There was no satisfaction in Citizen Boyne; the passions were burned out of him. He politely tendered Tropile a famous aphorism: "Citizen, the art of living is the substitution of unimportant, answerable questions for important, unanswerable ones. Come, let us appreciate the new-born Sun." He turned to the window, where the spark of blue-white flame in what had once been the crater of Tycho was beginning to spread across the charred moon. Tropile was child enough of his culture to turn with him, almost involuntarily. He was silent. That blue-white infinitesimal up there growing slowly--the oneness, the calm rapture of Being in a universe that you shaded into without harsh discontinua, the being one with the great blue-white gem-flower blossoming now in the heavens that were no different stuff than you yourself-- He closed his eyes, calm, and meditated on Connectivity. He was being Good. By the time the fusion reaction had covered the whole small disk of the sunlet, a quarter-hour at the most, his meditation began to wear off. Tropile shrugged out of his torn parka, not bothering to rip it further. It was already growing warm in the room. Citizen Boyne, of course, was carefully opening every seam with graceful rending motions, miming great and smooth effort of the biceps and trapezius. But the meditation was over, and as Tropile watched his cellmate, he screamed a silent _Why?_ Since his adolescence, that wailing syllable had seldom been far from his mind. It could be silenced by appreciation and meditation. Tropile's specialty was Water Watching and he was so good at it that several beginners had asked him for instruction in the subtle art, in spite of his notorious oddities of life and manner. He _enjoyed_ Water Watching. He almost pitied anybody so single-mindedly devoted to, say, Clouds and Odors--great game though it was--that he had never even tried Water Watching. And after a session of Watching, when one was lucky enough to observe the Nine Boiling Stages in classic perfection, one might slip into meditation and be harmonious, feel Good. But what did one do when the meditations failed, as they had failed him? What did one do when they came farther and farther apart, became less and less intense, could be inspired, finally, only by a huge event like the renewal of the Sun? One went amok, he had always thought. But he had not. Boyne had. He had been declared a Son of the Wolf, on no evidence that he could understand. Yet he had not run amok. Still, the penalties were the same, he thought, uncomfortably aware of an unfamiliar itch--not the inward intolerable itch of needing the advantage, but a localized sensation at the base of his spine. The penalties for all gross crimes--Wolfhood or running amok--were the same, and simply this: They would perform the Lumbar Puncture. He would make the Donation of Spinal Fluid. He would be dead. * * * * *