- We're still in Gerry's grasp of Alicia's memories. We need Twilight Zone music.
- She tried to find, for Lone, a book about a gestalt life form, but couldn't find anything satisfactory. A band of musicians making a song was similar but not a single life form.
- She reported her failure to Lone. Though he wasn't angry, he told her not to come back.
- Alicia complained that he wasn't giving her anything to pay back the reading.
- He asked what she wanted. She asked him to read not books out of her, but her self out of her.
- Lone probed her eyes and found confusion inside her. She denied it, claiming she was happy. Lone said she hated women because they knew something she didn't, and that she wanted two things from him.
- The first was to know how he grew up. He explained that he grew like an unwanted weed in the woods, but with the freedom to grow into the gestalt. She criticized his grammar and seemed jealous one member of the group was female.
- They discussed the mind probing. Lone said he didn't know what it was, but that she would forget about him except his name and the need to repay a favor.
- She asked if anyone would know about them. Lone said only if a gestalt head like himself or better came along.
- He then gives her the other thing she wanted: sex, taking her virginity. The novel describes it again, revealing what that first description of it was all about. A pressure, a painful breakage, and triumph drowning out the pain.