"And makes a woman?" Charpantier laughed. "If he fails, what of it?"
"But if he succeeds, Charpantier! If he succeeds!" Couldn't he see? "What sort of woman?"
Charpantier looked at me for a moment, but I hadn't made him see. He saw only me, and I had taken up his time without delivering value. So he chastised me.
"The Veld made me and you. Are you dissatisfied?"
He had that trick, Charpantier. If you tried to give him a problem he couldn't solve, he gave you a greater problem of your own, to add to the one you already carried.
I picked up my bag and followed him up the hill to the Foundation, where the Veld timelessly waited.
It was dusk, and as I walked I turned my eyes up to the stars. One eye was larger than the other, and a different color. My nose sat askew on my lumpen face. Though Charpantier was a hunchback, and lacked a finger, still he was a handsome hunchback. But I, whom the Veld had made second, with Charpantier's example, was merely whole. And from my eyes, tears.
We entered the Foundation. It had been erected around the Veld, when he first came and there were men who could question.
Now the building was neat and kept up, but all its many rooms were empty, and all its many machines were still. Charpantier had his cottage on the West—a very learned man had used it, while working with the Veld—and I had mine on the East, where a military commander had kept his family.