"According to you," Hank Szantho muttered.

"Well," Sheila said, "we are here, Hank. This pa­thetic colony of weevils. Theo Ferry put us here and you know it. THL is the underlying principle governing the dynamics of this world, whatever category this world falls into: pseudo-para or real or full para." She smiled grimacingly at Hank Szantho who returned her bril­liant, cold glare dully.

"But if the paraworlds are derived via the UN's time-warpage gadget," the hard-faced middle-aged man said, "then they would constitute a spectrum of equally-real alternative presents, all of which split off at some disputed episode in the past, some antediluvian but crit­ical juncture which someone — whoever it is — tinkered with through the damn gadget we're discussing. And so in no sense are they merely 'para.' Let's face that honestly; if the time-warpage gadget is involved then we might as well end all speculation as to which world is real and which are not, because the term becomes mean­ingless."

"Meaningless theoretically," Miss de Rungs an­swered, "but not to anyone here in this room. Or in fact anyone in the world." She corrected herself, "Anyone in this world. We have a massive stake in seeing to it that the other worlds, para or not, stay as they are, since all are so very much worse than this one."

"I'm not even certain about that," the middle-aged man said, half to himself. "Do we know them that thoroughly? We're so traumatized about them. Maybe there's one that's better, to be preferred." He gestured in the direction of the living room with its logorrheic flow of TV noise, the pompous, unending, empty spout­ing-forth of jejune trash by the nonreal president of what Rachmael — as well as everyone else on Terra — knew to be a nonreal, deliberately contrived and touted hoax-colony.

"But this world can't be para," Gretchen Borbman said, "because we all share it, and that's still our sole criterion, the one point we can hang onto." To Rach­mael she said, "That's so important. Because what no one has laid on you yet, mercifully, is the fact that if two of us ever agree at the same time — " She lapsed into abrupt silence, then. And regarded Sheila with a mix­ture of aversion and fear. "Then out come the proper forms," she went on, at last, with labored difficulty. "Form 47-B in particular."

"Good old 47-B," the curly-haired youth said gratingly, and instantly grimaced, his face contorted. "Yes, we just love it when that's trotted out, when they run their routine check of us."

"The control," Gretchen continued, "signs 47-B after he or she — she, right now — feeds someone's para-world gestalt in on Computer Day, which is generally late Wednesday. So after that it becomes public prop­erty; it isn't simply a subjective delusional realm or a subjective anything; it's like an exhibit of antique potsherds under glass in a museum; the entire damn public can file past and inspect it, right down to the last detail. So there would hardly be any doubt if ever two individual paraworlds agreed simultaneously."

"That's what we dread," the fold-fleshed older woman with lifeless dyed hair said in a toneless, me­chanical voice, to no one in particular.

"That's the one thing," Gretchen said, "that really does scare us, Mr. ben Applebaum; it really does." She smiled, emptily, the expression of acute, unvarying ap­prehension calcified into sterile hopelessness over all her features, a mask of utter despair closing up into im­mobility her petite, clear-hewn face — clear-hewn, and frozen with the specter of total defeat, as if what she and the rest of them dreaded had crept recently close by, far too close; it was no longer theoretical.

"I don't see why a bi-personal view of the same paraworld would — "Rachmael began, then hesitated, appraising Sheila. He could not, however, for the life of him fathom her contrived, cool poise; he made out nothing at all and at last gave up. "Why is this regarded as so — injurious?"

"Injurious," Hank Szantho said, "not to us; hell no — not to us weevils. On the contrary; we'd be better able to communicate among each other. But who gives a gruff about that... yeah, who cares about a little miniscule paltry matter like that — a validation that might keep us sane."

Sheila said, remotely, " 'Sane.' "

"Yes, sane," Hank Szantho snarled at her.

"Folie à deux," Sheila said mildly. To Rachmael she said, "No, not injurious to us, of course. To them." She once more indicated the empty living room — empty except for the din of Omar Jones' recorded unending monolog. "But you see," she explained to Rachmael, raising her head and confronting him tranquilly, "it wouldn't just be real; that is, real in the experiential sense, the way all LSD and similar psycheletic drug-experiences are... they're real, but if one of the ex­periences is common to more than a single individual the implications are quite great; being able to talk about it and be completely understood is — " She gestured faintly, as if her meaning at this point was obvious, scarcely worth articulating.

"It would be coming true," Miss de Rungs said in a stifled, unsteady voice. "Replacing this." She ejected the end word violently, then swiftly once again sank into her withdrawn brooding.

The room, now, was tomb-like still.

"I wonder which one," Hank Szantho said, half-idly, to himself but audibly. "The Blue, ben Applebaum? Yours? Or Paraworld Green, or White, or god knows which. Blue," he added, "is about the worst. Yeah, no doubt of that; it's been established for some time. Blue is the pit."

No one spoke. They all, wordlessly, looked toward Rachmael. Waiting.

Rachmael said, "Has any of the rest of you — "

"None of us, obviously," Miss de Rungs said, with rigid, clipped firmness, "has undergone Paraworld Blue. But before us — several, I believe, and fairly re­cently. Or so the 'wash psychiatrists say, anyhow, if you can believe them."

"But not all of us," Gretchen Borbman said, "have been before the computer, yet. I haven't, for instance. It takes time; the entire memory area of the cerebral cortex has to be tapped cell by cell, and most of the retention in stored form of the experience is subliminal. Repressed from consciousness, especially in the case of — less favorable paraworlds. In fact the episode in its entirety can be split off from the self-system within minutes af­ter the person regains contact with reality, in which case he has absolutely no knowledge — available, conscious knowledge, that is — of what happened to him."

"And a pseudo-memory," Hank Szantho added, rubbing his massive jaw and scowling. "Substituted automatically. Also a function beyond conscious con­trol. Paraworld Blue... who in his right mind, who wants to keep his frugging right mind, would recall it?"

Gretchen Borbman, impassive, drained and pale, went to pour herself a fresh cup of the still-warm syn-cof; the cup clattered as she maneuvered it clumsily. With iron-rigid fixity all of them maintained a state of contrived obliviousness toward her, pretended not to hear the tremor of her nervous hands as she carried her cup step by step back to the table, and, with painstaking caution, seated herself beside Rachmael. None of the other weevils showed any sign whatever of perceiving her existence in their midst, now; they fixedly kept their eyes averted from her halting movement across the small, densely occupied kitchen, as if she — and Rach­mael — did not exist. And the emotion, he realized, was stricken terror. And not the same amorphous uneasiness of before; this was new, far more acute, and beyond dispute directed absolutely at her.

Because of what she had said? Obviously that; the ice-hard suspension of the normal sense of well-being had set in the moment Gretchen Borbman had said what seemed to him, on the surface, to be routine: that she, among others in this group, had not presented the con­tents of their minds, their delusional — or expanded-consciousness-derived — paraworld involvement. The fear had been there, but it had not focussed on Gretchen until she had admitted openly, called attention to the fact, that she in particular viewed a paraworld which might conform thoroughly to that of someone else in the group. And therefore would, as Miss de Rungs had said, would then be coming true; coming true and replacing the environment in which they now lived... an environment which enormously powerful agencies intended for extremely vital reasons to maintain.