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«What beast could make this beautiful girl cry, I wonder». — Julia kept looking at the door too. She recognized the cause of Sarah’s tears immediately by the girl’s reaction: the poor thing become tense and sat paralysed as if all the energy had suddenly left her body.

«A perfect sample of male», — reflected Julia as her eyes studied the man who resolutely made his way to Sarah. Rather tall, in his early forties, dark hair slightly touched by grey, blue eyes and sensitively curved mouth, he was attractive and repulsive at the same time. Attractive because he was undoubtedly handsome, repulsive because there was something evil about him.

By the manner in which he started to talk to Sarah, Julia guessed that he was awfully angry. The poor creature looked so frightened — as if he was going to kill her.

«What are they talking about?» — wondered Julia and without a second thought clicked her fingers.

The next moment infinite terror and loneliness penetrated her soul. Julia couldn’t find in her own emotional experience equivalent of such a dark and hopeless deadlock.

— «Please, Steve, don’t tell my father. It would kill him», — begged Sarah, — «I’ll do anything you want, only don’t tell my father».

— «Oh, yes. He’ll be pleased to learn that his only beloved daughter is taking drugs and sleeping with anyone just to get her daily fix», — the man gave a sinister laugh.

— «But you know that I’ve given it up, and I’ll never do it again!»

«My God, this exquisitely beautiful young creature is a drug-victim!» — Julia was shocked. «I must save her. But how? Impossible to try to influence her from the inside, it’ll only hurt her and may even kill. And what if I use the right of extra-switching?» — Julia marvelled at the viability of her decision and clicked the fingers once again.

The first moment she felt giddy — two switchings at once! — but quickly recovered and started to examine her new soul-bearer. Steve’s soul was a strange land; everything was alien to her: alien thoughts, alien emotions, alien feelings. She had a curious sensation that she had secretly entered the enemy’s territory. And it was the enemy’s territory, for Steve had no soul in her view: the images were dark and blurred, the thoughts — disorderly and disconnected low and primitive desires. Julia immediately identified him as the Poor Coco type, wonderfully depicted by her favourite writer, John Fowles.

Julia had always been interested in this particular type of human being, for it demonstrated a remarkable ability to survive and prosper under any conditions. There was nothing whatsoever that could prevent them from getting a regular share of low pleasures — no human values, no moral laws, no inner restrictions. Once Julia had had a dispute on this subject with Jim: she had tried to understand how a person, who committed a crime, even a minor one, sort of indecency, could go on living in peace with his conscience and enjoying life without the slightest remorse. Jim had explained to her this phenomenon on a perfectly scientific basis — in terms of social biology or bio-psychology or something of the kind — she didn’t remember. The thing she did remember well was that animal-oriented type people owing to their better adaptability were gradually ousting the intellect-oriented type.