-
ble?"
Why did teachers and medicops have to be this way?
When all you wanted was to have them talk to you, they
turned everything around and made you think.
She quoted unhappily from her schoolbook, "The main
things in an ego-shift are the two vegetative nervous systems
that translate the conditions of either personality to the blood
and other organs right from the brain. The vegetative nervous
systems change the rate at which the liver burns or stores
sugar and the rate at which the kidneys excrete..."
Through the closed door to the other room, Mrs. Harris's
voice raised at the visiophone said distinctly, "But, Mr.
Walden..:'
"Reabsorb," corrected Captain Thiel.
"What?" She didn't know what to listen tothe medicop
or the distant voice of Mrs. Harris.
"It's better to think of the kidneys as reabsorbing salts
and nutrients from the filtrated blood."
"Oh."
"But, Mr. Walden, we can overdo a good thing. The proper
amount of neglect is definitely required for full development
Of some personality types and Mary certainly is one of
those...."
"What about the pituitary gland that's attached to the brain
and controls all the other glands during the shift of egos?"
pressed Captain Thiel distractingly.
"But, Mr. Walden, too much neglect at this critical point
may cause another personality to split off and we can't have
that. Adequate personalities are congenital. A new one now
would only rob the present personalities. You are the ap-
pointed parent of this child and the Board of Education will
enforce your compliance with our diagnosis. . . ."
Mary's mind leaped to a page in one of her childhood
storybooks. It was an illustration of a little girl resting be-
neath a great tree that overhung a brook. There were friend-
ly little wild animals about. Mary could see the page clearly
and she thought about it very hard instead of crying.