"Bipping isn't bad at all," Mesner had said yesterday. "After you're bipped, you can do routine work like everyone else, never worry again about worrying. That guy who replaced you, for example. He was bipped. He's never made a mistake for 20 years. He never will." I closed my eyes. I thought of all the happy bottleheads walking the streets, out on the farms, doing their routine work, happy and care-free as long as they didn't worry. Human vegetables, the erased ones, and the terrified ones who didn't know they were even scared. Cities full of dull-eyed ciphers, and now that I was outside it a little, I could see them with an awful clarity. And I thought--how many are as dumb as they appear to be? How many were just too frightened and numbed to think? How many would stay frightened and numb so long that they would never be able to think even if they sometime decided to try? It was easy enough to assume that too much intelligence was an evil, a virus to be burned out. Was it better to have too little and become like the hillbilly? Oh, Mesner had set my so-called quiescent IQ going all right. But how far would it go before it had gone far enough for his purpose? * * * * * That night I had another bad dream. Only it didn't really seem so bad as it should have been. A blind man was talking to me. Then I dreamed that a blind girl with a seeing-eye dog was looking at me. She was about fifteen, maybe younger, dressed in a plain flowered dress tied in back with a ribbon. She had a soft round face and her eyes were wide and opaque. The girl and dog seemed to come out of a mist and they whispered to me. It was frightening, but important, and I didn't remember what it was. I woke up shivering. I seemed to smell wet hair, and the window was open. I couldn't remember whether I had shut the window before I went to sleep or not. Mesner called me early the next morning. He looked the same in his wrinkled suit with the food stains on the lapels, and peeling an apple. "Fred, have you ever heard a phrase sounding like '... and the blind shall lead them?'" I appeared to be trying to think about it, then said I had never heard anything like that. "You're positive about that?" "I don't remember it." "You mean you might have, but you just can't remember it." "I didn't say that. I doubt if I ever heard such a phrase." "What about this one, '... and the blind shall see again.'" "No, I said. "You're sure?" I looked directly at him and he stopped peeling the apple. "If I'm supposed to have such a damn high quiescent IQ, why not let me in on a few things?" "What few things?" "These references to the blind. The Dirksons. Some blind girl named Elsa. What are you trying to find out?" "I thought maybe you remembered something, that's all. I'm pretty much in the dark myself. All I have are a few clues and theories." "Clues, theories, about what?"