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So they’re sitting alone at the table. Shane Drinion seems to be neither nervous nor not to be sitting alone opposite the galvanic Meredith Rand, with whom he’s exchanged not one direct word since his posting in late April. Drinion looks directly at her, but not in the challenging or smoldering way of a Keck or Nugent. Meredith Rand has had two gin and tonics and is on her third, slightly more to drink than normal but has not yet smoked. Like most married examiners, she wears both an engagement ring and a wedding band. She looks back at him, though it’s not as if they’re staring into each other’s eyes or anything. Drinion’s expression could be called pleasant in the way that certain kinds of weather are called pleasant. He is on either his first or second glass of Michelob from one of the pitchers that’s still on the table, some not wholly empty. Rand has asked Drinion one or two innocuous questions about his origins. The thing about the Kansas Youth Authority orphanage seems to interest her, or else it’s just the flat candor with which Drinion says he spent much of his childhood in an orphanage. Rand tells Drinion a brief childhood vignette about her going to a girlfriend’s house and their using their hands and feet to climb up inside doorjambs and remain there high up in the jambs splayed and as if framed, though later on she will not be able to remember the reason for telling this anecdote or any of the context behind it. She does notice, almost right away, the same thing that Sabusawa and many of the other examiners have noticed—which is that although Drinion seems only partly socially present in a large gathering, there is a very different quality to any kind of tête-à-tête with him; he has the quality of being easy or good to talk to, which is an attribute for which there is no good single word in English, which is slightly odd, although so is whatever is good about talking to Drinion, since he possesses nothing that could be called charm or social grace or even evident compassion. He is, as Rand will say later to Beth Rath (though not to her husband), a very odd bird indeed. There is a brief exchange that Meredith Rand won’t remember so well, involving Drinion’s being an itinerant examiner and the REC and Examinations and the Service in general, i.e., Rand: ‘You like the work?’ which it seems to take Drinion a moment or two to process. D: ‘I think I don’t like it or dislike it either.’ R: ‘Well, is there something else you’d rather be doing?’ D: ‘I don’t know. I don’t have any experience doing anything else. Wait. That’s not true. I worked in a supermarket three evenings a week between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. I would not prefer working in a supermarket to what I’m doing now.’ R: ‘It sure doesn’t pay as well.’ D: ‘I put things on shelves and affixed small adhesive price tags to them. There wasn’t much to it.’ R: ‘Sounds boring.’ D: ‘…’

‘We look like we’re having a tête-à-tête’ is the first thing that Meredith Rand will later be able to remember clearly having said to Shane Drinion.

‘That’s a foreign term for a private conversation,’ Drinion responds.

‘Well, I don’t know how private it is.’ Drinion looks at her, but not in the way of someone who’s not sure what to say in reply. One thing about him is that he’s completely the same, affectwise and demeanorwise, by himself as he is in a large group. If he gave off a sound it would be like a single long tone from a tuning fork or EKG flatline instead of anything that varies.

‘You know,’ Meredith Rand says, ‘if you want to know the truth, you kind of interest me.’

Drinion looks at her.

‘I’m guessing you don’t hear that a lot,’ Meredith Rand says. She gives a little bit of a dry smile.

‘It’s a compliment, that you find me of interest.’

‘I guess it is, isn’t it,’ Rand says, smiling again. ‘For one thing, it’s that I could say something like that, that there’s something sort of interesting about you, without you thinking I’m coming on to you.’

Drinion nods, one hand around the base of his glass. He is very still, Meredith Rand notices. He doesn’t fidget or change positions in his chair. He’s a bit of a mouth-breather; his mouth hangs slightly open. With some people the mouth hanging open thing makes them look not too bright.

‘For instance,’ she says, ‘imagine if I said something like that to “2K” Bob, how he’d react.’

‘All right.’

Something goes slightly opaque for a moment in Shane Drinion’s eyes, and Meredith can tell he is literally doing it, imagining her saying ‘I find you interesting’ to Second-Knuckle Bob McKenzie. ‘What would his reaction be, do you think?’

‘Do you mean his outer, visible reaction or his inner reaction?’

‘The visible one I kind of don’t even want to imagine,’ Meredith Rand says.

Drinion nods. He is, it is true, not all that interesting to look at, in terms of looks. His head is somewhat smaller than average, and very round. No one’s seen him in any sort of hat or coat yet; it’s always a white dress shirt and sweater vest. His hairline is receding in a way that makes his forehead seem elaborate. There are some pimple scars around his temple areas. His face isn’t very defined or structured; his nostrils are two different sizes or shapes, she can see, which is usually bad news for how good-looking someone is. His mouth is slightly too small for the width of his face. His hair is that dull or waxy kind of dark blond that sometimes goes with a reddish complexion and not the greatest skin. He’s the sort of person you’d have to look at very intently even to be able to describe. Meredith Rand has been looking expectantly at him.

‘You’re asking me to describe what I believe his inner reaction might be?’ Drinion says. His face at least isn’t quite the same abraded-looking red when they’re not in the fluorescence of the Pod, a reddishness in people that for some reason always depresses Meredith Rand first thing in the morning.

‘Let’s say I’m curious.’

‘Well, I don’t know for certain. When I was imagining it, my impression was that he’d be frightened.’

There’s a slight change in Meredith Rand’s posture, but she keeps her facial expression very neutral. ‘How come?’

‘My impression is that he’s frightened of you. This is just my impression. It’s hard to explain out loud.’ He stops for a moment. ‘Your attractiveness presents McKenzie with some kind of test that he is afraid he won’t pass. He’s anxious about this. When others are around and he can act out a role, he can go into an adrenalized state that makes him forget he’s afraid. No, that’s not right.’ Drinion pauses again for a moment. He doesn’t look frustrated, though. ‘My sense is that the adrenaline of performing makes the fear feel like excitement. In this type of setting, he can feel as though you excite him. That’s why he acts so excited and pays so much attention to you, but he knows that others are watching,’ Drinion concludes and takes a sip of Michelob; the motion of his arm is very nearly right-angled without being stiff or robotic. There is a precision and economy of movement about him. Meredith Rand has noticed this also during work hours, when she stretches and looks around as a kind of break and looks over and sees Drinion sitting and removing staples and moving different forms into different piles at his Tingle table. His posture is very good without being stiff or rigid. He looks like a man whose back and neck never hurt. He appears confused, or speculative. ‘Fear and excitement seem to be closely related.’

‘Ten Eyck and Nugent do the same thing, though, when the whole table’s going at it like that,’ Rand says.

Drinion nods in a slightly off way that indicates that’s not quite what she has asked to talk about. It’s not the same as his registering impatience, though. ‘In a private, tête-à-tête conversation with you, though, my impression is that he would feel the fear more as real fear. He wouldn’t like being directly conscious of this. Of feeling it. He wouldn’t be sure what it was even fear of. He would be on edge, confused, in a way that could not be made to feel like excitement. If you told him that you found him interesting, I believe he would not know what to say. He would not know how he was supposed to act. I think not knowing this would make Bob very uncomfortable.’

Drinion looks at her steadily for a moment. His face, which is a bit oily, tends to shine in the fluorescence of the Examination areas, though less so in the windows’ indirect light, the shade of which indicates that clouds have piled up overhead, though this is just Meredith Rand’s impression, and one not wholly conscious.

‘You’re pretty observant,’ Meredith Rand says.

Drinion replies: ‘I don’t know that that’s true. I don’t think I have any direct observation or fact-pattern to base this on. It’s a guess. But my guess, for some reason, is that he might actually burst into tears.’

Meredith Rand looks suddenly pleased, which almost literally lights up her face. She reaches out and pats the table smartly with the fingers of one hand. ‘I think you’re right.’

‘Somehow it’s awful to contemplate.’