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Donald nodded a syh the door across the hall where a man in white sat behind a similar desk The puppeteer It was a wonder people didn’t trip on the strings

Thurot up from his desk and joined them in the hall Here was one who seee Tiers of puppets

Donald followed the two of the ame of solitaire He felt a mix of sympathy and envy for the man, this captain at a rudderless wheel Sympathy and envy for those who don’t reht back to those initial bouts of awareness on his first shift He re this sense of wonder that anyone could cope with such knowledge And now he saw that it wasn’t that the pain grew tolerable or the confusion went away Instead, it simply became familiar It became a part of you It was a nasty scar that still flared up now and then but that you lived with

The comm room was quiet Heads swiveled as the three of them entered One of the operators hurriedly removed his feet from his desk Another took a bite of his protein bar and turned back to his station

"Get hteen," Thurman said

Eyes turned to the other h Thurht the expression on Donald’s face and waved the operator for another set Donald stepped forward and accepted it while the cable was slotted into the receiver He could hear the fa placed, and his stoan to surface Finally, a voice answered A shadow

Thuret Mr Wyck, the silo Head

"He’s already co," the shadow said

When Wyck joined the conversation, Thurman told the Head what Donald had found, but it was the shadoho responded The shado the one they were after He said that they were close There was so in his voice, soet the sensors in his headset going Suddenly, it was a Rite of Initiation they were conducting This shadow becaet, and Donald watched a master at work

"Tell me what you know," he said Thurman leaned over the operator and peered at a screen that monitored skin conductivity, heartbeat, and perspiration Donald was no expert at reading the charts, but he knew so was up by the way the lines spiked up and dohile the shadow spoke He feared for the young man He wondered if someone would die then and there

But such was not Thur of his childhood, had hi, the need to act up and lash out He spoke of a childhood that seeentle but fir hi hi man "And now you see why it must be divvied out carefully or not at all"

"I do"

The shadow sniffed as though he were crying And yet: the jagged lines on the screen forerous valleys

Thurood, of individual lives proving less in the far stretch of tie and redirected it until the work of being locked up for acy was distilled down to its very essence And through it all, it didn’t sound as though the silo Head breathed once

"Tell me what needs to be fixed," Thurman said, after their discussion He laid the problem at the shadow’s feet Donald sa this was better than si hi that overvalued individuality, of children that wanted to get away fro levels apart and independence stressed until no one relied on anyone and everyone was dispensable

The sobs cahtened, and he wondered again if he was about to see a death ordered, a young eneral, this senator of another tiathered around, simply, "He’s ready"

And what started as an inquiry, a test of Donald’s theory, concluded this boy’s dose of the Legacy and his Rite of Initiation A shadow became a man Lines on a screen settled into steel cords of resolve as his anger was given a new focus, a new purpose His childhood was seen differently Dangerously

Thurratulated the boy and provided his freedom And later, as Donald and Thurman rode the elevator back toward Anna, Thurman declared that this Rodny would make a fine silo Head Even better than the last