“Backfires,” Hnatt said gratingly. He had been expecting this.

“But mostly we have successes. Here, Herr Hnatt, is what the backfires consist of, I am afraid; instead of evolving the Kresy Gland is very stimulated to—regress. Is that correct in English?”

“Yes,” Hnatt muttered. “Regress how far?”

“Just a trifle. But it could be unpleasant. We would catch it quickly, of course, and cease therapy. And generally that stops the regression. But—not always. Sometimes once the Kresy Gland has been stimulated to—” He gestured. “It keeps on. I should tell you this in case you might have scruples. Right?”

“I’ll take the chance,” Richard Hnatt said. “I guess. Everyone else does, don’t they? Okay, go ahead.” He squirmed, saw Emily, even paler now, almost imperceptibly nodding; her eyes were glassy.

What’ll probably happen, he thought fatalistically, is that one of us will evolve–probably Emily—and the other, me, will devolve back to Sinanthropus. Back to fused molars, tiny brain, bent legs, and cannibalistic tendencies. I’ll have a hell of a time closing sales that way.

Dr. Denkmal clamped a switch shut, whistling along with the opera happily to himself.

The Hnatts’ E Therapy had begun.

He seemed to feel a loss of weight, nothing more, at least not at first. And then his head ached as if rapped by a hammer. With the ache came almost instantly a new and acute comprehension; it was a dreadful risk he and Emily were taking, and it wasn’t fair to her to subject her to this, just to further sales. Obviously she didn’t want this; suppose she evolved back just enough to lose her ceramic talent? And they both would be ruined; his career hung on seeing Emily remain one of the planet’s top ceramists.

“Stop,” he said aloud, but the sound did not seem to emerge; he did not hear it, although his vocal apparatus seemed to function—he felt the words in his throat. And then it came to him. He was evolving; it was functioning. His insight was due to the change in his brain metabolism. Assuming Emily was all right then everything was all right.

He perceived, too, that Dr. Willy Denkmal was a cheap little pseudo-quack, that this whole business preyed off the vanity of mortals striving to become more than they were entitled to be, and in a purely earthly, transitory way. The hell with his sales, his contacts; what did that matter in comparison to the possibility of evolving the human brain to entire new orders of conception? For instance—

Below lay the tomb world, the immutable cause-and-effect world of the demonic. At median extended the layer of the human, but at any instant a man could plunge—descend as if sinking—into the hell-layer beneath. Or: he could ascend to the ethereal world above, which constituted the third of the trinary layers. Always, in his middle level of the human, a man risked the sinking. And yet the possibility of ascent lay before him; any aspect or sequence of reality could become either, at any instant. Hell and heaven, not after death but now! Depression, all mental illness, was the sinking. And the other… how was it achieved?

Through empathy. Grasping another, not from outside but from the inner. For example, had he ever really looked at Emily’s pots as anything more than merchandise for which a market existed? No. What I ought to have seen in them, he realized, is the artistic intention, the spirit she’s revealing intrinsically.

And that contract with Chew-Z Manufacturers, he realized; I signed without consulting her–how unethical can one become? I chained her to a firm which she may not want as a minner of her products… we have no knowledge of the worth of their layouts. They may be shoddy. Substandard. But too late, now; the road to the hell-layer is paved with second-guessing. And they may be involved in the illegal manufacture of a translation drug; that would explain the name Chew-Z… it would correspond with Can-D. But—the fact that they’ve selected that name openly suggests they have nothing illegal in mind.

With a lightning leap of intuition it came to him: someone had found a translation drug which satisfied the UN’s narcotics agency. The agency had already passed on Chew-Z, would allow it on the open market. So, for the first time, a translation drug would be available on thoroughly policed Terra, not in the remote, unpoliced colonies only.

And this meant that Chew-Z’s layouts—unlike Perky Pat—would be marketable on Terra, along with the drug. And as the weather worsened over the years, as the home planet became more of an alien environment, the layouts would sell faster. The market which Leo Bulero controlled was pitifully meager compared to what lay eventually—but not now–before Chew-Z Manufacturers.

So he had signed a good contract after all. And—no wonder Chew-Z had paid him so much. They were a big outfit, with big plans; they had, obviously, unlimited capital backing them.

And where would they obtain unlimited capital? Nowhere on Terra; he intuited that, too. Probably from Palmer Eldritch, who had returned to the Sol system after having joined economically with the Proxers; it was they who were behind Chew-Z. So, for the chance to ruin Leo Bulero, the UN was allowing a non-Sol race to begin operations in the system.

It was a bad, perhaps even terminal, exchange.

The next he knew, Dr. Denkmal was slapping him into wakefulness. “How goes it?” Denkmal demanded, peering at him. “Broad, all-inclusive preoccupations?”

“Y-yes,” he said, and managed to sit up; he was unstrapped.

“Then we have nothing to fear,” Denkmal said, and beamed, his white mustache twitching like antennae. “Now we will consult with Frau Hnatt.” A female attendant was already unstrapping her; Emily sat up groggily and yawned. Dr. Denkrnal looked nervous. “How do you feel, Frau?” he inquired.

“Fine,” Emily murmured. “I had all sorts of pot ideas. One after another.” She glanced timidly at first him and then at Richard. “Does that mean anything?”

“Paper,” Dr. Denkmal said, producing a tablet. “Pen.” He extended them to Emily. “Put down your ideas, Frau.”

Tremblingly, Emily sketched her pot ideas. She seemed to have difficulty controlling the pen, Hnatt noticed. But presumably that would pass.

“Fine,” Dr. Denkmal said, when she had finished. He showed the sketches to Richard Hnatt. “Highly organized cephalic activity. Superior inventiveness, right?”

The pot sketches were certainly good, even brilliant. And yet Hnatt felt there was something wrong. Something about the sketches. But it was not until they had left the clinic, were standing together under the antithermal curtain outside the building, waiting for their jet-express cab to land, that he realized what it was.

The ideas were good—but Emily had done them already. Years ago, when she had designed her first professionally adequate pots: she had shown him sketches of them and then the pots themselves, even before the two of them were married. Didn’t she remember this? Obviously not.

He wondered why she didn’t remember and what it meant; it made him deeply uneasy.

However, he had been continually uneasy since receiving the first E Therapy treatment, first about the state of mankind and the Sol system in general and now about his wife. Maybe it’s merely a sign of what Denkmal calls “highly organized cephalic activity,” he thought to himself. Brain metabolism stimulation.

Or—maybe not.

Arriving on Luna, with his official press card from P. P. Layout’s house journal clutched, Leo Bulero found himself squeezed in with a gaggle of homeopape reporters on their way by surface tractor across the ashy face of the moon to Palmer Eldritch’s demesne.

“Your ident-pape, sir,” an armed guard, but not wearing the colors of the UN, yapped at him as he prepared to exit into the parking area of the demesne. Leo Bulero was thereupon wedged in the doorway of the tractor, while behind him the legitimate homeopape reporters surged and clamored restively, wanting to get out. “Mr. Bulero,” the guard said leisurely, and returned the press card. “Mr. Eldritch is expecting you. Come this way.” He was immediately replaced by another guard, who began checking the i.d. of the reporters one by one.