“Mad with boredom! You’ve got a good mind, Kim. You just don’t like to use it.”

“Mind! Enough zee mind. What about zee body?”

She pulled at the top of her blouse to disclose her cleavage. Pulled a little too enthusiastically and the blouse opened wide disclosing one bare breast, a sweet pink nipple. She giggled as she buttoned the blouse.

“I drive zee men mad…”

Her voice died away as she saw the effect the accident had had on Brian. His skin had gone pale, his eyes wide.

“Relax,” she said. “You’ve seen lots of bare skin before down on flesh beach where all the kooks hang out.”

“I’ve never been there,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“Well I don’t blame you. Some pretty ugly guys and gals are naturists.” She looked up at him and arched her eyebrows. “Hey, how old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

She bounced up onto her knees and looked him in the eye. “You’re as tall as I am and not too bad looking. Ever kissed a girl?”

“Let’s go to work,” he said uncomfortably as he turned away. She took him by the shoulder and pulled him back. “That’s no answer — and I know you know about girls because I found some old Playboys under your bed — with scorch tracks that your eyes had left on all the centerfold nudes. Maybe you know what they look like — but I’ll bet dollars to dongles that you are sweet thirteen and have never been kissed — so you’re going to learn now.”

Brian did not pull away when she took his head gently in her hands and pulled his mouth down to hers. She made a happy humming sound and let her tongue drift inside his lips, felt his hands harden on her back. She moved her hand down; that wasn’t the only thing that was hard.

She opened his belt.

What Brian could not understand was why everyone didn’t know what had happened just by looking at him. It was so momentous, earth-shattering, that it must show on his face. Whenever he thought about it he could feel his skin glow with the strength of his memories. Kim was gone by the time Dolly came home; he heard his father arrive a few minutes later. He stayed in his room as long as he could, waiting until he was called a second time for dinner.

But neither of them noticed a thing. Brian ate in silence, face lowered over his plate. They were discussing a barbecue they had been invited to next weekend; neither wanted to go. But it was business not pleasure and in the end they made the obvious decision. They were barely aware that he had left the table and was back in his room.

The thing that bothered Brian most was that what had happened did not seem to have affected Kim in the slightest. The next morning she passed him in the hall with a “Hi!” and nothing else. He thought about it all day in school, muttered some incorrect answers which shocked his teachers, then cut all of his afternoon classes and went out on the rigs. Alone above the sea.

If he felt so strongly about what had happened — why didn’t she? The answer was pretty obvious when he asked the question that way. Because she had done it before. She was eighteen, five years older man him, had had five years to get interested in boys. He was jealous of them — but who were they? He couldn’t dare ask her. In the end he said the hell with it and tried to put it from his mind. And sought for an excuse to see her alone as soon as possible.

Brian was waiting in the hall next morning, caught her before class. “I stayed up late last night, finished your term paper.”

“My hearing is going. Did you just say what I thought I heard you say?”

“Mm-hmm. Thought it would be easier to get it done all at once than take you through it step by step. Maybe that way you will remember what you wrote.” He tried to be more casual than he felt. “Come over this afternoon and I’ll give you a first run-through of how it works.”

“You bet. See you there.”

The day dragged by. It was Dolly’s afternoon to play bridge and the house would be empty.

“This is the final surgery,” Snaresbrook dictated quietly. “The implants are all in place. The CPU put into position. The regrowth of new nerve connections to the damaged portions of the cortex is almost completed. The replacements for the corpus callosum connections are being stimulated. The fiber-optic interfaces between the chips have been installed, the last of the intracranial procedures. The meningeal tissues have been repaired or replaced and I am now coating the edges of the section of bone that was removed to give access to the brain. This will grow and seal the section of skull into place. The procedure now begins.”

She did not add her silent thoughts that this was just the end of the surgical procedures. But the new and untried procedures that would hopefully restore the connections inside Brian’s brain were only in their opening stages. New, unproven — would they work?

Stop thinking about it. Complete this and move on.

It was a muggy and torrid July afternoon when Brian finally got away from the computer lab. He had worked out what he hoped would be an improvement on LAMA, and AI programming language that his father had helped to develop. If he was right the cross-linking nemes of the CYC information nets could be speeded up by a factor of 10. But his new technique had to be tested and this would have taken days to work through on his own computer — so he managed to borrow some time on the Cray 5 and if all went well he should get some results by morning. Which meant there wasn’t much else he could do until then.

And there was a good chance Kim might be waiting for him at home. He walked faster now and his sweat-soaked shut stuck to his skin. She had no classes this afternoon so she might come over for what she called tutoring. Yes, there would also be some tutoring because she really needed it. She was cutting classes now and ignoring lectures because she knew that he would be there to tell her what to do before the exams. She really hated the school work and was always happy to find something better to do. Brian slowed down when he realized he was gasping for breath. Easy did it in this heat or he would get back dead.

The cool air puffed out and embraced when he opened the front door.

“Anyone home?” he called out, but silence was his answer. Then he heard the music playing, smiled and pushed open the half-closed door to his room.

“I called — you didn’t hear me.”

The stereo was on, switched to the Mississippi soul food station, but the room was empty. His bed was rumpled and his pillows pushed into a backrest the way she liked them. He looked around for a note, Kim still wrote them, never thinking to access the network, found nothing. He turned off the music and the only sound was the whir of the fan on the computer. It muttered to itself while it accessed a disk. The kitchen — that was it. Kim was the world’s best nibbler. The glass and dirty dish in the sink proved it. But she wasn’t there.

Nor did she answer her phone. He searched more carefully a second time; she had left him handwritten messages more than once, probably the only person in computer-happy UFE that did his anymore, but still couldn’t find any note. Maybe she actually broke a long-standing dislike and actually left a message in the computer. He called up his communication program but there was nothing there.

Mysterious — and he was beginning to get worried. Could something have happened to her? The front door had been closed, but not locked. It usually wasn’t locked except at night; the university was a cutoff and safe place. Except no place was really safe. Hadn’t they just caught the drug smugglers a few miles down the coast? The isolated rigs of UFE might be the ideal spot for another try. A sudden sound caught his attention as the computer whirred and a drive light came on.