That slow, thudding pain had left his head, and - he caught his breath.
"Let me - let me see a mirror."
The machine moved instantly to press the lowest stud in a row beside that immense translucent window - no concealed relay, but a button that he could reach.
The amber glow went out, and the wide panel became a mirror, luminous with the soft light from the murals.
It reflected a dark stranger, taller and younger than he had been, not quite so skinny but lean and straight and fit.
The balding head was haired again, the petulant twist gone from the lips.
The deep scars of worry were all somehow erased.
Even those durable gray pajamas with the impregnable rhodomagnetic snaps were gone at last, for he wore a new blue suit with buttons that he himself could unfasten.
Moving to get a better view, he recalled his twisted knee.
Oddly, he felt no pain.
Bending to explore that old injury with his fingers, he found the swelling and the stiffness gone.
The joint felt sound.
He walked back across the soft floor, experimentally, and found his step firm and sure.
He smiled gratefully at the sleek, alert machine, and saw no response.
Because that was what it was - merely a machine.
Neither good nor bad - he could hear Frank Ironsmith's protesting voice again, convincing now. Neither friend nor enemy, moved by neither love nor hate, it was doing the work for which Warren Mansfield had designed it - serving and obeying, and guarding men from harm.
Approaching it with that enlightened understanding, he prodded the nude plastic flank of it with an experimental forefinger, and even slapped the lean curve of a silicone buttock resoundingly.
There was no reaction.
The slightest human need of its service or obedience or protection would trigger its remote relays, but nothing else could move it.
Turning his back on its blind benevolence, he wondered how long the grid had been teaching him the folly of his fears.
How long had he been - blank?
While he had no sense of any time lost, he was somehow curiously certain that not even all the unconscious energy of united minds flowing in that vast mechanism could have mended his sick body instantly. How long?
He caught his breath to ask the question, but apprehension checked him. Instead, he inquired:
"Jane Carter - is she still ruled by the grid?"
"Her Awakening Day was three years ago."
Three years!
He must have spent all that time in featureless oblivion - and how much longer?
A cold awe touched him and was gone - as if all that time lay very thinly covered just beneath the threshold of his own recollection.
Yet he couldn't remember anything, actually, and he asked eagerly: "Where is she now?"
"Away," the machine said. "Traveling."
"Tell her I want to see her."
"We can't reach her," the machine said.
"She is beyond the range of our service, exploring planets where no men have been before."
"Can't I get any message to her?"
"Possibly you can secure information from one of her associates, sir. From Mr. Frank Ironsmith, perhaps. Or from Mr. Warren Mansfield or Mr. Mark White."
"Where are they?"
"Mr. Ironsmith is still with the Psychophysical Institute.
Mr. Mansfield and Mr. White are living now at Dragonrock, in the intervals between their expeditions."
"So Mark White's free of the grid?"
He smiled with relief. "I'd like to see him."
"Mr. White has anticipated your wish, sir.
He had been informed that you were to awaken today, and he is now aboard a rhodomagnetic cruiser on his way here.
He'll be landing in a few minutes."
"Good!"
Forester nodded, anxious to see how the grid had transformed that archenemy of the machines into an associate of Mansfield and Ironsmith.
He couldn't keep his voice from catching as he asked, "And where's - Ruth?"
"With Mr. Ironsmith, sir."
The pain from which he shrank had somehow been erased, and he felt only an eager interest when the machine added, "She sent a gift, to be delivered when you asked of her." Another mechanical brought it to him.
A thin rectangular block of something black, polished smooth and golden-veined, it carried a green-lettered message in Ruth's neat printing:
Dearest Clay-