I studied the files flashed before me. Several times before, Coleman had been guilty of slight misuses of his authority: helping his friends, harming his enemies. Not enough to make him be impeached from the Committee. His job was so hypersensitive that if every transgression earned dismissal, no one could hold the position more than a day. Even with the best intentions, mistakes can be taken for deliberate errors. Not to mention the converse. For his earlier errors, Coleman had first received a suspended sentence, then two terminal sentences to be fixed by the warden. My predecessors had given him first a few weeks, then a few months of sleep in Dreamland. * * * * * Coleman's eyes didn't frighten me; I focused right on the pupils. "That was a pretty foul trick, Councilman. Did you hope to somehow frighten me out of executing this sentence by what you told me this morning?" I couldn't follow his reasoning. Just how making me think my life was only a Dream such as I imposed on my own prisoners could help him, I couldn't see. "Warden Walker," Coleman intoned in his magnificent voice, "I'm shocked. _I_ am not personally monitoring your Dream. The Committee as a whole will decide whether you are capable of returning to the real world. Moreover, please don't get carried away. I'm not concerned with what you do to this sensory projection of myself, beyond how it helps to establish your moral capabilities." "I suppose," I said heavily, "that I could best establish my high moral character by excusing you from this penal sentence?" "Not at all," Councilman Coleman asserted. "According to the facts as you know them, I am 'guilty' and must be confined." I was stymied for an instant. I had expected him to say that I must know that he was incapable of committing such an error and I must pardon him despite the misguided rulings of the courts. Then I thought of something else. "You show symptoms of being a habitual criminal, Coleman. I think you deserve _life_." Coleman cocked his head thoughtfully, concerned. "That seems rather extreme, Warden." "You would suggest a shorter sentence?" "If it were my place to choose, yes. A few years, perhaps. But life--no, I think not." I threw up my hands. You don't often see somebody do that, but I did. I couldn't figure him. Coleman had wealth and power as a councilman in the real world, but I had thought somehow he wanted to escape to a Dream world. Yet he didn't want to be in for life, the way Paulson and Horbit did. There seemed to be no point or profit in what he had told me that morning, nothing in it for him. Unless-- Unless what he said was literally true. I stood up. My knees wanted to quit halfway up, but I made it. "This," I said, "is a difficult decision for me, sir. Would you make yourself comfortable here for a time, Councilman?" Coleman smiled benignly. "Certainly, Warden." I walked out of my office, slowly and carefully.