“What I want to know is, why did Darfla take you off your rounds in the first place?”
Darfla looked up. She had been idly running her toe through the mud near the pool. “I went through his dossier. He was too brilliant for the Corps. His record indicated any number of checkpoints of upper-level intelligence. So I went and found him. He didn’t react as most Stuffs would have, when I applied a few stimuli, such as ruining his dictobox.”
Themus winced at the memory of the dictobox.
“But what made you look up his dossier?” demanded Furth.
Darfla hesitated, and a gold blush crept up her cheeks. “I saw him get off the ship from Penares-Base. I—well—I rather liked his appearance. You know.” She looked down again, embarrassed.
Deere made a gun with thumb and forefinger, pointed it at her, “If you don’t stop taking these things into your own hands! There’s a group who looks into things like that. We’d have gotten to him in time.”
Themus rubbed his nose in amazement. “I—I just can’t believe all this. It’s so fantastic. So unreal.”
“No more unreal to believe every man is a single brain with individual thoughts than to believe he’s a member of a group mind with the same thoughts for all.”
He clapped the Watcher on the back.
“Are you prepared to drop your life as a Watcher and become one of us? I think you’ll be quite a find. Your five acts were the maddest we’ve seen in a long time.”
“But I’m not a Crackpot. I’m a Stuffed-Shirt. I’ve always been one.”
“Bosh! You were brought up to think you were one. We’ve shown you there are other ways to think, now use them.”
Themus considered. He’d never really had anything, as a member of the Kyben race—the rulers of the universe—but a constant unease and a fear of the Mines. These people all seemed so free, so clever, so—so—He was at a loss for words.
“Can you take me out of sight of the Corps?” he asked.
“Easiest thing in the world,” said Furth, “to make you drop out of sight as Themus, the Watcher, and make you reappear as—let’s say— Gugglefish, the Crackpot Mountebank.”
Themus’s face broke into the first full, unreserved smile he could recall. “It’s a deal, I suppose. I’ve always wanted to live in a madhouse. The only thing that bothers me is Uncle Boolbak. You fool the Stuffs by pretending madness, and well—you consider Boolbak mad, so perhaps—”
He stopped when he saw the perplexed looks that came over the Crackpots’ faces. It was a germ of thought.
“Welcome home, maniac,” said Deere.
The End