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“It seems rather an expensive way of making me charming,” he couldn’t help saying, with the last struggle of something that was dying in him, something alien that perhaps should never have been there in the first place.

“Whole civilizations have been sacrificed for nothing at all. This one will not be sacrificed, only quarantined. But its contribution could be of cosmic magnitude.”

“Now what are you going to try to sell me?” he asked drearily. “Are you saying that the essence of the Damorlant civilization is going to live on in me, that I carry its heritage inside myself, and so I have a tremendous responsibility to the Damorlanti on my shoulders?”

She laughed. “You’re really getting sharp, Clarey. If you stayed in the service, you could be one of our best operatives. But you’re not going to stay in the service. Yours is a higher destiny. Here, catch!”

She tossed him something that glittered as it arched through the air.

It was a U-E identcube, made out in his name. He had only seen them at a distance, and now he was holding one warm and gleaming in his hand, with his name and his face in it. His face ... and yet not his face.