"How should I know? After twelve hours, the treatment will wear off, and you'll be yourself again. Hold this up to your eye, now." "I will if you'll change me back to myself," Martin haggled. "I can't. It's against the rules. One variance is bad enough, even with a filed waiver, but two? Oh, no. Hold this up to your left eye--" "No," Martin said with feeble firmness. "I won't." ENIAC studied him. "Yes, you will," the robot said finally, "or I'll go boo at you." Martin paled slightly, but he shook his head in desperate determination. "No," he said doggedly. "Unless I get rid of Ivan's matrix right now, Erika will never marry me and I'll never get my contract release from Watt. All you have to do is put that helmet on my head and change me back to myself. Is that too much to ask?" "Certainly, of a robot," ENIAC said stiffly. "No more shilly-shallying. It's lucky you are wearing the Ivan-matrix, so I can impose my will on you. Put your eyeprint on this. Instantly!" Martin rushed behind the couch and hid. The robot advanced menacingly. And at that moment, pushed to the last ditch, Martin suddenly remembered something. He faced the robot. * * * * * "Wait," he said. "You don't understand. I can't eyeprint that thing. It won't work on me. Don't you realize that? It's supposed to take the eyeprint--" "--of the rod-and-cone pattern of the retina," the robot said. "So--" "So how can it do that unless I can keep my eye open for twenty seconds? My perceptive reaction-thresholds are Ivan's aren't they? I can't control the reflex of blinking. I've got a coward's synapses. And they'd force me to shut my eyes tight the second that gimmick got too close to them." "Hold them open," the robot suggested. "With your fingers." "My fingers have reflexes too," Martin argued, moving toward a sideboard. "There's only one answer. I've got to get drunk. If I'm half stupefied with liquor, my reflexes will be so slow I won't be able to shut my eyes. And don't try to use force, either. If I dropped dead with fear, how could you get my eyeprint then?" "Very easily," the robot said. "I'd pry open your lids--" Martin hastily reached for a bottle on the sideboard, and a glass. But his hand swerved aside and gripped, instead, a siphon of soda water. "--only," ENIAC went on, "the forgery might be detected." Martin fizzled the glass full of soda and took a long drink. "I won't be long getting drunk," he said, his voice thickening. "In fact, it's beginning to work already. See? I'm coöperating." The robot hesitated. "Well, hurry up about it," he said, and sat down. Martin, about to take another drink, suddenly paused, staring at ENIAC. Then, with a sharply indrawn breath, he lowered the glass. "What's the matter now?" the robot asked. "Drink your--what is it?"