Max Allgood, Central's chief of Tachy-Security, climbed Administration's plasmeld steps slightly ahead of his two surgeon companions as befitted the director of the Optimen's swift and terrible hand of power.

The morning sun behind the trio sent their shadows darting across the white building's angles and planes.

They were admitted to the silver shadows of the entrance portico where a barrier dropped for the inevitable delay.  Quarantine scanners searched and probed them for inimical microbes.

Allgood turned with the patience of long experience in this procedure, studied his companions - Boumour and Igan.  It amused him that they must drop their titles here.  No doctors were admitted to these precincts.  Here they must be pharmacists.  The title "doctor" carried overtones which spread unrest among the Optimen.  They knew about doctors, but only as ministers to the mere humans.  A doctor became a euphemism in here, just as no one said death or kill or implied that a machine or structure could wear out.  Only new Optimen in their acolyte apprenticeship, or meres of young appearance served in Central although some of the meres had been preserved by their masters for remarkable lengths of time.

Boumour and Igna both passed the test of youthfulness, although Boumour's face was of that pinched-up elfin type which tended to suggest age before its time.  He was a big man with heavy shoulders, powerful.  Igan looked lean and fragile beside him, a beaked face with long jaw and tight little mouth.  The eyes of both men were Optimen color - blue and penetrating.  They were probably near-Opts, both of them.  Most Central surgeon-pharmacists were.

The pair moved restlessly under Allgood's gaze, avoiding his eyes.  Boumour began talking in a low voice to Igan with one hand on the man's shoulder moving nervously, kneading.  The movement of Boumour's hand on Igan's shoulder carried an odd familiarity, a suggestion to Allgood that he had seen something like this somewhere before.  He couldn't place where.

The quarantine probing-scanning continued.  It seemed to Allgood that it was lasting longer than usual.  He turned his attention to the scene across from the building.  It was strangely peaceful, at odds with the mood of Central as Allgood knew it.

Allgood realized that his access to secret records and even to old books gave him an uncommon knowledge about Central.  The Optiman demesne reached across leagues of what had once been the political entities of Canada and northern United States.  It occupied a rough circle some seven hundred kilometers in diameter and with two hundred levels below ground.  It was a region of multitudinous controls - weather control, gene control, bacterial control, enzyme control... human control...