"I don't," said the Chief, and got up. He looked at me for just a moment before he turned away. He said, "The boys will be able to have their fun, after all. I suppose it's just as well. It keeps their morale up to be able to interview somebody once in a while." "No! You can't! You can't send them in here again!" I shouted, without meaning to. I struggled to rise and found that I was strapped to the table. "No! No!" He was standing at the doorway to the room. He held a key-box oscillator in his hand and I knew that a force screen held me in the cubicle here, and that without a key-box I could beat my head forever against that invisible barrier and never pass through that doorway. He said, "I'll give you one hour to decide. I'll be back. I'll ask you if you're ready to talk. If you aren't--well, you'll talk to the Deacons instead of me." The key-box hummed and he walked through the doorway and turned and disappeared. I stared after him and fought back my sudden nausea. V How long, then, lying there before a key-box hummed again? I didn't know. My time sense had been dulled. Even the pain was dull now; it was something that had always existed. I looked at the shining ceiling. The glowlights began to dim and I supposed that since my arrest in the park another day had passed. Most of all, I wondered. Something had happened to me, something that I could almost feel as a physical change, but I didn't know quite what it was. I knew its results. I knew that I was no longer standard, no longer conformal, no longer well-behaved and moral and an efficient, useful citizen of the State. I hated the State. I hated all States. I hate all efficiency and common sense and hate. It suddenly came to me that I didn't care whether I was in Southem or Northem, or which of them ruled the world. I lay there. And presently a key-box hummed and I didn't even look that way. The stink of my own burning flesh still clung to my nostrils, the dull pain was still with me, but I didn't care. It was too much. When horror becomes too great, it stops being horror. The mind is smart. It doesn't believe; it doesn't register. The curve of sensation flattens out, stops, almost. When such horror looms, you go on doing whatever you are doing. I was lying there, so I went on lying there. "Don't speak," whispered a voice. "Don't ask questions." Something fumbled at the straps. I turned my head, and two people were in the room. They were thin, and their eyes were overlarge and they were naked and covered with bruises. The fugitives of the park last night! "What are you doing here?" Finger to the lips. That was the man. He was taking the straps from my legs. The woman was releasing my arms and shoulders. "But--" "Sh!" That was the woman.