On the next level she dismounts and takes a robocab. She punches Dio's name; the little green-eyed driver "hunts" for a moment, flickering; then the cab swings around purposefully and gathers speed.
The building is unrecognizable; the whole street has been done over in baroque facades of vermilion and frost green. The shape of the lobby is familiar, though, and here is Dio's name on the directory.
She hesitates, looking up the uninformative blank shaft of the elevator well. Is he there, behind that silent bulk of marble? After a moment she turns with a shrug and takes the nearest of a row of fragile silver chairs. She presses "3"; the chair whisks her up, decants her.
She is in the vestibule of Dio's apartment. The walls are faced with cool blue-veined marble. On one side, the spacious oval of the shaft opening; on the other, the wide, arched doorway, closed. A mobile turns slowly under the lofty ceiling. She steps on the annunciator plate.
"Yes?" A pleasant male voice, but not a familiar one. The screen does not light.
She gives her name. "I want to see Dio—is he in?"
A curious pause. "Yes, he's in. . . . Who sent you?"
"No one sent me." She has the frustrating sense that they are at cross purposes, talking about different things. "Who are you?"
"That doesn't matter. Well, you can come in, though I don't know when you'll get time today." The doors slide open.
Bewildered and more than half angry, Claire crosses the threshold. The first room is a cool gray cavern: overhead are fixed-circuit screens showing views of the sector streets. They make a bright frieze around the walls, but shed little light. The room is empty; she crosses it to the next.
The next room is a huge disorderly space full of machinery carelessly set down; Claire wrinkles her nose in distaste. Down at the far end, a few men are bending over one of the machines, their backs turned. She moves on.
The third room is a cool green space, terrazzo-floored, with a fountain playing in the middle. Her sandals click pleasantly on the hard surface. Fifteen or twenty people are sitting on the low curving benches around the walls, using the service machines, readers and so on: it's for all the world like the waiting room of a fashionable healer. Has Dio taken up mind-fixing?
Suddenly unsure of herself, she takes an isolated seat and looks around her. No, her first impression was wrong, these are not clients waiting to see a healer, because, in the first place, they are all students—every one.
She looks them over more carefully. Two are playing chess in an alcove; two more are strolling up and down separately; five or six are grouped around a little table on which some papers are spread; one of these is talking rapidly while the rest listen. The distance is too great; Claire cannot catch any words.
Farther down on the other side of the room, two men and a woman are sitting at a hooded screen, watching it intently, although at this distance it appears dark.
Water tinkles steadily in the fountain. After a long time the inner doors open and a man emerges; he leans over and speaks to another man sitting nearby. The second man gets up and goes through the inner doors; the first moves out of sight in the opposite direction. Neither reappears. Claire waits, but nothing more happens.
No one has taken her name, or put her on a list; no one seems to be paying her any attention. She rises and walks slowly down the room, past the group at the table. Two of the men are talking vehemently, interrupting each other. She listens as she passes, but it is all student gibberish: "the delta curve clearly shows . . . a stochastic assumption . . ." She moves on to the three who sit at the hooded screen.
The screen still seems dark to Claire, but faint glints of color move on its glossy surface, and there is a whisper of sound.
There are two vacant seats. She hesitates, then takes one of them and leans forward under the hood.
Now the screen is alight, and there is a murmur of talk in her ears. She is looking into a room dominated by a huge oblong slab of gray marble, three times the height of a man. Though solid, it appears to be descending with a steady and hypnotic motion, like a waterfall.
Under this falling curtain of stone sit two men. One of them is a stranger. The other—
She leans forward, peering. The other is in shadow; she cannot see his features. Still, there is something familiar about the outlines of his head and body. . . .
She is almost sure it is Dio, but when he speaks she hesitates again. It is a strange, low, hoarse voice, unlike anything else she has ever heard before: the sound is so strange that she forgets to listen for the words.
Now the other man is speaking: ". . . these notions. It's just an ordinary procedure—one more injection."
"No," says the dark man with repressed fury, and abruptly stands up. The lights in that pictured room flicker as he moves and the shadow swerves to follow him.
"Pardon me," says an unexpected voice at her ear. The man next to her is leaning over, looking inquisitive. "I don't think you're authorized to watch this session, are you?"
Claire makes an impatient gesture at him, turning back fascinated to the screen. In the pictured room, both men are standing now; the dark man is saying something hoarsely while the other moves as if to take his arm.
"Please," says the voice at her ear, "are you authorized to watch this session?"
The dark man's voice has risen to a hysterical shout—hoarse and thin, like no human voice in the world. In the screen, he whirls and makes as if to run back into the room.
"Catch him!" says the other, lunging after.
The dark man doubles back suddenly, past the other who reaches for him. Then two other men run past the screen; then the room is vacant; only the moving slab drops steadily, smoothly, into the floor.
The three beside Claire are standing. Across the room, heads turn. "What is it?" someone calls.
One of the men calls back, "He's having some kind of fit!" In a lower voice, to the woman, he adds, "It's the discomfort, I suppose . . ."
Claire is watching uncomprehendingly, when a sudden yell from the far side of the room makes her turn.
The doors have swung back, and in the opening a shouting man is wrestling helplessly with two others. They have his arms pinned and he cannot move any farther, but that horrible, hoarse voices goes on shouting, and shouting . . .
There are no more shadows: she can see his face.
"Dio!" she calls, getting to her feet.
Through his own din, he hears her and his head turns. His face gapes blindly at her, swollen and red, the eyes glaring. Then with a violent motion he turns away. One arm comes free, and jerks up to shield his head. He is hurrying away; the others follow. The doors close. The room is full of standing figures, and a murmur of voices.