To his relief, she smiled. But there was some unfunny association. . . . "Las' time I recited that, som'bod' beat shit outta me. Wuz on fas'pent' then, too."

Alertness coursed through her lovely long body. "You've been given fast-penta before? What else do you remember about it?"

" 'Is name wuz Galen. Angry wi' me. Doan' know why." He remembered a reddening face wavering over him, radiating an implacable, murderous hatred. Blows raining on him. He searched himself for remembered fear, and found it oddly mixed with pity. "I doan' unnerstan'."

"What else did he ask you about?"

"Doan' know. Told 'im 'nother poem."

"You recited poetry at him, under fast-penta interrogation?"

"Fer hours. Made 'im mad as hell."

Her brows rose; one finger touched her soft lips, which parted in delight. "You beat a fast-penta interrogation? Remarkable! Let's not talk about poetry, then. But you remember Ser Galen. Huh!"

"Galen fit?" He cocked his head anxiously. Ser Galen, yes! The name was important; she recognized it. "Tell me."

"I'm . . . not sure. Every time I think I'm taking a step forward with you, we seem to go two sideways and one back."

"Lak to step out wi' you," he confided, and listened to himself in horror as he went on to describe, briefly and crudely, what else he would like to do with her. "Ah. Ah. Sorry, m'lady." He stuffed his fingers into his mouth, and bit them.

"It's all right," she soothed. "It's the fast-penta."

"No—izza testost'rone."

She laughed outright. It was most encouraging, but his momentary elation was drowned again in a new wash of tension. His hands plucked and twisted at his clothing, and his feet twitched.

She frowned at a medical monitor on the wall. "Your blood pressure is still going up. Charming as you are under fast-penta, this is not a normal reaction." She picked up the second hypospray. "I think we'd better stop now."

"M' not a normal man," he said sadly. "Mutant." A wave of anxiety rushed over him. "You gonna tak' my brain out?" he asked in sudden suspicion, eyeing the hypospray. And then, in a mind-blinding blast of realization: "Hey! I know where I am! I'm on Jackson's Whole!" He stared at her in terror, jumped to his feet, and bolted for the door, dodging her lunge.

"No, wait, wait!" she called, running after him with the glittering hypospray still in her hand. "You're having a drug reaction, stop! Let me get rid of it! Poppy, grab him!"

He dodged the horse-tail-haired Dr. Durona in the lab corridor, and flung himself into the lift tube, boosting himself up with yanks on the safety ladder that sent bolts of searing pain through his half-healed chest muscles. A whirling chaos of corridors and floors, shouts and running footsteps, resolved at last into the lobby he had found before.