There was no way to avoid it. Still angry, Bleys collapsed the security bubble.

"What is it, John?" Henry asked.

"The ship is reporting news from Old Earth," John said, speaking directly to Bleys. "They say there's been an assassination attempt on Rukh Tamani!"

"'Attempt'?" Dahno asked. "What d'you mean, 'attempt'?"

"The reports say she was only wounded."

"They missed?" Dahno roared.

Colville stared at him, but Dahno turned back to Bleys. "I've got to go!"

"You can't repair this by rushing back, brother," Bleys said. His anger was gone, and he had a curious sense that he had been emptied out.

"It'll be easier than you think," Dahno said. "It was already set up to get rid of the actual assassins right afterward; all I have to do is manipulate the way people talk about her. No matter what they're saying now, in a couple of days I can change the way they look at her." He grinned. "I may even be able to blame this on the Dorsai."

"You did this?" It was John Colville's voice, speaking to Dahno's broad back. Dahno turned to look at the Soldier; but before he could speak, Henry stepped forward, moving up beside Dahno.

"John, you're overwrought," Henry said. "This is not your place."

Shaking off Foster's attempt to hold him back—an attempt hampered by the Soldier's need to keep an eye on Dahno's bodyguards— John turned to Henry.

"It's not my place, Henry. I know that! But this is an evil I can't condone."

"I do not ask you to condone it," Henry said. "But you must tend to your own duty—" He indicated Dahno's two bodyguards, that John had been assigned to watch. "—and I will do mine."

Henry turned back to face Dahno.

"Is it so?" he said. "Did you order this assassination?"

"You heard," Dahno said. "She wasn't assassinated."

"You would play word games before the Lord?" Henry asked. His voice was colder than Bleys had ever heard it.

"I have to go," Dahno said. "I can't take the time to argue semantics—not if I want to fix the damage."

"You intend to complete the deed," Henry said.

"No!" John Colville yelled; he was turning back from where he had been watching the two bodyguards, his void pistol coming up.

"John—nor Henry said, his voice loud as he tried to penetrate the Soldier's anger while turning to face him. He raised an empty hand toward the younger man, stepping in front of Dahno to shield him—and as he did so, Dahno's two bodyguards acted.

The one closest to Steve Foster threw himself sideways into the Soldier, knocking him backward and freeing the other bodyguard to raise his own void pistol.

"Don’t!” Dahno yelled; and his arm swept out to push Henry sideways, out of the path of the charge. But the bodyguard had already fired.

There was no sound, no flash, but both Henry and Dahno fell, the impetus of Dahno's arm pushing Henry to the side even as both of them fell forward. Before they hit the ground, John Colville had swung around and fired at the man who had shot. As he did so, the other bodyguard fired at him. The second Soldier, Steve Foster, having recovered quickly, fired a fraction of a second late.

It might have taken two or three seconds, Bleys found himself thinking. The scene on the patio of the Mayne estate came back up from his memory—it had taken only a few seconds to stretch seven bodies out on that floor ... it was like an echo.

He was aware of a strange detachment in his head, as if his mind had withdrawn from the area behind his eyes, to hide in a room farther back ... as if his being was just along for the ride now. He saw Foster turning back to face him. There were tears in his eyes.

I should tell him to watch the door, Bleys thought. But before he could do so his eye was caught by Toni's movement—she had somehow reached Henry without Bleys noticing it, and was kneeling beside him.

"He's alive!" She almost yelled the words, and they seemed to wake Bleys.

"How—?" Bleys took a step in her direction, but stopped to point a finger at Foster.

"Call the ship," he ordered. "Have them bring emergency medical equipment—quietly but quickly!"

"What about their people outside?" the Soldier asked.

"Make the call!" Bleys said, and strode to the door. Pulling it open, he looked out, and saw six pairs of eyes looking back at him.

"We have a problem," he said, directing his words at one of Dahno's bodyguards. "Who speaks for your people?"

By the time Kaj Menowsky and some helpers from Favored of God had reached the chapel, Dahno's bodyguards, knowing their employer was dead, had agreed to sit quietly in the bar, under observation. Bleys had remained with them, knowing his presence would quell their nervousness; until Toni came into the bar to report that the medical team had removed the bodies of Henry and Dahno, as well as that of John Colville, under the guise of a delivery of supplies to the ship.

"You should call your ship, if you haven't already, and have your friends' bodies removed quietly, too," Toni said, looking at the leader of the bodyguards. "You don't want an alarm raised before you get back to Old Earth."

As he and Toni walked back down the concourse toward the entrance closest to Favored, Bleys' back felt cold despite the Soldiers covering their withdrawal. But nothing happened.

At the port entrance they boarded a shuttle bus for the trip to the ship. Bleys expected Toni to want to talk with him, but she maintained her silence. He felt no desire to talk, himself.

Once they were on board, Toni turned to him.

"They're both alive!" she said. Bleys looked down at her. "How can that be?" he asked.

"Kaj says he thinks they were hit by a single charge," she said. "Maybe that dissipated some of the effect. But Henry wants to talk to you, and Kaj says you need to get there right away."

"I think Dahno will recover," Kaj said as Bleys entered the infirmary. "He was damaged, and machines are maintaining some of his vital functions for the moment; but he's strong." "And Henry?" Bleys asked.

"He's still alive," Kaj said, "but I think he doesn't have very long." Toni sat down abruptly, her head down. Bleys felt his eyes burning into the medician.

"Why not? If he's still alive you might be able to—"

"No," Kaj said. "Void pistols disrupt neural functions on a cellular level. He took the brunt of that charge, and was more damaged than Dahno. And he was weaker to start with." He looked up at Bleys.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Bleys," Henry said, as his nephew entered the room. "How is Dahno?"

"He'll live," Bleys said.

"I will not," Henry said. "I feel it. Do not grieve for me; I am content with my life."

"I won't grieve for you, if that's what you want," Bleys said. "But I can't promise not to grieve for my own loss."

"I cannot argue with that," Henry said. His voice, Bleys thought, already seemed weaker. He stood there for a moment, feeling helpless.

"I'll take care of Joshua and his family," he said at last.

"There is no need," Henry said, a smile coming to his face. "Joshua is well with the Lord, and needs no more.... But I thank you. I've always known you had a good heart in you."

"Uncle Henry," Bleys began—but Henry's weak voice overrode him.

"Save yourself, Bleys," Henry said. "You walk the paths of damnation, and I will no longer be there to try to help you." "Uncle—"

"May God bless you and help you, Bleys," Henry said. His voice was almost inaudible—and then it was gone.

As Favored dropped inside Luna's orbit, Toni came striding into the lounge, where Bleys had been sitting in silence since they left Mars orbit. It was less than a Standard day since Henry had died. Dahno, still unconscious, was alive among the infirmary's machines.

"Bleys, you have to see this," Toni said. As she was talking she activated the controls for his screen, which Bleys had not turned on; and Bleys found himself looking across a green, grassy field, at what appeared to be the back of a large crowd of people.

"What's going on?" he asked. "What's that roaring noise?"

"This is being broadcast on all the major Old Earth broadcast media," she said. "The reporter stopped her narration to let the crowd noise come through. There's a roadway on the other side of the crowd, and those people are all there because they heard a rumor that Rukh Tamani is coming down the road, heading for a spaceport."

The view on the screen panned sideways, and the reporter began to speak.

"The crowd seems to be about a dozen deep on both sides of the road," she said. "It's been lining the road like this for more than ten kilometers. We've been asking for permission to put a camera into the air, but so far the security people have refused—no one is taking any chances of a repeat attempt on Rukh Tamani's life."

"Kayla," a male voice cut in, "we've just been given permission to take the feed from the security net—" Even as the man spoke, the view shifted.

Now they were looking down on the crowd, and could see the road itself, outlined by the fence that separated it from the people. A small convoy of vehicles entered the screen, and the view panned to watch as they passed by—until, as the convoy approached the far side of the screen, it stopped.

Two figures stepped out of one of the rear vehicles, one small, moving haltingly, and the other—Hal Mayne!

As if paralyzed, Bleys watched the smaller figure as it seemed to bless the crowd. It all happened in virtual silence, the noise of the crowd having died away when they saw her. The reporter kept her own silence.

After the moment of blessing, the crowd noise began again, while the figure that was Hal Mayne gathered his smaller companion into the vehicle once more, and they drove off. The reporter began to speak, but Bleys punched the control that shut off the screen once more.

"I have to talk to Hal Mayne," he told Toni. "I have to tell him—" He stopped.

"Would you please try to set up a meeting?" he said.

Before she could reply, the communicator's EMERGENCY tone sounded.

"Great Teacher." The captain's voice carried a note that made Bleys sit up straighter. "What is it, Captain?"

"A broadcast message from Space Authority," the captain said. "We're being warned away."

"Warned away? Do you mean they don't want us to approach the planet?"

"Not just us, Great Teacher—all ships are being warned off. They say the Final Encyclopedia has activated some kind of shield that will circle the whole planet, and that it would be fatal to touch it."

"The whole—" Bleys began; but then caught himself. "Did they say how far away we should be?"

"We're fine," the captain said. "But this space is going to get crowded with other vessels being kept away. I recommend we move away."

"I'd like to stay in the vicinity, though," Bleys said.

"I could land on Luna," the captain said. "I suspect other vessels will do so, too, and it may become crowded down there; but we're closer than most."

"Do so, Captain," Bleys said.

"You probably won't be able to get through to Hal Mayne for a while," Bleys said to Toni, quietly. "Please keep trying. When you get someone in the Final Encyclopedia, put me on to talk to them."

When Toni came back to tell Bleys that she had the Final Encyclopedia's Chief Engineer on the line, Bleys was busily sampling intercepted communications. The Final Encyclopedia was being swamped with hundreds of calls protesting the great shield that now walled the planet off from the rest of the Universe—and walled approaching ships off from the planet. It was clear, though, that the Final Encyclopedia was not about to take the shield down.

The Engineer—his name was Jeamus Walters—was a mousy-looking little man, and he looked exasperated; he did not seem startled at Bleys' explanation of the reason for his call.

"I'll try to find Hal," the Engineer said. "But I can't promise you he'll see you—he's just been made Director of the Final Encyclopedia, and he's going to be pretty busy."

"I understand that," Bleys said. "Tell him, please, that I called— but say that I can wait. I'll call back in a few days, after things have quieted down for you all."

"Captain," Bleys said. "Take us back to Mars, would you? And tell the courier to accompany us, and to be ready to take a message in a few hours."

"What are we doing?" Toni asked.

"I need to try to learn more about what's going on with Old Earth and that shield of theirs," Bleys said. "I was hoping the planetary authorities would become angry enough to make them take it down, but I'm sensing a change in tone."

"I think you're right," Toni said. "The assassination attempt seems to have altered the way a lot of Earthmen are feeling."

"That's what I'm seeing, too," Bleys said. He sighed. "Dahno did us a lot of damage."

"What are you going to do with him?"

"That's one of the reasons I want to send out some messages right away," he replied. "I'm working on a plan for him, but I need a couple of extra ships on hand."

"Is there something I can do?" she asked.

"Keep monitoring the situation," he said. "Keep me on top of major developments. But I need time to think."

CHAPTER 43

Mars was on the other side of the sun from Old Earth, which meant that Favored of God's captain vastly preferred to make their journey back to Old Earth in two phase-shifts, rather than one—the first at an angle that took them well to the side of Old Earth's star and out almost to the orbit of Jupiter, and the second back in to the near-vicinity of Old Earth, again at an angle that kept Favored well away from the star. The trip, Captain Broadus had assured Bleys the first time they made it, would still be much faster than trying to proceed around the star by conventional drive.

"There's no hurry, Captain," Bleys told her. "I have a lot to think about."

And he did. He had spent several days near Mars trying to follow the events precipitated by both the assassination attempt and the erection of the shield around Old Earth. There had been much to do, but he had felt himself possessed by an almost manic energy, and had kept his staff busy shuttling information and sending out orders. A steady stream of courier vessels had been moving to and from the Younger Worlds, and three were currently holding station with Favored, awaiting their orders.

Dahno remained unconscious in the ship's infirmary, but Kaj assured Bleys that he would recover well enough, given time. Bleys had developed a plan for dealing with him, and it was already in motion.

The question remained: what had Dahno been up to on Old Earth? Bleys still thought it likely that some of the senior Others' leaders were somehow involved; but it was unclear whether those leaders had been plotting with Dahno, or against him. In any case, Bleys was sure the storm of recent events would be causing those leaders to rethink their loyalties. He would have that to deal with when he left this system.

What am I going to do about Henry? The question could not be ducked, although he shrank from going back to tell Joshua.

Bleys watched the screen that was now showing him the orb of Mars; the planet had been getting smaller, slowly, as they drew away, but they must now be far enough off for their first phase-shift. He had decided it was time to get back to Old Earth once more; he needed to have that talk with Hal Mayne—

"Bleys," Toni said, from her desk behind him and to his left side, "there's a message coming in."

"What is it?" Bleys said.

"It's from Many Colors,'" she said.

"Many Colors?' Bleys said. "She's the end of the chain from New-Earth, isn't she?" Without waiting for her to respond to what had merely been a rhetorical question, he went on: "She must have news. Tell the captain to wait."

"The captain's already doing that," Toni said.

Decoded, the news was stunning—and yet, Bleys told Toni, in hindsight it made perfect sense that the Dorsai, leaving their planet, would come to Old Earth.

"The only reason we had to think that the Dorsai were going to go to Mara, to set up a defense there, was because the Exotics themselves were expecting that," Bleys said. "We've never managed to get sources on the Dorsai, but the Exotics have always been so open and accommodating that intelligence-gathering there has been fairly easy."

"Perhaps for the unimportant information," Toni said. "Who can say whether even the Exotics might be able to keep important secrets?"

"Well, I made the mistake of believing they were being consolidated on Mara." He shook his head.

"Mayne caught me out on this one," he said. "I thought it was a major sacrifice for the Exotics, to strip Kultis of everything valuable so they could protect Mara, but it made sense. Who could believe the Exotics would strip both their planets of everything, to leave themselves wide open for us to walk in whenever we want?"

"You mean they sent all of their assets to Old Earth?"

"It must be," he said. "I expect we'll see both Exotic and Dorsai ships—a lot of them—entering Old Earth's space very soon. Where else can they have gone?"

"But this report that the Dorsai are going to Old Earth isn't based on any hard information," Toni objected. "It could be a mistake, or even a piece of misinformation."

"It isn't," Bleys said. "It makes too much sense for it to be wrong. That phase-shield wall around Old Earth changed everything. A wall like that would only slow down a determined attack from outside, normally, because attackers could simply move up close enough to get their bearings, shift right through it—and have time on the other side to recover and mount an attack on the planet."

"I see!" Toni exclaimed. "With the Dorsai at Old Earth, they can simply wait behind the wall and destroy any ship shifting through it before it can recover from the effects of the shift!"

"More than that," he said. "They can also threaten to come out from behind the wall whenever one of our ships comes near enough to try to set up for a safe shift. Forcing our ships to shift from farther away widens the uncertainty factor—" He stopped as she made a gesture indicating he had lost her. "—I mean, the farther a ship moves in a shift, the less certainty it can have that it will come out exactly where it intends." He stopped, to let her think that over.

"I think I see," she said after a moment. "It's something like the fact that the farther away an archer is from his target, the more likely it is his arrow will miss the target—" He started to speak, but she checked him with an upraised hand. "—but there are no such factors as windage in space, so it must be a factor of the physics involved?"

"That's an analogy, only," he said, "so don't try to run too far with it. Let's simply say that under the principles of uncertainty, the farther a ship tries to shift, the more its point of arrival has to be pictured as a sort of spray pattern."

"I understand," she said. "That's why interstellar ships take a number of shifts to make their trips—they make relatively short shifts so that they don't come out of shift too far off-course. And it takes time because when they come out of each shift, they have to figure out exactly where they are before they can calculate their next shift."

"Exactly," he said. "That's why only the most accomplished spacers, like the best Dorsai, dare to try to shift in a planet's atmosphere—they do it in such short jumps that they don't have to calculate very much. ... I've heard they just judge it by eye, or maybe by feel."

"So if we tried to shift to Old Earth from—let's say the orbit of Mars—we couldn't be sure we'd come out inside that wall of theirs."

"Yes," Bleys said. "And if we sent a fleet, it'd be statistically certain some of them wouldn't get it right; the greater the range from which a ship makes a phase-shift, the greater the likelihood of errors—such as coming out on the wrong side of the wall, coming out so near it that they touch it and are destroyed—or coming out inside some other solid object, such as the planet itself."

"Which would create a big explosion?"

"About the size of a large nuclear weapon," Bleys responded— somewhat absently.

"It's not that we can't shift our fleets through the shield-wall any time we want—once we have our ships and people ready," he went on musingly. "But our people would know they were being asked to make a fairly long-range shift into a fairly small pocket of empty space—it's going to be hard to motivate them."

Toni was silent; and after a moment he turned to look at her.

"Ask the captain to pick a place for us to sit, on Old Earth's side of the star," he said. "Perhaps somewhere in Mars' orbit—although of course she's not there—and then give those coordinates to Many Colors, so she'll know where to come once she's delivered the message I'm about to give her. I want it to go to New Earth."

He sat back, returning his gaze to the screen. While he had been talking with Toni, Favored’s path had moved the planet out of sight; but then, it was the stars he wanted to see, anyway.

"The captain has decided on a rendezvous point," Toni said a short time later, "and the information's been passed to Many Colors. Since she's only going back to her place in the chain, she doesn't need to calculate a jump, and is ready to go."

"All right," Bleys said. "Take a look at this." He touched a control, sending the file to her own screen, and she sat down to read what he had written.

To all who believe in the future for ourselves and our children:

I have been reluctant to speak out, since it has always been my firm belief that those like myself exist only to answer questions— once they have been asked, and if they are asked.

However, I have just now received information, from people fleeing Old Earth, which alarms me. It speaks, I think, of a danger to all those of good intent; and particularly to such of us on the new worlds. For some hundreds of years now, the power-center worlds of the Dorsai, with their lust for warlike aggression, the Exotics, with their avarice and cunning, and those the Friendly people have so aptly named the Forgotten of God—these, among the otherwise great people of the fourteen worlds, have striven to control and plunder the peaceful and law-abiding Cultures among us.

Toni looked up from her screen. "It's a declaration of war," she said.

"No, it's a call to arms," Bleys said. "I'm not calling for war. I'm trying to tell people that someone else had already started a war, and we need to work together to defend ourselves."

Toni looked back to her screen.

"Let me rephrase that," he said. "It's—" He stopped as she made a movement with her lips, but her eyes never left her screen and she did not speak. He stayed silent himself.

For some hundreds of years we have been aware that a loose conspiracy existed among these three groups, who have ended by arrogating the title of Splinter Cultures almost exclusively to themselves, when by rights it applies equally, as we all know, to hundreds of useful, productive, and unpredatory communities among the human race. We

among you who have striven quietly to turn our talents to the good of all, we whom some call the Others but whom those of us who qualify for that name think of only as an association of like minds, thrown together by a common use of talents, have been particularly aware of this conspiracy over the past three hundred years. But we have not seen it as a threat to the race as a whole until this moment.

Now, however, we have learned of an unholy alliance, which threatens each one of us with eventual and literal slavery under the domination of that institution orbiting Earth under the name of the Final Encyclopedia. I and my friends have long known that the Final Encyclopedia was conceived for only one purpose, to which it has been devoted ever since its inception. That purpose has been the development of unimaginable and unnatural means of controlling the hearts and minds of normal people. In fact, its construction was initially financed by the Exotics for that purpose; as those who care to investigate the writing of Mark Torre, its first Director, will find.

That aim, pursued in secrecy and isolation which required even that the Encyclopedia be placed in orbit above the surface of Earth, has been furthered by the Encyclopedia's practice of picking the brains of the best minds in each generation; by inviting them, ostensibly as visiting scholars, to visit that institution.

"Won't this bring Old Earth against us?" she said. She did not look up as she said it, but continued reading, intent.

"I was hoping Old Earth would resent that Mayne put up his shield-wall without getting their permission," he said. "For a while there, the reactions down there gave me hope of that. But things have calmed down."

She looked up.

"You mean you now think Old Earth is going to accept Mayne's acts?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "That assassination attempt seems to have been a watershed event. A lot of people there are still against the Encyclopedia's actions, but those who are for it—they're most for Tamani— have been energized."

Her eyes returned to her screen.

Also, it has continued to be financed by the Exotics, who, records will show, have also had a hand in financing the Dorsai, who were from the first developed with the aim of becoming a military arm that could be used to police all other, subject worlds.

Those conspirators have now been joined in their unholy work by the people of Old Earth themselves—a people whose early, bloody attempts to keep all the newly settled worlds subject to themselves were only frustrated by the courageous resistance of the peoples on all those Younger Worlds. But it took a hundred years of continuous fighting, as you all know from the history books you studied as children.

Now the people of Old Earth, under the leadership of the Final Encyclopedia, have finally thrown off all pretense of innocent purpose. They have withdrawn the unbelievable wealth accumulated by the Exotic Worlds by trade and intrigue from such people as ourselves, moving it to their treasury on Earth. They have also, openly, in one mass movement, evacuated the Dorsai from their world and brought them to Earth; to begin building the army that is intended to conquer our new worlds, one by one, and leave us enslaved forever under the steel rule of martial authority. And they have begun to ready for action those awesome weapons the Encyclopedia itself has been developing over three centuries.

They are ready to attack us—we who have been so completely without suspicion of their arrogant intentions. We stand now, essentially unarmed, unprepared, facing the imminent threat of an inhuman and immoral attempt to enslave or destroy us. We will now begin to hear thrown at us, in grim earnest, the saying that has been quietly circulated among the worlds for centuries, in order to destroy our will to resist—the phrase that not even the massed armies of all the rest of mankind can defeat the Dorsai, if the Dorsai choose to confront those armies.

But do not believe this. It was never true, only a statement circulated by the Exotics and the Dorsai for their own advantage. As for massed armies, as you all know, we have none. But we can raise them. We can raise armies in numbers and strengths never dreamed of by the population of Old Earth. We are not the impoverished, young peoples that Old Earth, with Dow deCastries, tried to dominate unsuccessfully in the first century of our colonization. Now, on all the worlds our united numbers add up to nearly five billion. What can be done against the courage and resistance of such a people, even by the four million trained and battle-hardened warriors that Old Earth has just imported from the Dorsai.

United, we of the Younger Worlds are invincible. We will arm, we will go to meet our enemy—and this time, with the help of God, we will crush this decadent, proud planet that has threatened us too long; and, to the extent it is necessary, we will so deal with the people of Old Earth as to make sure that such an attempt by them never again occurs to threaten our lives, our homes, and the lives and homes of those who come after us.

In this effort, I and my friends stand ready to do anything that will help. It has always been our nature never to seek the limelight; but in the shadow of this emergency I have personally asked all whom you call the Others, and they have agreed with me, to make themselves known to you, to make themselves available for any work or duty in which they can be useful in turning back this inconceivable threat.

The unholy peoples of Old Earth say they will come against us. Let them come, then, if they are that foolish. Let us lay this demon once and for all. How little they suspect it will be the beginning of the end, for them!

Signed, Bleys Ahrens.

Toni, after reading the announcement, was silent for a long moment.

"For immediate release to the media on all the Younger Worlds," Bleys said.

"Just your name, no title?" she said at last.

"No," he said. "No title would have any meaning here. And it's psychologically more effective this way—it's meant to tell people that we're at war, and that I'm just another human being in it with them."

"Why do this at all?"

"I have to get out in front," he said. "Mayne stole a march on me, and to maintain my credibility as the leader of the Others, as well as of the Younger Worlds, I can't let it be seen that I've been surprised."

"This letter does more than that," she said.

"You mean it's deliberately inflammatory," he said. He nodded without waiting for her reply.

"It is that. But that's necessary—people have to be pumped up for a war; they wouldn't want to do it, otherwise. Give it to Many Colors and send her on her way—I want my letter published on all the Younger Worlds before the Dorsais' movement becomes public knowledge."

Chapter 44

Favored of God had been at the new rendezvous point for just under half a Standard day when the in-system communications its technicians had been monitoring began to carry reports of the arrivals of the first of the Dorsai ships. It was most likely, the captain explained, that they had come out of shift on the fringes of the system, before recalculating and shifting inward; and they were all coming out of their final shifts well in-system from where Favored lay quietly in Mars' orbital plane.

For the next half-day the arrival of the Dorsai was a media sensation, and Bleys' people were able to relay to him broadcast coverage as the Dorsai ships were passed through irises opened in the shield-wall and assigned orbital parking slots just inside the wall. But as the process continued it quickly became old news, and the media turned to other interests.

"It's time to go in," Bleys said to Toni. "Mayne's had time to digest the press of events, so he'll be able to meet me."

"Why would he meet you?" she asked. "For that matter, why do you want to meet with him—again?"

"You don't think I should?"

"I don't think it's good for you," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean . . . well, I've never been there when you've talked to him, but it's always seemed to me as if you come back from those meetings—different."

"'Different'?"

"For a while. ... I mean, you're usually—distracted. And unhappy."