He is Charles Render, the Shaper. He is a psychoanalyst, and a mechanic of dreams. In a warm womb of metal his patients dream their neuroses, while Render, intricately connected to their brains, dreams with them, makes delicate adjustments, and ultimately explains and heals.

She is Eileen Shallot, a resident in psychiatry. She wants desperately to become a Shaper. She has been blind from birth.

"It is a physical and mental impossibility," he told her.

"The damage is in my eyes," she said, "not in my brain. I can see with other eyes if I can enter other brains."

"The universe did not invent justice," he told her.

"I'm not asking the universe for help," she said. "I'm asking you."