"Charley, please. I have never been Charles, though it is a nice name. Please have a chair, Admiral, and be comfortable."

Soong pulled one to face Charley's sensorium.

"I've been studying your open file, sir," Charley said. Brightly. Eagerly. The announcement took Soong by surprise. Kennah must have gotten it for him, he decided. Meanwhile Charley continued. "It says almost nothing of your life before you attended the Space Academy. Born near Terrassa, in the Catalunya Prefecture, and attended the Space Academy in the Colorado Prefecture-twenty years in just a few lines!" He added the last almost merrily. "Then graduated with high honors; one more line! After that it summarizes your service record. Surely there is more to be told than that."

"Not really," Soong replied. Untruthfully of course, but it wouldn't be very interesting. Except possibly to a student of social and professional acculturation and family iconography. "I'll tell you what," he added. He was surprised at what he found himself saying. "I'll have some spare time for a while. Enough to sit down some day soon and record a few items of my childhood and youth for you. Things that may provide amusement, or insights."

He took a different tack then, to get his own questions answered. "You know more about me than I do of you. I read a bit on savants years ago. My impression was that most of them were children."

"Idiot savants you mean," Charley answered. "The adjective is apt, and typically accurate. Many of us are severely defective physically as well as mentally, and die as infants or children. Typically with our potentials undiscovered. Historically, especially before the Enlightenment, others were killed-sometimes burned-as being possessed by the devil. And later, many were put away, out of sight in institutions."

Charley sounded quite serene as he recited, as if he'd long since come to terms with the facts.

"As for me-I am thirty-three years old, and spent my life in an institution from perhaps two days of age until the War Mobilization Directorate learned of me."

"Was that when you were installed in a bioelectronic interface unit?"

"To understand that, you need to know my origins. As far as they are known. I was found abandoned in a trash bin, in Rio de Janeiro, in the Brazilian Autonomy. Seemingly in my first day of life. The police delivered me to a hospital, which passed me on to another, which forwarded me to the Sacred Heart Research Institute. Where I remained for more than thirty years."

Sent to a research institute at what? Five days of age? There has to be an interesting story behind that, Soong thought.

Charley paused. "As for being bottled… My early years involved a continuous struggle on the part of the Institute's personnel to keep me alive, because of the physiological imbalances that continually afflicted me. Finally they arranged with another research organization to extract my central nervous system and bottle it. An operation quite illegal then, even for research, and carrying severe penalties. But I was beginning to show signs of the hormonally driven syndrome referred to as adolescence, a period of powerful physiological changes. My staff guardians doubted I could survive it."

"They didn't call my bottle a bottle, of course, or even a bioelectronic interface unit. They called it a modularized life-support unit. It was hoped that that and being a monastic order would protect them, if the act came to the attention of the secular authorities. But it required extraction of a living central nervous system, which legally made it bottling."

Again he laughed. "And now, all these years later, here I am in my technological glory, and some would say middle-aged. Incidentally, what you see before you is my third module. The technology does progress, you know, albeit covertly."

The admiral sat without speaking. I'll have to digest all this, he thought. Sleep on it, see how it looks in the morning. Meanwhile, Charley seemed to be waiting. "How did you go from being `Male Infant Doe' to `Charley Gordon'?" Soong found himself asking.

"Ho ho! You have opened a new area there! In the beginning it wasn't known that I was a savant. I was simply a medical challenge, not in the Savant Division at all. What set me apart from most critically defective infants was surviving my first day. Despite having been discarded. The neighborhood I was found in was quite degraded. I could easily have been eaten by rats.

"My savant status was first suspected before my third birthday, when I showed a love of good music, and recognized and asked for certain numbers. It was also determined that I could be educated to a higher level than supposed. The highest of any wards of the Institute, actually.

"Finally, at age twelve, my physical condition became quite precarious, and I was bottled."

Charley paused long enough that it seemed he'd finished. "You were about to tell the admiral how you came to be called Charley Gordon," Kennah said.

"Oh yes. Excuse me, Admiral. One of my mental weaknesses is a tendency to lose track of the subject. I have noticed that normal people sometimes do the same thing, but I excel in it. If I may use the word `excel' in this sense.

"Now, where-oh yes. I was named Charley Gordon after a person in a story: a retarded man who became a genius."

He paused, then spoke again. "I really should tell you the rest. Otherwise it's not very meaningful.

"The study that discovered my ability to learn, was part of a project that became very important. Leading inadvertently to the discovery of savant-facilitated instantaneous communication."

Charley's fluency and apparent understanding awed the admiral.

"And as one of the study subjects, it was determined that I had `the talent,' as it is called. I might then have been assigned to the Commonwealth Ministry, and sent to an embassy on some colony world. But because bottling was still a felony, I remained at the Institute, occasionally taking part in research projects as a subject or advisor."

Again he paused. "Admiral, I'm afraid I'm a poor host. I have not offered you food or drink. Ophelia, would you please?"

"Of course, Charley. Admiral, I do not have an alcoholic beverage to offer you, but I do have a mixed fruit drink, and some hors d'oeuvres."

"Thank you, Ms. Kennah," the admiral said gravely. "The fruit drink will be fine, and I'm sure I'll like the hors d'oeuvres as well. But I shouldn't stay long. I didn't tell the bridge where I'd be."

She saw the statement as an excuse. He could easily call the bridge and tell the officer of the watch where to reach him. "Of course," she replied. "Perhaps you could select your own hors d'oeuvres in the kitchenette."

The suggestion sparked his curiosity; it seemed lame. He wondered if Charley saw through it. Or didn't it matter to him? Either way, he thought. If she wanted privacy…

The kitchenette was small but not tiny. The door closed itself behind them. The hors d'oeuvres were on a tray. "Ms. Kennah… " he began quietly.

"Call me Ophelia if you'd like," she prompted. "Or Kennah without the miz. Or Ken; that's what they called me at the Institute. Actually, I prefer Kennah."

"Well then, Kennah it will be. How long have you known Charley?"

"Since he was only days old; as soon as he came out of intensive care. I was a seventeen-year-old apprentice nurse, assigned to watch him eight hours at a time, with a half-hour lunch break. It was then I learned to love him, when he was still a tiny baby. Before it was recognized how truly special he was. He is special, you know. The whole staff came to feel it. All the children are special, and loved, but Charley more than any. His fight to live was so brave. As if he knew he had a special gift to share." Again she shrugged. "And he was so cheerful! Did you know a sick infant can be cheerful? You can hardly imagine what he went through. For years! And his growth as a person and a personality have been equally outstanding."