e fought another Nipe. And that didn't work.
I had the reach on him, and I could maneuver faster. Besides, he can't
throw a straight punch with those shoulders of his."

"It appeared to me," Yoritomo said with a broad grin, "that you were
fighting him as you would fight another human being. Eh?"

Stanton grinned back. "I was, in a modified way. But I wasn't confined
to a pattern. Besides, I won--the Nipe didn't. And that's all that
counts."

"It is, indeed. Well, I'll let you know when I'm ready for your
impressions of the fight. Probably tomorrow some time--say, in the
afternoon?"

"Fine."

George Yoritomo nodded his thanks, and his image collapsed and faded
from the screen.

Stanton walked back over to the window, but this time he looked at the
horizon, not the street.

George Yoritomo had called him "Bart". It's funny, Stanton thought, how
habit can get the best of a man. Yoritomo had known the truth all along.
And now he knew that his pupil--or patient--whichever it was--was aware
of the truth. And still, he had called him "Bart".

_And I still think of myself as Bart_, he thought. _I probably always
will._

And why not? Why shouldn't he? Martin Stanton no longer existed--in a
sense, he had never existed. And in actual fact, he had never had much
of a real existence. He was only a bad dream. He had always been a bad
dream. And now that the dream was over, only "Bart" was real.

He thought back, remembering George Yoritomo's explanation.

"Take two people," he had said. "Two people genetically identical.
Damage one of them so badly that he is helpless and useless--to himself
and to others. Damage him so badly that he is always only a step away
from death.

"The vague telepathic bond that always links identical twins (they
'think alike', they say) becomes unbalanced under such conditions.

"Normally, there is a give-and-take. One mind is as strong as the other,
and each preserves the sense of his own identity, since the two
different sets of sense receptors give different viewpoints. But if one
of the twins is damaged badly enough, then something must happen to that
telepathic linkage.

"Usually it is broken.

"But the link between you and your brother was not broken. Instead, it
became a one-way channel.

"What happens in such a case? The damaged brother, in order to escape
the intolerable prison of his own body, becomes a receptor for the
stronger brother's thoughts. The weaker feels as the str