Pitchblende doesn’t power nuclear reactors, and crude oil doesn’t drive automobiles. Psi talent is extremely valuable—but only when it’s refined.

Anne McCaffrey

When Daffyd op Owen reached his office, there was a message on his desk to call Sally Iselin as soon as he had a moment. To a semantically-sensitive personality, the phrasing was provocative, added to the fact that Sally Iselin was in charge of recruit-testing. Daffyd punched her call numbers as soon as he read the note, disregarding other red and white flagged tapes and messages. If only one psi-latent was uncovered in a month of public information broadcasts, the program would be worth its cost.

“Daffyd here, Sally. You rang me?”

“Oh, Daffyd!” She sounded surprised and a tinge embarrassed. “I’m not really certain if I should bother you…”

“My great-grandmother used to say, ‘If it’s doubtful, it’s dirty.’”

“I’m not talking about a shirt, Daffyd,” and Sally’s usual levity was missing. “I’m talking about people.”

“Which people?” It was like pulling screws from wood: intriguingly un-Sallyish.

“Well, Daffyd, I’d hate to prejudice you. But… well, would you take me out tonight? There’s a place I want you to feel. I can’t figure out what it is myself and I know something happened.”

“Curiouser and curiouser. You’ve hooked me…”

“Oh, damn. I don’t want to hook you. I’ve gone and done what I shouldn’t ta oughta.”

Daffyd laughed. “Sally, all you’ve done is arouse my very considerable, insatiable curiosity.”

“All right, elephant’s child. Pick me up at nine; you’ll need the copter and money.” Her voice darkened with baleful implications of wild spending and debauchery, but there was a rippling undercurrent of laughter which told Daffyd that Sally was herself again.

“With as many bundles as Lester will allow me. At 9!”

He depressed the comset button just as the door opened to admit Lester Welch.

“What’s on Iselin’s alleged mind?”

“I can’t ‘path over a phone,” Daffyd replied, deliberately misinterpreting Lester.

The man swore and glared sourly at his boss. “All right, so you won’t talk either. Maybe I’ve no Talent but I don’t need it to know something’s got Sally excited. She’s so careful to sound calm.”

Daffyd shrugged his shoulders and reached for the in-tapes. “Soon as I know, you will. Anything else bothering you this fine morning? And Sally says I need bundles tonight.”

Lester eyed him in surprise for a moment and then snorted. He pointed to the finance-coded blue tape among the urgent flags Daffyd was fingering.

“Some local yokel from East Waterless Ford upstate wants to tax the Center’s residential accommodations, same as any other apartment block. Claims the revenue on such ‘high income residents’ would reduce the state’s deficit by 9%.”

Daffyd whistled appreciatively. “He’s probably right but for the fact that this is a registered restricted commune and those high-income residents turn every credit of their salaries over to the Center.”

“Listen, Dave, he’s building a pretty good case.”

Op Owen sighed. There was always something or someone or some committee picking away at the Center, trying to disrupt, destroy or discredit it despite all the careful publicity.

“They did the same thing in New Jersey, you know,

when the Princeton University Complex put up those academician villages to counteract the high price of real estate and taxes,“ Lester reminded him sourly.

“I’ll listen, I’ll listen. Now, go away, Les.” Daffyd inserted Welch’s tape in the console.

Lester growled something under his breath as he left. And Daffyd op Owen listened. He didn’t like what he heard but the State Senator had certainly done some of his homework. Revenues from the Center’s residential buildings would indeed be a tidy pile in the State’s chronically anemic Treasury. Only the Center was in Jerhattan proper by a mile and a half, and therefore its revenues were the City’s, if anyone’s.

“Get me Julian Pennstrak, please,” Daffyd asked his secretary.

The City Manager might be of some assistance here. Certainly he’d be interested in what this upstate character, Aaron Greenfield (am I always to be “fielded,” Daffyd wondered wryly, remembering his battle with the US Senator Mansfield Zeusman) is proposing. If Julian didn’t already know. Not much slipped past Pennstrak’s affable eagle-eye. Pennstrak wasn’t available but his secretary tactfully put Daffyd through to Pat Tawfik, Pennstrak’s speech writer who was, in actual fact, his Talent guard.

“Yes, Dave, Julian’s been keeping an eye on Greenfield’s proposal,” Pat told him. “In fact, Julian had him in here for a long cozy chat when we first got wind of the scheme. Greenfield’s like Zeusman: suspicious and scared of us supermen.”

“Julian told him that the residential buildings are communal… ?”

“Yes and Julian showed him the figures the Center files every year, plus the auditors’ reports. Cut no ice! In fact, if anything,” and Pat grimaced, “it only confirmed Greenfield’s notion that the Center is a rich source of additional income.”

“The Center is also in Jerhattan proper.”

“Julian made that point but Greenfield’s one of those allocation goons: all for one and one for all… all monies being in one kitty—his. He’s State Budget Chairman, you see.”

Daffyd nodded.

“I didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily, Daffyd,” Pat went on apologetically.

Daffyd suppressed a tart rejoinder and sighed instead.

“Pat, it’s easier to pull a weed if it’s small.”

“A weed? That’s a good one. Greenfield’s a weed all right.” Pat sounded unusually acerbic. “I’ll tell Julian you called and that you’re worried.”

“No. I’m not worried, Pat. Not yet.”

“I would be if I were you,” she said, all gloom.

“Is there a precog?”

“No specific ones. But frankly, Dave, I’m far more worried about the city’s climate than anything old Aaron Leftfield perpetrates. And so is Julian. He’s street-walking today.” She gave a reassuring wave of her hand. “Oh, I sent one of the LEO sensitives with him. I can’t move so fast these days.” She glanced down at her gravid abdomen. “You’ve seen my report?”

“You sent one in?” Daffyd began riffling through the tapes.

“It should be on your desk. It’d better be on your desk.”

Daffyd found the purple-backed City Admin tape and waved it at her.

“It is. Lester Welch had first crack at me.”

“And he didn’t mention our tape?” She made an exasperated noise. “Look, Dave, listen to it now because, believe me, it’s more important than Greenfield even if Lester doesn’t think so.”

“Is that a precog, Pat?”

“You tell me it’s my condition,” she said, suddenly angry, “the way Julian does or a vitamin deficiency like my OB and I’ll resign.” The anger as suddenly drained from her face. “God, don’t I just wish I could!”

“Pat, d’you want a few weeks relief?”

Daffyd op Owen caught the shifting emotions on her face: sullen resentment giving way to hope, instantly replaced by resignation. “Don’t, Dave.”

“I wouldn’t and you know it. I can send out a may-day…”

“And overwork some other poor Talent?” Pat’s chin lifted. “I’ll be all right, Dave. Honest! It’s just that… well, hell, listen to the report. And remember, it’s a pan-ethnic problem this year.”

“This year?” Another loaded phrase. Daffyd op Owen inserted the City Admin tape and his concern over the Greenfield proposal faded to insignificance as he recognized the more imminent danger of a disturbed City. He began to wonder who else had thought to save their dear Director trouble by not reporting the grim facts he now heard. Because if the Correlation Staff had slipped up on reading precogs, he’d downgrade the lot.

Brief, violent inter-ethnic quarrels over contract employment during the winter had been mediated but, within the City’s ethnic sectors, the truce had been uneasy: each segment certain that another had received what plums existed. (Most of the spot employment during the winter had been make-work, paid for by funds pared from other pressing needs to give the proud their sop.) Most of the agitation could be traced to a young Pan-Slavic leader, Vsevolod Roznine. The report noted that Roznine was more feared than popular with his constituents and, although several attempts had been made to cool or placate the agitator, he had neatly avoided the traps. The report closed with the note that Roznine might have latent Talent. However, the only mental contact made had been so distasteful to the Talent that he had broken it off before he could implant any suggestion to go to the Center for testing.

“The man’s public mind is a sewer,” was the final comment.

Daffyd op Owen made a steeple of his fingers and,

twirling his swivel chair, gazed out his window to the orderly grounds below. He felt unaccountably depressed yet he could be justifiably proud of what Talent in general and Eastern American Center in particular had been able to accomplish in the past decades. Op Owen could appreciate, and it was no precog, how much more had to be done on numerous levels: public, private, civic, clinical, military, spatial, and most important, inner. No matter what the dominant Talent, precog, telepath, teleport, kinetic, empathic, the Talented were still very human people, above and beyond their special gifts which so often complicated adjustment therapy.

They had professional immunity at long last, for all registered Talents. Another giant step forward. They had had acceptance on a commercial level for many years where Talent could steadily show profit to management. Since the first body-Talents had been able to point out assassins in crowds (even before precogs were accepted and acted on by key personnel), they’d been accepted by intelligent people. But the suspicious were the majority and they still had to be convinced that the Talented were not dangerously different.

He’d ruminated on this many times and it wasn’t solving the other pressing problems before him. A city torn by the very ethnic strife that had once been hailed as a bonding compromise to the late twentieth century’s lack of basic life-style values: summer was a-coming and, despite advances in weather controls, a hot dry spell which could cut the power available for city air-conditioning would only produce riot-breeding conditions.

So far, no major precogs of disasters had been recorded and for such a large unit as Jerhattan, a trouble precog was statistically more probable than one dealing with a small number of people or a single citizen. Scant reassurance, however.

And thank god, Talent was pan-ethnic, thought Daffyd. He didn’t have to worry about that ugly head rising against the Center.

He did tape an All-Talent alert on the city’s climate. The great minds would now have a single thought. Perhaps they’d also have an answer.

When he picked Sally Iselin up at nine at the Clinic door, she gave him a quick appraising look. Then her anxious-puppy expression changed to a radiant smile.

“I knew it. I knew it.” And she all but war-danced a circle as she inspected his costume.

“What?” he asked, turning to keep her face in view.

“You dressed just right. How’d you know? I’m sure I didn’t clue you. Are you positive you’re not a precog, too, Daffyd?”

“I’d rather not be.”

Her vivacity faded instantly. She put a hand out, aborting the sympathetic gesture before she actually made a contact. He touched her fingers lightly in reassurance. -

“Not to worry. I just had a tedious day. Felt like wearing glad threads.”

Sally’s eyes crinkled and her mouth tilted up as she cocked her head to one side. “You are indeed joyous,” she said saucily as her glance took in his royal blue black-trimmed coverall.

“Look who’s talking,” and Daffyd grinned down at Sally in lime green and black swing tunic and matching high boots. Sally’s puppy charm was a tonic and he wondered, as he often did in her company, why he didn’t make more opportunities to enjoy it.

As he put a helping hand under her elbow to assist her up to the passenger side of the two-spot copter, she gave him a startled sideways glance. He caught the echo of mental astonishment before she started to chatter about the day’s hopeful applicants.

“They come, Daffyd, swearing oaths that they’d had this or that perception. Dorotea doesn’t tap a one. We go through the routine but even with maximum perceptol, they come over dead dumb and stone blind.”

Sally was a compulsive talker but Daffyd became aware that her present garrulity was a shield. He wondered what Sally would need to obscure. Propriety prohibited his making a quick probe but undoubtedly there’d be clues later on. Sally was entirely too open to be devious for very long.

She directed him to Sector K, northwest of the Center, where the worn hills struggled up from old swamplands: not a salubrious area despite reclamation and renovation efforts. There were still ruins of early twentieth-century factories and it was by one such structure, a sprawling half-glass and brick affair, that Sally directed him to land.

“The place seems popular enough,” Daffyd said as he had to circle several times to find a site for the copter.

Sally winced, eyeing the ranks of city-crawlers and the presence of both private and public transport copters. “Doesn’t take long, does it, for the masses to latch onto a new thrill!”

“Oh? This is new?” He’d caught the worry tone of her thoughts. “Crowd bad for the project?”

“I don’t know.” She was more than worried. “I just don’t know. It’s just that…” She broke off, firmly pressing her lips together.

They stood in a short queue for billets, paying a credit apiece to get in.

“Milking the golden cow,” Sally said with uncharacteristic bitterness as they passed the billets in at massive sliding doors which separated the outer hall from the vast factory space beyond.

“Guarding it, too,” Daffyd said, noting the strong-arm types in meshed duty-alls.

“That might make more sense than you’d guess,” Sally said in a very dark voice. Her mind was practically shouting “trouble.”

“Will we need assistance?” he asked her, estimating how many empathic Talents might be needed to control a crowd this size.

Sally didn’t answer. She was looking around the enormous open area which was filling rapidly. It didn’t require Talent to appreciate the aura of excited anticipation that emanated from the audience. The hall was by no means full yet; half the tables were still empty, but most of the couches of the inner circles were occupied. Daffyd had never seen such an assortment of styles, ages and conditions of furnishings.

“They must have been scouring the Sector,” Sally said. Then she indicated a table on the outer rim: a table, Daffyd noticed, which was convenient to one of the luminescent exit doors.

They were barely seated, Daffyd on Queen Anne, Sally on Swedish tubular, before a waiter inquired their pleasure.

“What’s available?” Sally asked, simulating bored indifference. Daffyd was surprised that she felt the need to dissemble.

“You name it,” replied the concessionaire, impatient. His tables were filling up.

Sally “told” Daffyd that this, too, was an innovation.

“Try something simple, schatzie,” Daffyd said, managing the verbal slurs of their assumed roles. “The Med-board warned you and I’m not copting you to the drain-brain again this month.”

Sally affected petulance, then with dutiful resignation, asked for a mild caffeine. Daffyd, in character, asked for an esoteric blend.

“Nor am I copting you!”

“Make it two milds and bring the pot.”

As the conman left, Daffyd leaned towards Sally. “Is this area disaffected?”

She wrinkled her nose. “We get a lot of hopefuls from this Sector.”

Sound had come on, more frequency drone than actual note. The dim lights on the girders were beginning to fade completely, and ground spots lit up, adding their eerie moiety to the ambience. Sally looked toward the

half-circle of stage which had remained semi-lit. The aura of expectation, of voracious emotional appetite increased perceptibly. Sally shivered and folded her arms across her breasts but Daffyd sensed that the created atmosphere irritated more than distressed her.

She shifted in her chair nervously when the waiter appeared with cups and the pot. He served them disdainfully—he didn’t make as much commission from the milder brews—and hurried off, grimacing thanks for the carefully generous gratuity.

The auditorium was almost full now and the conversational murmur impinged on Daffyd’s senses as the snarl of the unfed. Yes, the climate of the city was very uncertain indeed. He could feel the tension building rapidly now, with so many feeding it. He noticed the muscle boys spreading through the tables and couches, and he worried harder. The psychology of a crowd was theoretically understood but there was always that gap between theory and reality—that dangerous gap which could be bridged by the most insignificant event—when crowd exploded into Riot. Daffyd and Sally were far too familiar with the “tone” of Riot to be very comfortable in a pregnant situation.

In fact, Daffyd was leaning across the table to warn Sally that they might have to leave when the lighting of the stage area altered and a girl stepped into the center. She wore a white caftan-type unadorned robe and carried an old-fashioned twelve-string guitar. It had no umbilical amplifier which surprised Daffyd as much as the girl’s regal poise and simple appearance.

A camouflaged hand deposited a three-legged stool and the girl took her place on it without a backward glance.

Daffyd frowned at the darkness above the stage, wondering where the sound amplification was hidden. She couldn’t possibly hope to reach and hold this crowd without electronic boosting of some kind.

Then Daffyd saw the relieved and pleased smile on Sally’s face.

The girl settled herself, tossed back her mane of tawny hair and, without taking any notice of the audience, began to play softly. There was no need for mechanical amplification of that delicate sound. For the first note fell into a voracious silence, the most effective conductor.

No—and Daffyd sat up straight—every nerve in his body aware of a subtle, incredible pulse that picked up the gentle melody and expanded it—telepathically!

And this, too, was what Sally had hoped he’d feel, what she’d brought him here to confirm. He saw the happy triumph in her eyes. The girl’s voice, a warm lyric soprano, intensified the pulse, “sounded” off the echo as she fed the multitude with a tender ethnic admonition to love one another. And… everyone did.

Daffyd listened and “listened,” stunned physically and emotionally by the unusual experience: unusual even for a man whose life had been dedicated to the concept of unusual mental powers. On an intellectual plane, he was incredulous. He couldn’t deduce how she was effecting this total rapport, this augmented pulse. It was not mechanical, of that he was certain. Why this sensation of “echo”?

The girl would have to be a broadcasting empath: an intelligent empath, unlike poor Harold Orley who hadn’t any intellect at all. This young woman was consciously choosing and directing the emotion she broadcast… Wait! That was it… she was consciously directing the emotions… at whom? Not the individual minds of the listeners: they were responding but they could not account for the “generation” of emotion that enveloped everyone. There had to be sensitive minds to generate emotion like that and these people were parapsychically dead. Yet she was manipulating them in some way, using some method that was non-electrical and non-sonic.

The girl continued with a more complicated tune from some early nineteenth-century religious minority which had settled in the eastern United States. And the “message” of the song was a soothing statement of acceptance.

She was deliberately taking the audience out of the technocratic trap, transferring them to less complex days, lulling them into a mood of even greater receptivity. Nor was Daffyd immune to the charged atmosphere… except for that part of his brain which could not perceive how she was effecting this deft, mass control.

The singer finished that song and plucked the strings idly, chording into a different key. The third song, while no more intense than the first two, was a rollicking happy ballad, a spirit-lifter, a work doer.

She was preparing her audience, Daffyd realized, deftly and carefully. He began to relax, or rather, the intellect which had been alerted, responded to the beguiling charm of her performance.

Daffyd was suddenly frightened. A deep pang, covered in a flash, overladen with worry that was lyric-inspired. Only it wasn’t. Sally had felt the pang, too, glancing nervously around her. The rest of the audience didn’t seem to catch alarm: they were in the young singer’s complete thrall, caught up in the illusion of unpressured times and ways.

The fear was the singer’s and it was not part of her song, Daffyd concluded, because he could detect no other influence, no newcomer in the hall, no change of lighting or aura. Sally was concentrating on the girl, too.

Why would she be frightened? She had the audience in the palm of her hand. She could turn them in any direction she chose to: she could…

Her song ended and, in a fluid movement, she rose, propped her guitar against the stool and casually disappeared into the shadowy rear of the stage.

Sally turned anxious eyes to Daffyd, and they shared the same knowledge. She’s the one who’s frightened. She’s leaving.

And that’s the most dangerous thing she could do, Daffyd “told” Sally.

No one in the audience moved and Daffyd didn’t dare. The lighting altered subtly, brighter now, and people began to shake off the deep entrancement, reaching for cigarettes or drinks, starting soft conversation.

“They don’t know she’s not coming back. When they do…”

Daffyd signalled to Sally. It was imperative they leave: they couldn’t risk the psychic distortion of a riot and, once this crowd discovered that the singer wasn’t returning, their contentment would turn to sour savage resentment. Caution governed Daffyd. They couldn’t just leave. But they had to…

He reached across the table casually and deftly tipped the caffeine pot over.

“Of all the stupid jerks,” Sally cried, irritably, getting to her feet and holding her flared skirt from her.

Daffyd rose, too, with many apologies. They received mildly irritated glances from nearby couples whose pleasant mood was disrupted. As Daffyd and Sally moved toward the main door, Sally kept up a running diatribe as to her escort’s awkwardnesses and failings. They reached the sliding doors. The aura generated by the singer was fainter in the lobby and the close knot of men by the box office window interrupted their discussion to stare suspiciously at Daffyd and Sally.

“I can’t sit around in this damp dress,” Sally said in a nasal whine. “It’ll stain and you know it’s only this week’s issue.”

“Hon-love, it’ll dry in a few moments. It was only…”

“You would be clumsy and right now…”

“Let’s just stand outside a bit. It’s warmer. You’ll dry off and we won’t miss any of the singing.”

“If you make me miss any of Amalda’s songs, I’ll never, never forgive you…”

With such drivel they got out the main entrance. But not before Daffyd experienced a wash of such frightful lewd thoughts that he hastily closed off all awareness.

“Sally, how many minorities did you notice represented there?”

“Too many, in view of your memorandum this morning. Daffyd, I’m scared. And it’s not Amalda’s fear this time!”

“I’m calling Frank Gillings.”

Sally pulled from him. “I’ll find the girl. She’s got to have protection…”

“Can you find her?”

“I’m not sure. But I’ve got to try. Once that crowd realizes she’s left…”

Sally turned to the right, toward the rear of the factory, slipping past the little city crawlers until she was out of Daffyd’s sight. He made for his copter and opened the emergency channel to the Center.

Charlie Moorfield was on duty and he instantly patched Daffyd through to the office of Law Enforcement and Order as he was rousing the Center’s riot control people. If they could get enough telepaths to the site in time, they might dampen the incipient riot before LEO needed to resort to the unpopular expedient of gas control.

“Tell Frank Gillings that Roznine is here, too,” Daffyd told the officer on the line.

“Roznine? What’n hell would he be doing listening to a singer?” the man asked.

“If you’d heard the effect this singer has on people, you’d understand.”

The officer swore, at a loss for other words. Daffyd wished that swearing were as therapeutic for him. “Keep the band open, Charlie…”

“Dave, you can’t stay there…” Charlie’s voice reached Daffyd’s ears even several yards from the copter. Daffyd wished he’d be quiet. He had to concentrate on “listening” for the girl. He could sense Sally’s direction but he was used to Sally’s mind; he could have “found” her at a far greater distance. But the singer was unknown: alarmingly unknown, Daffyd realized, because he ought to be able to “find” her. He’d been in her presence, in “touch” with her for over half an hour, long enough for him to identify most minds and contact them again within a mile radius. She couldn’t have got very far away in such a short time.

The beat of heavy duty copters was audible now: coming in without lights and sirens. Daffyd looked east, willing the Center’s fast transports to get here before the riot control squads. It was generally impossible to get enough telepaths during the day to quell an imminent riot unless there’d been a precog of trouble. But, of an evening, there was the entire Center’s telepathic population… Now, if…

He heard the beginning of a subdued murmur from the building. The customers were getting restless. He hoped they hadn’t yet realized that the singer wasn’t taking a short break.

Someone opened a section of the big main doors, stood framed in the rectangle of light for a moment, peering out. Daffyd identified the stocky figure as Roznine’s. Suddenly the figure of the ethnic leader froze. He stepped out, into the night, head up. The man’s curses floated toward Daffyd as he slammed back into the building. Daffyd hurried in search of Sally, wondering what Roznine would do now he knew a LEO squad was on the way. Only… and Daffyd faltered midstride, how could Roznine know, if he did, that the big copters were LEO. Cargo firms used the same type. Yet op Owen knew with unarguable certainty that Roznine had properly identified the aircraft.

Daffyd came round the corner of the old factory just as the personnel hatch in the huge rear door opened. He counted five of the muscle boys, each taking off in a different direction. Then a sixth man, Roznine, whose harsh urgent voice ordered them to find those effing copouts or they’d be subsistence livers for the rest of their breathing days.

‘Copouts.’ Plural, thought Daffyd. Who beside Amalda? No time now for speculation. Daffyd sent a quick warning to Sally to leave off the search and get

back to the copter. She was there when he returned, easily eluding the searching muscle men who were as noisy mentally as they were physically.

“That audience is losing patience fast,” Sally said, staring at the ominous black bulk of the building. She was hugging herself against shivers of fear.

Daffyd looked eastward, saw the running lights of the slim Center transports.

“Not long now.”

But too far away. Disappointment and whetted appetite rocketed to explosive heights. All along their side of the factory, exits burst open as part of the audience swarmed out, in futile search of the singer. Inside the furnishings were being thrown about and broken, people were slugging and slugged, trampled and hurt as uncertain tempers erupted.

Daffyd wasted no time. He half-threw Sally into the copter, jammed in the rocket-lift, warning Sally to hang on. The head LEO copter blared its summons before he could turn on his distinctive identity lights. As it was, he only just got out of stun range.

Once clear of the busy altitudes, Daffyd hovered, calling an “abort” to the Center transports. The situation had gone beyond their capabilities. He’d only completed one circle before he saw that the LEO copters were laying gas. It was all they could do with such a mob starting to rampage. Sally was weeping softly as he veered eastwards toward the Center.

“I wasn’t honestly certain, Daffyd,” Sally said, curled in a small contrite ball on the suspended couch in his quarters. She kept examining her glass as if the amber liqueur were fascinating. She’d the appearance of a small girl trying to get out of a scold. Actually her public mind was wide open to Daffyd’s, permitting him a review of her initial impressions of the singer. “I mean, while I

couldn’t think what else she might be, there was the possibility that it was all sonic amplification. You know what a skilled operator can do.“

“All the more reason you should have reported it, Sally. That kind of manipulation is why mechanical amplification is strictly licensed to reputable and reliable technicians.”

“And not a clue about the girl?”

“Not yet.” The licensed owners of the Factory were among those drowsily helpless inside the office in the lobby of the building. They’d be questioned, of course, by Gillings’s men. Perpetrators of riots could expect scant mercy from the LEO office.

“We’ve got to get to the girl first, Sally.”

“If only I’d told you sooner…” Sally was floating in chagrin.

“I keep telling you, and every other member of my staff, I don’t mind being bothered with so called ‘trivia.’ Because it isn’t always as trivial as you might believe.”

“I know. I know. I simply wasn’t thinking clearly.” That was what she said, but what Sally was thinking, also for him to see, was that she hadn’t wanted to disappoint him, or herself, in case her initial impression about the singer had been wrong. The girl had been almost too good to be true.

“Was she afraid of that crowd, Daffyd? It was three times the size of the one the other night. In fact, the size alone put me off.”

“You first heard her…”

“Just two days ago. I tried to get backstage to see her…” Sally shrugged her failure.

“Muscle boys?”

“No.” Sally was astonished. “Everyone else wanted to get next to her. I’d never have had a chance to find out for sure with so much interference, much less suggest she come to the Center.”

Daffyd began to stroll about, his arms crossed over his chest, his head down.

“We both sensed her fright?”

Sally nodded.

“We are both agreed that she is a broadcasting em-path?”

Sally nodded again, more emphatically. “Could she also receive? I mean, that would account for that ‘echo’ phenomenon, wouldn’t it? She throws the emotions out and then magnifies them on retrieval?”

“That’s one explanation.”

“Hmm, but you don’t subscribe to it with any enthusiasm.”

Daffyd grinned at Sally. “It doesn’t fit all the circumstances. Besides, Roznine used a plural… ‘those effing copouts.’”

Sally’s eyes rounded with surprise. “She links. That would account for the amplification and the echo.” Daffyd nodded. “Then who’s the other empath, or empaths?” Daffyd shrugged. “Doesn’t she realize what she is?”

“Probably not. We shall have to inform her.”

“And how do you plan to do that?”

“I think we ask for Frank Gillings’s help…”

“But… but… she started the riot. You know what happens to riot provokers.”

“Yes, but I also know that Frank wants all Talented people registered, trained and controllable. So when he’s had a chance to question the sleeping beauties…”

“We can trace Cinderella and fit her out with glass slippers…” Sally grinned saucily as she picked up the analogy.

“Before Pegasus flies away with her.”

“Pegasus? He’s a myth, not a fairy tale. That’s not fair, Daffyd!”

“But the analogy is most apt,” and op Owen was grimly serious. “And we’ve got to put a bridle on her Pegasus or she’ll end up with singed wings.”

Although the LEO Commissioner and the Director of Eastern American Parapsychic Center were on good working terms, the Commissioner avoided coming to the Center. Respecting this whimsy, Daffyd called through to Gillings’s office the next morning, asking for an appointment and specifying his business as the Fact riot.

“How did you happen to be there, Dave?” Gillings greeted him, rising from his chair as op Owen was ushered into his tower office.

Daffyd spent a moment admiring the 360° view of the sprawling hazed metropolis.

“Tracking a rather unique Talent.”

“That singer?” And Gillings swore when Daffyd nodded. “Do you know the toll on that caper?”

“No, but it’s one helluva lot cheaper than it would have been if we hadn’t alerted riot control.”

Gillings frowned. “She shouldn’t be allowed a public performer’s license.”

“I wanted to find out if she had one.”

Glaring, Gillings icily banged at his desk comset and demanded to be put through to ID. No license had been issued to anyone answering the description of the singer, Amalda: nor had there been a license issued to the Fact for solo entertaining. There were, however, specifications on record as to what mechanical amplification was permitted the management of the Fact, the frequency of the programming and the nights on which public gatherings could be held and the maximum number of people permitted to gather. Last night’s performance, it transpired, was completely illegal. Gillings issued a summons for the owners, brothers named Dick and Harry Ditts, who had told an entirely different tale the previous evening when they had recovered from sleepy gas. Five minutes later, Gillings was informed that neither Dick nor Harry Ditts could be located at their residences on record.

“Have they any known connection with Roznine?”

“Roznine?” Gillings regarded Daffyd with a combina—

tion of disgusted annoyance and startled concern which faded into deep reflection. “You saw him there?”

“Yes, he was at the Fact. When we were withdrawing from the scene of the imminent riot, he was deep in conversation with several types in the lobby. Later he spotted the LEO copters on their way in and made his way out. Funny he didn’t suggest to the Ditts brothers that they leave with him.”

“Don’t be naive. Roznine looks after Roznine, first, last and always or I’d‘ve had him cooled long ago. But Sector K is far from his bailiwick…” Gillings stared out across the city with narrowed eyes. “He’s been getting too damned powerful in the City and not just with the Slavs. A megalomaniac is what he is and they operate with a curious ability to avoid minor disasters… until they get overconfident. Roznine hasn’t made that mistake… yet…”

“I shouldn’t wonder that there’s some Talent in a megalomaniac, apart from his madness.”

“Talent?” Gillings erupted as Daffyd had known he would. “Christ, that’s all I need is a Talented pan-ethnic leader. Goddammit, why don’t you people get on the ball and round up all these goddamn freaking Talents before they go haywire. We’ve got enough problems keeping that…” and his blunt-fingered hand described a circle at the panoramic metropolis outside the plexi-glass, “… from exploding as it is without unnatural hazards like latent Talents…”

“… Then help us find Amalda. She can be immensely useful…”

“She’s a riot provoker…” Gillings’s eyes narrowed with a flash of vindictiveness.

“Are you going to help me, or hinder me, Frank? The girl is valuable to both of us but not in your cooler as an RP. She’s an intelligent broadcasting empath of tremendous range and power. I don’t think she realizes what she is… or didn’t until possibly last night. Something frightened her out of her wits halfway through her third

song. She ran! I don’t know what it was nor do I know exactly how she can broadcast the way she does, but it’s imperative that the Center find and protect her.“

Gillings’s eyebrows rose in ironic surprise. “You and Iselin were there. Why didn’t you get her then? What happened?”

“Among other things, a riot. Some people shield automatically, Frank, and if you can’t trace the mind, you can’t catch the body.”

“All right, all right,” Gillings said, irritably waving aside Daffyd’s mild reproval. “But how come she doesn’t know what she is? All right, all right. I know the answer to that, too. All right, what do I do?”

“I want a tracer on any young singer of her description applying for a performer’s license anywhere in the country. And I want to know where she has sung, where she trained, where she came from. She’s gone to cover and she won’t find easy. In the first place, she’s terrified of whatever hit her last night. And secondly, she’ll have a good idea what happened when the audience found out she wasn’t going to sing again. She has two very good reasons for being scarce. I also don’t want her frightened out of her wits so let me handle the actual search with my people. I’ll get my propaganda team to alter some of the public info broadcasts subliminally. We might get her to seek us out spontaneously which would be preferable,” Daffyd added, rising.

“Okay, you handle it but I want that girl found and trained or whatever it is you do with them. And quick. I’ll shunt the report on her to your computer. Shouldn’t take long to trace her.”

It took two days to trace the girl known as Amalda. And the print-out had many gaps.

She’d been born and reared in a small Appalachian commune: educated to her sixteenth year in the County School system which she quit to “travel”… a not un—

common pattern for an undirected or unmotivated youngster. There was no record of formal music instruction but music was a feature in her environment: no official record of her for several years until she took work in a Florida food control complex. Two applications for performer’s license in Florida were denied by the Audition Board there. The third application was provisionally granted and lapsed without formal request for an extension, but several short term engagements were on record for her as an unamplified, string-instrumented folk singer. A new application as apprentice, non-singer, had been filed in Washington, D. C. four months before: one engagement was listed without a termination date. Then Daffyd had a check made on the play in which she had appeared. Amalda, who had started as a walk-on, had been abruptly promoted to an important supporting role. The play was scheduled for a metropolitan opening in three weeks.

Although Daffyd had only a superficial acquaintance with the mechanics of the Performing Arts, there were several glaring contradictions in this report. And no explanation for Amalda’s sudden appearance as a self-accompanied soloist in a minority entertainment hall of dubious reputation.

In the meantime, he and Sally worked with the propaganda department to include in the public information broadcasts a subliminal appeal for someone in Amalda’s situation. Daffyd also got in touch with the play’s producer.

“I’ve had enough trouble with that flitting bird,” Norman Kabilov told op Owen. “If she does show up, I’ll tell her straight: she gets no more contracts and she shouldn’t ever hope to get a PP license approved. Not if I have any connection in the PA.”

“What kind of trouble did you have with Amalda?” Daffyd asked, injecting placatory thoughts at the irritated little man.

“Troubles, plural, not trouble singular,” and Norman Kabilov glowered at op Owen.

Daffyd knew the man was considerably perplexed by the Center’s interest in his ex-actress.

“First, she latches on to my stage manager, Red Vaden… good man, Vaden. Solid. Dependable. Only this little twit has him hopping to her tune like he’d never tried to brush off a stage-struck tail before. Red doesn’t ask many favors so when he wants this bird in the cast… so when the show travels, he’s not lacking what he’s been having regular… I say, yes. What harm? Suddenly I got Red begging me to give her an audition for one of the secondary leads. I already got a good PA picked out for the part…” Kabilov’s expression told Daffyd that his choice had been personal rather than professional. “… but I gotta keep ‘em happy so I audition the girl.” The little producer frowned now, his thoughts vivid to Daffyd. The man had been surprised out of boredom at the quality of the audition and immediately signed Amalda for the role, despite the fact that he’d known he’d be in for a heavy tune with the disappointed candidate. “Mind you, it wasn’t that great a part until that kid reads it.” Another headshake of perplexity. “I dunno how she did it because she sure had no theatre arts credits but I couldn’t not give her the part. And then the author comes to rehearsal and hell, he’s rewriting the part to give her more. I damn near have a jeopardy action from Carla Jacobs who’s the name in the play. Only Red goes to work on her and she quiets down like a lily. And you gotta believe that Jacobs don’t handle that easy. She’s pushing fifty, y’see, and any new bird is a threat. Funny thing,” and Kabilov stared off above Daffyd’s head, his mind taking up and discarding a hundred different glimpses of Carla Jacobs in high tantrum, Carla Jacobs soothed and very few snatches of Amalda. The man was unconsciously censoring those recollections. “Once La Jacobs got to working with the kid, things were okay. Wanta see the reviews we got?”

Daffyd hastily assented but he was given no chance to do more than glance at the commendatory headlines in the fasc sheets.

“As long as we were in Washington, it was okay. But the minute we got to Jerhattan, troubles! La Jacobs storms in here with her lawyers and her current man and she won’t play with that creature anymore. In fact, she gets so absolutely violent we gotta trank her. Now I can’t lose La Jacobs or I lose the theatre and the play since that’s the contract. So I tell Red to find his bird another nest. I can’t afford trouble. And they both walk!” He was indignant. “Just like that. He walks. A guy I’d sworn was 100% dependable walks out of the show two weeks before opening. On account of a scrawny bird!”

If Norman Kabilov looked the picture of outraged innocence, he “sounded” like a man reprieved from an unknown ordeal. However, he did have publicity shots of Amalda and Red Vaden, which he appeared relieved to give Daffyd: as if by getting rid of everything reminding him of this unsettling episode he could erase it from his memory.

Daffyd op Owen had his best finders scan the pictures, he sent copies to the LEO office and, on an off-chance, gave a final print to his best precog.

“You better find that girl,” Gillings told op Owen, “or I’ll find her and make her answer—officially—for that riot.”

“Frank, don’t provoke another Maggie O.”

Though the comset was not color, Daffyd was certain that Gillings’ face changed shade.

“We’re doing all we can,” he went on soothingly, “to find her but there’s no way of forcing her to come to us.”

Gillings growled something dire as he broke the connection.

There were days when Gillings was not Daffyd’s only cross. He and Sally had spent most of the morning trying

to figure out a way to attract Amalda to them. Lester Welch walked in, listened a few minutes and then snorted in disgust.

“Why don’t you just find out where this Red Vaden lives? If he was so gone on the girl he’d leave a successful show, he’s probably tied up tight with her. And if he’s at leisure,” and Lester grinned as he used the performing arts’ euphemism, “he’s surely checked into the PA Casting Agency.”

Op Owen closed his eyes briefly before he thanked Lester with a good grace.

“I’m not sure what we’d ever do without your common sense, Les.”

“Oh, someone else’d tell you your nose is on your face.” And Les left.

“This is one time I wish I were a kinetic,” Daffyd said with a wistful sigh, thinking all kinds of disasters, of a minor sort, to befall the dour New Englander on his way down the aisle to his own office. Then he caught Sally grinning at him, her eyes sparkling. “And if you repeat any of what I was thinking…”

She composed her face into solemnity, raising one hand. “Dai, you know I can’t ‘path that accurately.” But in her mind was a vivid picture of Lester stuffed into one of his wastepaper baskets.

Daffyd placed a call to the Casting Agency. Bruce Vaden had reported his availability and a new address. However, the Agency informed him, the address was naturally restricted. Daffyd explained who he was and that he urgently needed to get in touch with Vaden and was informed that Performing Artist Vaden would be contacted and would return his call if he were interested.

“ ‘If he were interested’ indeed,” Daffyd repeated, breaking the connection with uncharacteristic irritability.

“Shall we think Lesterish, and perhaps drop a word in the omnipotent ear of our local lion?” asked Sally.

Her suggestion elicited the needed address in five minutes and in less than half an hour, they were on their

way by copter to an isolated area of the Coast. The small sea-silvered cottage was tightly locked and obviously untenanted. Rather depressed, Sally and Daffyd returned to the Center. Lester met them at the roof stairs.

“You’re covered with canary feathers,” said Sally.

“I thought you couldn’t read my mind,” Lester replied, startled.

“With your expression I don’t need to.”

But Sally hesitated at the door of Daffyd’s office. Rather more aggravated with circumstance than Sally, Daffyd took her firmly by the arm and pushed her into the room. He was instantly overwhelmed by several devastating impressions: contact with Sally informing him that her emotions were highly unstable; there were intense love-hate auras swirling in the room and among them the sure knowledge that the chestnut-haired girl seated facing the door was a powerful and violently agitated empath; that the redbearded man standing by the window was linked to her in a desperate, despairing bond.

“I’m Daffyd op Owen,” he said, “and this is Sally Iselin, head of our Clinic Recruiting Team. We’ve been looking for you.” Daffyd poured out waves of sympathy/ reassurance/overt love and respect.

“We found you,” replied the man. “I’m Brace Vaden.”

“We tried to locate you at the Fact last night,” Daffyd said, turning to Amalda. His second impression was that the girl was about to implode.

At that point, Sally gasped and made a movement towards Amalda as the impact of fear/confusion/hatred/ love/horror/revulsion/affection lapped over the two Talents.

“That’s just a sample of what I can do.” Despite a southern softness, the girl’s voice grated in their ears and was echoed by an intense mental shout that caused both Daffyd and Sally to shake their heads. “I don’t want this. It doesn’t matter any more if Red is in or out of the room. It works anywhere now.” She was drenched

in bitterness, but there was pity as well as satisfaction to be read from her glance as she “watched Sally beginning to shake with reaction.

Daffyd curtly gestured Sally from the room. She resisted until he reinforced the order mentally, telling her to get Jerry Frames over here on the double. He duly noted that she was rebellious and not bothering to hide the fact in her public mind or her expression. Daffyd winced slightly as Sally slammed the door behind her.

“You’re an empath,” Daffyd told Amalda, trying to reach through her broadcast to soothe her stampeding emotions.

“I don’t care what I am. I want you to stop it. Now!”

“I can’t stop it, my dear,” he said in his kindest voice, but he had a vision of a bridleless winged horse bolting across the heavens.

Amalda rose, in a single fluid movement, her eyes blazing. “Then I will!” Her words rose to the edge of a scream as she launched herself at the window. Daffyd moved to intercept her, physically and mentally, but not as swiftly as Red Vaden. Not that she could have achieved her end, since the window was unbreakable. So she hit the plastic hard and crumpled into the arms of the redhead, sobbing hysterically and broadcasting such conflicting and powerful emotions that, out of pity, Daffyd reached for the trank gun in his desk and shot her.

There was absolute silence on every level in the room as the two men stared down at the limp figure in Vaden’s arms.

“I suppose that was necessary,” the man said in a bleak voice as he swung her up in his arms.

Daffyd could read the relief in the man’s mind which had been bruised by confusion, fear and an unquestioning devotion to the girl. Op Owen gestured towards the couch.

“All right, op Owen, what now?” Vaden asked after he had arranged Amalda gently in a comfortable position. The man’s eyes were a cold, troubled blue.

Daffyd returned the gaze, probing deftly and finding in Vaden’s outer thoughts that their visit here had been his suggestion, a last possibility of assistance, since Amalda had been determined to end her Talent even if it meant taking her life.

“First we have the Center’s doctor prescribe sedation,” and Daffyd nodded towards the painfully thin arm of the unconscious girl, “and a decent diet.”

Vaden snorted as if practical advice was the last thing he’d expected from op Owen but he took the chair Daffyd indicated to him.

“Then the Center teaches her to control this Talent.”

“Talent?” Vaden exploded. “Talent? It’s an effing curse! After the other night, she’s scared to go out of the house. She’ll never perform again… She won’t even…” and he clenched his teeth over what he’d been about to add but not before the thought, “audible” to Daffyd, made him pity the two more.

“Any Talent is a two-edged sword, Vaden,” op Owen said, swinging his chair a little, a soothing motion.

“What kind of a freak is she?”

“She’s by no means a freak,” Daffyd answered in rather severe tones. “She’s a broadcasting telempath…”

“And I’m the booster station?”

“I think that would be a good analogy.”

“Look, op Owen, I’ve read a good bit about you Talents and nothing was said about what Amalda does…”

“Quite likely. We’re just beginning to appreciate the mutations possible in the parapsychic. We have only one true telempath here. He unfortunately has no more mind than a rabbit and he only receives. Amalda can apparently transmit exactly what she chooses. I gather the phenomenon only began when she met you?”

On the top of Vaden’s mind was the actual first meeting: a sort of dazed comprehension that they were “meant for each other.” Their first love-making had been a revelation to the blase, sex-wearied Vaden and

eachsucceedingdayhadstrengthenedtheirinterdependence.

“She was down and out,” Vaden said aloud in an expressionless voice. What he wasn’t saying was vividly and pictorially flashing across his mind, elaborating with every shade of the emotional spectrum a dry recital of fact. “Thank God it was me she approached…” and beyond the flashes of memories, Daffyd saw that Vaden had never allowed himself the luxury of loving or caring for anyone for fear of being hurt and used. In a transient profession, constantly besieged by stage-struck youngsters who thought a PA license was “all” they needed to achieve fame, he had been invulnerable to physical charms and ordinary ploys. But he had absolutely no defense against the impact of Amalda’s mind in his. Now he ran nervous fingers through his crisp red hair.“We went everywhere.” He’d been haunted with the fear that she’dleave himor betaken fromhim.“Evento rehearsal. Then the girl who was to play Charmian was late so I asked Amalda to fill in and read it ‘til she came. I’ve never heard a better first reading. She even lost every trace of her regional accent and became the hard-voiced trollop. We all loathed her. It was such a total characterization! I’ve never seen such a thing in all the years I’ve been a PA. I’d expect such expertise from someone like Mathes or Crusada, but a novice? An ex-canary?” Vaden looked toward the unconscious girl and gave a sort of incredulous shrug. “She was so pleased to think she did have ability. She’d tried often enough to qualify as a vocalist.” Vaden made an exasperated noise in his throat. “The first time she sang for me I couldn’t credit that she’d been refused a license.” He turned back to Daffyd. “It just didn’t make sense.”

“I’d hazard that you were the missing factor.”

“A modern Svengali?” Vaden was bitter.

“Not exactly. But the brain generates electrical currents. And in the same way that a receiver must be

tuned to a certain wave-length to get a message broadcast on that same wave-length, minds must be broadcasting on the same frequency. Yours and Amalda’s are. Were either of you ever parapsychically tested?“

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, we can sort out the pure mechanics later during testing but there is one other pressing question I must ask.”

Vaden did have Talent, whether it had blossomed through contact with Amalda or not was immaterial, for he instantly perceived what was on Daffyd’s mind and stiffened. Daffyd continued, feeling it wiser not to let Vaden realize that he was in the presence of a strong telepath… at least not yet.

“Granted you serve in the capacity of an amplifier for whatever mood Amalda creates, what happened the other night at the Fact? What terrified her so that she fled from what obviously was a smash-success? She had that audience in the palm of her hand.”

An expression akin to terror crossed Vaden’s face, ruthlessly suppressed in a second.

“You were in the audience?” Vaden asked, temporizing.

“Yes, Sally Iselin had heard Amalda two nights before and wanted me to confirm her suspicion that Amalda was a high-gain empathist. What scared Amalda off that stage? And sent both of you into hiding?”

There was nothing helpful in Vaden’s mind except a repetition of what Daffyd and Sally had felt in Amalda’s projection. Instead, Vaden’s thoughts became despairing.

“That’s why you’ve got to help us, op Owen. Turn Amalda off!”

Vaden didn’t attempt to disguise his fear now. And he didn’t strike op Owen as easily frightened. He was tough, able to take care of himself from the look of his bearlike build. And had taken care of himself, to judge by the scars on his knuckles and face.

“Fortunately, no one can turn Amalda off. Nor do I yet see the necessity.” Only a nebulous but overwhelming fear in both Vaden and Amalda.

“You’d better see,” Vaden cried, leaning urgently toward op Owen. His eyes were blazing with anger, fear and a sense of impotence which would be more frightening and humiliating to a man of Vaden’s temperament. “You’d better see that it’s crushing Amalda to the point where she was willing to commit suicide rather than live with what she’s become!”

“You haven’t told me what frightened her and what, if I may speak candidly, is bothering you as well.”

Vaden got a grip on his fear and anger. “There was someone else in that audience,” he said in a harsh controlled voice, “who suddenly linked up with us. Someone who was trying to dominate. Who was determined to control what Amalda can do. She got the brunt of it, of course, then I caught it.”

Op Owen was certain then, with an awful instinct, that Roznine was the third person. And the ramifications of that premise were decidedly unsettling. He managed to smile reassuringly at Brace Vaden. He swung his chair idly from side to side with counterfeit unconcern. He had lost Solange Boshe but he wouldn’t lose Amalda… and Vaden… and Roznine.

“That’s very interesting,” he told Vaden. “Does Amalda have any idea of the man’s identity?”

“How could she?” Red Vaden asked scornfully. He was making a notable effort to cover his inner perturbations. He couldn’t bear even the notion of sharing Amalda with anyone. “The minute she realized what was happening, how strong the guy was, and what he wanted her to do, she made as if she was taking a short break. And told me to follow. But she won’t ever sing again. You don’t know what it does to you…”

“I probably more than any man,” Daffyd said with a slight smile.

Vaden discredited the statement with a cutting sweep of his hand.

“You’ve got to understand that Amalda must be turned off.”

There was an edge in his voice now: he was hitting an emotional high, too. Daffyd reached surreptitiously for the trank gun.

“Don’t you dare!” Vaden moved with surprising speed and grabbed op Owen’s hand.

“I thought you’d understand, op Owen. Whoever that guy is is double dangerous!”

“You’ll have every bit of protection the Center and every other Center in the world can offer you, Vaden,” Daffyd replied, allowing his voice to take on strength without volume. “Which is not inconsiderable, I assure you. What you don’t understand, Vaden, is that Amalda’s main problem is simply lack of control of her rather breath-taking ability.”

“You don’t understand.” Vaden was desperate. “She can control masses of people. Those subbies in the Fact… she could have made them do anything. That’s what’s terrifying her. And me. And that other freaked-out mind… he wanted to use her to control that kind of a dangerous mob. God, man, I know what riot is. I’ve seen them. I’ve been caught in them. I know what happens. She could cause one. She even started one by not being there. She could incite the entire goddamned Jerhattan complex…”

“How?” asked Daffyd blandly.

“By… by… doing what that mind wanted her to do the other night.”

“But,” and Daffyd matched Red Vaden’s urgency with his own, “she didn’t! And she couldn’t! And nothing on this world, not even some freaked-out mind with a megalomaniacal bent could make her. And once she’s learned to control this… winged horse of hers, I think you’ll all find this not so cursed a Talent.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“How old is Amalda?”

“What? What has that got to do?”

“How old?”

“She’s twenty-two…”

“Twenty-two. And rather young for twenty-two, I should imagine. That’s still a tender age.” Daffyd could’ve wished for some of Amalda’s empathic strength but he was getting through to Vaden’s basic reasonableness. “And she has become emotionally involved with you… No offense, please, Mr. Vaden. From a rather humdrum frustrating existence, she has erupted onto the stage, into prominence… Even a mature personality could be dazzled. Then she is thrown into a highly charged situation—the concert at the Fact—it was unnerving for me as an observer, and I’m well in command of my emotional responses. She is frightened and runs! For which I don’t blame her at all. In short, Amalda has been operating on high for some time. We are still frail masters of our powers, Mr. Vaden. And that receiver/broadcaster unit which is Amalda is overcharged.

“No, Mr. Vaden, we can’t turn her off. We don’t want to. But we can teach her how to channel her Talent, how to discipline it so it won’t run away with her as it has just done. We can also show you how to help her put on the brakes. Oh, yes, you can apply what, to all intents and purposes, are circuit breakers. She will need your strength and aggression, Mr. Vaden. In fact, and this is between us, Amalda is not as important as both of you. So I will consider you a team, because that’s what you are.”

“Then you can help?” asked Vaden. He didn’t quite believe op Owen but the aura of belligerent desperation was fading.

“I just said so.”

“No,” and Vaden shook his head angrily as if he’d thought Daffyd would “know” his exact referents.

“Emotion is as much a tool as a pen or a pneumatic drill…”

Vaden stared at him, and then unexpectedly chuckled. “And Amalda’s been swinging the drill?”

Inwardly op Owen cheered. Thank God the man had a sense of humor.

“Exactly. Amalda has all the finesse of a tyro. If you had been the focus instead of this rather impressionable and previously frustrated young woman, I think matters might have progressed more circumspectly. As it was…”

“I don’t think Amalda’s going to believe you, op Owen,” Vaden said, looking sadly down at the unconscious girl.

“I don’t think she’ll have any alternative,” Daffyd replied severely. Vaden frowned, his eyes narrowing, but op Owen returned the look, adding a mental reinforcement. “She is exhausted from the look of her, which is what happens when you run an engine on full power for any length of time. We’ll sedate her sufficiently to let her body and mind rest. And we’ll keep her sedated until she begins to realize that she cannot control everything around her with the grip of a tyrant… for that seems to be her main fear. Rather commendable, actually.”

“And?” Vaden said in a flat, no-argument voice.

“And, in the meantime, you will have to learn how to aid her. You’ve been more or less passive. Shall we say,” and Daffyd smiled slightly as he bowed to Vaden, “you are both engaged for a long-term contract with no options.”

The door burst open to admit Jerry Frames, the Center’s physician and Sally Iselin, who glared her way back into the office. Daffyd smiled as he stepped aside to let them through to Amalda.

“What took you so long?” he asked Sally.

“What d’you think I am? A lousy pop Talent?”

“She’s able to cover completely now, Daffyd,” Sally said with understandable pride.

They were watching through the one-way mirror as Amalda fed Harold Orley. The witless empath was neatly eating, with appetite, and often a small smile of pleasure on his childlike features.

“Never thought we’d use Harold as an instructor,” said op Owen. Sally grinned at him, her eyes sparkling. “Harold’s a useful old tool.”

Daffyd thought fleetingly of Solange Boshe.

“Don’t, Dai!” Sally’s one word was reinforced by her mental command behind which Daffyd sensed sympathy, pity and, oddly enough, annoyance.

“She’s off all tranks now?” he asked, grateful to her.

“Heavens yes. She’s got to concentrate on Harold, you know.”

“Then let’s start them moving about outside.”

“I would if I were you. The Red Bear’s about to go stir crazy.”

“Red Bear?”

Sally wrinkled her nose. “That’s what I call Vaden.”

“Then Amalda’s Goldilocks?”

“Good heavens, no. She’s Cinderella, remember?”

“Cinderella and the One Bear?”

“Cinderella, the One Bear and… the Wolf!”

Daffyd frowned. “I thought I was a better therapist than that.”

“Oh, it’s just a back-of-the-mind worry. She’s not going to trust herself until she does meet and vanquish the Wolf. And then we can all live happily ever after.”

There was a tinge of bitterness in Sally’s bright voice that made Daffyd look at her closely. He was tempted to probe but that wasn’t ethical, particularly since Sally would be instantly aware of the intrusion. So he observed Amalda for a few more moments before leaving the Clinic.

In the month Amalda had been at the Center, the over-thin, intense girl-child had been replaced by a still slender but composed young woman. Her fears had slowly been eased by Daffyd’s adroit therapy and by her own ability to discipline her emotions, to channel the vital energies deftly.

The first sessions with Harold Orley had been conducted with Amalda fairly well sedated. The girl had been revolted by Harold’s witlessness. There could have been no clearer mirror for her reaction. Pity for the moronic empath had been quickly suppressed because Harold would disconcertingly burst into tears. At first Amalda had rebelled at being forced to work with Harold but she could not refute the fact that he would react instantly to her emotions and until she could control them in his presence, she couldn’t expect to be able to control them sufficiently in public.

In the first days at the Center, she had also demanded, even under heavy sedation, to be lobotomized: an operation which Amalda erroneously supposed would suppress her gratuitous Talent. Then she met Harold and realized that the psionic portion of her brain would not be excised by such an operation. Step Two in Amalda’s rehabilitation was her introduction to the Center’s star young Talent, two-year old Dorotea Horvath. It didn’t take Amalda long to recognize the lesson which, was thus demonstrated to her.

Small Dorotea was playing contentedly with six-sided blocks. When they tumbled, her fury exploded… to be checked, unconsciously but firmly, by her mother. The young telepath’s thoughts were so loud and clear that Amalda couldn’t fail to recognize the analogy.

“So I discovered a bright new toy in my mind and it won’t play with me, is that it?”

“You have to learn to balance the toy just as Dorotea does…” Daffyd said gently.

“So they won’t all fall down and go boom?”

“With you underneath,” added Sally. “Like the night at the Fact.”

Despite sedation, Amalda paled and shuddered.

“He can’t find me, can he?”

“Not here, behind shielded walls, my dear,” Daffyd reassured her.

Once Amalda could control her emotions, Vaden began to take part in the exercises. It was during these sessions that the phenomenon of the second Fact concert was harnessed. Amalda, with Red, could dominate the emotional atmosphere of any large room, could project, even to the minds of sensitives, any emotion she chose. But the force that Daffyd and Sally had felt at the Fact was absent.

“The team right now is limited,” Daffyd said to Sally, somewhat ruefully.

“Limited?” Sally was surprised.

“Yes. As long as there are no dark emotions being counter-broadcast, she can project what she wants of the lighter ones. But I was rather hoping that she and Vaden would be strong enough together to counteract…”

“An incipient riot?”

“Yes,” and Daffyd leaned forward eagerly. “That would placate Frank Gillings and wipe out that RP he’s still got against her. And think what it would mean in riot control techniques: two people instead of twenty sensitives, if we have ‘em available when we need ’em, or instead of the gas.”

“Well, so that’s what you’ve had in mind.”

“As it is, I think we’ll let them operate as a team in those gatherings that tend to develop brawls: conventions, fairs, industrial shows.”

“And what about the Wolf?”

“Ah, yes, but you see, I want him to come out of the woods.

“And Amalda?” Sally “sounded” furious with him.

“Which would you wager on? A Wolf or a Bear?”

Daffyd op Owen was by no means as callous of Amalda’s safety as Sally might think, for he’d circulated

a warning to all sensitives for any inquiry about Amalda or Brace Vaden and any unusual activity on Roznine’s part. Ted Lewis, the chief police Talent, gave them their first hint of interest. A well-known and respected Performer’s Agent who just happened to be Polish, asked for assistance from Central Casting to find a missing PA, Brace ‘Red’ Vaden who was reportedly employed but who had obviously not appeared with any working company.

“Now that could be legit,” Ted Lewis told Daffyd. “The guy really is forming up a variety show for the Borscht circuit but for that he doesn’t need a stage director with Vaden’s rating.”

“What about an unamplified folk singer?”

Ted Lewis shook his head. “Now Roznine may have found out that Amalda is Vaden’s bird but it’s also fairly common knowledge that Gillings is still after the folk-singer who started the riot at the Fact Stupid Roznine isn’t. Devious, yes.”

It suited Daffyd that Gillings had not yet dropped that charge, for while Amalda was recovering herself and learning to control her abilities, the charge would provide her with a certain protection.

What did puzzle Daffyd was what Roznine intended doing with Amalda if, as, and when, he got possession of her. To be sure, the public was informed, in broad terms, about the capabilities of the Talented but nothing had ever been released about the more bizarre possibilities of psionic powers. Certainly nothing related to Amalda’s ability for the very good reason that until Amalda had met Bruce Vaden, such a Talent couldn’t even have been conjectured as possible. Therefore, what could Roznine’s active imagination have suggested to him? Did he realize that he, Roznine, was Talented? Since he had domination over his ethnic group, did he plan to dominate the entire City through Amalda?

“Vsevolod Roznine is no man’s fool, boss,” Ted Lewis was saying to Daffyd’s further agitation. “He’s got every

single employment and patronage plum available for his Slavs. Oh, all very legal; a bit dicey if you’re looking at it from some other ethnic corner, but legal. And he’s fast moving out of his own bailiwick. He’s been getting cooperation where no Pan-Slav has ever got it before. How, why, what he does, we don’t know. He may use a common garden variety of blackmail or he may even have a genuine Talent. Though Gillings’ll flip if he’s got to deal with a Talented ethnic leader!“

“There could be worse things,” Daffyd said, though obviously Ted Lewis wouldn’t agree. “Have you got the LEO precogs sensitive to both Roznine and Amalda?”

Ted Lewis shot his superior a disgusted look. “They’re all sleeping on papered pillows.”

“And?”

“Boss, you know you can’t force a valid precog.”

“No Incidents at all?”

“Nary a one. Only vague feelings of uneasiness.” He was evidently repeating a frequent reply, which satisfied him no more than it did Daffyd.

“Keep an open mind on Roznine. And don’t let Gillings know we suspect Roznine is Talented. I’m going to start using Amalda and Vaden as a team. Sooner or later Roznine will discover her again.”

“You want that?”

“Very much.” And in Daffyd’s mind, as he left Ted Lewis, was the memory of Solange Boshe’s wild demented face before she teleported through a steel door in the parking building.

Gillings was delighted to use Amalda and Bruce Vaden as riot prevention. He even offered to take the charge off the books but Daffyd suggested that it remain a while longer. The team was instantly assigned to a round of rallies, meetings, conferences, and conventions. Such gatherings were encouraged. to divert a population with too much unoccupied time but any one of them might

explode into a riot, given the proper stimuli. Decibel alarms were legally required in every meeting hall, in-chiding churches, but clever agitators could and had sabotaged them so that the suppressant gases were not released when the “noise” level reached the sharp pitch of incipient riot. The professional agitators had also learned how to modulate their voices below the danger level, carefully goading their victims into the spontaneous combustion which neither gas nor water jets could control. And which no precog could be expected to accurately predict until too late for effective action.

Fortuitously, as Amalda learned to control herself, she learned to read Harold with an accuracy and perception that surpassed Sally’s. Harold could serve with the team, Daffyd decided, as a gauge for the general atmosphere of a group and as, in an emergency, a body guard for Amalda. (You learned things, even from disasters, Daffyd told himself positively.) Partnered with the empath, Amalda would sit in the center of an audience or circulate through a crowd. Vaden would be on the periphery, ready to “broadcast” if it became necessary. They could also be expected to keep up a running projection of whatever aura the LEO authorities or the sponsors of the occasion requested, if this were not a commercial affair. Subliminal pressures for mercantile purposes were, of course, an illegal and unethical use of Talent.

The team was extraordinarily successful in unexpected ways. The Motorboat show had the lowest incidence of petty pilfering in its history: the Home Show reported no lost children and a remarkably quiet, well-behaved quota of siblings following their parents through the exhibits. Two conventions, noted for the inebriation of their members, had their damage deposits reduced as a result of genial but undestructive behavior.

And Amalda began to gam confidence to the point where Sally remarked that even Bruce Vaden had been seen to smile occasionally.

I was surely right about the menu today, Amalda thought as the waiter plunked down the mock chicken, lumpy reconstituted potatoes and shrivelled snap beans. Oh, well, all part of Life’s Rich Pageant, she added and started broadcasting recklessly intense delicious taste feelings. Harold began to beam beside her, attacking his food with relish.

She glanced casually around at her table mates, as pompous a crew of convention goers as she’d ever seen and she was now an authority. (Did they always use the same “masks” at conventions? Or could it be the same group of people as the Plastic Container Manufacturers last week, and the Fabric Finishers Association on Tuesday-week?) They responded to her prompting as rapidly as Harold, all grunting with pleasure as they ate their cardboard food. Amalda sighed. Too bad she and Brace couldn’t. get a kick-back from the catering staff for “improving” their food beyond the call of duty.

Now there I go again, she thought, but it does seem that the Talented were letting an awful good thing go the way of Duty and Honor.

She was rather pleased with her broadcasting today. She had begun to bother with such fine points in their assignments, more to amuse herself at first—like stopping all those kids from whining at the Boat Fair. But it had sounded like home, all her brothers and sisters whining at once, before they’d tied Ma off. If she never heard another child whine it would be soon enough. And making food at least “seem” tasty was in defense of her poor abused digestion. According to specifications, all the nutrients and vitamins were in the food and would be absorbed by her system. But she’d come to prefer “tasting” things. It made these convention luncheons bearable. What a way to earn a living!

And yet, Amalda reluctantly admitted, she didn’t dislike it. If only… She wouldn’t think about that. It’d ruin her appetite. After all, now she’d got the hang of this trick mind of hers, she could make whole bunches

of people feel what she wanted them to. When the time came, she could control him, too. Bruce was never far from her. She smiled, the warmth of his infinite love a presence to counteract any nibble of fear. Sometimes when Bruce made love to her, she wanted to embrace the whole world with its beauty, but that sort of broadcasting wasn’t even moral: that was private between her and Bruce and… He’d thought things at her that night… Things she didn’t even dare to think about… Harold was getting restless. She curbed her reminiscences.

And then, the jab. So sharp she gasped, so hard it was physical yet the prod was in her mind… and all too familiar. He was here.

Harold whimpered, empathizing with her. She hastily damped down her shock of fearful surprise. He was as abruptly gone from her mind. She shivered, unable to suppress the lingering sense of revulsion that that recognition touch evoked in her. She overcame the feeling, smiling inanely around at her table mates. She patted Harold soothingly on the arm. He grinned, restored to equilibrium. Good, she must keep this to herself.

But she couldn’t keep from glancing around for Bruce: he was at table 4, near the dignitaries. He glanced up, nodded at her, and was then required to make some answer to his partner, a female who simpered up at him.

Sometimes, Amalda thought, Red has the harder role to play.

Part of her mind wanted to search for him, but her strongest desire was never to be touched by him again, ever. She scanned the room now, certain she’d be able to locate his evil self. She’d certainly studied his IDs long enough to spot him physically anywhere. Waiters were coming and going from the kitchens. He wasn’t one of them. He wouldn’t be one of the conventioneers. She’d‘ve identified him long before now. She opened her mind, making it, as Dave had suggested, like the lens of a

camera, slowly widening. She didn’t really want to: too much of an appalling and revolting nature seeped in. She wondered how Dave, who was a full telepath and “heard” actual thoughts, not just emotions as she did, could bear it. She wondered how much he had “conditioned” her mind to accept her Talent. She knew he had: he’d told her so. She didn’t mind… probably Dave had done that, too. But he was so kind. Now if only he’d…

No, she told herself sternly, these thoughts you may not have. Sally loves Daffyd op Owen. She grimaced. For a perceptive Talent, Dave could be awfully dense. For the Lord’s sake, you didn’t even have to be a telepath to see Sally Iselin was madly in love with Mm. Or maybe Dave knew and couldn’t do anything about it? Couldn’t someone condition Dave? Hmmm. Maybe I’ll get to work on it. No, and Amalda gave her head a little regretful shake, that would be tampering and that’s not ethical.

She sighed. Being a Talent imposed certain rules and regulations which absolutely couldn’t be broken. In the first place, you got found out too fast. Not much of a bridle on that winged horse Dave’s always talking about but it kept you from falling off… morally…

The waiter was bending over her. Amalda leaned toward Harold to permit the waiter to remove her plate. Instead he mumbled something.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you,” she said, smiling up at him.

He gave her a stare and said something in the same unintelligible mumble. She could, however, sense his urgency. He had something she must do?

“I’m really very sorry, but would you repeat your question?” She gestured at the chattering diners by way of explanation.

The little man looked angry. In a clear voice, he asked the waiter at the next table to join him.

“I ask her a simple question and she gives me this

so-sorry routine,“ he said. But he was incensed about something. And his urgency intensified.

“Really, there’s so much noise,” Amalda said.

The second waiter, a burly man, gave her a fierce scowl.

“What’s your problem, miss? You got delusions? Ain’t you conventioneers satisfied with nothing? Do like he says and there’ll be no trouble.”

“I certainly don’t want to cause trouble.” And Amalda began to broadcast soothing thoughts.

Suddenly a third man was pulling her chair from under her and the first two had her by the arms.

“You just come with us, miss. You just come with us.”

They were scared: they were prompted by an urgency which was unnatural and artificially induced. He had instigated their actions.

She got Harold to his feet. The poor witless fool was momentarily as confused as she was. She felt Bruce reacting. But she was being physically manhandled away from the table by the two waiters. If they did get her out of the hall—it wasn’t that far to the kitchen entrance —Amalda tried to keep from panicking. The next thing she knew Harold reached out and grabbed the waiters by the shoulders, had torn their hands from her arms, and banged their heads together.

Then Bruce and two officials closed in on the knot of people and somehow the unconscious waiters were being whisked from the banquet hall.

“Calm ‘em, Mally,” Bruce hissed at her and she began to pour out such sweetness and light that everyone at her table stopped eating to beam at each other. She modified the broadcast, got Harold and herself reseated. She even managed to keep her trembling reaction inward so that none of it boiled over to erase the idiotic smile from Harold Orley’s face.

By the time the luncheon ended, however, the effort began to tell on her and was reflected in Harold’s nervousness. She felt physically drained. What if he had been able

to get her away before Harold could react? Before Bruce, on the other side of the hall, had been able to get to her? Supposing he had…

Bruce was at her side, his face set and determined. She knew that look. But now she was afraid of leaving the semi-protection of so many people. If he had actually tried to kidnap her in the middle of a convention…

A plainclothes LEO man was bearing down on them. She rose, smiling brightly. Harold twitched his hulk to his feet, but his brow was clouding with childlike anxiety.

Disgust at her spinelessness buoyed Amalda’s weakening knees. The instant Red put his arm around her protectingly, she almost crawled into him.

“Let’s get her out of here,” Red said and gestured the LEO man to lead Harold.

“Come this way,” the LEO man said, gesturing to the draperies at the side of the huge banquet hall. A door in the paneling gave onto a small anteroom. “The Waiters Union is screaming over those busted skulls. We got to get you out of here quietly. What’n‘hell did happen, Amalda?”

“I don’t quite know,” she murmured, aware that exhaustion was overcoming mental resolve.,“Is it all right to leave?” She looked back over her shoulder at the diners dispersing slowly.

“The hell with them,” Bruce said in a savage voice.

“I’m so sorry. So sorry.” Amalda had a sense of failure. The first tune she came up against him she had fallen apart. She wanted to cry. She was a failure. After all Daffyd and the others had done to help her… to swoon like any vapid female…

“I’ll get you. I’ll get you the next time.” The voice was as loud in her ears as Bruce’s exclamation.

“Bruce…”

Charlie Moorfield came through Daffyd’s door without bothering to knock.

“They did it,” he cried, halting his forward momentum just short of gouging his thighs on the desk edge.

Daffyd picked up the images so vivid in Charlie’s mind, and despite the fact that he could also perceive that the emergency was over, he sprang to his feet.

“Who did what?” demanded Sally, excitedly. She wasn’t accurate enough to ‘path the sequence.

“They tried to snatch Amalda at the Morcam Convention luncheon,” Daffyd told her.

“Only she got Harold to bash their skulls in.”

Sally gasped.

“Gillings said the attempt and the arrest were handled so quickly that no one at the table with Amalda and Harold knew what happened,” Charlie went on. “Waiters Union is screaming over the quote unwarranted unquote arrest of three members. There’s hell to pay.”

“Not necessarily,” said Lester but he was glowering as he walked into the room and carefully closed the door behind him. “This is a clear case of professional immunity.”

“How do you construe that?” Daffyd asked.

Lester sighed as he regarded his boss with a tolerant expression.

“Amalda is a registered Talent, right? She was present at the Luncheon in a professional capacity. Therefore no one, not anybody, has the right to interfere. The waiters did, by trying to remove her from the hall. They broke the law. Amalda hasn’t. Neither has Harold. Even if he was a little overzealous, he is now protected from the consequences of his Talent.”

“Wait a minute, Lester,” Charlie said, “that Immunity Law only means that you can’t get sued when…”

“It also means,” and Lester waggled a bony finger at Charlie and Daffyd in turn, “according to the way Senator Joel Andres and our legal eagles interpreted it to me, that any citizen attempting to interfere with a registered Talent’s performance of his duty is violating that law.”

“This would be the first time we’ve had to invoke the law,” Daffyd said.

Lester raised his eyebrows in surprised alarm. “So what’s wrong with that? Or did you break your…” he glanced abruptly at Sally who stifled her laugh… “your bones arranging protection not to use it?”

Op Owen made a cut-off gesture with one hand. Lester Welch muttered in disgust.

“I thought by this time you’d‘ve learned the cost of idealism, Dave. We sweated out that Bill: it damned near cost us Joel Andres’s life; we have a clear case of an infraction and by God’s little chickens, you’re going to invoke it. If Gillings hasn’t already.”

The comset on Daffyd’s desk lit up, flashing red. He pushed the toggle down.

“Commissioner Gillings, sir, urgently.”

Daffyd nodded acceptance.

“Op Owen, we’re getting a lot of static from the Waiters Union, about Amalda, false arrest and all that crap,” Gillings stated with no preamble. “So far I’ve played it that their member was pushing a lust act and got told to bug off: that the lady-in-question is sufficiently upset to invoke female citizen’s rights. Then we got the honest-employees, good union men with clean sex records and she’s a pervert-after-the-damages claim.” Gillings sighed with heavy disgust. “You know, the usual convention static. Now, we can clear all this up by invoking the Professional Immunity Act but…” and Gillings waggled a thick finger at Daffyd. “I’m not all that eager to break the team’s cover. Bruce Vaden told my men that something had scared Amalda and the only thing I know she’s scared about is what happened at the Fact. Was there a repeat at the Morcam?”

“I haven’t talked to Amalda yet, Frank,” Daffyd said. “I assume she’s on her way back here with Vaden?” Gillings nodded. “Give me a little time.”

“Don’t take too much. That Waiters Union packs quite a wallop.”

As soon as the Commissioner’s face had faded from the screen, Daffyd asked for Ted Lewis in the LEO Block.

“Ted, you heard about the snatch attempt on Amalda?”

“It’s all over the place. Say, why don’t you just invoke the Immunity Act… No?” Ted was as perplexed as Lester.

“Is Roznine involved in any way in the Waiters Union?”

“Hell yes. There isn’t one Union he isn’t involved with right now.”

“Any chance of finding out if he was at the Morcam Convention Hotel this afternoon?”

Ted Lewis held up a hand, flicked on another switch, his words and the reply indistinct, being off the receiver limit of the comscreen. He looked more confused.

“We’ve had Croner sort of keeping him under the eye/ear. Croner says he’s at a TRI-D on Market and Hall. Huh, how’s that, Croner? Hey, boss, Roznine has been watching a lot of TRI-D lately.”

“Then he suspects he’s been under surveillance and is ducking out the other exit of the TRI-D. Fine.” This was an unsettling development because it could mean that Roznine was developing as a Talent. If he got pushed too hard… op Owen shuddered. “Let’s go see Amalda.”

“It was him,” Amalda told Daffyd. She looked white, shaken and small as she huddled against Red Vaden on the couch in the living room of their suite.

“How close to you?”

She shook her head. “He wasn’t in the room. I’d‘ve seen him. But he was near enough to recognize me. My mind, I mean.” She gave a delicate shudder. Had he recognized her because she’d been thinking those thoughts about him? She wanted to ask Daffyd but she didn’t dare. She’d let him down enough already.

“Were you aware of anything, Red?” Daffyd asked.

“Not at first Then only Amalda’s surprise. I looked up and saw the waiters grabbing her. But before I could get across the room, Harold had acted.” There was admiration on Vaden’s face for the maneuver. “I should apologize to the guy. I think we got things quieted down before any of the convention crowd got wise.”

“After the attempt, were you aware of Roznine’s mind, Amalda?”

“Not until we were leaving the hall.” She closed her eyes. “He said ‘I’ll get you. The next time I’ll get you.’ ”

Daffyd looked questioningly at Red who shook his head.

Had you ever received words before, Amalda? Daffyd asked.

Amalda looked at him startled and then shook her head, smiling shyly. “Only from you. Before now.” She was aware of his concern. “That’s bad, ain’t it?” she asked, her soft southern inflection intensifying her regret.

“Not necessarily. We have a problem,” he began, choosing his words carefully. “We know that Roznine would like to… get you, Amalda, to accomplish his own ends which, knowing your capability, must be illegal control of men’s emotions. We have to assume he’s been trying to locate you. We must also assume that he may not realize that Brace is part of your ability. And that’s a link that can and will protect you, Amalda.” Daffyd reinforced that notion with a stern telepathic voice. “Roznine couldn’t succeed in kidnapping you today, could he? Well, he damned well won’t be able to anywhere else either.”

“You can’t be sure of that, Daffyd,” she said in a very small scared voice.

“I don’t intend to put it to the test, Amalda,” Daffyd continued smoothly, smiling at the apprehensive girl, “but kindly remember that you have successfully eluded him twice now. Once by running away and hiding—successfully. And today by direct action against his agents.”

Amalda slowly nodded her head in agreement.

“Now, while Roznine is keen to get his hands on you, we… and I include the Commissioner… are very anxious to get Roznine.”

It was Brace Vaden who stiffened and looked with an intensity close to hatred at Daffyd op Owen. The telepath returned that look calmly, knowing in that exchange that Vaden understood the implication even if Amalda didn’t.

“Roznine is obviously a latent Talent. We know he fits minds with Amalda. We don’t know what else he can do, and he is in a peculiarly sensitive position in the ethnic situation of this city: in a position to do a lot of damage or a lot of good. We can’t push him too far and we can’t let him go. We do want him, preferably on his own initiative as you did, to come to the Center. You know what it’s like to have an unmanageable Talent…”

Daffyd was speaking more to Bruce Vaden than Amalda but it was the girl who answered.

“It’s awful… awful lonely, awful wonderful.” She gave Daffyd a smile, tremulous, and though she held her chin up in an attitude of confidence, he could see the indecision and fear of her mind.

“Now,” he went on briskly, “in using the Waiters Union to snag you, Roznine has put us in a difficult position: we can easily use the Professional Immunity Act to protect you but that would necessitate your appearance in court. And believe me, everyone interested in our cover agents would be there to identify you. Your team usefulness would decrease…”

“Does Amalda have to appear in court?” asked Red suddenly.

“Well, yes. Oh, I see what you mean,” and Daffyd started to grin. He managed to keep his smile normal despite what he had read in Bruce Vaden’s mind under the cover of the constructive suggestion. “Very good point. Two ways. Yes, I suppose we could make Amalda up to look different… or we could have a standin for her. In that case, Amalda would have to be physically present because Roznine would be there and he’d know if she weren’t present, which could score against us if an EEG reading is requested by the prosecution. Hmmm. Good notion.“

“What can Roznine hope to achieve by forcing us into court?” asked Red. He was trying to cover his earlier thoughts before they became apparent to Daffyd. Present now was a thread of hopelessness, a presentiment that the intense happiness and rapport that Brace Vaden had enjoyed with Amalda was to be sundered: too good to last. Daffyd could only answer the spoken question.

“Now that has me stumped,” he said, and meant it on several levels.

“Standin?” Gillings appeared to reject the stratagem instantly and just as abruptly, he frowned thoughtfully. “Why? You don’t think anyone would be crazy enough to try and snatch Amalda in court, do you? Although…” he glanced over at the windows, “the atmosphere is damned unstable…”

“I know,” Daffyd agreed. Even during the short copter flight to the LEO Block, he’d been aware of the pervasive “darkness” of the city’s emotional aura. The weather had been miserable, which didn’t help; general employment was down; there’d been the usual complaints about the subsistence-level foods; gripes about the TRI-D programming; nothing out of the ordinary… yet. There might indeed be the makings of a major blow-up.

It would take two weeks for an improvement in the food to have a perceptible effect: TRI-D programming was undoubtedly being altered but even the most perceptive Talents could be fooled over what the public really wanted on the boob tubes. The variety of “circuses” available was almost as infinite as food-tastes and yet one never knew precisely what would satiate the public appetite. Op Owen made a mental note to check all precog rumblings. Strange there hadn’t been any definite Incident

by anyone when such a large population unit was involved.

“Look, op Owen,” Gillings was saying, “I’ve got to have the team available for riot spotting. Particularly right now. And I can’t have them identifiable.”

“Then we send Amalda to the hearing made-up.”

Gillings muttered under his breath about fancy dress and sow’s ears and then suddenly swung round to fix op Owen with a startled glare. Daffyd hadn’t expected to keep Gillings in the dark long.

“Okay, op Owen, what’s behind all this pussy-footing? Who was trying to snatch Amalda at the Morcam Luncheon? Was it the same guy who was at the Fact? Because if it was, let’s get him and cool him. I need that team operating. And there’s that open charge of riot provocation…”

Op Owen took a deep breath. “I don’t think it would be advisable to cool Roznine.”

“Roznine?” Gillings exploded from his chair with all the frustrated astonished exasperated impotence of the strong man suddenly discovering himself in an untenable position. “Roznine! Christ, op Owen, do you know what would happen to this city, in the present mood, if I arrested the Pan-Slavic leader?” He fumed on, in much the same vein, for moments more until either Daffyd’s placatory thoughts or his own lack of breath brought a stop to the flow of recriminations.

“I haven’t suggested you arrest Roznine. In fact, that would not only be impolitic but dangerous.”

Gillings glared at him, snapping out one short explosive word. “How?”

“Because Roznine is a latent Talent. That’s what scared Amalda.”

Gillings erupted again, thoroughly enraged. This tune the shield of his public mind slipped sufficiently for Daffyd to see past the anger to the panic his confession evoked.

“No!” Daffyd’s negative, forcible mental as well as audible, carried weight on every level and blocked those

avenues of action which he could perceive Gillings already plotting. “Roznine is contained… at the moment But—this time we don’t force a latent into a position where he can become dangerous to an entire city. I want to avoid another Maggie O far, far more than you do!”

Gillings had no escape from Daffyd’s mind, so op Owen did not relent in the pressure until he was certain of Gillings’s uneasy and resentful cooperation.

“Roznine is no threat to us… yet. But he does threaten Amalda,” Daffyd went on. “That threat is real. It would be stupid,” and he paused to let that word be absorbed, for Gillings was not a stupid man, “to get Roznine so frustrated that additional facets of his Talent —whatever it is—are stimulated.”

Gillings’s face was a study of frustration. He gave vent to a stream of profanity which so delighted and enlightened op Owen that he could ignore the fact that he was the victim of the spiel. But, with the avalanche, Gillings recovered his mental equilibrium.

“I told you a couple of months ago that what you guys really need is a law that makes it illegal to conceal Talent.”

Daffyd laughed wryly. “Roznine may be unaware that what he uses is Talent!”

“Unaware? My effing foot. With all the publicity you guys have been larding the TRI-Ds with, he’s got to know what he is—especially if he’s been playing mental patty-cakes with that Amalda. Op Owen, I don’t need a Roznine in this city! You Talents put him where he belongs and bridle him or lobotomize him or something. Or I’ll invoke whatever law on the books suits me and cool him permanently. I can’t have this city turned into a battlefield. Or have you forgotten Belfast?”

His buzzer winked the urgent red. Gillings raised one fist as if to squash the unit and then, swearing viciously, slapped the toggle open.

“Well?”

There was a moment’s hesitation. Daffyd could almost

see the caller swallowing hastily, probably wishing he didn’t have to continue.

“Commissioner, the lawyers for the WU are here with bail for their members. Do we release them?”

“I want to scan them,” Daffyd said in a swift undertone.

“Delay ‘em. Someone’s on the way down from this office. Then permit bail.”

Gillings tossed an oddly designed coat button to op Owen.

“This’ll get you anywhere in the building. And keep it.”

Daffyd thanked the Commissioner, and left. Prowling the LEO offices would not be a frequent pastime: the “neural” noise level was more than a telepath of Daffyd’s sensitivity could bear.

The Waiters Union had sent a battery of lawyers to procure the release of their incarcerated members. They had been shown into a waiting room, just off the main admissions hall of the retention section of the LEO Complex.

Daffyd sauntered by, scanning each man’s mind quickly. What he “heard” he didn’t like, but it confirmed the. fact that Roznine was organizing the proceedings. None of these men knew more than his own assignment. But each was moved by an intense desire to complete it expeditiously and successfully or… The “or else” held dark, dire and fearful consequences.

Daffyd returned as quickly as possible to the shielded calm of Gillings’s private eyrie. The Commissioner was absent. Daffyd used the few moments’ respite for some solid thinking.

There were times, he finally concluded, when a man had to operate on the “feel” of things alone. He was not, God forfend, a precog, but there were also tunes when a man simply had to dispense with rational thought and its consequences. Particularly when faced by a free agent

like Roznine who could not be expected to have predictable responses to stimuli and pressures.

The similarities between Roznine and Maggie O were inescapable, but this time Daffyd had a tool and a resolve.“We’ve been fighting fire with old-fashioned water, Frank,” he said to the Commissioner when the man stalked back into his office. “From now on we use modern methods, foam and tranquillizers.”

“What are you jibbering about?”

“I can’t explain, but will you trust me?”

Gillings glared back at him, but his tight natural shield leaked conflicting emotions of desire-to-believe, distrust, and irritable frustration.

“I goddamn well have to, don’t I? But, goddamn it, Dave, if you Talents don’t contain Roznine…”

“We can,” and Daffyd op Owen began to grin with utter malice for the underhanded, immoral, unethical use of Talent he was about to invoke. Lester wouldn’t approve either, but then, he didn’t plan to tell Lester Welch.

The stratagem did require the invocation of the Immunity Act. What Daffyd didn’t count on was the hue and cry when the news of the hearing was announced on the media. Suddenly Aaron Greenfield vociferously supported the Waiters’ Union in their outraged cry against Talent abusing unTalented people and hiding behind the law. The Morcam Convention Committee tried to evade any responsibility by claiming that they had not hired a Talent team for their Luncheon… their defense being that their convention members were law-abiding peaceful people with no record of violence, so a LEO team was unnecessary and an insult to their good name, etc. Greenfield made political hay of this as well. He’d never been in support of the Immunity Law because “obviously it was a screen for illegal, immoral, unethical invasion of privacy: one more instance of establish-mentarianism and totally unwarranted minority privilege.” “Repeal the Immunity Act; no extraordinary privilege

for minorities!“

“Make them Pay Their Own Way! Taxation for all on an equal basis.”

Precogs began to have troubled Incidents. To alter circumstances, the team began wearing disguises, with Amalda and Bruce Vaden both paired to combat-trained LEO men. They were also on twenty-four-hour call, hopping from one gathering to another, trying to forestall explosions—usually at rallies designed to bring their own downfall. Twice Amalda felt Roznine’s mind searching for hers. She’d break off all broadcasting and the team would leave that area instantly.

The weather remained unseasonably hot and humid. There were unprecedented foul-ups in the food supply and a heavy drain on the power sources necessitated cuts of the entertainment circuits. More trouble.

Roznine’s stratagem also suffered from his zealous-ness. On the day of the hearing, there were so many people wanting to attend this test of the Immunity Act that he couldn’t possibly have attempted a kidnapping. The press of hopeful attendees provided the LEO officials with an excuse to be selective and, naturally, the audience was conveniently packed with out-of-town Talents whom Daffyd had invited. Sensitives at the Court Block entrance tipped the LEO men off whom to exclude and the Pan-Slavic contingent was decimated. In the wake of the prosecuting force, Roznine was admitted in his capacity as Pan-Slavic leader since one of the waiters was his ethnic. It was the first opportunity Daffyd op Owen had had to get a good look at the man and he was somewhat surprised by Roznine’s physical appearance. Daffyd would have liked to “scan” him but the emotional aura of the courtroom made that mentally and physically impossible. The telepath pondered on the subconscious impressions he’d been receiving from Gillings and Amalda, for Roznine was a perfectly presentable, personable looking chap, quietly dressed in a moderately expensive tunic, his heavy head of black hair cut to his shoulders and his

thick black moustache trimmed to join the sideburns, leaving the rest of the strong face bare. Roznine took a seat by the wall and turned for a careful survey of those already seated.

Op Owen sincerely regretted the impossibility of probing the man’s mind. He must have planned something. He had a “waiting” about him, calmly composed in the midst of a hectic scene.

But there had been no precogs on the situation. There’d been incidental auguries but of too varied a nature to be useful or indicative of the trend of the day’s events. Daffyd could only conclude, as the Correlation Staff had, that it didn’t matter how the hearing went today. That in itself was unsettling. However, plans had been made for such contingencies as common sense indicated. Daffyd had warned Vaden, among other things, and then “conditioned” Amalda with strong confidences. There were Talents unknown to the girl in the audience and they had their instructions.

Bruce Vaden entered, slipping into an aisle seat at the rear. He, too, glanced around, his eyes sliding past Daffyd’s. He’s looking for Roznine, Daffyd thought, as Vaden’s eyes lingered once on some bull-chested man but not on Roznine’s mustachioed face. Roznine’s attention was held by a wiry little man in sloppy tweeds of ancient manufacture who pranced conspicuously down the aisle to a seat reserved for him by the prosecution’s table.

So, thought Daffyd, Aaron Greenfield had a small man’s push! Greenfield leaned over, tapping one of the prosecuting attorneys on the shoulder and engaged him in a guarded conversation, all the time glancing around the audience, pointing at last to the very empty seats on the defendant’s side.

The hearing lights went on and the “judge” sounded his electronic gavel for the court to come to order. One of the prosecution team rose to protest the absence of the

defendant and counsel but that was Amalda’s cue and she, and her escort, made their entrance.

There was, of course, the anticipated cry of protest from the prosecuting attorneys. The defendant arrived garbed in voluminous robes, bewigged and made up a la japonaise, escorted by two women exactly the same to the last hair and measurement. Even as the prosecution leapt to its collective feet, the three figures shifted in a complicated pattern, making it impossible for any unTalented person to know which one was which.

However, as this was a preliminary hearing, necessarily conducted in front of the legal computer, the “hearing” judge had no directives about the dress or escort of the defendants and/or attorneys so long as they appeared clad and reasonably clean. Prosecution replied that the defendant was deliberately obstructing justice by appearing with look-alike escorts. One of the Amaldas rose, presented two sets of credentials as legal counselors for the defendant and asked the “hearing judge” if it was programmed to refuse defendant’s counsel on the basis of similarity in shape and appearance to defendant. The objection was overruled.

Prosecution instantly demanded EEG readings to prove that the women so attired were in fact the aforesaid attorneys and the defendant.

Defense had no objection and EEG readings were promptly taken, establishing beyond controversy who were the attorneys and who the defendant. At which point, the three women repeated their rapid “shell-act.” Daffyd op Owen watched furious anger suffuse the faces at the prosecution table, evidence that the ruse was successful. The audience murmured, half in amusement, the other half totally confused by the antics.

The hearing proceeded with the charge being made of illegal arrest and restraint, countered by the defense invoking the Professional Immunity Act, requiring that the complaint against Amalda, Registered Talent, be dropped.

Rather smug, Daffyd missed the first twinge of Amalda’s alarm.

“Daffyd,” she said, her mind tone anxious, “he’s after me.”

“Make everyone laugh,” Daffyd said and so quickly did she react, with such forcefulness, that Daffyd didn’t need to call in the reserve empaths to help.

For a moment Daffyd wondered if fear prompted her outrageous strength, for everyone in the audience, himself and the planted Talents, were struck by an epidemic of giggles. It would appear that the audience was attempting to laugh the complaint out of court.

Daffyd suppressed Amalda’s projection sufficiently so that he wasn’t doubled with uncontrollable mirth. Roznine had a rictus-like grin across his face: he’d leaned back against the wall in an effort to control his body and he was forcing his head to move so he could scan the audience. Daffyd bent over slightly, counterfeiting excessive mirth, and noticed that Red Vaden and the other Talents were doing the same thing.

Grand! Let Roznine think only Amalda was responsible! But could Amalda—even with Red helping—broadcast so strongly? Could she actually use Roznine without his consent? If so…

The hearing judge mechanically sounded the gavel and called for order, its voice getting louder and louder as the giggles continued. It ordered the courtroom cleared of “obstructionists.” The paroxyms which had afflicted everyone abruptly ceased and people weakly wiped their eyes and ordered their clothing. Aaron Greenfield looked anxiously around, his face flushed with anger. The man was no fool, Daffyd realized. He’d know that Talent had been responsible and, with his prickly dignity offended, he’d redouble his efforts to get the Talented taxed. Oh, well, you couldn’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, thought Daffyd philosophically. He nodded approvingly at Amalda who, with her twins, had sneaked a glance at him.

Prosecution then announced possession of a sworn statement from the Morcam Convention Committee that it had requested no LEO surveillance. Defense replied that all convention situations fell under the Riot-Prevention Act and the LEO Commission was quite within its jurisdiction to use such riot prevention techniques as seemed advisable. The uncertain climate of the city was cited to be in the “unsettled” percentile which permitted the LEO Commission to take such precautions as it deemed necessary to ensure law enforcement and order. The defense counsel reminded the “judge” that any gathering of 200 or more persons (and the Morcam Luncheon had had 525 paid and consumed covers) was liable to auxiliary surveillance whether requested or not when the climate of the city registered in the “uneasy” percentiles. Prosecution demanded to know exactly what riot prevention technique was employed by Amalda. Defense responded that she was a registered empath of a +15 sensitivity and a perceptive rating of +12, and offered to produce positive testimonials from organizations which had employed Amalda in her capacity as a Talent for riot prevention. Prosecution repeated its demand for an explicit description of her crowd control technique and defense invoked the provisions of the Law Enforcement and Order Commission.

Daffyd wasn’t certain whether the prosecution wanted to separate Amalda from her look-alikes or discover the exact procedure she used.

Defense again requested that the charge be dropped: she didn’t wish to waste the Court’s time and public money when the evidence clearly pointed to a nolle prosequi situation.

Prosecution insisted vehemently that this was a clear case of personal infringement and misuse of privilege just as the time-limit light came on. There was the rumble as the “hearing judge” searched its programming for precedents. That didn’t take long. Moments later the

date for a trial appeared on the screen: a date seven weeks hence.

Not bad, thought Daffyd, although he’d half wished that the computer would throw the case out. With no precedents, there’d been slim chance of that.

Amalda’s fear was like a knife in his own guts. He tried to get through to Roznine, to fathom what the man was doing. Bruce Vaden jumped to his feet, started down the aisle, his progress blocked by others who were beginning to leave the courtroom.

Daffyd had the sense that every Talent in the audience stiffened suddenly and then Roznine, half rising from his seat, stunned amazement on his face, began to topple slowly over onto the people in the row in front of him.

“Hey, this guy’s passed out,” someone cried. “Is there a medic around?”

Bruce Vaden kept trying to reach Roznine. Daffyd signalled to two other Talents to assist. If they could bring Roznine to the Center this way…

“I’m a physician,” a woman said in a firm loud voice, three rows away, holding up her emergency pouch. There was a slight scuffle as Bruce tried to intercept her, but suddenly the Pan-Slavs moved, jumping over seats, knocking people aside in an effort to protect their fallen leader.

Daffyd caught Vaden back, called off the others.

The bailiff scurried from the court, yelling for an ambicopter, as the woman medic and three Slavs lifted the stricken man and carried him to the prosecution’s table. The “hearing judge” began to call for order, for the next case, for the obstructionists to be removed from the courtroom. Its voice got louder and louder until it finally called a recess until the court could be humanly cleared.

“All right, all right, we’ve got him under heavy sedation in the Court Block infirmary,” Frank Gillings told Daffyd, “but that took doing. The place is crawling with

Pan-Slavs. We can’t arrest a man for collapsing in court… and how did you do it?“

“One of the teleports gave him a ‘punch,’” Daffyd said with a rueful grimace.

Gillings stared at him with awe and respect.

“One has to be very careful,” Daffyd explained almost apologetically, “pressing against the carotid. But he was pressuring Amalda.”

“You expected that! But I expected you guys to grab him there. And that goddamned hearing is affecting the entire city. Now don’t tell me you expected that!”

Daffyd looked at Gillings and, for a micro-second, hesitated.

“No, not exactly, but we’re doing our very best.”

“What? What in hell do you mean by that?”

“I mean, we’ve set the trap and baited it and we simply have to have patience.”

“Patience? With this city about to erupt?”

“Curiously enough, Gillings, I don’t think the city is going to erupt. Oh, we’ve recorded some Incidents, minor ones, involving Talents…” and Daffyd frowned because the Incidents were distressing and so vague that only a general all-Talent warning could be issued.

Gillings gave one of his disgusted growls. “You guys make me sick. You can’t even protect yourselves.”

“We’ll do what we can,” and Daffyd’s voice turned steely enough to reprimand Gillings. “What concerns you, Commissioner, is the fact that our precogs have predicted no major Incidents. Your city is going to be safe!”

“Prove it!” demanded Gillings but Daffyd op Owen made no reply as he left the Commissioner’s office.

It took the telepath the entire trip back to the Center to get control of his inner perturbation. Of course, Gillings had to be ruthless and consider only the larger aspect, the safety of the City, but it galled Daffyd to think that Gillings could so offhandedly dismiss the personal trials of the Talented. It grieved Daffyd that there would be more precedents on the newly-programmed Immunity Law

after the next few days. The fact that Talents would now have redress for the precogged personal assaults on them was no satisfaction. He’d really have preferred never to have had to invoke that Law.

It would serve Gillings proper notice if Roznine did burst out of bounds… And how in hell were they to promulgate a law that made it illegal to conceal Talent? Latent Talents were always cropping up when the right connections were made…

And not a single Incident connected with Amalda or Red or Vsevolod Roznine. And he’d had every precog in the Center sensitized to that unholy trio. How could that possibly be?

Daffyd’s state of mind was grim as he landed the copter on the roof of the mam administration building of the Center. He tried to drain the poisons of bitterness and anger from his mind as he descended the stairs. He paused at his office door but swung away. He had to calm himself. This excessive reaction was self-defeating. Gillings might be a latent Talent himself but he remained obdurately impervious to the problems of the Talented, especially when they interfered with the law enforcement and order of his precious city.

While Roznine was unconscious in the Court Block infirmary, Daffyd had managed to implant a suggestion that Roznine seek Amalda out at the Center. It was the only feasible practicable method… make the mountain come to Mahomet. And the mountain must apparently come of its own volition. Now, if he could just get Mahomet to do a Lorelei… it would speed matters up, and maybe so many Talents wouldn’t get hurt.

That brought Daffyd back to the point of anger he’d reached in Gillings’s office and the whole thought sequence started again.

His path led him past the play-yard where he could hear the children yelling and screaming, arguing over some violently important triviality. Triviality? To him,

perhaps, yet they were as devoted to their separate sides of the argument as he was to…

“Well?” Sally Iselin stood in his way, her fists planted on her hips, a mock-ferocious expression on her pert pretty face. “Aren’t you pleased with the outcome of the hearing?” She frowned, sensing his uncertainty. “But you were able to plant a suggestion in Roznine’s mind? Oh, that Gillings. What is it about a cop that sours the man?” It was Daffyd’s turn to be surprised. “That’s pretty good reading, Sally.”

As suddenly he felt her mind tighten and the contact that had begun to lift his depression was taken away. “What does Gillings expect of us anyway?” she asked. “A happy ending!”

Sally eyed him speculatively and then fell in step with him, grinning.

“There has to be a happy ending to every fairy tale, after all. Though I shouldn’t have expected it of Gillings, fer gawd’s sake.”

Her switch of mood, while it obscured her thoughts from him, lifted his spirits. Nonetheless, he said rather gloomily that there hadn’t been a precog of any happy ending for Cinderella.

“Oh, you… honestly!” Sally sounded peeved and her eyes flashed at him irritably. “Your trouble, Daffyd op Owen, is that you don’t really believe in Talent.”

“I beg your pardon?” Daffyd stopped and stared down at her.

“Just because no one has precogged a disaster of some monumental proportion resulting from this fairy tale affair, you’re down in the doldrums. Does everything Talented have to end in disaster? Are you going to be committed to grief for the rest of your born days? Or are you willing to admit that there hasn’t been a disaster precog because there isn’t going to be a disaster? That things will work out right? All the sensitives are edgy, but not miserably so. Good God, do we have to wallow

in sorrow all the time? Do we have to run around wondering if we have a right to be happy?“

Daffyd thought he knew Sally Iselin fairly well but this—from a girl characteristically full of puppyish goodnature and exuberance?

She turned on him, her brown eyes flashing with anger as she stamped her foot. “And I am not a goodnatured puppy! I can be just as much of a bitch as any other woman!”

In that outraged mood, she forgot to shield her inner thoughts. It was all there, what propriety had kept Daffyd from “perceiving” and her sense of honor had prevented her from showing him more openly.

Abruptly Daffyd reached out and drew her into his arms, savoring the miraculous disclosure. Unaccountably Sally struggled, and courtesy disregarded, Daffyd probed deeply into her mind, past the barriers she had carefully erected, past the pert verbosity with which she masked those inner feelings. With a strangled sob, she relaxed against him and let him perceive the whole of her conflict. The older man/much younger woman, her yearning to be tall/elegant, an appropriate spouse for a man of his status/abilities, the puppy image of herself from his mind, her feeling of inadequacy because she couldn’t locate more and more Talents to relieve the burdens on him… all the small sins and great vanities that inhabit the soul of any human being. And what he saw in that instant of perception only endeared her to him more.

With one hand he tilted her head back, forcing her to meet his eyes, amused that a telepath required a look. Her mouth lifted slightly in a smile as she shared his thought. He felt a pressing need to articulate the thoughts he was transferring to her mind but all he could say was her name before he kissed her. No more was needed.

The next morning the nebulous anxieties of the sensitives were translated into attacks on the Talented. One

of the finders attached to the LEO Block was beaten up on his way to the Center. A Talent mechanic at the big Mid-Town Parking Complex was seriously mauled and shoved into the boot of the car he’d been servicing. Two healers in the General Hospital were raped and shorn of their hair but their assailants were caught because the girls had the ability to “call” for help.

In the clear light of that morning, Daffyd bitterly wondered if indeed he had a right to any personal happiness.

“And if that isn’t a piece of outright antediluvian puritanical nonsense, I don’t know what is,” Sally said,, popping out of the bathroom with all the savagery of a miniature…“… I am not a miniature anything, Dai op Owen.”

But she was comical enough in her undressed state, mentally bristling at his thoughts and aggravated by his pessimistic rumination to put the morning’s disasters in their proper perspective.

“I’m not sure what good it’ll do to have Roznine marching in here now,” she went on, pouring out coffee.

“I’d hoped he’d come as soon as he regained consciousness.”

Sally’s eyebrows flicked up. “You’ve never failed of your mark before. Unless…” She pursed her lips, frowning.

“Amalda’s inhibiting him?” Daffyd caught the half-suppressed notion.

“You know she’s scared of him. I mean, scared as a woman is of a very domineering man… sexually, I mean. Oh, you know what I mean and then there’s Brace Vaden and all that.”

“Amalda had proof positive yesterday that Roznine couldn’t dominate her.”

“Perhaps… I mean, intellectually, Talent-wise, yes. But it’s Brace that’s holding her back. He’s already at the top of the Glass mountain and Amalda doesn’t dare roll the other apple.”

Daffyd caught the unarticulated ramifications of Sally’s thinking. Part of Amalda’s reluctance to admit Roznine’s attractiveness to her stemmed from a fear of losing Bruce Vaden, to whom she was equally attracted but for different reasons.

“She’s not one to drop the bone she’s got in her mouth for the one she sees in the water,” Sally said.

“Now it’s fables?”

“Why not? You added myths to my fairy tales so it’s my shot.”

“That only leaves me proverbs.”

“So?”

“So! That leaves us with Amalda inhibiting Roznine?”

“He should’ve been here otherwise.”

Daffyd was turning over this interesting possibility in his mind when the comset beeped.

“Boss, we got pickets out in front,” said Lester in a thoroughly disgusted tone of voice. “Pay your fair share. Everyone else is taxed. Why not you? No Minority privileges.”

Daffyd sighed long and deeply.

“Pete’s on reception and he says they’ve got legal political platforms, their IDs are upstate and they’re registered party members. Legally, under the Political Platform Act, they can picket the grounds because there is legislation concerning our tax status before the State Senate right now.”

“Did you inform Gillings?”

“Hah! They informed us about the time the first picketers foregathered on our gatestep. What’n‘hell happened to your Machiavellian nonsense of yesterday?”

“ There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip!‘” Daffyd replied. Sally gasped and signaled surrender.

“Huh?” Lester wanted an explanation.

“I must ask Gillings if Roznine’s had a visit from Aaron Greenfield since the hearing yesterday,” was Daffyd’s reply.

“Did you goof, boss? Now what do we do?”

“Keep tabs that the onlookers remain quiescent, and alert riot control.”

“Amalda and Red?”

“No, plunk Harold in the gatelodge with Pete. Ask Gillings

“Ask him yourself: Charlie says he’s just called through.”

Before Daffyd could request a deferment of that call, Charlie had patched it through and Daffyd hoped his flinching wasn’t apparent to the LEO Commissioner.

“You got troubles?” Gillings’s face was impassive.

“Nothing we can’t handle…”

“Oh, the trap’s sprung?” Gillings looked almost pleased.

“Hmmmm… but I’d like a few of your riotmobiles around.”

Gillings’s expression changed rapidly to sour discontent.

“Like that, huh? I thought Roznine was supposed to come like a lamb?”

Daffyd shot a glance at Sally who was muttering something about metaphors being illegal. Her levity was not appropriate to the gravity of the present situation and yet… it helped.

“Roznine’s a strong personality…”

“I’m going after him…” Gillings now looked like a trap sprung.

“Gillings,” and Daffyd’s tone of voice was far sterner than people were apt to use in addressing the LEO Commissioner, “don’t go after Roznine. We’ve exerted all the pressure possible under the circumstances. He’ll come…”

The Commissioner regarded the Director for a long moment.

“You better know what the hell you’re doing, op Owen.”

“I do.”

“Well, you sound as if you do,” Sally said when the call was disconnected.

“I really think I do, Sally.” Daffyd looked out of his

window toward the building which housed Amalda and Red. “Two birds in one bush, two baskets with the same eggs, two minds with the same great thought…”

“Spare me! Uncle! I yield!”

“Good, then let’s figure out how to unwind Amalda. I did not suggest to Roznine that he bring Great Birnam Wood to Dunsinane.”

“I should have guessed that Shakespeare would be next.”

“Considering my propensity for quoting Alexander Pope, I wonder you dared.”

“He’s coming for me,” said Amalda when she and Red noticed the circling picketers and the gathering of curious by-standers.

Bruce Vaden threw back his head and roared. He wasn’t counterfeiting the amusement though it had a bitter note. But her woebegone expression was ludicrous and his laughter was not the sympathy she’d expected.

“My dear child, if Roznine has to salve his Slavic ego by resorting to that kind of subterfuge…”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean that Roznine simply can’t walk in here, no matter what suggestion op Owen planted in his mind when he was unconscious.”

Her irritation was replaced by a shudder. Vaden could feel the repugnance she experienced when touching Roznine’s mind. But her impression no longer dominated his reaction to Roznine. Not after seeing the man in Court yesterday.

“Did you really look at Vsevolod Roznine yesterday?”

Amalda gave him that wide-eyed innocent stare and he felt her going “dead” on him. At first Bruce thought it was because she was afraid of Roznine and censored any references to him. Now he knew differently.

“Mally hon,” and he took her by the shoulders, forcing

her to look him in the eye. “I looked at Roznine. I looked him over good and strangely enough, I liked what I saw.” That got her where she lived, and Red took a deep breath, opening his own inner mind so she couldn’t fail to see the sincerity of his words. “He’s the kind of guy I’d trust and respect even if I could probably take him apart in a fair fight. Oh, I know. I’ve heard all this static about his sewer-sink mind and his power in the city and I don’t know as my public mind would be all that clean and pure. I’ve learned to do my improper thinking carefully but no one’s warned Roznine that there’re guys around reading him now and again.”

Amalda was staring up at him. Her eyes had gone all big and her lips were parted. He wanted to kiss her, to love and reassure her, but not just then.

“Mind you, I don’t think Roznine’s a crusading saint but feckitall, Mally, he’s up against City Hall and when you’re fighting City Hall you use every advantage you can beg, borrow or,” he clipped her lightly on the jaw, “kidnap. Not that I blame him for flipping his nut over you.” He couldn’t keep his voice steady and he knew he was playing-back their initial meeting. “If you affect Roznine the way you do me, I’m damned sorry for the poor guy. It must be hell for him to want you and not get you.”

Amalda discarded all restraint and now remorse/love/ appreciation agreement understanding pride loyalty/washed over him.

“Don’t do that, Mally. I’ve got to think.”

She bit her lip apologetically and “buttoned” her emotions up.

“Thanks. Now, where was I? Yeah. As of yesterday, I don’t think Roznine could use you. Not now. Or only if you let him. And you won’t. If that’s what’s bugging you, forget it. Or don’t you remember how easily you knocked him out? You gotta take it easy on the guy, hon. He loves you even if he doesn’t know it.”

“It’s you I’m worried about, Brace,” she said in a very low voice, her eyes wide and full of tears.

So he embraced her, pressing her slender body against him, so she’d “feel” all he couldn’t express. His knowledge that you aren’t selfish with Talent, whatever kind you possessed: that they had a relationship too strong to be broken or diminished by the acceptance of a third party: that Talent had obligations beyond the personal and this was one of them, for both Amalda and Bruce.

She reached up tenderly to stroke his face, her fingers enjoying the tactile contact with the silky hair of his beard, letting her fingers express what she didn’t articulate. As she had learned to accept Brace’s right to decide for them both, she accepted his decision now.

“The stage is set, honey,” he said finally. “Extras all milling about, waiting for the director. Are you going to let him come?”

She gave an impatient little shrug, then squared her shoulders and smiled at him, ready to move mountains, from the look of her. He liked that about Amalda, among a thousand other things. He conveyed that approval with a gentle, mind-blown hug. Talent has advantages, too.

Roznine. rubbed at his temples, wondering what kind of fake powder the medic had sold him as a headache remedy.

They had done something to him when he was unconscious. Just as he, Vsevolod Roznine, knew that they had caused him to black out at the hearing. No, not “they”! Her!

The conviction that he had to get to her, be with her, returned with renewed and irresistible force. And Roznine fought it again, fought it as his head throbbed, and his hands clenched into fists of effort to withstand the compulsion.

He flung himself from the table, catching the leg with

his foot and upsetting the untouched meal, half-stumbling against the door and striking his temple on the frame. He hit his head a second, a third time. And clutching the molding, threw back his head in bitter laughter.

“Roznine has to beat his own head, because it feels so good when he stops!”

His fingers dug into the frame until his nails bent against the durable plastic. His head turned slowly, as if he could see straight through concrete and plastic, across the miles to the Center in which direction he unerringly turned.

“NO!‘ This time his fists thudded into plastic. ”Roznine does not come at a woman’s call. She comes to him!“

How had they done this to him? How could she call him? Once he’d known her name and that she was at the Center, he’d had his people find out all they could. She was registered as a telempath. Roznine had looked that up and the answer had only confirmed what he’d guessed himself: she could transmit emotions and probably receive them.

Roznine pounded the wall viciously, transmitting such hatred and discontent as boiled up in him from the frustration of not having her and the humiliation of being knocked unconscious… in full view of his constituents… by a slip of a girl he could break in two pieces with one hand.

And who was the redbearded man who worked with her? How close did he work with her?

Jealousy was added to the seething emotions of Vsevolod Roznine. And the skin of his skull pulsed with a surfeit of his angry blood.

The intensity of his desire to see Amalda reached another peak. He fought it. He would not go to her. She must come to him! He could not go to her. She had to come to him. She, who could read his thoughts, let her read that one. Let her read his feelings…

“No!”

Roznine stopped. Everything about him stopped, his heart, his lungs, the oxygen molecules in his blood. Then he took a deep breath and exhaled, his wide mouth forming an odd smile in a suddenly calm face.

No wonder she had not come to him, the little one. She could read his thoughts. She would be terrified of him, Roznine: terrified of the anger he had felt toward his little bird. He had felt her fear before, felt her spirit fluttering away from him. That was why she had run from the Fact. But she shouldn’t fear him, Vsevolod Roznine. Every man, boy and adult she should fear but not Vsevolod Roznine. He would go to her. He would explain.

Chort vozmi! Would his head never stop aching?

His comset buzzed. The noise stabbed piercingly through his skull. He grabbed frantically for the set to stop the noise, answering in a savage tone.

“Everyone’s in position, Gospodeen.”

“Position?” Roznine shook his battered head, unable to recollect which position and where.

“The picketers have been checked by the Center’s guards, who are two old men: nothing to worry about.”

Picketers? Pickets? At the Center? Oh, yes. He’d discussed that with the little man from upstate. How could he have forgotten?

“And the riot squad?”

“Parked at or working conveniently nearby. The disposal men…”

“Good enough!” His head pounded like a drill press but he remembered. How could he have forgotten? So she was a riot control team, was she? Well, let her control this riot! Men would pour in to the Center’s so private, so secluded, so sacrosanct grounds from all over the city: men from many ethnic groups so it couldn’t be blamed on his section. It had meant cancelling half the favors he was owed but, just let him get his hands on that little riot controller and…

He threw open the illegally unsealed window and slid

down the airshaft on the escape line. He opened the window in the rear flat, which conveniently belonged to a relative who was blind anyhow, and exited through the back door. Found the iron pry-bar and flipped up the sewer lid, snagging it deftly back over the manhole when he was within. He walked briskly over the thin stream which trickled down the pipes at this time of day. Two rights and a left brought him to a wider section conduit with a catwalk on one side. Two more rights and two lefts and he climbed a ladder. The manhole had been shielded and a Disposal truck was just drawing up. Swiftly he was within the truck and issuing orders to the driver.

The sensitive signalled LEO headquarters that Roznine had left his quarters. Immediately Gillings warned the Center and circulated the alert to all stations.

Charlie Moorfield rang through to Daffyd’s quarters.

“Ring Amalda and tell her I’m on my way over.”

Sally was struggling into her coverall, excitement making her fingers fumble so that Daffyd held the collar until she could find the armholes.

“He is coming. You were too much for him.”

“Possibly.”

Daffyd could also see another interpretation of Roznine’s secret exit, particularly with the picketers outside and the observers forming a larger and larger ragged semi-circle beyond the gates to the Center.

“Yes, I see what you mean, Dai.”

“Let’s reinforce Amalda.”

The buzzer sounded again. “Boss, I get no answer from Amalda.”

“Tell Gillings to get all riot units here on the double. Alert ours.”

Daffyd op Owen swore as he grabbed Sally’s hand and pulled her out the door. Short of teleporting, he’d never been down the stairs so fast. Afterwards Sally told him her feet had touched the steps only three times.

Amalda and Brace Vaden had exited through one of the side-gates in the grounds. They’d come up on the picketline from one side, mingling with the onlookers until they were directly opposite the main gates. The picketers were dutifully chanting the slogans they carried, the four LEO men routinely assigned a picket, were almost as bored with the proceedings. A passenger conveyance settled to the public landing some hundred yards from the gates and the occupants, carrying collapsed signs, descended in an orderly fashion.

“Those are bully boys, not bona fide picketers,” Bruce told Amalda in a quiet voice.

She nodded for she’d unerringly sighted the one man who was important. “He’s with them.”

“Well, this is the last place he’d be looking for us. Are you shielding tightly?”

Amalda nodded again but she didn’t take her eyes from Roznine.

He really was attractive, she thought. There was something proud and fierce in his manner. Bruce was right: she hadn’t really seen him before. She’d been just so scared of his mind…

She stopped thinking because Roznine was suddenly glancing over his shoulder, at the crowd, frowning slightly. He stood near the copter, to one side of the new shift of pickets. They were milling about…

“Warn Dave Amalda, and get set. See how they’re maneuvering?” Even as he spoke, Bruce glided to a more advantageous position for teamwork.

The new arrivals, for all their aimless movement, could now be seen aiming for the LEO men and the Center’s two guards, mild-appearing gentlemen who were in fact top kineticists and could hold a grown man immobile on the ground without lifting a physical finger.

The old shift broke from their circuit, grounding and collapsing their signs, preparatory to leaving. Some elements of the crowd which had watched pacifically from the footpath began to move toward the grounds.

Amalda began to broadcast, gently at first, the feeling of immense fatigue, utter boredom and a dislike of this activity.

Brace moved further across the street, picking up and increasing the intensity of her broadcast. But he watched Roznine, saw the man stiffen, his head turn slowly, unerringly towards Amalda. The group in which she had been standing shifted and she was by herself.

The setting of the confrontation was superb, Brace Vaden told himself with a curious objectivity. As if by magic or common consent, everyone melted from the two principals, leaving a clear path between them.

“Don’t get scared, honey baby,” Brace told her tinder his breath, fighting in his mind to hold the broadcast and disguise the inner reluctance of sharing Amalda with anyone at all.

Suddenly he felt buoyed up, felt the indescribable mental support and touch of Daffyd op Owen, speaking through him to Amalda. And it wasn’t just Dave, but something… no, someone else.

The area was blanketed with silence by Amalda’s projection which began to waver slightly. Brace intensified it, imagining as he’d been taught, that the emotion was something visible which he was manipulating tangibly, as visible and tangible as water falling over a specific area, drenching everything with its cascade.

Everything went at half speed. Roznine pulled first one heavy leg forward, then the other, like a man treading through molasses, sticky, cloying. The man’s face was contorted with effort and concentration.

Amalda just stood, her chin slightly raised, looking as regal and poised as she had on the Fact stage, so sure of herself that she almost fooled Vaden.

The action was all slow motion: the picketers, real and bogus, discarding their all too heavy signs, inexorably sinking to the ground, sprawling in poses of utter exhaustion. It affected the LEO men though they tried hard

to resist the pressure, falling to their knees and hands, faces down on the ground.

Then only she, Bruce and Roznine were standing. She took a deep breath and looked straight at Roznine’s eyes: the first time she had done so.

And Bruce was right that Vascha (she found his nickname easily: though he thought of himself, self-impor-tantly, only as Vsevolod Roznine, the Vascha personality was there, too) was nice looking, with a strong body and sensitive hands. She liked long, well-shaped fingers on a man—she liked to have such hands on her body.

“All right, here I am,” she said out loud and dared him in her mind to overpower her.

His eyes seemed to eat her flesh hungrily, as if starved for the essence beneath the covering tissue.

“You’re mine. I, Vsevolod Roznine, say you are mine.” That was his thought, beating away at her. She wanted to laugh, to sing out because his thought couldn’t go any further than her mind. It couldn’t reach Bruce, standing not more than five feet away. Not unless she wanted it to go further!

“Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked gently because the knowledge of such total power over another human being humbled her.

Some of his bully boys were getting to their feet for she’d turned off some of her blanketing projection to deal with Vascha. Through Vsevolod Roznine she sent a fleet-nig thought of nausea that instantly reduced them to retching bodies on the grass. And as abruptly, she deflected the actual illness. Then she turned off the empathetical broadcast completely, knowing its cessation would leave the victims disoriented enough to cause no further trouble.

“I think you’d better come with us, Vsevolod,” she said to Roznine and took his hand, turning and leading him toward the Center as if he had no other choice. He didn’t because Bruce fell in on the other side, their strides matching.

Roznine was dazed, his lips compressed into a thin line. He glared down at Amalda as she led him, at arm’s length, like a mother dragging an errant child home.

The gateman nodded to the trio as they passed into the Center’s Grounds.

“What’n‘hell has happened to your common sense, op Owen?” Frank Gillings demanded. “Letting not only Amalda and Vaden but Roznine into the City Council? For Chrissake that’s what he wanted Amalda for…”

“Easy, Frank. The team’s on assignment, completely legitimate.”

“Council isn’t a riot situation…”

Daffyd raised his eyebrows in polite surprise. “No? According to Roznine, the tempers get so hot no constructive work is ever done. Each ethnic group insists that its members are being discriminated against with accusations and counter-accusations until the mediator adjourns the hearing with nothing accomplished except exhibitions of parliamentary bad manners. Sorry. The team is going to cool things long enough for common sense to prevail. Roznine’s reason for wanting Amalda’s Talent in City Hall was valid.” Daffyd also neglected to add that that was the bargain he’d struck with Roznine to join the Center. All the man wanted was to be certain the employment allotments were impartially assigned. Well, not all, Daffyd amended to himself, but Roznine had gone about it the wrong way.

Daffyd grinned reassuringly at Gillings’s image in the comset. “He’s part of the team now and she follows orders.”

“But does Roznine?” asked Gillings sarcastically.

“As I’ve explained to you, Frank, Roznine is parapsychically dead to anyone else. Oh, Brace Vaden empathizes with him to some extent now they’ve both had training, but Roznine’s is a one-way Talent, right to

Amalda. She’s the focus of the gestalt. You might say, he’s been check-reined.“

Frank Gillings grunted, somewhat mollified. Then, jutting out his chin, he glared at the Director. “You going to start lobbying for a rider on that Talent Immunity Law?”

“Immediately. In fact,” and Daffyd’s smile broadened with sheer malice, “Senator Greenfield is helping us get an interim rider through the State Senate on a Bill he has coming up on the Agenda next session.”

“Greenfield?”

“Yes. Roznine invited him here at the Center for a chat. The Senator was most amenable to the suggestion.”

The LEO Commissioner’s frown was partically perplexity. “What’d you guys do to Greenfield? Blanket him with loving kindness?”

“Good heavens, no. It was merely pointed out to him that the Center is not a minority, but a collection of minorities since all ethnic groups are represented. He took a tour of the grounds and instantly perceived that the housing was by no means as luxurious as he’d been previously led to believe, with swimming pools or wasted space that might house additional families. In fact, he complimented us on our planning and thrifty use of facilities.”

Frank Gillings was by no means taken in by Daffyd op Owen’s bland manner. He growled something under his breath.

“What did Roznine have on him, Dave?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Frank.”

The LEO man made a gesture of disgust.

“Dave, don’t give me any more problems for a while, will you?”

“Nothing’s coming up in the foreseeable future.”

The screen went blank on Gillings’s incredulous expression.

“Daffyd, that was highly unmoral, unethical and downright dirty,” said Sally, half scolding as she rose from the

couch where she’d been sitting out of line-of-vision of the comset. She walked in under his arm, linking him around the waist. He nuzzled her curls and kissed her forehead.

“Probably. Les is always reminding me that it’s bad policy to tell all.”

“It’s a shame about Vascha though.” Sally sighed.

“Why?”

“Oh, it’s rather sad, his being a psychic mule, her Pegasus.”

“Thank God he is,” Daffyd said so fervently she looked up, startled. “With the ambition and drive that young man has, he’d rule the world in half a year if Amalda and Bruce weren’t there to stop him.”