Manshape by John Brunner Page A

occasionally since they let him out from sedation. But most of the time, he had been assured, one could only talk
to
her, not with her; this was a breakthrough.
    She hesitated, looking to left and right among the branches, then chose a thick stem, heavy with gorgeous waxy blossom, which she snapped off near the base. Holding it before her like a torch, seeming to need its luminance before she dared venture on the open lawn, she took a few cautious steps towards Thorkild. He saw she had drawn open eyes on her breasts with mud from one of the ponds.
    “Lucky?” Thorkild said again, uncomfortably. She had her own eyes, too, and they were terribly sharp. They reminded him a little of Lancaster Long’s.
    “They’ll cure me,” Nefret said. “But not you. You won’t let them.”
    “You can’t cure someone who isn’t sick,” Thorkild offered.
    “It’s sick to be different,” Nefret said. She lowered the raw end of her flowery branch to the ground and began to pick off petals one by one. She didn’t look at Thorkild again.
    “I’m soft,” she said eventually. “I can feel the cure going on inside me now. Like hands shaping wet clay. One day soon I’ll be made over entirely. I won’t beme any more. This is the third time, so I remember, you see. I’m too soft to fight the changes. All it needs is for me not to notice when they puff my medicine into the air, and there it is, right inside me, like my own breath, and it turns into a new me and I start to behave the way they want, the way they think is right. But you, you’re hard. They won’t shape you any other way than the way you are. If they go on trying they’ll break you into little pieces and dust, and you’ll sparkle in sunlight.”
    “How come you’re here for the third time, Nefret?” Thorkild said. She looked far too young; her body was still half a child’s, her figure scarcely formed under her brown sleek skin.
    “For being different.”
    “How are you different?”
    “Because I don’t want to be the same as everybody. I don’t want to be made to think I’m happy. If I’m going to be happy I want to
be
happy. Otherwise I’d rather stay the way I am.”
    A foot crunched on a gravel path, indicating that somebody was arriving in person rather than via solido. She let the branch fall and darted back into the bushes; she had disappeared before the topmost flower touched the ground.
    Thorkild took a sip of his wine before turning to confirm that the newcomer was, as he expected, Lorenzo.
    “You got here quickly,” he said.
    “I was on my way already,” Lorenzo smiled. A chair stood nearby; hooking it around with one foot, he sat down. “I suppose you threw the therapy-box in the pond?”
    “Ah, it must have happened before,” Thorkild said with irony. “A shame! That means you probably have it water-proofed.”
    “Certified proof against anything from liquid air toliquid iron. So it’s another of the things you can’t run away from.”
    “I’m not running away!” Thorkild blasted, knuckles clenching. “I wish I could get you to understand this simple and obvious fact! I am not repeat
not
running away, or hiding, or dodging, or skulking, or ducking out-”
    “Then what are you doing?” Lorenzo cut in, with a rasp of authority.
    “I’m looking for a place worth running
to!”
    The retort was unexpected; Thorkild had the momentary gratification of seeing Lorenzo at a loss. But it took him only a few seconds, during which he subvocalised a message to his hospital computers and got an answer, to pick a new path forward.
    “In that case, Jorgen, why have you not yet found it? You’ve worked in the Bridge System all your life since completing your education. You’ve developed such a grasp of it that—”
    “That they picked on me as Director at my absurdly early age! So? It wasn’t my decision—it was someone else’s! Plus the verdict of a bunch of machines!”
    “How much older do you think you’d have to be before you