he'll jump to
the conclusive I'm an automaton. Which, of course, I _am_. Then there's
a Uighur on my list--I'll appear to him in a shaman's hut and he'll
assume I'm a devil. A matter of ecologicologic."

"Then you're a devil?" Martin inquired, seizing on the only plausible
solution.

"No, no, no. I'm a robot. Don't you understand anything?"

"I don't even know who I am, now," Martin said. "For all I know, I'm a
faun and you're a human child. I don't think this Scotch is doing me as
much good as I'd--"

"Your name is Nicholas Martin," the robot said patiently. "And mine is
ENIAC."

"Eniac?"

"ENIAC," the robot corrected, capitalizing. "ENIAC Gamma the
Ninety-Third."

So saying, he unslung a sack from his metallic shoulder and began to
rummage out length upon length of what looked like red silk ribbon with
a curious metallic lustre. After approximately a quarter-mile of it had
appeared, a crystal football helmet emerged attached to its end. A
gleaming red-green stone was set on each side of the helmet.

"Just over the temporal lobes, you see," the robot explained, indicating
the jewels. "Now you just set it on your head, like this--"

"Oh no I don't," Martin said, withdrawing his head with the utmost
rapidity. "Neither do you, my friend. What's the idea? I don't like the
looks of that gimmick. I particularly don't like those two red garnets
on the sides. They look like eyes."

"Those are artificial eclogite," the robot assured him. "They simply
have a high dielectric constant. It's merely a matter of altering the
normal thresholds of the neuron memory-circuits. All thinking is based
on memory, you know. The strength of your associations--the emotional
indices of your memories--channel your actions and decisions, and the
ecologizer simply changes the voltage of your brain so the thresholds
are altered."

"Is that all it does?" Martin asked suspiciously.

"Well, now," the robot said with a slight air of evasion. "I didn't
intend to mention it, but since you ask--it also imposes the
master-matrix of your character type. But since that's the prototype of
your character in the first place, it will simply enable you to make the
most of your potential ability, hereditary and acquired. It will make
you react to your environment in the way that best assures your
survival."

"Not me, it won't," Martin said firmly. "Because you aren't going to put
that thing on my head."

The robot sketched a puzzled frown. "Oh,"