Docchi stopped foggily when he was alone again. Cameron would soon be trying to help Nona. Somebody had to and he, Docchi, couldn't. It was enough to settle all the prosaic details that must be attended to if the place were to function properly.
It was a relief to know that he no longer be concerned about her. Nevertheless a certain grayness descended that didn't lift until Jeriann came in to check on a patient's file.
[11]
In the beginning there was silence and it never changed. No sound came to break the stillness. Darkness changed to light with regularity or not, but in the particular universe in which she lived there was never any noise nor any conversation, and music was unknown. She didn't miss it.
There were also machines in the universe in which she dwelt and these too observed a dichotomy. Some machines were warm and soft and this distinguished them from those which were hard and cool. The warm ones started themselves when they were very small. Later they grew up but they didn't know how they did it. Neither did she. Once she was little and she didn't remember doing anything to change it, but it did change.
The hard machines she knew more about. They didn't always have picture receptors on top. Some were blind and some saw more than she did, though not quite in the same way. She could never tell by looking at them which was apt to do which.
(There was a stupid little running machine that she had discovered once that was perpetually scurrying about looking for things to do. It would never have survived on Earth because there was an unexpected flaw in it. She herself had sensed the fault and started to fix it only to realize that here was an unexpected stroke of luck. Curiosity circuits there were by the million but they were all mechanical and what they produced could be strictly predicted. But this was unique. A deviation in the manufacturing process, a slight change in the density of the material, whatever it was something extraordinarily fine had been put together and it would take a hundred years of chance to duplicate it.)
(Midway she had changed her mind and instead had altered the machine to encourage the basic sensitivity. She hadn't seen it recently. She hoped someone who didn't understand hadn't undone her work.)
The known order crumbled under the touch into something that was strange. But where sight itself would not suffice, it was possible to touch reality, to soak it into the skin, like understanding which cometh slowly to the growing mind. But what was understanding? Parts of it were always left out and she could venture toward it only a little way.