He could remember studying tongue-twisters, once. He could even picture a whole screen-list of them, black words on pale blue. Had it been for some sort of rhetoric course? Unfortunately, though he could picture the screen, he could only remember one of the actual lines. He struggled to sit upright in bed and try it. "Sheshells . . . shsh . . . she shells she shit!" He took a breath, and started over. Again. Again. His tongue seemed thick as an old sock. It felt staggeringly important to recover control of his speech. As long as he kept talking like an idiot, they were going to keep treating him like one.

It could be worse. He was eating real food now, not sugar-water or soft sludge. He'd been showering and dressing on his own for two whole days. No more patient gowns. They'd given him a shirt and pants, instead. Like ship knits. Their gray color at first pleased him, then worried him because he could not think why it pleased him. "She. Sells. Sea. Shells. By. The. Sea. Shore. Ha!" He lay back, wheezing in triumph. He glanced up to see Dr. Rowan leaning in the doorway, watching him with a slight smile.

Still catching his breath, he waved his fingers at her in greeting. She pushed off and came to sit at his side on his bed. She wore her usual concealing green smock, and carried a sack.

"Raven said you were babbling half the night," she remarked, "but you weren't, were you. You were practicing."

"Yuh," he nodded. "Gotta talk. C'mand—" he touched his lips, and waved vaguely around the room, "obey."

"You think so, do you?" Her brows arched in amusement but her eyes, beneath them, regarded him sharply. She shifted and swung his tray table across between them. "Sit up, my authoritarian little friend. I brought you some toys."

"Sec'on chil'hd," he muttered glumly, and shoved himself upright again. His chest only ached. At least he seemed done with the more repulsive aspects of his second infancy. A second adolescence still to come? God forbid. Maybe he could skip over that part. Why do I dread an adolescence I cannot remember?

He laughed briefly as she upended the bag and spread about two dozen parts from some disassembled hand weapons across the table. "Test, huh?" He began to pick them up and fit them together. Stunner, nerve disruptor, plasma arc, and a projectile gun . . . slide, twist, click, knock home . . . one, two, three, four, he laid them in a row. "Pow'r cells dea'. Not armin' me, eh? These—extras." He swept half a dozen spare or odd parts aside into a pile. "Ha. Trick." He grinned smugly at her.

"You never pointed those at me or yourself while you were handling them," she observed curiously.

"Mm? Didn' notice." She was right, he realized. He fingered the plasma arc doubtfully.

"Did anything come up for you while you were doing that?" she asked.