akening was phenomenally quick, the first
tentative questionings occurring in only the fourth week of life. He
recalled how the stirring of objective awareness brought with it a
half-remembered pang of death, and how the stirring of innocent wonder
brought--memories. The memory banks flooded open at the touch of wonder,
poured out their contents, and the fledgling ego went down before the
surge, overwhelmed forever.

Inexperienced in such delicate maneuvers and overtaken at the crises by
the climactic unseating of Death, he had poured into the empty memory
banks the whole contents of his own mind. All his knowledge, all his
experiences, all his memories on every level of incidents great and
small. Everything. Including the complex and ineradicable concept of
his own identity.

VIII

The involuntary start that shook the pine cone from his hand freed
Phil's nostrils of the anaesthetic. Rapidly clearing eyes watched the
cone fall near his feet and roll a few inches. A hawk that had been
wheeling in the sky at the edge of his vision was still wheeling. Only
seconds had elapsed, but this time there remained a clear recall of all
that had transpired in those few seconds of lost time--seconds in which
he had lived another's memories as though they were his own.

Reluctantly, impelled more by fascination than intent, he raised his
head and faced his companion. The compassionate eyes that met his did
hold certain childlike qualities of freedom from suspicion or hardness,
but the gaze was not that of a simple child, nor was the bearing.
Incongruity sparked a scarcely-controllable impulse to hysterical
laughter. A small boy seated on a log, regarding his elder with gentle
kindliness and understanding! Phil made a sound deep in his throat and
swung his head away, afraid he was going to be sick. "Timmy" made no
move. The silence endured, as it had to endure until one reaction or
another prevailed. Gradually Phil worked to a conclusion.

"You call it a 'blunder,'" Phil said thickly. "You made a freak of an
unborn baby for your own ends, and you call it a blunder. Anyone else
might be content with a little innocent butchery, but not you ... you
take over children, body and soul!"

"No."

"What we've been calling Timmy is a secondhand suit of clothes for
_you_! And you claim you're not a monster!"

"Nor am I."

Phil struggled for violent words to match his feelings, then sighed
heavily. "No," he agreed, despite hims