The man newly named Matlin, which meant The Reborn, stood at the bar in the Hotel Deneb. Matlin wore an inexpensive tunic supplied him by the Arcturan hospital, and still had a few silver denebs in his pocket, also courtesy of the Arcturan hospital. Matlin was not drunk, but wished that he was. He should not have come here. He knew that now. It had been wrong to surrender to drink like this, before he had time to think, to prowl the damaged streets and seek out the familiar in a world which seemed totally alien because his mind was lost somewhere in the shattered prison building. Had he been a drunkard in his earlier life? or at least a not very forceful man who readily lost himself in some form of lethe or another when his problems weighed heavily on his shoulders? Had this, indeed, been the weak character he'd been trying to resurrect? Lethe. He thought: lethe. But what is lethe? It is not a Kedaki word, but in your thoughts you use it. Isn't it said that a man tends to think at least some of his thoughts in his native tongue, no matter where he lives or how long he has been away from home? Lethe. It meant: forgetfulness. The waters of ... no, the river of forgetting. Lethe. It meant that all right. But in what language? This Matlin did not know. The bar of the Hotel Deneb, since the hotel was Junction City's best, catered to extra-Kedaki and to highborn natives. You could always tell the highborn by the rich-looking tunics they wore, tell their ladies by the way you could see breast and loins through the transparent, clinging garments, and tell both sexes among the highborn by their arrogance toward lower born Kedaki and toward all extra-planetary peoples. You could, all right, Matlin thought desperately, but why do I think this? A lowborn Kedaki would not: he would hope for rebirth, someday, as a highborn. And a highborn? But a highborn would never admit it, not even to himself. Matlin ordered another glass of Sirian whisky with a soda chaser. Sirian? Why Sirian? He seemed to like the fiery brew, but Sirius was five hundred and some years across intergalactic space. Was he a Sirian? That didn't seem likely, for the Sirians were chauvinistic, rarely leaving their homeworld.... Chauvinistic. Another word, like lethe. Not a Kedaki word. A word from somewhere else, but Matlin could not recall where. As it turned out, he did not have time to pursue the matter, for a voice at his elbow said: "I'll say it again. You were eyeing my woman with lust." This jolted Matlin, until he realized he was not being addressed. The words were spoken by an expensively-dressed highborn Kedaki on his left, but the man's face was averted. He was talking, Matlin realized, to a baseborn Kedaki further down the bar who, from the looks of his tunic, probably had no business here.