THE LION AND THE UNICORN
THE best way of keeping a secret is to avoid even the appearance of secrecy. McNey whistled a few bars of Grieg, and the vibrations set delicate machinery in operation. The dull amber of the walls and ceiling changed to a cool transparency. Polaroid crystal did tricks with the red glare of the sunset above the Catskills. The deep, cloudless blue sky hung empty overhead. But Barton's helicopter had akeady arrived, and soon Callahan would be here, too.
That Callahan would dare to come, and alone, gave a horrible  clarity to the danger.  Twenty years  ago  a  dagger
would have ended the matter. But not permanently. Barton had used steel, and, while he had not completely failed, he had not succeeded either. The menace had grown.
McNey, standing by his desk, brushed a hand across his forehead and looked at his wet palm curiously. Hypertension. The result of this desperate, straining attempt to get in contact with Callahan, and the surprise of finding it far too easy. And now Barton as the catalyst-mongoose and snake.
There must be no clash-not yet. Somehow Barton must be kept from killing Callahan. The hydra had more than a hundred heads, and the Power as well. There lay -the chief peril, the tremendous secret weapon of the mad telepaths.
But they weren't mad. They were paranoid types, coldly logical, insane in one regard only, their blind warped hatred for nontelepaths. In twenty years, thirty, forty perhaps, they had-not grown-but organized, until today the cancerous cells were spotted throughout the towns of America, from Modoc and American Gun to Roxy and Florida End.
I'm old, McNey thought. Forty-two, but I feel old. The bright dream I grew up with-it's fading, blotted out by a nightmare.
He glanced in a mirror. He was big-boned, large-framed, but soft. His eyes were too gentle, not suited for battle. His hair-the wig all telepathic Baldies wore-was still dark, but he'd buy a graying one soon.
He was tired.
He was on leave of absence from Niagara, one of the science towns; but there were no furloughs from his secret job. That was a job many Baldies held, and one no nontelepaths suspected-a combination of policing and extermination. For paranoid Baldies could not be allowed to survive. That was axiomatic.
Over the ridge lay the town. McNey let his gaze travel downward, across pine and sumac groves, to the pool in the brook, where trout hid under shadowed overhangs. He opened part of the wall and let the cool air enter. Absently he whistled the phrase that would start the supersonics and keep mosquitoes at a respectful distance. On the flagged walk below he saw a slim figure, trim in light slacks and blouse, and recognized Alexa, his adopted daughter. The strong family instinct of Baldies had made adoption a commonplace.
The fading sunlight burnished her glossy wig. He sent a thought down.
Thought you were in the village. Marian's at the show.
She caught the hint of disappointment in his mind. Intrusion, Darryl?
For an hour or two-
O.K. There's an apple-blossom sequence in the pic, and I can't stand the smell of the stuff. Marian asked me-I'll catch a dance or two at the Garden.
He felt wretched as he watched her go off. In the perfect telepathic world there would be no need for secrecy or evasion. That, indeed, was one of the drawbacks of the paranoid system-the mysterious, untappable wave length on which they could communicate. The thing called the Power. It was, McNey thought, a secondary characteristic of the mutation itself, like baldness, and yet more strictly limited. It seemed that only the paranoid Baldies could develop the Power. Which implied two separate and distinct mutations. Considering the delicate balance of the mental machine, that was not improbable.
But true rapport was vital for a complete life. Telepaths were more sensitive than nontelepaths; marriage was more complete; friendship warmer; the race a single living unit. For no thought could be hidden from probing. The average Baldy refrained, from courtesy, when a rapport mind went blurred; yet, ultimately, such blurring should become unnecessary. There need be no secrets.
Both Marian and Alexa knew of McNey's connection with the organization, but it was a tacit understanding. They knew without words when McNey did not want to answer questions. And because of the deep trust that comes from telepathic understanding, they refrained from asking any, even in their thoughts.
Alexa was twenty now. Already she had felt the reaction of being an outsider in a world complete in itself. For Baldies were still intruders, no matter how much rationalization was used. The great majority of humanity was non-telepathic-and fear, distrust, and hatred lay latent in that giant tribunal that daily passed judgment upon the Baldy mutation.
Capital punishment, McNey knew very well, was the sentence contingent upon a thumbs-down verdict. And if the thumbs ever turned down-
If the nontelepaths ever learned what the paranoids were doing-
Barton was coming up the path. He walked with the lithe
springiness of youth, though he was over sixty. His wig was iron-gray, and McNey could sense the wary alertness of the hunter's thoughts. Technically Barton was a naturalist, a big-game hunter. His quarry was sometimes human, however.
Upstairs, Dave, McNey thought.
Right. Is it here yet?
Callahan's coming soon.
The thoughts did not mesh. The semantic absolute symbol for Callahan was simpler in McNey's mind; in Barton's it was colored by associations from a half-lifetime of conflict with a group he hated, by now, almost pathologically. McNey never knew what lay behind the violence of Barton's hatred. Once or twice he had caught fleeting mental images of a girl, dead now, who had once helped Barton, but such thoughts were always as inchoate as reflections in rippling water.
Barton came up in the dropper. He had a seamed, swarthy face, and a trick of smiling lopsidedly so that the grimace was almost a sneer. He sat down in a relaxer, sliding his dagger forward into a more handy position, and thought for a drink. McNey supplied Scotch and soda. The sun had dropped beyond the mountain, and the wind grew colder. Automatic induction began to warm the room.
Lucky you caught me. On my way north. Trouble.
About us?
Always.
This time what?
Barton's thoughts broadened.
f Wigless Baldy with Hedgehound group Peril to Baldies <   Villages being raided
\_ Wigless one untrained telepathic ally
Wigless? Paranoid?
Know little. Can't establish communication.
But-Hedgehounds?
Barton's sneer was reflected by his thought.
Savages. I'll investigate. Can't let the humans connect Us with raiding Hedgehounds.
McNey was silent, pondering. It had been a long time since the Blowup, when hard radiations had first created the mutations, and brought about the decentralization of a culture. But those days had seen the beginnings of the Hedgehounds, the malcontents who had refused to join the village unions, who had fled to the woods and the backlands and lived the
savage life of nomads-but always in small groups, for fear of the omnipresent atomic bombs. Hedgehounds weren't seen often. From helicopters you might catch glimpses of furtive figures trailing in single file through the Limberlost country, or in the Florida Everglades, or wherever the old forests stood. But by necessity they lived hidden in the backwoods. Occasionally there were quick raiding parties on isolated villages-so few, however, that no one considered the Hedge-hounds a menace. They were nuisances at best, and for the most part they stayed away from towns.
To find a Baldy among them was less singular than amazing. Telepaths formed a racial unit, branching out into family groups. As infants grew, they were assimilated. Might be some sort of paranoid plot. Dunno what sort.
McNey tipped his drink. No use killing Callahan, you know, he pointed out.
Tropism, Barton's thought said grimly. Taxis. When 1 catch 'em, I kill 'em. Not-Certain methods work on Them. I've used adrenalin. They can't foresee a berserker's actions in a fight, because he can't foresee his own. You can't fight Them as you'd play a chess game, Darryl. You've got to force them to limit their powers. I've killed some by making them fight with machines, which don't react as instantly as the mind. In fact-shadow of bitterness-we dare make no plans ahead. The paranoids can read our minds. Why not kill It?
Because we may have to compromise. The blasting wave of hot, violent fury made McNey wince. Barton's negative was stunningly emphatic.
McNey turned his glass, watching the moisture condense. But the paranoids are expanding.
Find a way of tapping their power, then! We're trying. There's no way. Find a secret wave length for us.
McNey's mind blurred. Barton looked away mentally. But he had caught a scrap of something. He tried not to ask the question burning within him.
McNey said aloud, "Not yet, Dave. I mustn't even think it; you know that."
Barton nodded. He, too, realized the danger of working out a plan in advance. There was no effective barrier that could be erected against the paranoids probing.
Don't kill Callahan, McNey pleaded. Let me lead.
Unwillingly Barton assented. It's coming. Now.
His more disciplined mind, trained to sense the presence of the radiations that meant intelligence, had caught stray fragments from the distance. McNey sighed, put down his glass, and rubbed his forehead.
Barton thought. That Baldy with the Hedgehounds. May 1 bring him here if necessary?
Of course.
Then a new thought came in, confident, strong, calm. Barton moved uneasily. McNey sent out an answer.
After a minute Sergei Callahan stepped out of the dropper and stood waiting, warily eyeing the naturalist. He was a slim, blond, soft-featured man, with hair so long and thick that it was like a mane. Only affectation made paranoids wear wigs of such extreme style-that and their natural maladjustment.
He didn't look dangerous, but McNey felt as though a feral beast had come into the room. What had the medievalists symbolized by the lion? Carnal sin? He couldn't remember. But in Barton's mind he caught the echo of a similar thought: a carnivore, to be butchered!
"How d'you do," Callahan said, and because he spoke aloud, McNey knew that the paranoid had classed his hosts as a lower species, and gave them patronizing contempt. It was characteristic of the paranoids.
McNey rose; Barton didn't. "Will you sit down?" "Sure." Callahan dropped on a relaxer. "You're McNey. I've heard of Barton."
"I'm sure you have," the hunter said softly. McNey hastily poured drinks. Barton left his untasted.
Despite the silence, there was something in the room that had the quality of fourth-dimensional sound. There was no attempt at direct telepathic communication, but a Baldy is never in complete mental silence, except in the stratosphere. Like half-heard, distant music of toccata and fugue the introspective thoughts beat dimly out. Instinctively one man's mental rhythm sought to move in the same pattern as another's, as soldiers automatically keep step. But Callahan was out of step, and the atmosphere seemed to vibrate faintly with discord.
The man had great self-confidence. Paranoids seldom felt the occasional touches of doubt that beset the straight-line Baldies, the nagging, inevitable question telepaths sometimes
- asked themselves: Freak or true mutation? Though several generations had passed since the Blowup, it was still too early to tell. Biologists had experimented, sadly handicapped by the lack of possible controls, for animals could not develop the telepathic function. Only the specialized colloid of the human brain had that latent power, a faculty that was still a mystery.
By now the situation was beginning to clarify a trifle. In the beginning there had been three distinct types, not recognized until after the post-Blowup chaos had subsided into decentralization. There were the true, sane Baldies, typified by McNey and Barton. There were the lunatic offshoots from a cosmic womb raging with fecundity, the terato-logical creatures that had sprung from radiation-battered germ plasm-two-headed fused twins, cyclops, Siamese freaks. It was a hopeful commentary that such monstrous births had almost ceased.
Between the sane Baldies and the insane telepaths lay the mutation-variant of the paranoids, with their crazy fixation of egotism. In the beginning the paranoids refused to wear wigs, and, if the menace had been recognized then, extermination would have been easy. But not now. They were more cunning. There was, for the most part, nothing to distinguish a paranoid from a true Baldy. They were well camouflaged and safe, except for the occasional slips that gave Barton and his hunters a chance to use the daggers that swung at every man's belt.
A war-completely secret, absolutely underground by necessity-in a world unconscious of the deadly strife blazing in the dark. No nontelepath even suspected what was happening. But the Baldies knew.
McNey knew, and felt a sick shrinking from the responsibility involved. One price the Baldies paid for survival was the deification of the race, the identification of self, family, and friends with the whole mutation of telepaths. That did not include the paranoids, who were predators, menacing the safety of all Baldies on earth.
McNey, watching Callahan, wondered if the man ever felt self-doubt. Probably not. The feeling of inferiority hi paranoids made them worship the group because of pure egotism; the watchword was We are supermen! All other species are inferior.
They were not supermen. But it was a serious mistake to underestimate them. They were ruthless, intelligent, and strong.
Not as strong as they thought, though. A lion can easily kill a wild hog, but a herd of hogs can destroy a lion.
"Not if they can't find him," Callahan said, smiling.
McNey grimaced. "Even a lion leaves spoor. You can't keep on with your plan indefinitely without the humans suspecting,
you know."
Contempt showed in Callahan's thought. "They're not tele-paths. Even if they were, we have the Power. And you can't
tap that."
"We can read your minds, though," Barton put in. His eyes were glowing. "We've spoiled some of your plans that way."
"Incidents," Callahan said. He waved his hand. "They haven't any effect on the long-term program. Besides, you can read only what's above the conscious threshold of awareness. We think of other things besides the Conquest. And-once we arrange another step-we carry it out as quickly as possible, to minimize the danger of having the details read by one of the traitors."
"So we're traitors now," Barton said. Callahan looked at him. "You are traitors to the destiny of our race. After the Conquest, we'll deal with you."
McNey said, "Meanwhile, what will the humans be doing?" "Dying," Callahan said.
McNey rubbed his forehead. "You're blind. If a Baldy kills one human, and that's known, it'll be unfortunate. It might blow over. If two or three such deaths occur, there'll be questions asked and surmises made. It's been a long while since we had Baldy lynchings, but if one smart human ever guesses what's going on, there'll be a worldwide program that will destroy every Baldy on earth. Don't forget, we can be recognized." He touched his wig. "It won't happen."
"You underestimate humans. You always have." "No," Callahan said, "that's not true. But you've always underestimated Us. You don't even know your own capabilities."
"The telepathic function doesn't make supermen." "We think it does."
"All right," McNey said, "we can't agree on that. Maybe we can agree on other things."
Barton made an angry sound. Callahan glanced at him. "You say you understand our plan. If you do, you know it can't be stopped. The humans you're so afraid of have only two strong points: numbers and technology. If the technology's
smashed, We can centralize, and that's all We need. We can't do it now, because of the atomic bombs, of course. The moment we banded together and revealed ourselves-blam! So-"
"The Blowup was the last war," McNey said. "It's got to be the last. This planet couldn't survive another."
"The planet could. And we could. But humanity couldn't."
Barton said, "Galileo doesn't have a secret weapon."
Callahan grinned at him. "So you traced that propaganda, did you? But a lot of people are beginning to believe Galileo's getting to be a menace. One of these days, Modoc or Sierra'-s going to lay an egg on Galileo. It won't be our affair. Humans will do the bombing, not Baldies."
"Who started the rumor?" Barton asked.
"There'll be more, a lot more. We'll spread distrust among the towns-a long-term program of planned propaganda. It'll culminate in another Blowup. The fact that humans would fall for such stuff shows their intrinsic unfitness to rule. It couldn't happen in a Baldy world."
McNey said, "Another war would mean the development of anticommunication systems. That'd play into your hands. It's the old rule of divide and fall. As long as radio, television, helicopter and fast-plane traffic weld humans together, they're racially centralized."
"You've got it," Callahan said. "When humanity's lowered to a more vulnerable status, we can centralize and step in. There aren't many truly creative technological brains, you know. We're destroying those-carefully. And we can do it, because we can centralize mentally, through the Power, without being vulnerable physically."
"Except to Us," Barton said gently.
Callahan shook his head slowly. "You can't kill us all. If you knifed me now, it wouldn't matter. I happen to be a co-ordinator, but I'm not the only one. You can find some of Us, sure, but you can't find Us all, and you can't break Our code. That's where you're failing, and why you'll always fail."
Barton ground out his cigarette with an angry gesture. "Yeah. We may fail, at that. But you won't win. You can't. I've seen a pogrom coming for a long while. If it comes, it'll be justified, and I won't be sorry, provided it wipes out all of you. We'll go down too, and you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you've destroyed the entire species through your crazy egotism."
"I'm not offended," Callahan said. "I've always contended
that your group was a failure of the mutation. We are the true supermen-unafraid to take our place in the universe, whereas you're content to live on the crumbs the humans drop from then- table."
"Callahan," McNey said suddenly, "this is suicidal. We
can't-"
Barton sprang out of his chair and stood straddle-legged, glowering furiously. "Darryl! Don't beg the swine! There's a limit to what I'll stand!"
"Please," McNey said, feeling very helpless and impotent. "We've got to remember that we're not supermen, either."
"No compromise," Barton snapped. "There can't be any appeasement with those wolves. Wolves-hyenas!"
"There'll be no compromise," Callahan said. He rose, his leonine head a dark silhouette against the purple sky. "I came to see you, McNey, for just one reason. You know as well as I that the humans musn't suspect our plan. Leave us alone, and they won't suspect. But if you keep trying to hinder us, you'll just increase the danger of discovery. An underground war can't stay underground forever."
"So you see the danger, after all," McNey said.
"You fool," Callahan said, almost tolerantly. "Don't you see we're fighting for you, too? Leave us alone. When the humans are wiped out, this will be a Baldy world. You can find your place in it. Don't tell me you've never thought about a Baldy civilization, complete and perfect."
"I've thought about it," McNey assented. "But it won't come about through your methods. Gradual assimilation is
the answer."
"So we'll be assimilated back into the human strain? So our children will be degraded into hairy men? No, McNey. You don't recognize your strength, but you don't seem to recognize your weakness, either. Leave us alone. If you don't, you'll be responsible for any pogrom that may come."
McNey looked at Barton. His shoulders slumped. He sank lower in his relaxer.
"You're right, after all, Dave," he whispered. "There can't be any compromise. They're paranoids."
Barton's sneer deepened. "Get out," he said. "I won't kill you now. But I know who you are. Keep thinking about that. You won't live long-my word on it."
"You may die first," Callahan said softly.
"Get out."
The paranoid turned and stepped into the dropper. Presently his figure could be seen below, striding along the path. Barton poured a stiff shot and drank it straight.
"I feel dirty," he said. "Maybe this'll take the taste out of my mouth."
In his relaxer McNey didn't move. Barton looked at the shadowy form sharply.
He thought: What's eating you?
1 wish . . .1 wish we had a Baldy world now. It- wouldn't have to be on earth. Venus or even Mars. Callisto-anywhere. A place where we could have peace. Telepaths aren't made for war, Dave.
Maybe it's good for them, though.
You think 'I'm soft. Well, I am. I'm no hero. No crusader. It's the microcosm that's important, after all. How much loyalty can we have for the race if the family unit, the individual, has to sacrifice all that means home to him?
The vermin must be destroyed. Our children will live in a better world.
Our fathers said that. Where are we?
Not yet lynched, at any rate. Barton laid his hand on Mc-Ney's shoulder. Keep working. Find the answer. The paranoid code must be cracked. Then I can wipe them out-all of them!
McNey's thought darkened. / feel there will be a pogrom. I don't know when. But our race hasn't faced its greatest crisis yet. It will come. It will come.
An answer will come too, Barton thought. I'm going now. I've got to locate that Baldy with the Hedgehounds.
Good-bye,  Dave.
He watched Barton disappear. The path lay empty thereafter. He waited, now, for Marian and Alexa to return from the town, and for the first time in his life he was not certain that they would return.
They were among enemies now, potential enemies who at a word might turn to noose and fire. The security the Baldies had fought for peacefully for generations was slipping away from underfoot. Before long Baldies might find themselves as homeless and friendless as Hedgehounds-
A too-elastic civilization leads to anarchy, while a too-rigid one will fall before the hurricane winds of change. The human norm is arbitrary; so there are arbitrary lines of demarcation. In the decentralized culture, the social animal was better able to find his rightful place than he had been in thousands of years. The monetary system was founded on barter, which
in turn was founded on skill, genius, and man-hours. One individual enjoyed the casual life of a fisherman on the California coast; his catch could bring him a televisor set designed by a Galileo man who enjoyed electronics-and who also
liked fish.
It was an elastic culture, but it had its rigidities. There were misfits. After the Blowup, those antisocials had fled the growing pattern of towns spreading over America and taken to the woods, where individualism could be indulged. Many types gathered. There were bindle stiffs and hobos, Cajuns and crackers, paisanos and Bowery bums-malcontents, anti-socials, and those who simply could not be assimilated by any sort of urban life, not even the semirural conditions of the towns. Some had ridden the rods, some had walked the highways of a world that still depended on surface travel, and some were trappers and hunters-for even at the time of the Blowup there had been vast forest tracts on the North American continent.
They took to the woods. Those who had originally been woodsmen knew well enough how to survive, how to set birdsnares and lay traps for deer and rabbit. They knew what berries to pick and what roots to dig. The others-
In the end they learned, or they died. But at first they sought what they thought to be an easier way. They became brigands, swooping down in raids on the unifying towns and carrying off booty-food, liquor and women. They mistook the rebirth of civilization for its collapse. They grouped together in bands, and the atomic bombs found targets, and they died.
After a while there were no large groups of Hedgehounds. Unity became unsafe. A few score at most might integrate, following the seasons in the north temperate zones, staying in the backland country in more tropical areas.
Their life became a combination of the American pioneer's and the American Indian's. They migrated constantly. They re-learned the use of bow and javelin, for they kept no contact with the towns, and could not easily secure firearms. They drifted in the shallows of the stream of progress, hardy, brown woodmen and their squaws, proud of their independ-' ence and their ability to wrest a living from the wild.
They wrote little. But they talked much, and by night, around campfires, they sang old songs-"Barbara Alien," "The Twa Corbies," "Oh Susanna," and the folk ballads that last longer than Senates and Parliaments. Had they ridden horse-
back, they would have known the songs based on the rhythm-patterns of equine gait; as it was, they walked, and knew marching songs.
Jesse James Hartwell, leader of his little band of Hedge-hounds, was superintending the cooking of bear steaks over the campfire, and his bass voice rolled out now, muffled and softened by the pines that screened camp from brook. His squaw, Mary, was singing too, and presently others joined in, hunters and their wives-for squaw no longer carried the derogatory shade of meaning it once had. The attitude the Hedgehounds had toward their wives was a more realistic version of the attitudes of medieval chivalry.
"Bring the good old bugle, boys, we'll sing another song-"
It was dark by the stream. They had been late in finding a camping place tonight; the hunt for the bear had delayed them, and after that it had been difficult to find fresh water. As always when the tribe was irritable, there had been half-serious raillery at Lincoln Cody's expense. It was, perhaps, natural for any group to sense the mental difference-or superiority-of a Baldy, and compensate by jeering at his obvious physical difference.
Yet they had never connected Line with the town Baldies. For generations now telepaths had worn wigs. And not even Line himself knew that he was a telepath. He knew that he was different, that was all. He had no memory of the helicopter wreck from which his infant body had been taken by Jesse James Hartwell's mother; adopted into the tribe, he had grown up as a Hedgehound, and had been accepted as one. But though they considered him one of theirs, they were too ready to call him "skinhead"-not quite in jest.
"Sing it as we used to sing it, fifty thousand strong, While we were marching through Georgia ..."
There were twenty-three in Hartwell's band. A good many generations ago, one of his ancestors had fought with the Grand Army of the Republic, and had been with Sherman on his march. And a contemporary of that soldier, whose blood also ran in Hartwell's veins, had worn Confederate gray and died on the Potomac. Now twenty-three outcast Hedgehounds,
81
discards of civilization, huddled about the fire and cooked the bear they had killed with spear and arrow. The chorus burst out vigorously.
"Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the jubilee, Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes men free, So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea While we were marching through Georgia."
There was a gray scar of desolation where Atlanta had been. The bright, clean new towns dotted Georgia, and helicopters hummed to the sea and back again now. The great War between the States was a memory, shadowed by the greater conflicts that had followed. Yet in that still northern forest, vigorous voices woke the past again.
Line rubbed his shoulders against the rough, bark of the 'tree and yawned. He was chewing the bit of a battered pipe and grateful for the momentary solitude. But he could sense- feel-understand stray fragments of thoughts that came to him from around the campfire. He did not know they were thoughts, since, for all he knew, Hartwell and the others might feel exactly the same reactions. Yet, as always, the rapport made him faintly unhappy, and he was grateful for the-something-that told him Cassie was coming.
She walked softly out of the shadow and dropped beside him, a slim, pretty girl a year younger than his seventeen years. They had been married less than a year; Line was still amazed that Cassie could have loved him in spite of his bald, gleaming cranium. He ran his fingers through Cassie's glossy, black hair, delighting in the sensuous feel of it, and the way it ran rippling across his palm.
"Tired, hon?"
"Nope. You feeling bad, Line?"
"It's nothing," he said.
"You been acting funny ever since we raided that town," Cassie murmured, taking his brown hand and tracing a pattern with her forefinger across the calloused palm. "You figure that wasn't on the beam for us to do, maybe."
"I dunno, Cassie," he sighed, his arm circling her waist. "It's the third raid this year-"
"You ain't questioning Jesse James Hartwell?"
"S'pose I am?"
"Well, then," Cassie said demurely, "you better start con-
sidering a quick drift for the two of us. Jesse don't like no arguments."
"No more do I," Line said. "Maybe there won't be no more raids now we're southering."
"We got full bellies, anyhow, and that's more than we had across the Canada line. I never saw a winter like this, Line."
"It's been cold," he acknowledged. "We can make out. Only thing is-"
"What?"
"I kinda wish you'd been along on the raids. I can't talk to nobody else about it. I felt funny. There was voices inside my head, like."
"That's crazy. Or else conjure."
"I'm no hex man. You know that, Cassie."
"And you ain't been smoking crazy weed." She meant the marijuana that grew wild in the backlands. Her gaze sought his. "Tell me what it's like, Line. Bad?"
"It ain't bad and it ain't good. It's mixed up, that's all. It's sort of like a dream, only I'm awake. I see pictures."
"What pictures, Line?"
"I don't know," he said, looking into the darkness where the brook chuckled and splashed. "Because half the time it ain't me when that happens. I get hot and cold inside. Sometimes it's like a music in my head. But when we raided that town it was plain bad, Cassie hon." He seized a bit of wood and tossed it away. "I was like that chip tossed around in the water. Everything was pulling at me every which way."
Cassie kissed him gently. "Don't pay no mind to it. Everybody gets mixed up once in a while. Once we get more south, and the hunting's good, you'll forget your vapors."
"I can forget 'em now. You make me feel better, just being with you. I love the smell of your hair, sweet." Line pressed his face against the cool, cloudly darkness of the girl's braids.
"Well, I won't cut it, then."
"You better not. You got to have enough hair for both of us."
"You think that matters to me, Line? Boone Curzon's bald, and he's plenty handsome."
"Boone's old, near forty. That's why. He had hair when he was young."
Cassie pulled up some moss and patted it into shape on Line's head. She smiled at him half-mockingly. "How's that? Ain't nobody anywhere that's got green hair. Feel better now?"
He wiped his scalp clean, pulled Cassie closer and kissed her. "Wish I never had to leave you. I ain't troubled when you're around. Only these raids stir me up."
"Won't be no more of 'em, I guess."
Line looked into the dimness. His young face, seamed and bronzed by.his rugged life, was suddenly gloomy. Abruptly he stood up.
"I got a hunch Jesse James HartwelPs planning another."
"Hunch?" She watched him, troubled. "Maybe it ain't so."
"Maybe," Line said doubtfully. "Only my hunches work pretty good most times." He glanced toward the fire. His shoulders squared.
"Line?"
"He's figgering on it, Cassie. Sitting there thinking about the chow we got at that last town. It's his belly working on him. I ain't going to string along with him."
"You better not start nothing."
"I'm gonna ... talk to him," Line said almost inaudibly, and moved into the gloom of the trees. From the circle of firelight a man sent out a questioning challenge; the eerie hoot of an owl, mournful and sobbing. Line understood the inflection and answered with the caw of a raincrow. Hedgehounds had a language of their own that they used in dangerous territory, for there was no unity among the tribes, and some Hedgehounds were scalpers. There were a few cannibal groups, too, but these degenerates were hated and killed by the rest whenever opportunity offered.
Line walked into camp. He was a big, sturdy, muscular figure, his strong chest arched under the fringed buckskin shirt he wore, his baldness concealed now by a squirrelhide cap. Temporary shelters had been rigged up, lean-tos, thatched with leaves, gave a minimum of privacy, and several squaws were busily sewing. At the cookpot Bethsheba Hartwell was passing out bear steaks. Jesse James Hartwell, an oxlike giant with a hook nose and a scarred cheek that had whitened half of his beard, ate meat and biscuits with relish, washing them down with green turtle soup-part of the raid's loot. On an immaculate white cloth before him was spread caviar, sardines, snails, chow chow, antipasto, and other dainties that he sampled with a tiny silver fork that was lost in his big, hairy hand.
"C'mon and eat, skinhead," Hartwell rumbled. "Where's your squaw? She'll get mighty hungry."
"She's coming," Line said. He didn't know that Cassie was crouching in the underbrush, a bared throwing-knife in her hand. His thoughts were focused on the chief, and he could still sense what he had called his hunch, and which was actually undeveloped telepathy. Yes, Hartwell was thinking about another raid.
Line took a steak from Bethsheba. It didn't burn his calloused hands. He squatted near Hartwell and bit into the juicy, succulent meat. His eyes never left the bearded man's face.
"We're out of Canada now," he said at last. "It's wanning up some. We still heading south?"
Hartwell nodded. "You bet. I don't figure on losing another toe with frostbite. It's too cold even here."
"There'll be hunting, then. And the wild corn's due soon. We'll have a-plenty to eat."
"Pass the biscuits, Bethsheba. Urp. More we eat, Line, the fatter we'll get for next winter."
Line pointed to the white cloth. "Them don't fatten you up none."
"They're good anyhow. Try some of these here fish eggs."
"Yeah-pfui. Where's the water?"
Hartwell laughed. Line said, "We going north come summer?"
"We ain't voted on it yet. I'd say no. Me, I'd rather head south."
"More towns. It ain't safe to go on raiding, Jesse."
"Nobody can't find us once we get back in the woods."
"They got gun."
"You scared?"
"I ain't scared of nothing," Line said. "Only I sort of know you're thinking about another raid. And I'm telling you to count me out."
Hartwell's heavy shoulders hunched. He reached for a sardine, ate it slowly, and then turned his head toward the boy. His lids were half-lowered.
"Yaller?" But he made it a question, so a fight wasn't obligatory.
"You seen me fight a grizzly with a knife."
"I know," Hartwell said, rubbing the white streak in his beard. "A guy can turn yaller, though. I ain't saying that's it, understand. Just the same, nobody else is trying to back out."
"On that first raid we was starving. The second-well, that might pass too. But I don't see no percentage in raiding just so you can eat fish eggs and worms."
"That ain't all of it, Line. We got blankets, too. Things like that we needed. Once we lay our hands on a few guns-"
"Getting too lazy to pull a bow?"
"If you're spoiling for a fight," Hartwell said slowly, "I can oblige you. Otherwise shut up."
Line said, "O.K. But I'm serving notice to count me out on any more raids."
In the shadows Cassie's hand tightened on the dagger's hilt. But Hartwell suddenly laughed and threw his steakbone at Line's head. The boy ducked and glowered.
"Come the day your belt starts pinching, you'll change your mind," Hartwell said. "Forget about it now. Git that squaw of yours and make her eat; she's too skinny." He swung toward the woods. "Cassie! C'mon and have some of this fish soup."
Line had turned away, readjusting his cap. His face was less somber now, though it was still thoughtful. Cassie bolstered her knife and came out into the firelight. Hartwell beckoned to her.
"Come and get it," he said.
The air was peaceful again. No more friction developed, though Line, Cassie knew, was in a quarrelsome mood. But Hartwell's good humor was proof against any but direct insults. He passed around the whiskey bottle he had looted- a rare treat, since the tribe could distill smoke only when they settled for a while, which wasn't often. Line didn't drink much. Long after the fire had been smothered and snores came from the lean-tos around him, he lay awake, troubled and tense.
Something-someone-was calling him.
It was like one of his hunches. It was like what he had felt during the raids. It was like Cassie's nearness, and yet there was a queer, exciting difference. There was a friendliness to that strange call that he had never felt before.
Dim and indefinable, a dweller hidden deep in his mind woke and responded to that call of a kindred being.
After a while he rose on one elbow and looked down at Cassie. Her face was partly veiled by the deeper blackness of her hair. He touched its soft, living warmth gently. Then he
slipped noiselessly out of the shelter and stood up, staring around.
There was a rustling of leaves, and the chuckling of the brooklet. Nothing else. Moonlight dappled the ground here and there. A woodrat rustled softly through the wild grasses. The air was very cold and crisp, with a freshness that stung Line's cheeks and eyes.
And suddenly he was frightened. Old folktales troubled him. He remembered his foster mother's stories of men who could turn to wolves, of the Wendigo that swept like a vast wind above the lonely forests, of a Black Man who bought souls- the formless, dark fears of childhood rose up in nightmare reality. He had killed a grizzly with his knife, but he had never stood alone at night hi the woods, while a Call murmured in his mind-silently-and made his blood leap up in fiery response.
He was afraid, but the bait was too strong. He turned south, and walked out of the camp. Instinctive training made his progress noiseless. He crossed the brook, his sandals inaudible on the stones, and mounted a slope. And there, sitting on a stump waiting for him, was a man.
His back was toward Line, and nothing could be seen but the hunched torso and the bald, gleaming head. Line had a momentary horrible fear that when the man turned, he might see his own face. He touched his knife. The confused stirring in his brain grew chaotic.
"Hello, Line," a low voice said.
Line had made no sound, and he knew it. But, somehow, that dark figure had sensed his approach. The Black Man-?
"Do I look black?" the voice asked. The man stood up, turning. He was sneering-no, smiling-and his face was dark and seamed. He wore town clothes.
But he wasn't the Black Man. He didn't have a cloven hoof. And the warm, sincere friendliness subtly radiating from his presence was reassuring to Line in spite of his suspicions.
"You called me," Line said. "I'm trying to figure it out." His eyes dwelt on the bald cranium.
"My name's Barton," the man said. "Dave Barton." He lifted something gray-a scalp?-and fitted it carefully on his head. The sneer indicated amusement.
"I feel naked without my wig. But I had to show you I was a... a-" He sought for the word that would fit the telepathic symbol. "That you were one of us," he finished.
"I ain't-"
"You're a Baldy," Barton said, "but you don't know it. I can read that from your mind."
"Read my mind?" Line took a backward step.
"You know what Baldies are? Telepaths?"
"Sure," Line said doubtfully. "I heard stories. We don't know much about town life. Listen," he said with fresh suspicion, "how'd you come to be out here? How'd-"
"I came looking for you."
"Me? Why?"
Barton said patiently, "Because you're one of Us. I can see I've got to explain a lot. From the beginning, maybe. So-"
He talked. It might have been more difficult had they not been Baldies. Though Line was telepathically untrained, he could nevertheless receive enough mental confirmation to clarify the questions in his mind. And Barton spoke of the Blowup, of the hard radiations-so much Greek to Line, until Barton used telepathic symbolism-and, mostly, of the incredible fact that Line wasn't merely a hairless freak in his tribe. There were other Baldies, a lot of them.
That was important. For Line caught the implications. He sensed something of the warm, deep understanding between telepaths, the close unity of the race, the feeling of belonging that he had never had. Just now, alone in the woods with Barton, he was conscious of more genuine intimacy than he had ever felt before.
He was quick to understand. He asked questions. And, after a while, so did Barton.
"Jesse James Hartwell's behind the raids. Yeah, I was in on 'em. You mean you all wear them wigs?"
"Naturally. It's a big civilization, and we belong to it. We're part of the whole set-up."
"And... and nobody laughs at you for being bald?" "Do I look bald?" Barton asked. "There are drawbacks, sure. But there are plenty of advantages."
"I'll say!" Line breathed deeply. "People ... the same sort ... your own sort-" He was inarticulate.
"The non-Baldies didn't always give us an even break. They were afraid of us, a little. We're trained from childhood never to take advantage of our telepathic powers with humans."
"Yeah, I can see that. It makes sense."
"Then you know why I came, don't you?"
"I can sort of understand it," Line said slowly. "These
raids ... people  might  start  thinking  a  Baldy's  involved- I'm a Baldy!"
Barton nodded. "Hedgehounds don't matter. A few raids- we can take care of them. But to have one of Us involved is bad medicine."
"I told Jesse James Hartwell tonight I was having no part in any more raiding." Line said. "He won't push me."
"Yes- That helps. Listen, Line. Why don't you come home with me?"
Years of training made Line pause. "Me? Go into a town? We don't do that."
"You?"
"The ... Hedgehounds. I ain't a Hedgehound, am I? Gosh, this is-" He rubbed his jaw. "I'm all mixed up, Barton."
"Tell you what. Come with me now, and see how you like our sort of life. You never were trained to use your telepathic function, so you're like a half-blind man. Take a look at the set-up, and then decide what you want to do."
On the verge of mentioning Cassie, Line paused. He was half afraid that if he spoke of her, Barton might withdraw his offer. And, after all, it wasn't as if he intended to leave Cassie permanently. It'd be just for a week or two, and then he could come back to the tribe. •
Unless he took Cassie with him now-
No. Somehow he'd feel shamed in admitting that he, a Baldy, had married a Hedgehound. Though he was proud of Cassie herself, all right. He'd never give her up. It was only-
He was lonely. He was horribly, sickeningly lonely, and what he had glimpsed in Barton's mind and Barton's words drew him with overpowering force. A world where he belonged, where no one called him skinhead, where he'd never ,feel inferior to the bearded men of the tribe. A wig of his own.
Just for a few weeks. He couldn't miss this chance. He couldn't! Cassie would be waiting for him when he came back.
"I'll go with you," he said. "I'm ready right now. O.K.?"
But Barton, who had read Line's mind, hesitated before he answered.
"O.K.," he said at last. "Let's go."
Three weeks later Barton sat in McNey's solarium and shaded his eyes wearily with one hand. "Line's married, you
know," he said, "to a Hedgehound girl. He doesn't know we know it."
"Does it matter?" McNey asked. He was looking very tired and troubled.
"I suppose not. But I thought I'd better mention it, because of Alexa."
"She knows her own mind. And she must know about Line being married, too, by this time. She's been giving him telepathic coaching for weeks."
"I noticed that when I came in."
"Yeah," McNey said, rubbing his forehead. "That's why we're being oral. Telepathic conversations distract Line when there's more than one; he's still learning selectivity." "How do you like the boy?"
"I like him. He's not... quite what I'd expected, though." "He grew up with the Hedgehounds." "He's one of Us," McNey said with finality. "No symptoms of paranoid tendencies?" "Definitely not. Alexa agrees."
"Good," Barton said. "That relieves me. It was the one thing I was afraid of. As for the Hedgehound girl, she's not one of Us, and we can't afford to weaken the race by intermarriage with humans. That's been an axiom almost since the Blowup. My own feeling is that if Line marries Alexa or any other one of Us, it's all to the good, and we can forget about previous entanglements."
"It's up to her," McNey said. "Any more Hedgehound raids?"
"No. But they're the least of my troubles. Sergei Callahan's gone underground. I can't locate him, and I want to." "Just to kill him?"
"No. He must know other key paranoids. I want to drag that information out of him. He can't blur his mind permanently-and once I get him where I want, he'll have few secrets left."
"We're fighting a losing battle." "Are we?"
"I can't talk yet," McNey said, with subdued violence. "I can't even let myself think about the problem. I... it works out this way. There's crux, a single equation, that must be solved. But not yet. Because the moment I solve it, my mind can be read. I've got to work out all the minor details first Then-" "Yes?"
McNey's smile was bitter. "I don't know. I'll find an answer. I haven't been idle."
"If we could crack the Power," Barton said. "If we could only tap the paranoid's code-"
"Or," McNey said, "if we had a code of our own-"
"Unbreakable."
"Which is impossible, by any mechanical means. No scrambler could work, because we'd have to know the key, and our minds could be read by paranoids. I don't want to think about it any more for a while, Dave. The details, yes. But not the problem itself. I... might solve it before I'm ready."
"The paranoids are plenty busy," Barton said. "Their propaganda's spreading. That talk about Galileo's secret weapon is still going around."
"Haven't the Galileans made any denials?"
"It isn't that tangible. You can't buck a whispering campaign. That, Darryl, is what's apt to cause a bust-up. You can fight a person or a thing, but you can't fight a wind. A wind that whispers."
"But the atomic bombs! After all-"
"I know. Just the same, some hothead is going to get scared enough to take action one of these days. He'll say, 'Galileo's got a secret weapon. We're not safe. They're going to attack us.' So he'll jump the gun. After that, there'll be other incidents."
"With Us in the middle. We can't stay neutral. I think there'll be a pogrom, Dave, sooner or later."
"We'll survive it."
"You think so? With every non-Baldy's hand ready to strike down telepaths-man, woman or child? There'll be no quarter given. We need another world, a new world-"
"That'll have to wait till we get interstellar ships."
"And meanwhile we live on borrowed time. It might be best if we let the human race reassimilate us."
"Retrogression?"
"Suppose it is? We're in the position of a unicorn in a herd of horses. We daren't use our horn to defend ourselves. We've got to pretend to be horses."
"The lion and the unicorn," Barton said, "were fighting for the crown. Well, Callahan and his paranoids are the lion, all right. But the crown?"
"Inevitably," McNey said, "it must be rule. Two dominant species can't exist on the same planet or even in the same system. Humans and telepaths can't evenly divide rule. We're
knuckling under now. Eventually, we'll arrive, by a different path, at Callahan's goal. But not by degrading or enslaving humans! Natural selection is our weapon. Biology's on our side. If we can only live in peace with humans, until-"
"-and drummed them out of town," Barton said.
"So the humans mustn't suspect the lion and the unicorn are fighting. Or what they're fighting for. Because if they do, we won't survive the pogrom. There will be no refuge. Our race is soft, through environment and adaptation."
"I'm worried about Callahan," Barton said suddenly. "I don't know what he's planning. By the time I find out, it may be too late. If he sets something in operation that can't be stopped-"
"I'll keep working," McNey promised. "I may be able to give you something soon."
"I hope so. Well, I'm flying to St. Nick tonight. Ostensibly to check the zoo there. Actually, I've other motives. Maybe I can pick up Callahan's trail."
"I'll walk you down to the village." McNey went with Barton into the dropper. They stepped outside into the warm, spring air, glancing through the transparent wall at the televisor where Alexa sat with Line. Barton said, "They don't seem worried, anyhow."
McNey laughed. "She's sending in her column to the Recorder. Alexa's a specialist on heart problems. I hope she never has any of her own to solve!"
"-if you love him," Alexa said into the mike, "marry him. And if he loves you, he'll have no objection to running psychrating tests and comparing id balance sheets. You're considering a lifetime partnership, and both of you should read the contracts before signing them." She managed to look like a cat with cream on its whiskers. "But always remember that love is the most important thing in the world. If you find that, it will always be springtime in your hearts. Good luck, Wondering!"
She pressed a switch. "Thirty, Line. My job's done for the day. That's one sort of job a Baldy can find-heart problem editor on a telepaper. Think you'd like it?"
"No," Line said. "It ain't... it's not up my alley."
He was wearing a silken blue shirt and darker blue shorts, and a cropped brown wig covered his skull. He wasn't used to it yet, and kept touching it uneasily.
"Ain't as good as isn't," Alexa said. "I know what you
mean, and that's more important than grammatical construction. More lessons?"
"Not for a while yet. I get tired easy. Talking's still more natural, somehow."
"Eventually you'll be finding it cumbersome. Personal endings-you speak, he speaks, parlons, parlez, parlent-tele-pathically you don't use those vestiges."
"Vestiges?"
"Sure," Alexa said. "From the Latin. The Romans didn't use pronouns. Just amo, amas, amant," she clarified mentally, "and the endings gave you the right pronoun. Nous, vous, and Us are used now instead, we, you plural, and they. So the endings are unnecessary. If you're communicating with a Swiss telepath, though you might find yourself wondering why he kept thinking of a girl as it. But you'd know what it meant to him, and you couldn't if you were being oral only."
"It's plenty hard," Line said. "I'm getting the angles, though. That round-robin business we had last night was-" He groped for a word, but Alexa caught the meaning from his mind.
"I know. There's an intimacy that's pretty wonderful. You know, I've never felt badly about being adopted. I knew just where I fitted into Marian's life and Darryl's, and how they felt about me. I knew I belonged."
"It must be a nice feeling," Line said. "I'm sort of getting it, though."
"Of course.. You're one of Us. After you've mastered the telepathic function, you won't have any doubts at all."
Line watched the play of sunlight on Alexa's bronze curls. "I guess I do belong with your kind of folks."
"Glad you came with Dave?"
He looked at his hands. "I can't tell you, Alexa. I can't tell you how wonderful it is. I'd been shut out in the dark all my life, thinking I was a freak, never feeling right sure about myself. Then all this-" He indicated the televisor. "Magical miracles, that's what. And all the rest."
Alexa understood what was in his mind. Through him she felt the heady excitement of an exile returning to his own kind. Even the visor, familiar symbol of her job, assumed a new glamour, though it was the standard double-screen model, the upper for news flashes, the lower for the twenty-four-hour newspaper that was received, recorded on wire-film, and thereafter available for reference. Push-buttons selected the
publication, and the dials made it possible to focus down on the pages, on either the action pictures or the printed matter. Format, of course, was quite as important as news value. The big concealed wall-screen at one end of the room was used for plays, concerts, movies, and Disneys. But for the added sensual attractions of smell, taste, and touch, one had to go to the theaters; such special equipment was still too expensive for the average home.
"Yes." Alexa said, "you're one of Us. And you've got to remember that the future of the race is important. If you stay, you must never do anything to hurt it."
"I remember what you've been telling me about the p-para-noids," Line nodded. "Guess they're sort of like the cannibal tribes 'mong the Hedgehounds. They're fair quarry for anybody." He felt his wig, stepped to a mirror-unit, and adjusted the headpiece.
Alexa said, "There's Marian outside. I want to see her. Wait for me, Line; I'll be back."
She went out, Lincoln, awkwardly testing his newly-realized powers, felt her thought fingering subtly toward the plump, pretty woman who was moving among the flowers, armed with gloves and spray.
He wandered to the clavilux, and, one-fingered, picked out a tune. He hummed:
"All in the merry month of May, When the green buds they were swellin',
Young Jemmy Grove on his death-bed lay For love of Barb'ry Alien."
Memories of Cassie rose up. He forced them back into the shadows, along with the Hedgehounds and the nomad life he had known. That wasn't his life any more. Gassie-she'd get along all right. He'd go after her, one of these days, and bring her to live with him among the Baldies. Only-only she wasn't a Baldy. She wasn't like Alexa, for instance. She was quite as pretty, sure; yet there was all this talk about the future of the race. If, now, he married a Baldy and had Baldy sons and daughters-
But, he was already married. What was the good of thinking so? A Hedgehound marriage might not amount to a hill of beans among the townsfolk, of course, and, anyway, all this mental round-robin stuff was sort of polygamy.
Well, he'd climb that hill when he came to it. First he had
to get the trick of this telepathy business. It was coming, but slowly, for he'd not been conditioned since infancy, as other Baldies were. The latent power had to be wakened and directed-not as a child could be taught, but allowing for Line's maturity, and his ability to grasp and understand the goal.
Marian came in with Alexa. The older woman stripped off her cloth gloves and brushed beads of perspiration from her ruddy cheeks. " 'Lo, Line," she said. "How's it going?"
"Fairish, Marian. You should of asked me to help out there."
"I need the exercise. I gained three pounds this morning arguing with that turnip-bleeder Gatson, down at the store. Know what he wants for fresh breadfruit?"
"What's that?"
"Catch this." Marian formed mental concepts involving sight, touch and taste. Alexa chimed in with the smell of' breadfruit. Line had his own arbitrary standards for comparisons, and within a second had assimilated the absolute meaning; he would recognize a breadfruit from now on. Marian threw a quick mental question. Line answered.
To town (Darryl McNey) by window (ten minutes past)
"A bit confused," Marian said, "but I get the idea. He ought to be back soon. I'm in the mood for a swim. Suppose I fix some sandwiches?"
"Swell," Alexa said. "I'll help. Line knows more about catching trout than anybody I've ever seen, except he doesn't know what a dry fly is."
"I just aim to catch fish," Line said. "Enough to eat. Many a time I had to fish through holes in the ice to keep from being hungry."
Later, stretching his brown, hard body on the sandy bank of the pool upstream, he luxuriated in the warm sunlight and watched Alexa. Slim and attractive in white shorts and bathing cap, she inexpertly practiced casting, while McNey, pipe in his mouth, worked a likely-looking spot under an overhang of branches that brushed the water. Marian placidly ate sandwiches and watched the activities of a community of ants with considerable interest. The deep, unspoken comradeship of the family and the race was intangibly in the air, a bond that reached out, touched Line, and drew him into its friendly center. This is it, he thought. 1 belong here. And Alexa's mind answered him with quiet confidence: You are one of Us.
The months passed very quickly for Line, broken by occasional visits from Dave Barton, whose manner grew increasingly more troubled, and by the green that covered tree and brush, ground and vine, as spring gave place to summer, and summer drew toward a not-distant autumn. He seldom thought of the Hedgehounds now. There was a sort of tacit acceptance of the situation among the little group; he felt, without actually bringing the realization consciously to mind, that Alexa knew a great deal about his past, and that she would not bring up the matter of Cassie unless he did. That she was beginning to love him he did not doubt. Nor did he doubt much that he loved her. After all, Alexa was his kind, as Cassie never had been.
But he dreamed of Cassie, nevertheless. Sometimes he felt loneliness, even among his own people. At such times he was anxious to finish his telepathic training and join Barton's fight against the paranoids. Barton was eager to enlist Line, but he warned against the danger of moving too soon. "The paranoids aren't fools, Line," he said. "We mustn't underestimate them. I've lived this long simply because I'm a trained big-game hunter. My reactions are just a bit faster than theirs, and I always try to maneuver them in a position where telepathy can't help them. If a paranoid's at the bottom of a well, he may read your intention of dropping a load of bricks on his head-but he can't do a lot about it." "Any news about Callahan?" McNey asked. "No word for months. There's some plan-maybe a big push in the propaganda field, maybe assassinations of key technologists. I don't know what. I've read no minds that knew the right answers. But I think something's going to break soon; I've found out that much. -We've got to be ready for it. We've got to break their code-or get one of our own. The same tune, Darryl."
"I know," McNey said. He stared out at the empty blue sky. "There isn't much I can say now, or even think. The same tune, all right."
"But you haven't failed? In a few weeks you're due back at Niagara."
Line said, "Look, about this code. I was thinking, the Hedgehounds have got a sort of code. Like this." He imitated a few bird and animal calls. "We know what they mean but nobody else knows."
"Hedgehounds aren't telepaths. If they were, your code wouldn't stay a secret long."
"Guess you're right. I'd like to take a crack at the paranoids, though."
"You'll have your chance," Barton said. "But, meanwhile, it's DarryFs job to find us a new weapon."
McNey said wearily, "I know all about that. No more pep talks, Dave, please."
Barton stood up, scowling. "I've a job to do down south. I'll see you when I get back, Darryl. Meanwhile, take care of yourself. If this business-whatever it is-should break soon, don't run any risks. You're vital to Us, much more so than I am."
With a nod to Line he went out. McNey stared at nothing. Line hesitated, sent out a querying thought, and met abstracted rebuff. He went downstairs.
He couldn't find Alexa. Finally he went out into the gardens, working his way toward the brook. A flash of color caught his eye, and he headed for it.
Alexa was sitting on a rock, her flimsy playsuit unzipped to let the slight breeze cool her. The heat was so intense that she had removed her wig, and her bald head was shiny and incongruous, incompatible with her artificial lashes and eyebrows. It was the first time Line had ever seen her wigless.
Instantly, at his thought, she swung about and began to replace the wig. But her arm stopped in arrested motion. She looked at him, half questionably, and then with pain and growing understanding in her eyes.
"Put it on, Alexa," Line said.
She watched him steadily. "What for-now?"
"I... it doesn't-"
Alexa shrugged and slipped the headpiece into place. "That was ... strange," she said, deliberately speaking aloud as if she did not want to let her mind slip back into the channels of telepathic intimacy where hurt can strike so unerringly. "I'm so used myself to Baldies being-bald. I never thought before the sight could be-" She did not finish aloud. After a moment she said, "You must have been very unhappy among the Hedgehounds, Line. Even more unhappy than you realize. If you've been conditioned against the sight of baldness to ... to that extent-"
"It wasn't," Line denied futilely. "I didn't... you shouldn't think-"
"It's all right. You can't help reactions as deeply rooted as that. Some day standards of beauty will change. Hairlessness will be lovely. Today it isn't, certainly not to a man with
your psychological background. You must have been made to feel very keenly that you were inferior because of your baldness-"
Line stood there awkwardly, unable to deny the thought        " that had sprung so vividly into his mind, burning with shame       I and dismay at the knowledge that she had seen as clearly as himself the ugly picture of her baldness in his thought. As if he had held up a distorting mirror to her face and said aloud, "This is the way you look to me." As if he had slapped her gratuitously across the cheek with the taunt of her-abnormality.
"Never mind," Alexa said, a little shakily, smiling. "You can't help it if baldness disg ... distresses you. Forget it. It isn't as if we were m-married or... anything."
They looked at each other in silence. Their minds touched and sprang apart and then touched again, tentatively, with light thoughts that leaped from point to point as gingerly as if the ideas were ice-floes that might sink beneath the full weight of conscious focus.
/ thought I loved you ... perhaps I did .. . yes, I too .. . but now there can't be . . . (sudden, rebellious denial) ... no, it's true, there can't ever be Tightness between us... not as if we were ordinary people... we'd always remember that picture, how I looked (abrupt sheering off from the memory) . . . (agonized repudiation of it) . . . no, couldn't help that.. . always between MS ... rooted too deeply ... and anyhow, Cos-(sudden closing off of both minds at once, before even the thought-image had time to form.)
Alexa stood up. "I'm going into town," she said. "Marian's at the hairdresser's. I... I'll get a wave or something."
He looked at her helplessly, half reluctant to let her go, though he knew as well as she how much had been discussed and weighed and discarded in the past moment of voiceless speech.
"Gopd-by, Alexa," he said.
"Good-by, Line."
Line stood for a long time watching the path, even after she had gone. He would have to leave. He didn't belong here. Even if nearness to Alexa were possible after this, he knew he could not stay. They were-abnormal. He would be seeing the baldness, the contemptible, laughable baldness he had hated in himself, more clearly now than the wigs
they wore. Somehow until this moment he had never fully realized-
Well, he couldn't go without telling Darryl. Slowly, dragging his feet a little, he turned back toward the house. When he came to the side lawn he sent out an inexpert, querying thought.
Something answered him from the cellar-laboratory, a queer, strange, disturbing vibration that clung briefly to his mind and then pulled away. It wasn't McNey. It was-an intruder. Line went down the cellar steps. At the bottom he paused, trying  to   sort  the  tangled   confusion   in   his  mind   as   he thrust out exploratory mental fingers. The door was open. McNey was lying on the floor, his mind blanked, blood seeping from a red stain on his side. The intruder? Who-
Sergei Callahan. Where-Hidden. And armed.
So am 1, Line thought, his dagger springing into his hand. Telepathically you are untrained. In a fight you can't win. That was probably true. Telepathy took the place of prescience with the Baldies. Any Baldy could outguess and conquer a non-Baldy, and Line was not yet thoroughly trained in the use of the telepathic function.
He probed awkwardly. And, suddenly, he knew where Callahan was.
Behind the door. Where he could strike Line in the back when the boy entered the laboratory. He had not expected the untrained Baldy to discover the ambush until too late, and even as Line realized the situation, Callahan made a move to spring out.
All Line's weight smashed against the panel, slamming the door back against the wall. Callahan was caught. Pressed helplessly between the two metal planes-door and wall-he tried to brace himself, to wriggle free. His hand, gripping a dagger, snaked out. Line dropped his own weapon, put his back against the door, and planted his feet more firmly. The door frame gave him good purchase. Veins stood out on his forehead as he ground, crushed, drove the door back with all his strength.
What  had   Dave   Barton   said   once?   "Kill   them   with machines-" This was a machine-one of the oldest. The lever.
Suddenly Callahan began to scream. His agonized thought begged for mercy. In a moment his strength would fail, he pleaded. "Don't-don't crush me!"
His strength failed.
Line's heavy shoulders surged. There was one frightful mental scream from Callahan, more agonizing than the audible sound he made, Bnd Line let the door swing slowly away from the wall. A body collapsed with its movement. Line picked up his dagger, used it efficiently, and then turned to McNey.
There was a puddle of blood on the floor, but McNey still lived. Callahan had not had time to finish his task.
Line became busy administering first aid.
This was it.
It was past midnight. In the cellar laboratory, McNey leaned back in his chair, wincing as he felt the pressure of the bandages about his ribs. He blinked at the fluorescents, sighed, and rubbed his forehead.
His hand hovered over the notepad. An equation was lacking. He wasn't quite ready to think of it just yet.
But the job was almost finished. It would give the Baldies a weapon, at last, against the paranoids. They couldn't tap the paranoid's secret wave length, but they could-
Not yet. Don't think of it yet.
Even Line had helped, unknowingly, by one suggestion he had made. Mimicry. Yes, that was one answer. The paranoids would not even suspect-
Not yet.
Well, Line had gone back to his Hedgehound tribe and his Hedgehound squaw. In the end, the psychological fixation implanted in the boy's mind had proved stronger than the strong bonds of race. Too bad, because Line had had something that few Baldies possessed-an innate hardness, a resourceful strength that might prove useful in the dark days that were coming.
The dark days that might yet be postponed, for a while, if-
Marian was asleep. McNey forced his thought from her. After years of marriage, they were so closely attuned that even that casual thought might waken her. And not until she had fallen asleep had he dared tp bring his mind to bear on this ultimate problem. There could be no secrets between Baldies.
But this would be a secret-the one that would give Dave
Barton a weapon against the paranoids. It was the unbreakable code that McNey had searched for for two years now.
It was a secret method of communication for Baldies.
Now. Work fast. Work fast!
McNey's stylus moved rapidly. He made a few adjustments in the machine before him, sealed its fastenings thoroughly, and watched power-flow develop. After a while, something came out of a small opening at one end of the device, a fine mesh of wire, with a few flatly curved' attachments. McNey took off his wig, fitted the wire cap to his head, and donned the wig again. After a glance at a mirror, he nodded, satisfied.
The machine was permanently set now to construct these communicator caps when raw materials were fed into it. The matrix, the blueprint, had been built into the device, and the end result was a communicator gadget, easily hidden under a wig, which every non-paranoid Baldy probably would eventually wear. As for the nature of the gadget-
The problem had been to find a secret means of communication, akin to the paranoids' untappable wave band. And telepathy itself is simply a three-phase oscillation of electromagneto-gravitic energy, emanating from the specialized colloid of the human brain. But telepathy, per se, can be received by any sensitive mind en rapport with the sender.
And so the trick had been-find a method of artificial transmission. The brain, when properly stimulated by electric energy, will give out electromagnet-gravitic energy, undetect-able except to telepaths because there are no instruments sensitive to this output. But when the paranoids would receive such radiations, without the unscrambling assistance of one of McNey's little caps, they wouldn't suspect a code.
Because they'd be hearing-sensing-only static.
It was a matter of camouflage. The waves masqueraded. They masqueraded on a wave band that nobody used, for that particular band was too close to that of the radio communicators used in thousands of private helicopters. For these radios, five thousand megacycles was normal; fifteen thousand manifested itself as a harmless harmonic static, and McNey's device simply added more squirts of static to that harmonic interference.
True, direction finders could receive the signals and locate them-but helicopters, like Baldies, were scattered all over the country, and the race traveled a good deal, both by
necessity and by choice. The paranoids could locate the source of the fifteen thousand megacycles emanating from the wire caps-but why should they think to?
It was an adaptation of the Hedgehounds' code of imitating bird and animal calls. A tenderfoot in the woods wouldn't look for a language in the cry of an owl-and the paranoids wouldn't be seeking secret messages in what was apparently only static.
So, in these light, easily disguised mesh helmets, the problem was solved, finally. The power source would be an automatic tapping of free energy, an imperceptible drain on any nearby electrical generator, and the master machine itself, which made the communicators, was permanently sealed. No one, except McNey himself, knew even the principles of the new communication system. And, since the machine would be guarded well, the paranoids would never know, any more than Barton himself would know, what made the gadget tick. Barton would realize its effectiveness, and that was all. The list of raw materials needed was engraved on the feeder-hopper of the machine; nothing else was necessary. So Barton would possess no secrets to betray inadvertently to the paranoids, for the secrets were all sealed in the machine, and in one other place.
McNey took off the wire cap and laid it on the table. He turned off the machine. Then, working quickly, he destroyed the formulas and any traces of notes or raw materials. He wrote a brief note to Barton, explaining what was necessary.
There was no more time left after that. McNey sank back in his chair, his tired, ordinary face without expression. He didn't look like a hero. And, just then, he wasn't thinking about the future of the Baldy race, or the fact that the other place where the secret was sealed was in his brain.
As his hands loosened the bandage about his ribs, he was thinking of Marian. And as his life began to flow out with the blood from his reopened wound, he thought: / wish I could say good-by to you, Marian. But I mustn't touch you, not even with my mind. We're too close. You'd wake up, and-
1 hope you won't be. too lonely, my dear-
He was going back. The Hedgehounds weren't his people, but Cassie was his wife. And so he had betrayed his own race, betrayed the future itself, perhaps, and followed the
wandering tribe across three states until now, with the autumn winds blowing coldly through bare leaves, he had come to the end of his search. She was there, waiting. She was there, just beyond that ridge. He could feel it, sense it, and his heart stirred to the homecoming.
Betrayal, then. One man could not matter in the life of a race. There would be a few Baldy children less than if he had married Alexa. The Baldies would have to work out then- own salvation-
But he wasn't thinking about that as he leaped the last hurdle and ran to where Cassie was sitting near the fire. He was thinking about Cassie, and the glossy darkness of her hair, and the soft curve of her cheek. He called her name, again and again.
She didn't believe it at first. He saw doubt in her eyes and in her mind. But that doubt faded when he dropped beside her, a strange figure in his exotic town clothing, and took her hi his arms.
"Line," she said, "you've come back."
He managed to say, "I've come back," and stopped talking and thinking for a while. It was a long time before Cassie thought to show him something in which he might be expected to evince interest.
He did. His eyes widened until Cassie laughed and said that it wasn't the first baby in the world.
"I... us ... you mean-"
"Sure. Us. This is Line Junior. How'd you like him? He takes after his dad, too."
"What?"
"Hold him." As Cassie put the baby into his arms, Line saw what she meant. The small head was entirely hairless, and there was no sign of lashes or eyebrows.
"But... you ain't bald, Cassie. How-"
"You sure are, though, Line. That's why."
Line put his free arm around her and drew her close. He couldn't see the future; he couldn't realize the implications of this first attempt at mixing races. He only knew a profound and inarticulate relief that his child was like himself. It went deeper than the normal human desire to perpetuate one's own kind. This was reprieve. He had not, after all, wholly failed his race. Alexa would never bear his children, but his children need not be of alien stock in spite of it.
That deep warping which the Hedgehounds had wrought
upon himself must not happen to the child. /'// train him, he thought. He'll know from the start-he'll learn to be proud he's a Baldy. And then if they ever need him . . . no, if We ever need him . . . he'll be ready where I failed.
The race would go on. -It was good and satisfying and right that the union of Baldy and human could result in Baldy children. The line need not come to dead end because a man married outside his own kind. A man must follow his instinct, as Line had done. It was good to belong to a race that allowed even that much treason to its tradition, and exacted no lasting penalty. The line was too strong to break. The dominant strain would go on.
Perhaps McNey's invention could postpone the day of the pogrom. Perhaps it could not. But if the day came, still the Baldies would go on. Underground, hidden, persecuted, still they must go on. And perhaps it would be among the Hedge-hounds that the safest refuge could be found. For they had an emissary there, now-
Maybe this was right, Line thought, his arm around Cassie and the child. Once I belonged here. Now I don't. I'll never be happy for good in the old life. I know too much- But here I'm a link between the public life and the secret life of the refugees. Maybe some day they'll need that link. "Line," he mused, and grinned.
Off in the distance a growl of song began to lift. The tribesmen, coming back from the day's hunting. He was surprised, a little, to realize he felt no more of the old, deep, bewildered distrust of them. He understood now. He knew them as they could never know themselves, and he had learned enough in the past months to evaluate that knowledge. Hedgehounds were no longer the malcontents and misfits of civilization. Generations of weeding-out had distilled them. Americans had always been a distillation in themselves of the pioneer, the adventurous drawn from the old world. The buried strain came out again in their descendants. The Hedgehounds were nomads now, yes; they were woodsmen, yes; they were fighters, always. So were the first Americans. The same hardy stock that might, some day, give refuge again to the oppressed and the hunted.
The song grew louder through the trees, Jesse James Hart-well's roaring bass leading all the others.
"Hurrah, hurrah, we bring the jubilee! Hurrah, hurrah, the flag that makes men free-"