"But why Dark Kensington's memory pattern?" asked Dark. "It turned out to be a valuable one for me, but I've met the real Dark Kensington since then, and he's a much older man. Why did they choose his memory pattern?"
Maya talked with Qril.
"He says names mean very little to them," she said then. "That's something I learned as a child: that Martians often interchange their names, and the names evidently refer to a state of experience and being rather than to a specific individual. But he says that the memory pattern they chose to give you was that of your father!"
Dark stared at her, stunned.
"Then," he said slowly, "Old Beard is my father. I should have known! I think I felt it."
"I'm not surprised if you did," said Maya. "From what Qril tells me, Dark, this prenatal alteration they performed on you gave you even more extensive powers than we realized. He says that you have extraordinary extrasensory ability, if you would only make an effort to use it."
"Oh, I do, do I?" murmured Dark thoughtfully.
He looked over at the other Martians, seated in a circle in the morning sunshine. They were taking turns tossing some small polygons, and evidently the objective of whatever they were doing lay in the way the polygons fell.
Dark felt a sudden surge of power in his brain. He concentrated it, he focused it, and one of the polygons rose slowly from the ground and drifted into the air above the Martians' heads.
Dark could feel the strength that went out and raised the polygon, like an invisible extension of himself. Then he felt another force seize the polygon, and it was drawn back firmly and without hesitation to its former place.