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boundaries in the wonderful ship the Ujurrians had fashioned for him. The
Teacher.
That was what they called him. A paradox, since the more he learned, the more ignorant he felt.
    Truzenzuzex would have called that a sign of increasing maturity. He was a student, not a teacher, intensely interested in everything around him: people and places, civilizations and individuals. He had been exposed to bits and pieces of great mysteries. Abalamahalamatandra, who had been not a survivor of some ancient race but instead a biomechanical key for triggering a terrible device. The Krang, the ultimate weapon of the long-vanished Tar-Aiym, whose strange mechomental perturbations still echoed through his brain after all these years. So many things seen, so many places yet to go. So much to try to comprehend.
    Intelligence was a terrible burden.
    He halted abruptly, the crawler coming to a stop as he released the accelerator. Pip’s head rose sharply from the seat where she lay curled about herself, and Scrap’s miniature wings fluttered nervously as Flinx clasped both hands to his head. The headaches were growing worse. He had always had them, but this past year they had become a constant companion, averaging several or more a month.
    One more reason for abjuring permanent relationships. It was entirely possible, he had considered in the darker moments, that he was one more eventual dead-end experiment, and he had no desire to drag anyone else down with him. He had simply managed to last a little longer than the rest of their spectacular failures. What was truly frightening was that in the medical texts the difference between headache and stroke was little more than a matter of degree.
    The painful lights began to fade from the inside of his retinas. He took a long, shuddering breath, then sat up straight. Something was happening to him. Something was changing inside his head, and he had no more control over it than a spaceport control tower had over a runaway shuttle. More changes. Piss on his progenitors, the sons of bitches who had arrogated unto themselves the right to toy with the unborn.
    There was nothing to be done about it. He could hardly walk into a major medical facility and calmly request a full-scale examination on the strength of being the bastard product of an illegal and universally abhorred society of renegade eugenicists. On the other hand, he told himself, feeling better as the pain in his head went away, it might simply, be that he was prone to headaches. He managed a grin. It would be amusing if all his fears and worries were groundless, and the only thing he was suffering from was the normal trauma of moving from adolescence into adulthood. It would also be wonderful.
    It would also be unlikely.
    The headaches were usually accompanied by a severe emotional twitch from another person, but there was no one else in the vicinity. Maybe a real headache, then. He would not mind the pain if that was the case. Sometimes even pain could be reassuring.
    The fact that he could still suffer wrenching emotional dislocation here in the middle of the jungle was further proof of the erratic nature of his abilities, not that he needed additional confirmation. The fact that he had come to grips with his peculiarities intellectually did nothing to assuage their effects on him. They were a constant reminder of his abnormality, of the fact that whatever else he did, he would never be able to lead anything resembling a normal life.
    If only he could learn to channel, to control his talents, to turn them on and off like water from a faucet. “If only,” he mumbled angrily to himself, “I were normal. But I’m neither normal nor in control of what I am.”
    A light weight landed on his right shoulder. A glance revealed the scaly yet somehow understanding face of Scrap. He smiled.
    “What am I going to do with you? You aren’t going to find any bonders out there, anyone to share with. You’ll be living in an emotional void, existing on