gless to him,
his selector circuits no longer disregarded. "Bert, M-75 can't manage
half the board in his condition. Better put him on the repairs."

"Yeah. Hadn't thought about that." Sokolski cleared his throat. "M-11
will return to standard function."

M-11 spun back to the panel and M-75 felt the tension slacken, the
fear vanish. Utter relief swept over him, and he let himself be
submerged in purest automatic activity.

But as he rested, letting his circuits cool and his organization
return, he arrived at a deduction that was almost inescapable. M-11
was _that one_ in terms of sound. M-75 had made a momentous discovery
which cast a new light on almost every bit of datum in his files: he
had discovered symbols.

"M-75!" came the voice, and he sensed within himself the slamming shut
of circuits, the whir of tapes, the abrupt sensitizing of behavior
strips. Another symbol, this time clearly himself. "You will proceed
as follows."

He swung from the board, and the tension was gone--completely. For one
soaring moment, he was _all_ awareness--every function, every circuit,
every element of his magnificent electronic physiology available for
use by the fractional portion of him that had become something more
than just a feedback device.

In that instant he made what seemed hundreds of evaluations. He
arrived at untold scores of conclusions. He altered circuits. Above
all, he increased, manifold, the area of his consciousness.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, he felt the freedom slip away, and
though he struggled to keep hold of it, it seemed irretrievably gone.
Once more the omnipotent voice clamped over him like a harsh hand over
the mouth of a squalling babe. "You will go to Section AA-39 of the
control board. What's the schedule, Joe? Thanks. M-75, your movement
pattern is as follows: Z-29-a-q-39-8...."

Powerless to resist, though every crystal and atom of his reasoning
self fought to thrust aside the command, M-75 obeyed. He moved along
the prescribed pattern, clipping wires with metal fingers that
sprouted blades, rewiring with a dexterity beyond anything human,
soldering with a thumb that generated a white heat, removing bulbs
and parts and fetching replacements from the vent where they popped up
at precisely the right moment. He could not help doing the job
perfectly: the design of the board to its littlest detail was
imprinted indelibly on his memory tapes.

But that certain portion of him, a little