and you were left alone for a
while.

"Actually something already was going on at the time, but it wasn't
spotted until your next check. What it's amounted to has been a
relatively minor but extremely precise and apparently purposeful therapy
process. Your unconscious memories of those groupings of incidents I was
talking about, along with various linked groupings, have gradually been
cleared up. Emotion has been drained away, fixed evaluations have faded.
Associative lines have shifted.

"Now that's nothing remarkable in itself. Any good therapist could have
done the same for you, and much more rapidly. Say in a few hours' hard
work, spread over several weeks to permit progressive assimilation
without conscious disturbances. The _very_ interesting thing is that this
orderly little process appears to have been going on all by itself. And
that just doesn't happen. You disturbed now?"

Trigger nodded. "A little. Mainly I'm wondering why somebody wants me to
not-dislike plasmoids."

"So am I wondering," said Pilch. "Somebody does, obviously. And a very
slick somebody it is. We'll find out by and by. Incidentally, this
particular part of the business has been concluded. Apparently,
somebody doesn't intend to make you wild for plasmoids. It's enough that
you don't dislike them."

Trigger smiled. "I can't see anyone making me wild for the things,
whatever they tried!"

Pilch nodded. "Could be done," she said. "Rather easily. You'd be bats,
of course. But that's very different from a simple neutralizing process
like the one we've been discussing.... Now here's something else. You
were pretty unhappy about this business for a while. That wasn't
somebody's fault. That was us. I'll explain.

"Your investigators could have interfered with the little therapy
process in a number of ways. That wouldn't have taught them a thing, so
they didn't. But on your third check they found something else. Again it
wasn't in the least obtrusive; in someone else they mightn't have given
it a second look. But it didn't fit at all with your major personality
patterns. You wanted to stay where you were."

"Stay where I was?"

"In the Manon System."

"Oh!" Trigger flushed a little. "Well--"

"I know. Let's go on a moment. We had this inharmonious inclination. So
we told Commissioner Tate to bring you to the Hub and keep you there, to
see what would happen. And on Maccadon, in just a few weeks, you'd begun
working that moderate inclinati