"But it's important--" he began, and stopped. He looked at his glass, still empty. He took a breath, began again. "I work with them. I'm part of it. It's important to me." "Just as important to me," Norma said. "Believe me, Johnny. I'm responsible, too." "But you're in Psych," he said. "That's--morale. Nothing more than morale, as far as I know--" She raised her head and looked him full in the face, her eyes like a bright challenge. Her face was quite sober when she spoke. "I'm in Psych, but it's more than morale, Johnny. We're--always thinking up new ways to keep the little Alberts in their place. Put it that way. Though nobody's really come up with an improvement on the original notion." "The original notion?" Now her smile gave light and no heat, a freak of nature. "The original specific," she said. She paused for a second and the mockery in her voice grew more broad. "That old-time religion," she said, drawing the words out like fine, hot wire. "That old-time religion, Johnny Dodd." 11 The work went on, for Cadnan as well as for the masters. Days passed and he began to improve slightly: he received no further discipline, and he was beginning to settle into a routine. Only thoughts of Dara disturbed him--those, and the presence of Marvor, who was still apparently waiting to make good his incomprehensible threat. Marvor had said he was going to leave, but he still appeared every evening in the same room. Cadnan had hardly dared to question him, for fear of being drawn into the plan, whatever it was: he could only wait and watch and wish for someone to talk to. But, of course, there was no one. And then, one day during the first part of his working shift, a master came into the room, the very master who had gone with Cadnan through his training. "You're Cadnan?" he asked. Cadnan said: "I am Cadnan." The master beckoned through the open door of Cadnan's working-room, and two more masters appeared, strange ones, leading between them an elder. The elder, Cadnan saw at once, had lived through many matings: the green skin of his arms was turning to silver, and his eye was no longer bright, but dulling fast with age. He looked at the working-room and at the young Albert with blank caution. "This one is called Gornom," the master said. "He'll be with you when you work. He's going to help you work--you can teach him all he has to know. Just make sure you don't let him handle the buttons until we give you the word. All right?" Cadnan understood. "All right," he said, and the three masters left the room without more words. The door shut behind them and Gornom visibly relaxed. Yet there was still wariness behind the old eye. "I work in the field," he said after a second. "I am good worker in the field."