"There are words buried in any conglomeration of letters. Confusion is the basis of all codes. There is always a cipher for any code." Hammen exhaled. "Never mind. What do I care what they want with her? All right, I'll try to take her through. You don't want me to use the dog?" "No. It won't do." "Then let me take her alone. I could do it this once." "Negative. Besides, need I remind you that you have already graciously agreed to take a human Companion?" "And," Hammen said ponderously, "I can't get any Companion other than you to go with me." "You can't? Sad. But why wouldn't I be acceptable?" "I hate your soul." "No doubt," Gordus sighed. "But I believe you said you hated all people." "I can't stand people, only some people especially do I hate." "I see. But surely it is only a small difference in degree, not kind, between the contempt and aversion you hold for humanity at large and that which you hold for me. Surely that difference is too small to cause you to break your word, given under the Code." "I suppose it is." The words tasted bad in his mouth. "Very well. I'll transmit with you." "_Of course_ you will," the coordinator said smoothly. * * * * * "Are you ready to transmit now?" "Of course we are." Hammen stood within the platform diagram with Gordus and the woman. Beyond the boundaries stood the technicians, one at the control mosaic, the other holding to the neck of Lad, who suffered it under orders. "Wiggle away from the Mindsnake, citizens," a technician called. A native, Hammen thought. He had never been in transmission himself. No one who had ever joked about the Mindsnake, or rarely even spoke of him. Hammen looked around him, slate eyes chalking the outline of the diagram in which they stood. It was only a rectangle, but shouldn't it be rather a pentagram? From the time of Aristotle, the populace equated science with magic. Wasn't the diagram only a sign to conjure the demon, Spatium, to do the boon of transporting his servants across the void without decay of time? No. Instantaneous transmission of matter wasn't magic. It had always been a part of folklore as teleportation, but just as machines had been made to duplicate the legendary feats of human extrasensory perception, machines made to let men speak over great distances to duplicate the strange voices of mystics, and machines made that would indeed show strange visions over vast expanses, science had made the Transmatter for null-time object displacement. Transmatters were a logical, progressive theoretical implementation. If electrical impulses could recreate patterns first in sound, then in light, it followed relentlessly that someday some form of impulses would be found to recreate matter. Energy and matter were only different forms of one unity. Fortunately, matter duplication had come before matter transmission. As the researches of Phillips established, an exact duplicate is _not_ the original.