ia, British Columbia. Not subscribing to the
folkway that prescribes seasick intoxication as an expression of joy, we
did the town with discrimination. At midnight we found ourselves
strolling along the waterfront in that fine, Vancouver-Island mist, with
just enough drink taken to be moving through a dream. At one point, we
leaned on a rail to watch the mainland lights twinkling dimly like the
hope of a new world--blackout being lifted.

Suddenly, Clyde said, "What's fraying you recently, Will? When we were
taking our ICEG reconditioning, it came through strong as garlic, though
you wouldn't notice it normally."

Why be coy about an opening like that? "Clyde, what do you know about
Edwin Scott?" That let him spin any yarn he chose--if he chose.

He did the cigarette-lighting routine, and said quietly, "Well, I _was_
Edwin Scott, Will." Then, as I waited, "Yes, really me, the real me
talking to you. This," he held out a powerful, coppery hand, "once
belonged to a man called Marco da Sanhao ... You've heard of
transplanting limbs?"

I had. But this man was no transplant job. And if a spinal cord is cut,
transplanting legs from Ippalovsky, the primo ballerino, is worthless. I
said, "What about it?"

"I was the first--successful--brain transplant in man."

For a moment, it queered me, but only a moment. Hell, you read in fairy
tales and fantasy magazines about one man's mind in another man's body,
and it's marvelous, not horrible. But--

By curiosity, I know a bit about such things. A big surgery journal,
back in the '40s, had published a visionary article on grafting a whole
limb, with colored plates as if for a real procedure[A]. Then they'd
developed techniques for acclimating a graft to the host's serum, so it
would not react as a foreign body. First, they'd transplanted hunks of
ear and such; then, in the '60s, fingers, feet, and whole arms in fact.

But a brain is another story. A cut nerve can grow together; every fiber
has an insulating sheath which survives the cut and guides growing
stumps back to their stations. In the brain and spinal cord, no sheaths;
growing fibers have about the chance of restoring contact that you'd
have of traversing the Amazon jungle on foot without a map. I said so.

"I know," he said, "I learned all I could, and as near as I can put it,
it's like this: When you cut your finger, it can heal in two ways.
Usually it bleeds, scabs, and skin grows under the scab, taking a week
or s