Summary

The people who run the Process of Villages have given a woman, called the "examiner" the assignment to monitor a man called the "claimant," based on her previous success. She's to follow First House policies for Gentlest Village, write reports on a daily basis and place them in a desk drawer. Someone will retrieve them. According to the information she has the claimant will be helpless until what is called Mark 1 and the treatment is up to her. Reprocessing decisions are also up to her and the recommendation to move the claimant to Gentler Village will happen when she recommends it.

In the prologue, the examiner arrives and sees the claimant lying down in a bedroom in a house he's been taken to in Gentlest Village. The claimant does not see her.

In Part 1, the examiner teaches the...