"You have no vision, Jas."

"I see better than anybody I know."

"Better, but not very far. Your father's dead."

"You think I didn't know that?"

"He died because he and some other Swipe ship captains weren't content to serve. They went into business for themselves, and so they lost the protection of the Empire. They thought they didn't need it. So they took a dozen ships and made war with the universe. They were heroes for a while, of course. Everybody loves a rebel — from a distance, and as long as the rebel loses gracefully. But when they were about to lose, they burned over some planets as a last–ditch effort. Then suddenly the Swipe heroes became Swipe bastards, and Swipes were hunted down and killed all over the Empire. And do you know why your father burned those planets?"

"No." Jas was grinding his teeth and couldn't stop.

"Because they wouldn't let him land. He requested permission to land and refuel, and they turned him down. He had to teach them a lesson."

"That's not true. They fired on him."

"You know that there's no weapon that can be fired in an atmosphere that can possibly do damage to a ship, Jas."

"My father burned them in self–defense."

"He was angry, and he had to teach them a lesson."

"No!"

"Like father, like son," Doon said.

Jason half–rose from the wheelchair, until the pain stopped him. "That's not true, you bastard! I'd never burn a planet, I never would —"

"You would, Jason. Right now you would, if they got you angry enough. Because you have no vision. You have nothing important to accomplish, no magnificent goal that keeps you from destroying yourself to achieve petty, transitory objectives. You don't even have a right to be free until you have vision and purpose. And so I'll rule you, Jason, and keep you safe until you're able to rule yourself."

They moved again down the corridor. Jas tried to look into Doon's mind, to see, if he could, what Doon eventually planned to do with him — having been betrayed once in the garden, he didn't plan to be betrayed again. But he couldn't twist around to see Boon's eyes, and whether that really stopped him from seeing into the man's mind or whether he simply couldn't control the gift well enough to see a person's thoughts without looking at him, Jas found nothing, could tell nothing.

They got back to the hospital room, which was still empty. Without a word Jas gingerly lifted himself out of the chair, and though he wanted to refuse Boon's help, he had to lean on the man as he made his way to the bed.

"Thirteen years old," Boon whispered. "Well, heaven knows you're ready for pilot school, anyway. They'll undoubtedly bend the rules and make you a pilot before you turn twenty–one — why they chose that age anyway is beyond me to fathom. You should go on two or three voyages, and then sometime, say a century or a hundred and twenty years from now, when you return to Capitol from a voyage, come to the Ministry of Colonization and ask for an appointment with me.

They'll know that they should wake me then. I'll look forward to seeing you again, my boy."

"Going back to sleep now, Mr. Doon?" Jas asked.

"In a few days. I've spent far too much time with you as it is, and I'm behind schedule on all my other work. You'd better be worth it."

"I hope I'm not."

"You like being excellent too well, Jas. You won't be able to stop yourself."

"I will not be part of your bloody vision!"

"How do you know that your resistance to me isn't exactly what I want from you?" Doon asked, amused.

In despair Jas threw himself back on the pillow, staring at the ceiling. There was no picture there. Through gritted teeth he said, "There isn't a damn thing I can do."

"You can trust me," Doon suggested. Jas laughed bitterly. Doon sighed. "Why don't you just look, and see who I am?"

"Look inside you?" Jas asked.

"Or are you afraid that if you knew me, you couldn't hate me anymore?"

And so Jas leaned up on his left elbow and looked behind Abner Doon's mind. It wasn't just a glance this time, as it had always been before. This time he looked deep, looked far, found the hidden places, found the lies and the lies behind them and finally came down to the truth. He held it in his mind — the basis on which Abner Doon thought, decided, acted — and was amazed. And then he stopped being amazed, and only with drew from Doon's mind. Painfully, reluctantly removed himself, and then, because he had left, he wept. Doon went away. Finally Jas slept.

When he woke, he remembered vague words that Doon had said, but whether Doon had actually said them or Jas had only dreamed them, he didn't know. He remembered them, though, and over the next few weeks, as bureaucrats processed him into the Service, tested him, trained him, as he consented to everything done to him, he stopped despising himself for the memory of Doon's words, and began, instead, to call them back, to listen to them again in his dreams, and in his daydreaming.

One day they came to him and told him he was ready for his first Service assignment. It was on the other side of Capitol, a long journey, and at the end of it he was assigned a tiny cubicle in a far corner of the officers' section of the command center. It was lowest in the hierarchy of privilege and perks, but it was a private room all the same, and in officers' quarters, too. And there was a full–length mirror on the wall.

"Ha," Jas said when he saw himself in it.

He was surprised to see that he was still only thirteen years old, still only a little over 165 centimeters in height, his main growth still ahead of him. Somehow during the last week he had stopped thinking of himself as a child. He was surprised at how young the face was. How slight the body.

He grinned, and the boy in the mirror smiled slightly back at him.

Then Jas turned and unpacked his few belongings, then began memorizing the list of command center rules and regulations that had been given him upon arrival. He was going to be the best damned new officer they'd ever had. Because the sooner everyone was happy with him, the sooner he'd become a pilot. And the sooner he became a pilot, the sooner he'd be on somec, and then he could sleep through most of the years until he could wake up at the end of a century and come back to see Doon.

He knew it was ironic that he should look forward to seeing the man who had tried to kill him, but Jas understood that a little better, now. For he had seen Abner Doon as no other living person had seen him. From the inside. And inside Abner Doon, behind the memories and pain, Jas had found what no other man could show him.

Peace. Utter discontent, but peace with his vision of the possibility, peace with his commitment to fulfilling that vision.

And Jas remembered the words he had heard Doon say. "I love you, son."

He set the list aside, closed his eyes, and recalled, or tried to recall, the face on the ceiling in his mother's flat. He couldn't. It was gone from his memory. When he tried to remember his father's face, all he could see was Doon, smiling.