"Do you come here often?" the girl was saying. He had been introduced to her once, but he couldn't remember her name. It was there, filed away.... "Greta Forzane," he said involuntarily. She smiled at him, leaning a little forward. "That's right," she said. "And you're Johnny Dodd. And do you come here often?" "... Sometimes." He waited. Soon she would stop, and he could leave, and.... And? "Anyhow, it was just as much my fault as yours," Greta was saying. "And there's no reason why we can't be friends. All right?" "Of course." There was a brief silence, but he hardly noticed that. "I'm sorry if I'm bothering you," she said. "Not at all." His eyes were looking at her, but that made no difference. There was nothing left, nothing. He could feel himself tighten, as if he were truly waiting for something. But there was nothing to wait for. Was there? "Is there something wrong?" "Nothing. I'm fine." "You look--" She never finished the sentence. The storm broke instead. Dodd found himself weeping, twisting himself in the chair; reaching out with his hands, violently racked in spasms of grief: it seemed as if the room shook and he grasped nothing until she put her hands on his shoulders. His eyes were blind with water, his body in a continual series of spasms. He heard his own voice, making sounds that had never been words, crying for--for what? Help, peace, understanding? Somewhere his mind continued to think, but the thoughts were powerless and very small. He felt the girl's hands on his shoulders, trying to hold him, and masked by the sounds of his own weeping he heard her voice, too: "It's all right ... calm down now ... you'll be all right...." "... I ... can't...." He managed to get two words out before the whirlpool sucked him down again, the reasonless, causeless whirlpool of grief and terror, his body shaking, his mouth wide open and calling in broken sounds, the tears as hot as metal marking his face as his eyes squeezed shut. "It's all right," the voice went on saying. "It's all right." At last he was possessed by the idea that someone else might come and see them. He drew in a breath and choked on it, and the weeping began again, but after a time he was able to take one breath and then another. He was able to stop. He reached into his pocket and found a handkerchief, wiped his eyes and looked into her face. Nothing was there but shock, and a great caution. "What happened?" she asked. "Are you all right?" He took a long time answering, and the answer, because it was true, surprised him. He was capable of surprise, he was capable of truth. "I don't know," he said. PART TWO 9 "You will not tell me how to run my own division." The words were spaced, like steel rivets, evenly into the air. Dr. Haenlingen looked around the meeting-room, her face not even defiant but simply assured. Willis, of Labor, was the first to recover. "It's not that we'd like to interfere--" he began.