Les Ro smiled at her. "He will be a saint, from now on. He knows how to be one, now. As to Tal Bock, he has not yet recovered from your needles. When he does recover, he will come out of the cavern a saint too."
"But why didn't you tell me about this?" Ronson whispered. "Why did you just thrust me, and presumably the others too, in there without warning. Why didn't you tell us?"
"To have told you, might have defeated my purpose, or prolonged its achievement. I put all who come to me in the cavern. There, the killer will try to kill, the coward will run, the brave man will fight. As the killer tries to kill, he will use the reaction patterns he has known all his life. As he uses them, I throw bursts of energy at him. I disconnect the kill patterns. The energy penetrates right down to the levels of the cells, and even goes lower than that, changing old patterns—"
"New lamps for old," the girl whispered.
Ronson was silent. His thinking was perturbed, almost bewildered. What Les Ro had said made sense. Reaction patterns had to change down to and through the cellular level. If the patterns were struck by bursts of radiant energy—but this was the method nature used! This was the method of the something they had sought but which had always eluded them. The change in the cells that was called cancer—again pain flicked through his chest—more often than not this change was brought about by radiant energy operating on cellular structure! Les Ro had organized this something, this wild talent of nature, and was making it do useful work.
"But it did not work for me," Ronson protested.
"Human cellular structure and Martian cellular structure are different," Les Ro answered. "This is the first opportunity I have had to work with humans. More time is needed to produce the changes in them. That is all." A beatific smile lit the face of the old Martian. It went slowly away as his eyes came to focus on the girl. Ronson turned, gasped when he saw what she was doing.
She was stripping herself. Without embarrassment and shame, she took off her clothes. She stood before them, naked.
"A human woman!" Les Ro said.
"Outside, I'm a woman," Jennie Ware answered. "But inside I've got more of the organization of a man than a woman. The result has been that all my life there's been a fight within me. Instead of being a woman, I have only succeeded in being a bitch, all jangle of nerves, always trying to do what the men did, but knowing I really couldn't, because I was a woman. I'm tired of this. I'm sick and tired of it!" Her voice grew frantic for a moment. Then she was calm again.