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necessary. If you’d explained what was at stake in the first place—”
    “If I’d done that, I wouldn’t have been sure you wanted this experience for its own sake. And I couldn’t weigh her welfare against yours.”
    “Then you’re slipping,” Noren said. “I’m a priest—and she is a prisoner in our hands. There’s no question about whose welfare comes first; any one of us would offer, wouldn’t we?”
    “But I couldn’t use just anyone, and the very things that make you a suitable subject will make it more grueling for you than for others.”
    “What things?” asked Noren, beginning to realize that he was not quite sure what he’d volunteered for.
    “Your likeness to the First Scholar—and your willingness to reach for his entire thought. I couldn’t rely on someone whose mind would retreat from the rough parts; there’d be danger of missing something significant.”
    “I don’t understand the technique,” Noren admitted. “I thought the monitors showed only physiological responses. Is there a way they can indicate content, too?”
    “Not directly. It has to be done with hypnotic suggestion—in this case, commands to respond physiologically in some unmistakable way whenever a thought we must delete comes into your mind. You’ll be unconscious, of course; you won’t feel anything.”
    “You—you stop each time?”
    “The master recording? Not with this kind of material; to keep stopping and starting would drive you insane. No, it’s possible to synchronize the timing so that I can make the actual edited copy later, by feeding small sections into my own mind while I’m awake, as if I were working with a recording of my own thoughts, or with something briefer and less emotional.” He smiled, seeming more like himself, like the Stefred in whom it was impossible to lack confidence. “It’s a safe procedure; that much I can promise.”
    “I’m not worried.”
    “That’s because you know little of what’s involved. Under some conditions such hypnosis can be extremely dangerous; I wouldn’t dare to try it on a person whose mind I hadn’t previously explored—which rules out older Scholars originally examined by my predecessor. You, however, I know. Your peril lies not in what I’m going to do to you, but in your reaction to the dreams themselves.”
    “That’s a chance I have to take,” Noren said firmly.
    “You realize this must be begun now, tonight, and the whole series must be completed in quick succession without proper rest breaks?”
    Noren nodded. They could afford no delay; having once started the dreams, a candidate could not be permitted long conscious intervals in which to notice discrepancies caused by the necessary omission of the secrets, nor could she be kept under sedation indefinitely.
    “You aren’t in fit shape for it,” Stefred said unhappily. “Only this morning you held rites for your wife—”
    I killed my wife , Noren thought, and if I can do anything toward salvaging some other woman’s future, that may help even the score . Aloud he said, “If I back out now, how will I feel if Lianne is lost to us? If I must see her isolated, knowing I might have prevented it? Will that heal me, Stefred?”
    “It’s too late for either of us to back out,” Stefred conceded. Silhouetted against the window, his face in shadow, he went on, “You’re right, I’m slipping—but I’m human; I saw you suffer last year in a way I don’t want to see again. I staked my conscience and my career on my conviction that you’d take no harm from it, and my belief in you was justified. You took not harm, but strength. I know perfectly well that if you run into problems with this, the same thing will happen. You’ve always been strong. You’ll withstand it.”
    “I should hope I’ll withstand it as well as an uninitiated village woman,” replied Noren, indignant. But he was aware that sorrow and exhaustion had made him reckless, that if he were not already half