new clothes came shucking off and four eight-year-olds stood naked and small, shivering more out of embarrassment than cold. Medical technicians came past, probing them, testing them with odd instruments, pricking them for blood. Each took the little cards and made additional marks on them with little black rods that produced the marks, all neatly lined up, with great speed. George stared at the new marks, but they were no more comprehensible than the old. The children were ordered back into their clothes. They sat on separate little chairs then and waited again. Names were called again and ‘George Platen’ came third. He moved into a large room, filled with frightening instruments with knobs and glassy panels in front. There was a desk in the very center, andthe doctor busied himself. His parents had explained this to him. They, too, had said it wouldn’t hurt, but then there were always the older children. There were the ten- and twelve-year-olds who howled after the eight-year-olds waiting for Reading Day, “Watch out for the needle.” There were the others who took you off in confidence and said, “They got to cut your head open. They use a sharp knife that big with a hook on it,” and so on into horrifying details. George had never believed them but he had had nightmares, and now he closed his eyes and felt pure terror. He didn’t feel the wires at his temple. The buzz was a distant thing, and there was the sound of his own blood in his