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compelled him; he had obeyed more like a servant reacting to his mistress than to a young girl he was trying to collar in a public place. Klia focused with more intensity on the man. His surface was not particularly attractive, but she encountered unexpected reserves, a central stillness, a peculiar metallic sweetness. His emotions did not taste the same as others.
    “I only listen to people who are interesting,” Klia said. She was starting to sound a little too arrogant. She fancied herself a more dignified sort of woman, not a street braggart.
    “I see,” the man said. He finished his stimulk and deftly tossed the stick into a receptacle. The proprietress walked to the receptacle, removed five sticks—a meager show for the day—and took them back to the rear of the stall to clean. “Well, is survival interesting?”
    She nodded. “As a general topic.”
    “Then listen closely.” He leaned forward earnestly. “I know what you are and what you can do.”
    “What am I?” Klia asked.
    He looked skyward, just as the square immediately above flickered back to full brightness. His skin was unusually sallow, as if he wore makeup against some skin condition, though she could not detect the pockmarks of brain fever. Klia’s cheeks themselves showed deep pocks, beneath the fur. “You had a bout of fever as a child, didn’t you?” he asked.
    “Most do. It’s typical on Trantor.”
    “Not just here, young friend. On all human worlds. Brain fever is the ever-present companion of intelligent youth, too common to be noticed, too innocuous to be cured. But in you, it was no easy childhood illness. It nearly killed you.”
    Klia’s mother had nursed her through the rough time, then had died just months later, in an accident in the sinks. She hardly remembered her mother, but her father had told her all about the illness. “What about it?”
    His eyes were pale, and she suddenly realized they were not looking directly at her face, but at some irrelevant point to the right of her forehead. “I can’t see well now. I make my way around by feeling the people, where they are, how they move and sound; in a place without people I am in some distress. I prefer crowds for that reason. You…do not. Crowds irritate you. Trantor is a crowded world. It confines you.”
    Klia blinked, uncertain whether it was polite to keep staring at his dead eyes. Not that she cared overmuch for politeness in a situation such as this.
    “I’m just a runner and sometimes a swapper,” she said. “No one pays much attention to me.”
    “I can feel you working on me, Klia. You want me to leave you alone. I disturb you, mostly because what I am saying has a certain truthful resonance—am I right?”
    Klia’s eyes narrowed. She did not want to be special or even memorable to this blind man in dusty green.
    She closed her eyes and concentrated: Forget me. The mancocked his head to one side, as if experiencing a muscle cramp. His mind had such an odd flavor! She had never experienced a mind like it.
    And she would have sworn he was lying about being blind…but none of that was important in the face of her failure to persuade him.
    “You’ve done well for yourself, for a child,” he said in a low voice. “Too well. People are looking for those who succeed where they should fail. Palace Specials, secret police, not at all friendly.”
    The man stood and arranged his coat and brushed crumbs from the seat of his pants. “These chairs are filthy,” he murmured. “Your effort to make me forget was exceptionally powerful, perhaps the most powerful I’ve experienced, but you lack certain skills…I will remember, because I must remember. There are a surprising number of those with your skills on Trantor now; perhaps one or two thousand. I’ve been told, no matter by whom, that most of you are marked by a particularly strong reaction to brain fever. Those who hunt for you are mistaken. They believe it passed you by.”
    The man smiled in her