"No, darling, I think he's telling the truth," Mary said sympathetically. "When altering began it was only skin-deep for all of us."
"I'll bet you're sixty per cent altered already," Smith cried out. "It's my bad luck to be only twenty-five per cent so far. All I can do is look at her and wonder why the two of you make such a fuss."
The cyberneticist tried to calm him. "Your turn's coming."
"I have to find out what it's about sooner than that!"
Tinker sighed. "I'll try to get your number advanced."
"Let him wait his turn," Stahl said coldly. "He's faking a lot anyway."
At that Smith broke free from them and pressed his back to the optical illusion window. "Don't come closer," he warned. "I don't have much to lose."
They stopped a few feet away and waited. Suddenly he raised his left hand to his face and dug the long nails in a semicircle into his flesh. As a thin stream of locally circulated blood gushed out, he dug deeper and the eyeball fell forward, quivering, on his cheek.
"He was telling the truth!" Stahl gasped, pointing at the glittering metal bits within the eyesocket. A glowing wire was slowly evaporating on the retinal plate as optical feedback collapsed.
Tinker, all professional competence now, helped Smith to a chair. "We'll be able to repair you in a month," he said, "because you've a simpler arrangement, and I can promise you'll have as good an electro-chemical near-cortex as anybody. And the other more interesting changes too."