"You see, Bejamel? I told you that 'Perceptives' would never do, yet you so persuasively sold me the idea of how useful they could be if their extra-sensory perceptive powers were developed." He sighed. "It's that genius of yours for intrigue.... But it has failed. We can allow no dissidents to enter the mysteries of the inner circle, Bejamel!" "I kneel before your Benevolence," Bejamel's gargoyle features were painfully contorted as he tried to grovel. "In my zeal for service to your Magnificence, I have failed, but there's always the Blessed Sleep for this blasphemer, O Symbol of Charity!" He finished ominously and pondered what a jewel of a victim he would make. * * * * * But His Benevolence gave Bejamel a look of such cold, devastating evil, that _he_ should dare to offer a solution, that the cadaverous Minister of Justice seemed to shrink, pale and desperate, against the wall of scientists who watched avidly the _miseen scène_. "No mercy, no finesse." His Benevolence again was wearing the mask of merciful forgiveness. "No Bejamel--not the Chamber of Blessed Sleep, just ..." and he held up two fingers weighted with jewels. Then he turned to Guerlan. "My son!" Guerlan flinched. "Having been offered the sacred honor of entering the Inner Circle, you failed to understand your first test of the lesser mysteries ... all this ... this pitiful show of human frailty and weakness, this odious travesty on the sins of the flesh, was staged to test you. And you." A world of sadness seemed to darken His Benevolence's voice, "and you condemned us! Instead of seeing it as a mere test, and valuing it for what it was worth, you believed that we were such monsters of hypocrisy as to entertain such lives." He wagged his head from side to side in inexpressible disappointment and grief. "I would pardon you from the depths of my heart, but The Law is inexorable--I can but soften the harshness of your retribution. "And so, my son," he held up two fingers again, "you not only are barred from entering the sacred inner circle, but are demoted from scientist of the first, to that of the second order. There is one plastic center where a problem has not been solved. Achieve its solution and you will be promoted to your original place, and perhaps ... perhaps as you grow older, you may again be considered for the priceless boon, the blessed destiny you have lost tonight."