It is our custom, as you know, for each man to select one of the Earth people as his subject. This is not part of our work, it is only a device to drive away the tedium that descends upon men far from home and bound to exacting work in a confined place. We begin to feel quite passionately concerned with our subjects, and occasionally find it difficult to return to our primary concerns.
For some time I had been spending my free hours in the world of a gentle old merchant named Jacobs. I lived his life with him briefly, seeing his wife and children as he saw them, going with him to his store. His memories were good ones, filled with hard work and simple pleasures. One day, when I had left the computing tables to prepare for dinner, I sought the mind of Jacobs. He was crossing the street and as he turned his head, he saw the shining lights of an automobile just before it struck him. I withdrew from his mind in a shower of pain and darkness.
"Oh, he is dead," my mind cried out to my vigil companions before I could smother the shock and emotion in it. They looked up at me, questioning. Then I exchanged with them more coolly, "My man Jacobs has been killed crossing the street."
Keven, the fuel technician, reached my mind first. "A pity, I lost a subject myself that way not long ago. It is a bad death for them, poor things. They might build overpasses, mightn't they? A pity."
It has never failed to unsettle me, the way my companions have come to accept the idea of death so easily. To me it is always a horror, unnatural and alien. You cannot quite see how it is, Novna, for you have never been in the mind of one who dies.
I withdrew for a little while to mourn my man Jacobs, for my sorrow was not to be shared with the others. It was while I sat thinking of the dead Jacobs that Gven approached hesitantly and sat near me.
"Is it possible," he asked, "that one can read the soul of an Earth man? Could I? Or perhaps that would not be permitted to me?"