As Protector of Procyon, now responsible not only for the defense of the Exotics, but of the two smaller inhabited planets in that system—St. Marie, and Coby—that action was required of him. But even more; as himself, it was required of him. So that what it now implied was not something he was eager to avoid. Rather, it was due, and welcome. Indeed, it was almost too welcome— fortuitous, even.

“I see—” he murmured. Then, lifting his face to his uncle, “Gait’ll need help. Get me some figures on available strength, will you Ian?”

Ian nodded and went out, as coldly and martially as he had entered.

Left alone, Donal did not break open the signal tape immediately. He could not now remember what he had been musing about when Ian entered, but the sight of his uncle had initiated a new train of thought. Ian seemed well, these days—or at least as well as could be expected. It did not matter that he lived a solitary life, and little to do with the other commanders of his own rank, and refused to go home to the Dorsai, even for a trip to see his family. He devoted himself to his duties of training field troops—and did it well. Aside from that, he went his own way.

The Maran psychiatrists had explained to Donal that no more than this could be expected of Ian. Gently, they had explained it. A normal mind, gone sick, they could cure. The unfortunate thing was that—at least in so far as his attachment to his twin had been—Ian was not normal. Nothing in this universe could replace the part of him that had died with Kensie—had, indeed, been Kensie—for the peculiar psychological make-up of the twins had made them two halves of a whole.

“Your uncle continues to live,” the psychiatrists had explained to Donal, “because of an unconscious desire to punish himself for letting his brother die. He is, in fact, seeking death—but it must be a peculiar sort of death which will include the destruction of all that matters to him. ‘If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.’ To his unconscious, the Ian-Kensie gestalt holds the Ian part of it to blame for what happened and is hunting a punishment to fit the crime. That is why he continues to practice the—for him—morbid abnormality of staying alive. The normal thing for such a personality would be to die, or get himself killed.

“And that is why,” they had concluded, “he refuses to see or have anything to do with his wife or children. His unconscious recognizes the danger of pulling them down to destruction with him. We would advise against his being urged to visit them against his will.”