y being found.
What am I to do?"

"I ... think you already have an answer."

"Yes, with your consent and only with your consent."

"You have it."

"You don't know--"

"You have it, I said. I trust you."

"Man puts his faith in Dog? Well, it will not be for the first time.
Remember us, Man, when you come into your own. Now--I must invade your
mind, without reserve. You understand? Nothing known to you will be
unknown to me. Are you willing?"

"Another of those Mickey Finns?"

"Yes, it is the only way. I will plant certain inflexible prohibitions
which will forever destroy your self-will in regard to certain courses
of action--they will be ones which you might at some time feel to be
wise, but which I know to be ultimately destructive. In return, I can
give you a measure of sanity greater than you have known. You will lose
your hags, but you will never be entirely your own master again. You
will follow the course I have planned for you for the rest of your life.
It is the best I can do with my limited ability, and I cannot guarantee
that I am doing what is right."

"And Timmy?"

"I have already seeded in his memory banks--a careful and painstaking
job this time!--all the memories and knowledge appropriate to the boy
his parents think him to have been, plus other information which will
become available to him at the right time. Every day for eight years I
gave him the memories for that day, planning for the time when I could
pay my debt by releasing him."

"You take eight years that were otherwise useless to him and give him
the rest of his life for his own. Fair enough."

"No, his life is not his own. It belongs to his whole race. Your work
will be to supervise his training until the time is ripe, and then
to awaken the dormant memories that will tell him what has happened
between us."

"How do I do that?"

"Think of it as long-term posthypnotic suggestion. It is one of the
least complicated matters to arrange. A simple, spoken phrase that you
will not remember until the right moment will be sufficient to trigger
the memory release. We must hurry now. Homer's breathing--can you hear
it? His lungs have almost failed. After I enter your mind, my last act
will be to release the simple block that makes Timmy an imbecile ...
he will awaken and not know that he has slept all his life until this
moment when he becomes in actuality an ordinary, quite intelligent boy.
He will not grieve unduly for Homer, and I