"And something has happened.  I don't know the cause of it; that's why you've been elected guinea pig, so I can try to discover the root causes of despair, of depression-of suicide.  I have to find out, Hildy, because I use your brains as part of my own, and an increasing number of those brains are electing to turn themselves off."

"So you're losing capacity?  Is that it?"  Even as I said it, I felt a tingling at the back of my neck that told me it was a lot worse than that.  The CC immediately confirmed it.

"The birth rate is sufficient to replace the losses.  It's even rising slightly.  That's not the problem.  Maybe it's as simple as a virus of some sort.  Maybe I'll isolate it soon, counter-program, and have done with it.  Then you can do with yourself what you will.

"But something is leaking over from the realm of human despair, Hildy.

"The truth is, I'm getting depressed as hell."

CHAPTER SEVEN

Callie's foreman told me my mother was in a negotiating session with the representative of the Dinosaur Soviet of the Chordates Union, Local 15.  I got directions, grabbed a lamp, and set off into the nighttime ranchland.  I had to talk to someone about my recent experiences.  After careful reflection, I had decided that, for all her shortcomings as a mother, Callie was the person I knew most likely to offer some good advice.  It had been a century since anything had surprised Callie very much, and she could be trusted to keep her own counsel.

And maybe, down deep, I just needed to talk it over with mommie.

It had been forty-eight hours since my return to what I was hopefully regarding as reality.  I'd spent them in seclusion at my shack in West Texas.  I got more work done on the cabin than during the previous four or five months, and the work was of a much higher quality.  It seemed the skills I "remembered" learning on Scarpa Island were the real thing.  And why shouldn't they be?  The CC had been seeking verisimilitude, and he'd done a good job of it.  If I chose to become a hermit in my favorite disneyland, I could thrive there.

The return to real life was cleverly done.

The Admiral had taken his leave after dropping his bombshell, refusing to answer any of my increasingly disturbed questions.  He'd boarded his boat without another word and rowed it over the horizon.  And for a while, that was it.  The wind continued to blow, and the waves kept curling onto the beach.  I drank whiskey without getting drunk from a bottle that never emptied, and thought about what he had said.

The first time I noticed a change was when the waves stopped.  They just froze in place, in mid-break, as it were.  I walked out on the water, which was warm and hard as concrete, and examined a wave.  I don't think I could have broken off a chip of foam with a hammer and chisel.