Within his mind a voice spoke. He could not at first fathom what it meant; he heard the words but they seemed to make no sense. The voice said, "Take her to the Garden."

He thought, What Garden?

"Take her by the hand."

Herb Asher, reaching down, fumbling in the folds of the blan- ket, took his wife's hand.

"Thank you," Rybys said. Feebly, she squeezed his hand.

Now, as he sat leaning over her, he saw her eyes shine; he saw spaces beyond her eyes, and if he were looking into some- thing empty, containing huge stretches of space. Where are you? he wondered. It is a universe in there, within your skull; it is a different universe from this: not a mirror reflection but another land. He saw stars, and clusters of stars; he saw nebulae and great clouds of gases that glowed darkly and yet still with a white light, not a ruddy light. He felt wind billow about him and he heard something rustle. Leaves or branches, he thought; I hear plants. The air felt warm. That amazed him. It seemed to be fresh air, not the stale, recirculated air of the spaceship.

The sound of birds, and, when he looked up, blue sky. He saw bamboo, and the rustling sound came from the wind blowing through the canes of bamboo. He saw a fence, and there were children. And yet at the same time he still held his wife's weak hand. Strange, he thought. The air so dry, as if it comes sweeping off the desert. He saw a boy with brown curly hair; the boy's hair reminded him of Rybys's hair before she had lost it, before, from the chemotherapy, it had fallen out and disappeared.

Where am I? he wondered. At a school?

Beside him fussy Mr. Plaudet told him pointless stories having to do with the school's financial needs, the school's problems- he wasn't interested in the school's problems; he was interested in his son. His son's brain damage; he wanted to know all about it.

"What I can't understand," Plaudet was saying, "is why they kept you in suspension for ten years for a spleen. For heaven's sake, a splenectomy is a normal and regular type of surgery, and there is frequently a splenolus that can be-"