"I wouldn't use that word. I'd use the term—normal. For some reason or other your genetic material remained unaffected by the treatment. You're a natural man."
For several minutes there was silence in the room while Hendley pondered the doctor's words. At last he said, "It's too late now, isn't it?"
"Yes. I understand late treatment has been tried—even experiments with adults—but without success."
Hendley rose and went to the window. It was late afternoon and the sun was low above the horizon. He regarded its fiery beauty with bitterness. "What about you?" he asked the doctor. "You know all this, but you're happy."
The doctor smiled. "I couldn't be anything else. I'm ... made that way."
"And I'm a misfit!"
"There are different ways of looking at that." The doctor crossed the room to stand beside Hendley at the window. The smile was back on his lips, but it remained pensive. "Do you want to know what I think?"
"What?"
"I envy you."
The phrase seemed disturbingly familiar. Hendley tried to remember who else had spoken it to him. The answer popped unexpectedly into his mind. The Morale Investigator had voiced a similar envy on the morning Hendley departed for the Freeman Camp.