"Just the unexpected break in the routine," I said. You've already explained it. My quiescent IQ is just too high to be a successful card-sorter." "It wasn't _what_ I said?" "What did you say? I've forgotten." "The eyes are the windows of the soul. But I was only quoting, Fred. Some crackpot said that long ago." "Why probe me about blind people? I never knew any." "Ninety percent of a human being's mental activity is underground, like most of an iceberg is under water. How much of your past can you remember, Fred?" "Very little. The past is dead. Why should I remember it?" "Because a good intelligence depends on the past. Memory is a part of it. Without a past, you don't have a brain. And we've got to release our brains, Fred, for awhile. Until we can catch saboteurs and Eggheads." "I guess I've just been a patriot too long," I said. "Remember attending Drake University ten years ago, Fred?" "Sure," I said, fast, as though it was unimportant. I was really beginning to sweat. "I can remember if you keep prodding me. Sure, I can. So what? I purged myself. I forgot it. Schools weren't illegal then." "But we've got to reawaken all those past memories, Fred. Make our brains work better, even if a lot of double-dome stuff comes up. You remember a psyche prof named O'Hara?" I felt suddenly dizzy, sick. A wavering wheel started turning in my head. I managed to stop it from turning so fast. "I don't remember that at all," I said. "Then of course you wouldn't remember that he was blind?" In the darkness behind closed lids I could see patterns of light begin to flicker and threatening whispers dug at a fogging curtain. "Don't push it, Fred. It'll come. I'm patient. If I weren't, then by this time I would be bipped myself and safely put away." He would get it all right, I knew. Sooner or later he would tap it. First I would tap it, then Mesner would tap it. And after that I never would worry again. I'd never worry about remembering or forgetting anything. I wouldn't even be me. A body with a bipped brain would walk around doing routine work, and looking like me. But I'd be dead. I didn't want to die that way. Genuine physical death would be all right. But not that, not that bipping treatment. Mesner turned quickly and caught me staring at the outline of the hand-gun under his coat. He smiled. "You want one of these, Fred?" "Not yet," I said. "I don't remember enough yet. I'm not smart enough yet." "Tell me when you're ready." * * * * * By the time we closed in on the professor in an old deserted house on the outskirts of Sauk City, he had managed to hang himself to a waterpipe in the basement. He wore a pair of ragged pants. He was terribly thin and his hair was white, and his toothless mouth gaped open and his jaws sucked in. I had never seen anyone appear so pitiful and so harmless as that old man hanging there.