To Ride Pegasus

A Womanly Talent

“If you were one whit less honorable, Daffyd op Owen,” exclaimed Joel Andres heatedly, “you and your whole Center could go…go fly a kinetic kite.”

The passionate senator was one of those restlessly energetic men who gave the appearance of continuous motion even in rare moments of stasis. Joel Andres was rigid now-with aggravation. The object of his frustration, Daffyd op Owen, Director of the East American Parapsychological Research and Training Center, was his antithesis, physically and emotionally. Both men, however, had the same indefinable strength and purposefulness, qualities which set them apart from lesser men.

“I can’t win support for my Bill,” Andres continued, trying another tack and pacing the thick-piled green carpeting of op Owen’s office, “if you consistently play into Mansfield Zeusman’s hands with this irrational compulsion to tell everything you know. If only on the grounds that what you ‘know’ is not generally acceptable as reliable ‘knowledge.’

“And don’t tell me that familiarity breeds contempt, Dave. The unTalented are never going to be contemptuous of the psychic abilities, they’re going to continue being scared stiff. It’s human nature to fear-and distrust-what is different. Surely,” and Andres flung his arms wide, “you’ve studied enough behavioral psychology to understand that basic fact.”

“My Talent permits me to look below the surface rationalizations and uncover the…”

“But you cannot read the minds of every single one of the men who must vote on this Bill, Dave. Nor can you alter their thinking. Not with your thinking and your ethics!” Joel was almost derisive as he pointed a nicotined finger accusingly at his friend. “And don’t give me that wheeze about lawmakers being intelligent, thoughtful men!”

Op Owen smiled tolerantly at his friend, unaffected by the younger man’s histrionics. “Not even when Senator Zeusman steals a march on us with that so apt quotation from Pope?”

Andres made a startled noise of exasperation, then caught the look in the other’s eyes and laughed.

“Yeah, he sure caught me flatfooted there.” He deepened his voice somewhat to mimic the affected bass of Mansfield Zeusman:

“ ‘Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish or a sparrow fall…’

“What a rallying cry that is! Why didn’t I think of it first? Mind you,” and

Andres was deadly serious again, “that quote is pure genius…for the opposition. Spikes our pitch in a dozen places. The irony is that it would be just as powerful for us if we’d only thought of it first. Dave, won’t you reconsider,” Joel asked, leaning across the table to the telepath, “eliminating the precogs from the Bill? That’s what’s hanging it up now in Committee. I’m sure I could get it put on…”

“The precogs need the legal protection most of all,” op Owen replied with unusual vehemence, a momentary flash of alarm crossing his face.

“I know, I know,” and Andres tossed a hand ceiling-ward in resignation. “But that’s the facet of the parapsychic that scares-and fascinates-people most.”

“And that is exactly why I insist we be as candid as possible on all phases of the extrasensory perception Talents. Then people will become as used to them as to finders,’ ‘ports’ and ‘paths.’ Henry Darrow was so right about that.”

Joel Andres whirled back to the desk, gripping the edges fiercely. “The prophet Darrow notwithstanding, you don’t tell suspicious, frightened people everything. They automatically assume you’re holding something back because they would. No one dares to be so honest anymore. Therefore they are sure that what you’re withholding is far worse than what you’ve readily admitted.” He caught the adamant gleam in Daffyd’s eye and unexpectedly capitulated. “All right. All right. But I insist that we continue to emphasize what the other Talents are already able to do…in their narrow specialized ways. Once people can stomach the idea that there are limits on individual psionic Talents, that all Talents are not mind readers cum weight throwers cum fire dowsers cum crystal-ballseers, all rolled up into one frightening package, they’ll start treating them as you want Talents treated: as professional specialists, trained in one area of a varied profession and entitled to professional immunity in that area if they are licensed and registered with the Centers. Don’t,” and the hand went up again as Daffyd tried to interrupt, “tell them you’re experimenting to find out how to broaden every Talented mind. Don’t ask for the whole piece of bread with jam on it, Dave! You won’t get it, but you will get protection for your people in the practice of their speciality, even your precogs. I’ll bear down heavily on the scientific corroboration of authentic foresights,” and Andres began to pace a tight rectangle in front of op Owen’s desk, his dark head down, his gestures incisive, “the use of computers to correlate details and estimate reliability of data, the fact that sometimes three and four precogs come up with the same incident, seen from different angles. And most importantly-that the Center never issues an official warning unless the computer agrees that sufficient data coincides between Incident and reality…”

“Please emphasize that we admit to human fallibility and use computers to limit human error.”

Joel frowned at op Owen’s droll interjection. “Then I’ll show how the foresight prevented or averted the worst of the Incidents. That Monterey Quake is a heaven-sent example. No heroes perished, even if a few sparrows did fall from gas discharges.”

“I thought it was the meddling with the sparrow’s fall that perturbs Senator Zeusman” Daffyd remarked wryly. “For want of that seed, the grain won’t sprout…”

“Hmmm, yes, it does! ‘What will be, will be,’” and Andres mimicked Zeusman’s voice again.

“Since he initiated Pope,” said op Owen, “I’d reply ‘Whatever is, is right.’ “

“You want me to turn Papist now, huh?” Joel grinned wickedly.

Daffyd chuckled as he continued, “Pope also advises, ‘Be candid where we can but vindicate the ways of God to man!’”

The gently delivered quote had an instant effect on the senator, comparable to touching a match to a one-second fuse. Midway to explosion, Andres snapped his mouth shut, sighed extravagantly and rolled his slightly yellowed eyes heavenwards.

“You are the most difficult man to help, Daffyd op Owen!”

“That’s only because I’m aware how carefully we must move in the promulgation of this Bill, Joel. I don’t want it backfiring at the wrong time, when some of the basic research now in progress becomes demonstrable. The Talents can’t be hamstrung by obsolete statutes imperfectly realized on a scrabbling compromise basis.”

“Dave, you want to run before you can walk?”

“No, but trouble has been foreseen.”

“Darrow again, huh? Or are you hoist on your own petard?” Joel waggled a finger triumphantly. “Trouble stemming from current non-protection. Go cast up a precog after the Bill is passed.”

“Ah-ha” and Daffyd mimicked Joel now, “but we don’t see the Bill passing!”

That rendered Andres speechless.

“And we are hoist on our own petard,” the telepath continued with a hint of sorrowful resignation in his voice, “because all our preventive methods are affecting the future, unfortunately, much as Senator Zeusman presented the syndrome in his Sparrow’s Fall peroration. That was such a masterful speech,” op Owen said with rueful envy. “Valid, too, for as surely as the Center issues a warning, allowing people a chance to avert or prevent tragedy, they have already prejudiced the events from happening as they were foreseen. That’s the paradox.

Yet how, how can ethical man stand aside and let a hero perish, or even a sparrow fall, when he knows that he can prevent unnecessary or premature loss.”

“The Monterey Quake could not have been prevented,” Joel reminded him, then blinked in amazement. “You’re not holding out on me, are you? You haven’t found a kinetic strong enough to hold the earth’s surface together?”

Dave’s laughter was a spontaneous outburst of delight at his friend’s discomposure.

“No, no. At least…not yet,” he said just to watch the outraged expression on Andres’s mobile face.

There were few people with whom Daffyd op Owen could relax or indulge in his flights of humor and hyperbole. “Seriously, Joel, the Monterey Quake is a spectacular Incident and a prime example of the concerted use of Talent, minimizing the loss of life or property. We have never had so many precogs stimulated in their separate affinities. And it’s the most concrete example of why precogs need legal protection. Do you realize that the Western Center was deluged with damage suits for the tsunami that followed?”

“That was predictable.”

“But we issued no warnings. And it’s against such irrational attitudes that precogs need legal protection more than any other Talent. Theirs is stimulated by mental perceptions as erratic as a smell in the morning air, a glance at a photo, the sound of a name. In a sense, precog is tremendously unreliable because it cannot be used as consciously as telepathy, teleportation and telekinesis. And to protect the Talent as well as the Center, we insist on computer corroboration when details are coherently specific. We never issue a public warning until the computer admits reliability…and we get damned because we have ‘heard’ and not spoken. Of course, a number of our precogs have become absorbed into business where peculiar affinities place them. For instance,” and Daffyd held up a tape-file, “this young man, who’s applying for progeny approval, is a fire conscious. But he’s one reason this city has such low fire-insurance rates: his Talent prevents them-a blessing indirectly passed on to every resident…”

“Hmmm, but scarcely spectacular enough to register with the average egocentric

Joe Citizen,” said Andres sourly. He was restless with Daffyd’s earnest review of facts he knew well. “However, every little bit helps, Dave, and the public moves a lot faster pro bona pocketbook.”

“True, exactly true, and they get rather nasty when we try to save them money and will not understand that a legitimate forewarning automatically alters the future, even to the point of preventing the foreseen Incident which will have cost old publican money, or time, or effort he then feels was unnecessary.”

“And there we are, right back at square one,” said Joel in flat disgust. “That is what Mansfield calls ‘meddling’ and what makes him fight this Bill with every ounce of his outraged moralistic, neo-religious, mock-ethical fibre. Remember, he’s backed by the transport lobbies, and every time one of your precogs hits that jolly little brotherhood, causing delays, hurried inspections, the whole jazz-you got a number-one headache. Because, when the predictions don’t happen as predicted, Transport swears your meddling is superstitious interference, un called for, unnecessary and nothing would have happened anyway.”

Daffyd sighed wearily. “How many times have we found bombs? Fuel leaks? Averted hijacks? Metal fatigue…mechanical justifications?”

“Doesn’t signify, Dave, not if it touches the pocketbook of the Transport Companies. Remember, every precog implies fault: human or mechanical, since the Companies will not recognize Providence as a force. And human or mechanical, the public loses faith in the Company thus stigmatized. When Company profits are hit, Company gets mad, sues the precog for defamation of character, interference, et cetera.”

“Then we are to allow the traveling public to fry in their own juice or be spread across the fields because a precog has seen a crash but doesn’t want to offend a Company? For want of a screw the nail was lost!” op Owen’s usually soothing voice was rough with asperity. “Damn it, Joel, we have to preserve impartiality, and warn any one or anything that is touched by the precognitive Talent, or we do usurp the position of the Almighty by withholding that evidence. I don’t care if the transportation companies then decide to disregard the warning-that’s their problem. But I want my people protected when, in good faith and based on computer-accepted detail, they issue that warning. We have no ax to grind, commercially, thanks to the Darrow endowment and member support, but we must continue to be impartial.”

“I hope your altruism is not going to be your downfall,” said Joel, his manner unusually grave.

“There’s been no warning that it will,” Daffyd replied. A hint of irritation in his voice.

“You’re too honest to be up against us crook politicians,” Joel said, grinning, then glanced at his watch. “Wup. Gotta go.”

“You push yourself too hard, Joel. You don’t look well.”

“A bit liverish, that’s all, and no snooping.”

“Not without permission and you know it.”

“Hah! Among friends, I don’t trust telepaths. Say, how’s the recruiting program?” Joel asked as he swooped up his travel cape and case.

“We get hopefuls every week,” the director replied as he escorted the senator to the elevator. “Sometimes we even catch a few young ones, before they learn to suppress a perfectly normal ability.”

“That’s another phrase you should delete around Zeus-man,” Joel said. “He will not buy your premise that every mind has psionic Talent.”

“But, Joel, that is scientifically valid. We know that those who possess Talent have strong, healthy twenty-first chromosome pairs. It is certainly admissible evidence that when the twenty-first is blurred or damaged to any degree, brain function is inhibited. And, with the Downs ’s Syndrome, you have mental retardation.”

“Don’t beleaguer me,” Joel said with widened eyes of innocence, “I believe!” He laid a hand on his heart. “I couldn’t doubt-not after that ‘finder’ located my brother in the mine shaft before he bled to death. If we could only subject Mansfield Zeusman to such an experience, he wouldn’t be so skeptical. Can’t one of your pet Talents do something about that? I thought they always keep an eye on controversial men to prevent assassination and stuff.”

Op Owen gave a snort. “Would Senator Zeusman honor a precog foreseeing his own demise?”

“Hmmm. Probably not. Say, you’re not funded on the Government Research Program, are you?”

“No, thank God. The Henner Bequest was reserved for that. Why?”

“Hmmm. Just that Zeusman is extending this argument against the Bill to all ‘specious’-as he terms it-forms of research, government funded. And spring is appropriations time, you know.”

“Fortunately, we’ve never had that kind of pressure.”

“Talented of you,” Joel said with a grin.

Behind him the elevator door slid open and a young woman, obviously in a hurry, ran out, right into the muscular frame of the young Senator.

She blurted out an apology, flushing with embarrassment as Andres reached out to steady her. Then her eyes opened wider as she saw op Owen and one hand flew to her mouth. “I’m awfully sorry, sir.”

Just as Daffyd recognized Ruth Horvath, he also identified the combined emotions of shame at her precipitous arrival into a distinguished champion of the Talented, regret for her impulsiveness in coming to the Tower at this hour, and the underlying hope and apprehension that had compelled her to come.

Instinctively, Daffyd touched her with soothing reassurances: but Joel Andres’s amiable and admiring glance was the tonic the pretty woman needed.

“No harm done, I assure you, Miss…?”

“Mrs. Horvath…Senator Andres,” Daffyd said and watched Joel’s expression change from delighted interest to flattering chagrin.

“I do apologize, Senator,” Ruth repeated, her cheeks blush-stained again.

“And I apologize for being in the wrong place at the wrong tune and…” an extravagant sigh “…too late.” He bowed deeply to Ruth, reluctantly stepping aside to let her pass.

Instead she fumbled with the elevator button.

“I’m on my lunch break,” she said with a stammer. “I’ve got to get back.”

The panel slid open and Andres stepped in beside her, one ringer jamming the “hold” button.

“Me, too,” he said, grinning down at her.

“Your file is on my desk right now, Ruth,” Daffyd said, suddenly comprehending the reason for her visit and her hesitancy in mentioning the subject in Andres’s presence. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Her face lit up, her eyes became eager and, as she glanced away, Daffyd thought he saw the shine of tears.

“Take care of yourself, Joel. You’re working too hard.”

“A pleasure, I assure you.” Joel’s laugh was cut off by the closing door.

Daffyd op Owen stood looking at the indicator panel for a few moments before he turned slowly back to his isolated tower office. He had much to think about. Not that he would deflect one centimeter from his course of action. Only his firm beliefs sustained him for it didn’t require precog, only intelligent extrapolation-which some uninformed people insisted was the essence of precog-to determine the difficulties still faced by the Talented all over the world. The

Bill was so vital a forward step, raising the Talents from the onerous category of “mental chiropractors,” (Senator Zeusman’s phrase, though chiropractic treatment had long been an accredited branch of medicine), to a creditable position among professional abilities. Mansfield Zeusman had already stalled the Bill in Committee for months, was capable of stalling it through the summer, and keeping it off the agenda next year. The senator was hoping to find some discrediting Incident that would forever banish hope of legal protection for the Talented.

The sheer genius of that Pope quotation was a measure of their opponent’s worth, op Owen mused as he turned to the mass of administrative files awaiting him. The pity of it was that the quote would have been much more applicable to the Talent side of the argument. Come to think of it, much of Pope’s “Essay on Man” was to the point.

Other pertinent lines came easily out of mental storage. Not much that Daffyd op Owen had once seen could elude his recall…a blessing as well as a handicap.

With too much knowledge for the Skeptic side, With too much weakness for the

Stoic’s pride, He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest: In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast: In doubt his mind or body to prefer Born but to die and reasn’ning but to err…

“Enough!” and op Owen roused from introspection to direction. He flipped open the nearest tape case and slapped it into the playback. It seemed somehow meet that it was the Horvaths’s progeny application. Were op Owen a superstitious man he could have accounted it a good omen: a favorable auspice for the work he and his fellow directors around the world were inaugurating. Breed like to like, strengthen strong genetic Talent traits and develop, not the super race of omniscient, omnipotent superpeople Zeusman basically feared, but people trained and conditioned from childhood to use their Talents for the benefit of man. And, by such service, force the World to recognize the treasure that can be unlocked in the unused, untapped portion of the human brain.

A flaming, shattering precog caught Lajos Horvath at the moment when REM sleep was over and his unconscious mind was rousing from that phase of rest.

His groan of anguish awakened his wife instantly. With the reflex of training.

Ruth flipped the recorder and pulled the retractable electrode Goosegg net to his head, expertly clamping the metal discs on the circles of his scalp that had been permanently depilated.

Blinking her eyes to see the reading in the dawn-dim room, Ruth watched the definite pattern of an Incident emerge. Center was already picking it up for authentication. The Incident lasted a scant eleven seconds before the brain waves settled back to a calm reading. She lay back, going through the discipline that would relax her and prevent her from imposing her haste-urgency reaction on Lajos. As soon as he roused, she must be composed enough to question him for a verbal report.

She achieved the proper repose quickly, suppressing the thrill of satisfaction at her success. She was no longer as troubled by flashes of envy that Lajos possessed a valid Talent while hers was so nebulous as to elude identification.

Now it was enough for her to know that, by the exercise of the deep empathy which existed between them, by her womanliness, she made his development more certain. Lajos needed her as a buffer, a source of solace from the sharp edges of Talent. Even the strongest personality could succumb to the Cassandra complex that destroyed the sanity of the unwary precog. Why was it, Ruth mused in a quiet inner voice, that tragedy has such a vicious way of reaching out of the mists of the future: like a falling man, blindly grabbing at anything to restore balance and avert his fall?

Again the needle rushed across the graph, a slight whoosh barely audible in the quiet room. Ruth glanced over to make sure the Incident was being beamed to the

Center and noticed the smile on her husband’s face. A smile? A happy premonition? She forced herself to relax, unaccountably assailed by a raving curiosity. Lajos so rarely had happy foresights, and fleetingly she regretted that he was a precog.

Lajos stirred restlessly. He was waking now. She turned on the voice recorder and leaned towards him.

“What is it? What do you see?” she asked in the soft persuasive voice the Center had taught her to use at these times. Her ability to stimulate his verbal accounts was highly praised, for it was sometimes difficult for the precog to articulate the semi-real into sufficient detail for preventive or supportive action.

“Flames!” Lajos groaned. “Must it always be flames?” He sat bolt upright in bed then, his brown eyes wide as he stared straight ahead at the retinal image of his premonitory vision. The electrodes were jerked from his skull, retracting with a metallic clink into the case. “The ship’s burning, exploding. Throwing flaming debris across the harbor into the suburbs. Damp it! Deflect! Shield those passengers. Watch out! The propellant will spray. It’s exploding. Contain it!”

“Markings on the liner?” a gentle but insistent voice whispered from the intercom.

Lajos shook his head, blinking furiously in an attempt to hold the fading sight. “It’s awash with flame. I think I see an eight, a four, a three-or is it another eight? It’s a Reynarder. It must be. They’re the only ones who use that class.”

“Which class?” the inexorable whisper wanted to know. Suddenly Lajos sagged, panting with shock, cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He lay back exhausted. “It’s gone,” he moaned. “It’s gone.” “You had a second one,” Ruth said. “What was that about?”

Lajos’s brows drew together in a half frown as he brushed his straight black hair out of his face. He kept it overlong to hide the depilated circles where the electrodes fit. His lips curved in a half-sided smile. “Something good?” he asked hopefully.

Ruth suppressed her sigh. Lajos rarely detailed the felicitous ones.

“Incident validated, a strong reading, Lajos,” the intercom voice said. “Report in as soon as you’re able.”

“They’ll check it out, won’t they?” Lajos asked needlessly.

“Action already initiated.”

Lajos lay so still that Ruth knew it was not passive quiescence but rigid strain. Another thorn in the Talented’s side was the harsh realization that their warnings were often disregarded and they were forced to see their predictions come horribly true. Ruth wiped the sweat from Lajos’s forehead and began to massage his neck and shoulders. After a moment he grinned weakly up at her. “What a way to start the day, huh?” “At least you ended on a happy note.

Maybe that means they’ll prevent?”

“If they can correlate enough data, in enough time,” he said gloomily. “And Reynarder bothers to listen!” He flopped onto his stomach, pounding the mattress with impotent fists.

Ruth transferred her attention to his muscular back. She loved the line of him, the broad double plateau of his shoulder blades with the small mounds of hard muscle, the graceful curve that swept down to the narrow waist, the hollow of his spine, the Grecian beauty of his buttocks. She quickly suppressed a flare of desire. This was not the time to intrude sex on his personal anguish. And she knew that her intense sexual hunger for him stemmed from a yearning for the child of his seed. A daughter, tall and fair, with Lajos’s dimples in her cheek. A son, strong-backed and arrogant, with thick black straight hair.

This hunger for his child was so primal, it paralyzed the sophistication overlaid by education and social reflexes. Nowadays a woman was expected to assume more than the ancient duties required of her. Nowadays, and Ruth smiled to herself, the sophists called those womanly talents, Maintenance, Repair and

Replacement, instead of housekeeping, cooking, nursing and having babies, but the titles didn’t alter the duties nor curb the resurgent desires. And, when you got down to it, men still explored new ground, even if it were alien lands, and defended their homes and families. You could call Lajos’s precog a kind of an early-warning defense system. Well, then, she’d added the chore of being Cerebral-Recording Secretary to Maintenance and Repair but they’d better let her Replace soon or…

She concentrated on more soothing thoughts, using her latent empathy to ease his remorse. When he began to take deep long breaths, she knew he was conquering the aftermath of the Incident, dispelling its destructive despondency. He had done everything he could. He could not change the course of every fated life. Some events had to come to their dire conclusions, for out of present tragedy so often rose future triumph; the result of sorrowful recriminations was often the catalyst of progress. A specious rationale in the Silver-lined Cloud Approach but true enough to save the sanity of the Talented.

It was a bitter thing, Ruth understood, to be Talented: bitter and wonderful.

But it was worse to have evidence of Talent and never know what it was.

Nonsense, she told herself sternly, discarding these reflections, you can’t be what you can’t be.

“Ahh, you’ve got the right spot,” Lajos said gratefully and she doubled her efforts across the heavy shoulder muscles.

And yet, when she anticipated his desires and needs, sometimes the words from his mouth, she wondered just how she had tapped that need; just what might awaken the occluded Talent within her.

The Center believed that psionic abilities were latent human characteristics: their absence due to malfunction of the necessary brain synapses or, even more basically, underdevelopment due to a protein lack in the gene. When chromosomes in the twenty-first pair were damaged or blurred, no Talent was detected. There was no aberration in Ruth’s chromosomes, and although she tested as Talented, her ability was unidentifiable. She had never been able to stimulate an Incident involving any of the known abilities. She’d met Lajos during her testing: they’d been approached by the Eastern American Center after finishing their secondary schooling and had qualified for the six-months’ training designed to stimulate latent Talent. Their genetic history had been taped back to the fourth generation. They had endured hours of cerebral recording on the Goosegg under a variety of stimuli. Ruth was finally labeled “indeterminate”; Lajos showed strong precog tendencies.

Ruth still secretly hoped that her Talent would develop. She’d been assured that this was a possibility: they cited her high empathy rating, her ability to anticipate attitudes and actions of those nearest and dearest to her. True, she might be no more than a receptive telempath, one unable to broadcast but receptive. Ruth therefore alternated between hope and despair: being a practical creature, she dwelt mostly on the pessimistic side of the pendulum, refusing to believe anything but the most conclusive evidence. This attitude was reinforced during Lajos’s worst Incidents, when she wanted no part of the cruel gift.

Lajos Horvath was one of several thousand Talented people, licensed and registered with the Center; devoted to its precepts and ideals, contributing all of his salary to it. The Center was not paternalistic, nor did it require any recompense. But the Talented preferred to live together, if possible, on or near, the Center’s grounds at Beech-woods, among their peers: reassured and reinforced. As the Center “policed” its own members, it also protected them.

Ruth had no specific objections to their situation: she had willingly taken the course orienting unTalented partners to their gifted spouses. She would have undergone a far more arduous requirement, so deep was her love of Lajos. But lately, obedience to E.A.C. had begun to gall Ruth and it was not due to any fault of the Center’s. She recognized that.

The muted buzz of the intercom roused both of them. Lajos propped himself up on his elbows, his profile towards her so that she observed the thin bitter line of his mouth and knew that he was steeling himself.

“Lajos,” it was Daffyd op Owen, “you were correct. A class 7 Reynarder had a propellant leak at Buffalo jet-port.”

Something in the director’s slow deep voice told them that Lajos’s information had not averted.

“And?” Lajos’s question was a firm demand for the truth.

“We had to compute the variable details with the possible airports near water, flights landing or departing on the Reynarder line. We got only one other personal precog involving the Incident but your data alone-particularly the registry-was sufficient. The loss would have been catastrophic without your warning. Teleports on the Rescue Squad deflected most of the flaming wreckage into the Lake before it could land in the suburbs. Kinetics managed to shield the passenger deck until the propellant could be foamed. The passengers and crew suffered massive heat prostration but all will live. Ruth, does he need a tranquillizer?”

“No!” the negative exploded from Lajos’s lips.

“Good lad!” op Owen’s voice was warm with approval. “We’ve authenticated the Incident. It averted a major tragedy: one more pound of evidence on our side of the scales for the Bill. And the passengers and jetport personnel know who gave the warning.”

Lajos went limp with relief as the Director signed off with expressions of gratitude. Lajos half-turned his face and Ruth didn’t know for a moment whether to comfort him or not. She waited. Finally he gave a long shuddering sigh and relaxed, one hand slipping over the side of the bed, fingers limp, the veins in his forearm bulging, blue under his unusually fair skin.

“Then what I saw-didn’t happen, Ruth. The jet didn’t turn into a flaming hull, exploding all over the suburbs. So what did I see? Which didn’t happen because I saw it? Because my seeing it was sufficient to alter the future?” He shook his head, his beard stubble rasping against the tightly drawn bedsheet, but his voice was no longer hoarse with recrimination; it was calm: his philosophy was asserting itself.

Ruth felt the muscles in her shoulders unknot and only then realized how tense she had become, waiting for his reaction.

“ ‘A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox,’” she chanted lightly, stroking his back with her fingertips. “My darling pirate,” and she kissed his cheek.

Lajos bounced out of bed and stretched, his sleep-pants falling off his narrow hips. He grabbed them back up, not out of modesty but to keep from tripping over them on the way to the bathroom.

“Maybe the good precog you had…it followed a bare sixty seconds after the first, you know,” Ruth remarked later as she served his breakfast, “was the realization that you had averted.”

Lajos considered that, then shook his head. “No. The two were definitely non-related.”

“Why is it,” Ruth asked with mock shrewishness, “that you can detail the horrors but not the happies?”

He didn’t know and began to eat heartily, his appetite indicative of restored equilibrium.

“Got to run, honey. Be a busy day. And that’s no precog. It’s a sure thing.” He grinned then kissed her soundly. “Annual review of contracts, and Zeusman notwithstanding, the Firm handles the government’s insurances in this city.”

Ruth would have to hurry as well. She disliked being late although her job was not essential. She fitted filaments to fractional feeders, an intricate, delicate operation which required deft hands even with waldo-aids, and a certain tenacious patience with micro-movements. Her employers never objected to her occasional delays as they employed teleports and telekinetics for the transportation of delicate equipment and to assemble by remote control the “hot” components of instrumentation to be used in the Jupiter probes. Ruth did not need to work, for Lajos was highly paid, but she preferred to keep busy until their request for progeny was approved. She wanted so to be a full-time mother.

There was unlikely to be a problem in receiving approval-eventually-but anyone was liable to pick up a dose of accidental radiation that could blur or damage chromosomes. They knew their genetic patterns were sound and they had completed the three years’ probation to establish the compatibility and stability of their marriage. For the last six months they had undergone continual egg and sperm cell check for possible aberrations. It was time-consuming, but who wanted a handicapped child? It had taken years to weed out the psychedelic damages that had resulted in the freaks of the late Seventies and early Eighties. There were still occasional mutants as a result of the heavy Solar Winds in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It was only common sense to check every variable.

But Ruth found it hard to be patient. She asked for very little of what her heritage had once seemed to offer. She didn’t mind being an unidentifiable Talent, she had adjusted to it. She didn’t really mind the often worrisome role of a passive observer to the mental agonies of Lajos’s perceptions: she loved him and she helped him. She did mind the growing sense of futility. Nowadays, with shelter and food assured one, with the excitement of space explorations to capture the imagination, with leisure to develop interests and hobbies, everyone had the opportunity to use their full capabilities, yet she was constantly frustrated. If only she could be a full woman to Lajos, not just caring for him, but raising his children, preferably his Talented children! She would do everything in her power to make sure they would succeed where she had failed.

On his firm’s table of organization, Lajos Horvath was listed as a “Contract Analyst and Underwriter” of the Eastern Headquarters of the Insurance Company. Conservative in so many areas, the insurance field had been one of the first major industries to see the advantages of staff ‘precogs’; particularly one such as Lajos whose accuracy in fire-hazard control had been established beyond question.

Most of his precognitive Incidents dealt with flaming substances, as other precogs seemed to have reliable affinities for water, autos, metals or certain types of personalities. There was a friendly debate within the Center whether “finders” were precogs or clairvoyants, but they had affinity for “lost items,” organic and inorganic. There were four in Lajos’ Firm, and they represented huge annual savings for their employers.

Once Lajos’s precogs would have been ascribed to astuteness or hunches or shrewd extrapolations. Indeed, he himself was perfectly willing to put the vaguer apprehensions under that generality. But training and sensitivity had sharpened many “hunches” into definitive perceptions: Check the cellar of that building for dangerous refuse, the janitor is lazy and has not discarded all possible combustibles. The wiring in that attic is frayed and the owners tend to overload their circuits with heavy-draw appliances. Sometimes the Incident was sustained:

This building will be vandalized, fire is involved. The police were then requested to keep that building under surveillance. The surveillance was sufficient to prevent the breaking and entering which Laps had predicted, but the Company had long ago learned not to protest the measures suggested by their perceptives. Insurers are accustomed to statistics, and Talents saved them too much in claims. Sometimes, as that morning, Lajos would experience a general alarm, touched off by the imminence of a violent fire, or a sudden flaring of fire-danger resulting from a vehicular crash. There were days when nothing activated his Talent. And days, of which this was one, when everything seemed to smell vaguely of smoke or be wreathed in ghostly flames. He had to censor half a dozen false impressions by checking them against the small office Goosegg. He had learned to differentiate the valid precogs: that was why he was licensed and registered by the Center.

He finished the pile of contracts, noting those about which he experienced twinge-hesitations that indicated a future review would be wise. On his way home, he suddenly felt a lightness of spirit, an ebullience quite unaccountable after his strenuous day. He didn’t try to analyze it, too delighted with the relief to want to question the source. But, as he opened his door, Ruth raced into his arms.

“We’ve been approved as parents,” she cried, clasping him tightly to her in an excess of elation. “Director op Owen himself called me just a few minutes ago.

You ought to have been home when he called.”

“Which proves that op Owen is no precog,” Lajos said with a chuckle as he pressed her soft slenderness to him. He buried his lips into the curve of her neck. “That’s an anodyne for this morning.”

“Why for this morning?” she asked, pulling back and searching his face with worried eyes.

“Oh, it’s all right, sweetie, but he knew I’d hear all the details. Reynarder

Inc. was warned the instant my Incident identified the ship but they refused to issue a blanket halt on all outgoing and incoming vessels with those numerals.

Reynarder’s money is back of the Transport Lobby and they support Zeusman, you know. They can’t admit that Incidents, backed by cerebral variations, computer-sorted, validated by the Center are NOT superstitious nonsense. But a lot of people check out their flights nowadays with a licensed precog.”

“Then I say that companies like Reynarder deserve what they get!”

“Hey, we can afford not to be petty. And besides, I want to talk about us: about our child. What’ll we have first? Boy or girl?”

Ruth stiffened in his arms and pulled back to look her husband straight in the eye.

“Do we have to specify? Does it have to be predetermined?” she asked in a small voice, aware even as the words popped out that she sounded resentful. “Oh, I don’t mean it that way. It’s just that when you predetermine, it takes away all the mystery that’s left to motherhood.”

“Ruthie,” and Lajos’s tender teasing voice thrilled her. “You’re a real recessive. O.K., we’ll just let nature take its course.”

“Can’t we eat first?”

Lajos threw back his head and laughed boyishly at her deliberate coquetry. He hugged her until he heard her ribs crack and her dinner sizzling.

It was a magical night. Ruth responded to lovemaking with an ardor that astounded her husband: a surrender that left him breathless and not a little awed: as if, sloughing off the onus of contraceptive interference, she could allow herself to be touched to the depths of her being.

If the quality of their loving had anything to do with the final product, their child ought to be a perfect human, Lajos thought as they finally fell asleep in each other’s arms. There was no guarantee that conception occurred that night.

In fact, Lajos hoped that it hadn’t if Ruth would react like this until she did conceive.

Shortly, however, it was apparent that conception had occurred. Ruth developed a luminous beauty that touched everything around her with harmony. Jerry Frames, the Center’s resident physician, with a healing talent, privately told op Owen that the fetus was female and that Ruth was healthy enough to experience no problems.

The girl weighed seven pounds and three ounces at birth and was immediately christened the Little Princess by the nursery staff in the Center’s hospital.

Her parents called her Dorotea and were utterly besotted with her miniature perfection, her pink-and-gold beauty. They were oblivious to the curious stares and whispered comments of the staff. It was Ruth, preternaturally sensitive to anything regarding her daughter, who began to notice the surreptitious glances, the cluster of people constantly near her daughter’s crib.

“You’re hiding something from me,” she told Jerry Frames accusingly. “There’s something wrong with Dorotea.”

“There’s not a thing wrong with her, Ruth,” Jerry replied sharply and thrust the baby’s chart at her. “You’ve enough pediatrics to read the medical notations. Go ahead.”

Ruth scanned the sheets quickly, then reread word and graph, checking the laboratory reports of body function, the cerebral and cardiac readings, even the nourishment intake and eliminations. There was definitely nothing abnormal about

Dorotea. Even her chromosome mapping was XX/healthy/normal. Reassured, Ruth passed the clip board back, and smiling confidently, continued to nurse her child.

Frames later said that he’d had a moment of pure panic because he couldn’t remember how much genetic training Ruth had had or might remember. Op Owen assured him that his instinctive impulse had been the only possible course under the circumstances.

“It’s exceedingly fortunate, though, Jerry,” the director said, his eyes active with speculation, “that they are already under the Center’s protection. That child must have every safeguard we can provide. I want equipment installed in her nursery, tuned to her pattern day and night. If what we suspect is correct, it may manifest itself in her first six months. Can you imagine the strides we can make in formulating an early childhood program with such a superb example?”

“A pure case of doing what comes naturally.”

“Nothing must interfere with that child’s development.”

“I still don’t see why we’ve kept it from the parents. Are you stepping down from your ‘know-all, tell-all’ pedestal after all?”

Op Owen returned the physician’s sardonic look.

“I’m not a precog, but I felt a strong reluctance to inform Lajos.”

“Why? He’d be walking nine feet tall to think he produced such a Talented child.”

“Haven’t we changed sides, Jerry?”

“It’s one thing to withhold information from the unwashed public, but another to clam up on one of the gang.”

“We don’t know positively that Dorotea Horvath is…”

“Come off it, Dave. Cecily King is a strong TP and she heard that child protest birth. Oh, I know that some of ‘em can cry out in the womb but this was no physical cry or it would have been audible to the rest of the delivery room personnel. Is your stumbling block Ruth Horvath?”

Op Owen nodded slowly.

“Well, that makes a little more sense, although I’d say she’d welcome her daughter’s Talent. A kind of vindication that she’s never been identified.

Unless you call the transmission of strong genetic traits a Talent.”

Op Owen shook his head, his lips pursed in thought. “She has wanted a child desperately. As a mother wants a child: not as a Talented person wants evidence of succession.” He spoke slowly, the words dragged out of his mouth as if he were sorting the thoughts. “Lajos says that although Ruth is a great help and very understanding, sometimes his Incidents bother her more than she admits.

Let’s just let things take their course. We’ll keep an eye on them.”

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them, huh?” Frames sighed. “Wish you’d let that attitude spill over into other areas, Dave.”

Op Owen regarded the doctor intently. “I can conceivably bend a little privately, for the benefit of those under my care, but I cannot as easily rationalize the broader issue which I cannot oversee or control.”

“All right, Dave, but I feel, and Joel Andres feels, that private reactions are a strong basis for predicting public ones. You’re reluctant to tell Ruth

Horvath, a girl conditioned and trained to accept Talent, that her child shows exceedingly strong telepathic Talent. You willingly want to broadcast information that even frightens me, and I’m Talented, to a public that is in no way conditioned to accept a fragment of that knowledge. The two attitudes cannot be reconciled.”

“The ethical position of the Talented must never be questioned.”

“Dave,” and there was entreaty in Jerry Frames’s voice and manner, “you are unable to be unethical. The withholding of prejudicial knowledge is not unethical, it’s plain good ol’ common sense. Which you are sensibly applying to Ruth Horvath’s case. How many times I have considered telling a patient he’s bought it and how few times have

I actually come clean. Very few people can stand the whole, complete, unvarnished truth.”

“I hang between, in doubt to act or rest,” op Owen said, resigned as well as frustrated.

“What’s that?”

“I apologize, Jerry. Your point is well taken. I’ve erred-on the side of the angels, I hope-but this attitude of mine towards Ruth Horvath is a curious vacillation from my tendency to be forthright. Yet I know that there is a reason to be slightly devious.”

“Then you’ll ease back on this all-open-and-above-board routine?”

“Yes, I’ll ease back as you put it.”

“Still,” and Jerry frowned slightly, “it isn’t as if they won’t find out soon enough.” He meant the Horvaths.

“They need time to get used to the idea.” Op Owen was thinking about humanity.

“Where on earth did she get those blue eyes?” Lajos asked as he sat entranced by his three-month-old daughter’s attempts to capture her toes. She flopped over, gurgling cheerfully to herself.

“Heavens, it’s possible,” Ruth replied, beaming fatuously as she caught her daughter’s eye. “I may be grey-eyed, and you brown, but we both have ancestors with blue eyes-four generations back.”

“I always said you were recessive, hon.”

“Humph. I don’t mind in the least, not if it produces a blue-eyed blonde daughter with dimples. And I’ve got her, haven’t I, love? You’re all mine.”

“Except for the twenty-three chromosomes from me.”

Dorotea twisted her head backwards over her shoulder and burbled moistly at her mother.

“Love at first bite,” Lajos said in a mutter of mock surliness. “There’s a conspiracy of females against this poor lone male.”

Dorotea impartially gurgled at him, her eyes bright and wide and happy.

“You never had it so good,” said Ruth.

And Lajos privately admitted the truth of that. Ruth was so enthralled with her daughter, their apartment had a noticeable atmosphere of benevolence. He was more relaxed than ever, and despite an increase in Incidents, extending beyond his usual affinity, he suffered less from the depressions and exhaustions that were the inevitable postlude.

The day Dorotea’s Talent blossomed, Daffyd op Owen was reviewing the records obtained overtly and covertly from the Horvath apartment. He’d had Lester Welch, his electronic chief, rig a buried web in Ruth’s mattress, in case the baby instinctively contacted her mother first. However, Lester had pointed out the slight variation in Ruth’s readings. It was more as if the needle had snagged itself on an imperfection in the graph paper. There was no such variation on the baby’s recordings. Welch had been about to discredit the occurrences until he checked them against Lajos’s and discovered that the minute variations in Ruth’s chart always occurred exactly at the onset of Laps’ Incidents.

“She might well be a latent ‘receiver,’” op Owen said to Welch, “only now beginning to develop from continued proximity to her husband and the advent of the child. I can’t present another explanation.”

“That’d be nice, Dave. Ruth’s a good little person: cheerful, intelligent and crazy for her husband and child. Just the sort of well-balanced, understanding parent to have for a…”

Lester was abruptly staring at op Owen’s retreating back. The man had leaped to his feet and raced down the hall to the recording room. Lester Welch was not Talented, although his electronic engineering was often sheer inventive genius, but op Owen didn’t react like that without good cause. When Welch reached the doorway, he saw that Charlie Moorfield, the day engineer, was hunched over the console, unconscious, but op Owen’s attention was for a graph.

“Take a close look at Dorotea’s graph,” op Owen said, grinning fit to pop his jaw, and then he passed his associate on his way out.

Common sense told op Owen that, despite the urgency of the summons, there could be no danger threatening the baby. Yet he could not disregard that call. What could have happened, he wondered as he ran down the front steps. Suddenly he noticed that there seemed to be a mass exodus from all parts of the building.

And everyone was headed in the same direction. As abruptly as the call had been issued, it ceased. People slowed down, stopped, looking around, grinning foolishly.

“What was that?” “Who called?” “Wot hoppened?”

“It’s all right,” op Owen found himself reassuring them. “A new technique improperly shielded,” he said to the telepaths. And grinned at his own dissembling as he continued towards the Horvath’s apartment.

There was a crowd in the hall before their apartment Op Owen politely pushed his way through the disturbed residents. Dorotea, her baby face still tear-streaked, was held high in her mother’s arms, cooing and chortling at the smiling faces around her. Op Owen’s arrival signaled the crowd’s discreet dispersal and shortly, he was alone with the mortified mother.

“I’m so embarrassed, sir,” Ruth said, jiggling her baby as she walked nervously up and down her living room. “I fell asleep with the tape recorder blaring away.

And I just…didn’t hear Dorotea wake up…I’ve never done such a thing before and we’ve never permitted her to cry long…”

“No one is remotely suggesting that you mistreat Dorotea.” Op Owen smiled as the baby flirted delightfully with him. “In fact a little honest frustration is very useful. It certainly placed her Talent.”

“Ooooooooh,” and Ruth collapsed on the sofa, staring wide-eyed at Daffyd op Owen as she absorbed the implication, which she had been too preoccupied with calming Dorotea to see.

“She broadcast a very loud signal. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if every Talent in the city heard her.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Lajos charged through the door.

“What happened to her? How did she get hurt? My head is splitting!” Lajos snatched Dorotea from her mother’s lap to examine her firsthand. She began to whimper, catching his anxiety.

“Only her feelings were hurt,” Ruth replied, suddenly very calm. Op Owen noticed that with approval: she was dampening her own distress to soothe the others.

“I’d fallen asleep with the tape recorder blasting away and just didn’t hear her when she woke up hungry and all damp.” She took her daughter back, rocking her until the baby began to beam again. “She was hurt because she felt she was being ignored, isn’t that right, sweetie?”

“Well, good god!” Lajos sank onto the couch, mopping his forehead. “I never heard anything like it before. Sir,” and he turned to op Owen, “look, this can’t

…I mean, can this sort of thing happen every time my daughter’s upset?”

“Oh, I’m sure she’s likely to protest many assumed indignities, Lajos. Babies have to suffer some frustrations to grow. We’ll just move you all to a shielded apartment and dampen down that lovely loud young voice.”

“You’re not surprised about Dorotea at all,” Ruth said, regarding op Owen with round, suspicious eyes. “So that’s why everyone was so excited about her in the nursery.”

“Well, yes,” the Director agreed slowly. “She was heard by the TP nurse at birth.”

“But I thought psionic Talents don’t usually show up until adolescence…”

“Conscious Talent,” op Owen said, correcting her.

Ruth looked down at the drooling baby in her arms. A strained look crossed her pretty face. “But I want Dorotea to have a normal, happy childhood!”

“And she won’t because she’s Talented? Is that it, my dear?” Op Owen knew, sadly, that his instinct about not telling Ruth at once had been all too well-founded. “Except for this ability, which might as well be drawing freehand, she is a normal, healthy child, totally unaware that she is in any way remarkable…”

“But I know you’ll want to test her, and all that, with stimuli…” Ruth’s distress was so acute that she couldn’t go on.

“Ruth!” Lajos bent to comfort her, surprised by her reaction. She clutched her daughter tightly to her.

“My dear Ruth!” op Owen said gently, “testing and stimuli are for people who come to us after they have subverted and suppressed their Talents. We know what

Dorotea is already, a very strong telepath. And we’ve been ‘testing’ her, as you call it, already. As for stimuli, I assure you,” and there was nothing forced in op Owen’s chuckle, “she’s applying the only stimuli…to us.”

Lajos laughed, brushing his hair back from his forehead as he remembered his frantic homeward flight. Beneath his arm, he could feel Ruth relaxing. A slight smile touched her lips.

“Dorotea will have an unusual opportunity, my dear. One denied you and Lajos, and myself, and so many other potential Talents. She has the chance to grow up in her Talent, learning to use it as naturally as she learns to walk and talk.

We will all help her to understand it…as much as we do ourselves,” he added with a wry smile. “To be candid, Ruth, we are in much the same position as your daughter. We are all learning to act in a publicly acceptable fashion with this new facet of human evolution. Psionic Talents are in their infancy, too, you know.

“You might even extend the analogy a little to include the Andres Bill, which we hope will afford all Talents professional status and legal protection. We, in effect, must prove to the public, our parent-body, if you wish, that we are not ‘bad,’ ‘naughty’ or ‘capricious’ children. Dorotea has already contributed something to that end,” and op Owen caught himself before he explained his own revelation. “Dorotea needs love and reassurance, discipline and understanding. She’ll pick that up from you, Ruth, with your warmth and sweetness. I want her, possibly more than you do, to have a normal, happy childhood so that she will be a normal, happy adult.”

He rose, smiling at the baby’s infectious gaiety.

“See, she knows how pleased we are with her right now, the little rascal.”

Op Owen left, assuring them new quarters within the week. Ruth was so quiet and thoughtful that Lajos remained home the rest of the day. He found the revelation of Dorotea’s Talent as much a shock as Ruth apparently did. However, by morning, he was consumed with a paternal pride and, in the succeeding days, discovered an overweening tendency to maunder on about his daughter’s prowess. By the time they moved to the larger, shielded apartment, he was accustomed to the notion and, since Dorotea made no more frantic summonses, succeeded in ignoring it.

Until he noticed the gradual change in Ruth. At first, it was no more than a sudden frown, quickly erased, or a nervous look towards the baby’s room if she slept longer than usual. Then he caught Ruth looking at her child with that wary expression he had once privately called ‘the Freak Look,’ which un-Talented people occasionally directed at him when they discovered his affiliation with the Center.

“You’ve got to stop that, honey,” he blurted out. “You’ve got to keep thinking… strongly…that Dorotea is just like other kids. Or you’ll prejudice her. Which is the one thing we have to avoid.”

Ruth vehemently denied the accusation but she turned so white around the lips that Lajos gathered her quickly into his arms.

“Ah, sweetie, she hasn’t changed just because we’ve found out she’s Talented.

But she is perceptive and she can sense your feelings towards her. You start suppressing that ‘freak-feeling’ right now. You think positively that she’s our beautiful baby girl, sweet and loving, kind and thoughtful. She’ll have that opinion of herself and it won’t matter that she’s a strong TP as well. She’ll merely consider that part of the whole bit. It’s when she senses criticism and restraint and hypocrisy that we’ll be in trouble. I had to get used to it, too, Ruthie. Say,” and he tilted her chin up and grinned down at her reassuringly, “why don’t we get a little help from op Owen? Talk this over with him. He can put a block on if you need one.”

The very suggestion that she couldn’t love and understand her own child made

Ruth indignant. She’d had years of parent training. She understood every phase of early childhood development. She adored Dorotea and she certainly wouldn’t do a thing that might jeopardize her daughter’s happiness. They both felt better after such a candid discussion and the problem was shelved.

“Sir, I thought you ought to see the Horvath charts,” Lester Welch told op Owen.

“A variation keeps appearing in Ruth Horvath’s. See?” and Welch unrolled the paper, pointing here and there to the almost imperceptible alteration in Ruth’s normal pattern. “See, here and here, it’s a couple of microseconds longer and broader. It begins to broaden minutely until it hits this frame which has remained constant. Now, compare her time-sequence to Lajos’s…and remember we’re picking up her pattern anywhere in the new apartment just as we pick up his from the office.”

Op Owen saw the correlation immediately.

“He’s finished no precog in six weeks?”

Welch contented himself with a nod as op Owen studied the graphs.

“If I didn’t think it was impossible, I’d say Ruth was suppressing him. But how?”

“Don’t you mean why?”

“That, too, of course, but ‘how’ is the bigger question.”

“If you mean the type of pattern, Dave, I can’t give you that. There isn’t enough to identify it as a known variation.”

“That wasn’t exactly what I meant, although I would like a magnification of this to study. Can you put on a more sensitive gauge, or a faster needle, to lengthen the stroke?”

“Hmmm.” Welch considered the suggestion. “I’ll rig up something, I guess.”

Op Owen chuckled. “One of the comforting things about you, Les, is your unfailing rise to the challenge. I don’t believe you know what failure is.”

Welch regarded his superior with some surprise. “Failure is an inability to consider what is not presently known. Like Ruth Horvath’s variation?” Then he added, “Or Senator Zeusman’s strategy?”

Op Owen dismissed that with a wave of his hand and continued to scan the Horvaths’ readings. “Dorotea’s first Incident rocked him, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it shows up in his sleep pattern as unusual restlessness the first nights, but see, he’s calming down by the third.”

“It’s from that date that his precogs begin to dwindle.”

“By God, you’re right. I thought he’d be too stable for a deviation like that.”

“Yes, he’s been too consistent a precog. I think I’ll call him in and drop a few leading questions to see what reaction I get.” Op Owen initiated the call then and there.

“There’s nothing wrong with Dorotea, is there, sir?’ Lajos asked as soon as he entered the office.

“Good heavens, no,” Daffyd op Owen said, gesturing Lajos to a chair.

“It’s about my drop in Incidents, then, isn’t it?”

Op Owen eyed his young colleague for a moment, savoring the peripheral emotions the man was generating.

It took no Talent to recognize the defensive nervousness in Lajos’s attitude.

“Not exactly. There are always periods of rest for precogs, caused by any number of valid reasons, including the absence of fires. However, your graphs show an onset of Incidents, broken off just as they begin.”

“Once or twice in the office, I’ve felt as if something was preventing me…”

“Preventing you…?” Op Owen prompted Lajos gently as he had broken off, startled by his own phrasing.

“Yes, sir,” Lajos went on slowly, “it’s as if something’s preventing me from previewing. Sort of like…glancing into a strange room and having the door slammed in your face.”

“Aptly put. Could you suggest why…or perhaps what…is preventing you?”

“You think it’s a psychological suppression, don’t you?”

“That’s my first thought”

Indignation and disbelief were Lajos’s instant reaction,

“Why would I want to suppress suddenly?”

“Something you yourself don’t want to see. Precog is not the easiest of Talents,

Lajos,” op Owen replied. “Often the precog imposes his own block, as a relief from the psychological pressures.”

“If you think there’s a chance that I’m developing the Cassandra complex…”

Lajos was heatedly provoked now.

“No, that follows an entirely different pattern.”

“Dorotea’s preventing me?”

“If this occurred only in your home environment, we’d have to seriously consider the possibility. But it’s improbable for a variety of reasons: the prime one being that her room is shielded to protect her from overtones of your precogs as much as to protect us from her blatant calls.”

“Ruth?” Lajos’s hushed question had the power of a shout. “She is Talented after all. But why suppress me? She loves me. I know she does. She’s always helped with Incidents. It made her feel a part…” Lajos stared at op Owen. Then shook his head, violently disagreeing with the natural conclusion. “No! I don’t see why suppressing me would…do her any good.”

“Has something else upset her? The suppression starts not long after Dorotea’s first Incident.”

Lajos covered his eyes, groaning deeply. He collected himself almost immediately and, looking up at op Owen, recounted Ruth’s curious uncertainty about Dorotea.

“Yes, I see now what has possibly happened. She’s made you her whipping boy.”

“Now wait a minute, sir. Ruth’s not petty or vindictive.”

“I’m not for a moment implying that she is, Lajos. Let us both try to see her conflicts. She’s had to make so many adjustments. She had such hopes when she entered the training program. I remember her cheerfulness and vivacity so well.

It was difficult to have to disillusion her. You two married and she has exhibited skill in assisting you. But even the most generous soul experiences twinges of envy. She looked forward to maternity as an outlet for her natural inclination and the assuagement of her failures. Suddenly she finds herself with the extraordinary daughter who makes even the Director of the Center jump at her whim.” Lajos weakly returned op Owen’s smile. “I thought at the tune she was very much distressed at the thought of relinquishing any of Dorotea’s care to our impersonal toils. I don’t believe we entirely relieved her fear that the

Center will usurp her role in her daughter’s upbringing. Can you see why she may be indirectly punishing you for circumstances that threaten her happiness?”

“Yes, I can.” Lajos’s admission was dejected.

“Now, it’s not as bad as that,” op Owen said firmly. “In fact, stop feeling guilty and look at the very positive side-Ruth actually has been able to suppress your strong Talent.”

“And that’s positive?”

“Yes. The underlying problem is Ruth’s lack of Talent.

We now can prove conclusively that she has one. She has demonstrated it superbly. Severe frustration often breaks down blocks. And she’s had that.”

“Of course.” Lajos’s face began to light up. “Whoa. You said she doesn’t know she’s doing it?”

“I’ve proof for her. And the further proof will be the renewal of your precogs.

I’ll have a talk with her and straighten this out today.”

He made the call as Lajos left. There was more to the problem of Ruth Horvath than touched the little family. If you don’t tell all you know, how much is enough? op Owen wondered.

“All right, I’m forced to believe you,” Ruth said, her defensiveness waning under op Owen’s gentle redirection, because she also could not deny the evidence of the graphs: of that remarkable, infinitesimal variation that had to be an Incident.

Daffyd op Owen felt himself begin to relax with her admission. He had known it would be a stormy confrontation: one reason why he had not delayed it. Ruth had been appalled by the knowledge that she had subconsciously blocked Lajos. She finally admitted that Dorotea scared her: that she had lost all joy in her daughter and was terrified of predisposing the child towards her.

“Yes, I have to believe you,” she repeated, not bothering to stifle resentment, “but it’s a pretty poor excuse of a Talent,” she added bitterly, “if all I can do is block my husband’s, and not even know I’m doing that.”

“On the contrary,” op Owen replied with a laugh, “it’s exactly the one you need the most…applied properly.”

Ruth glared at him, waiting pointedly for an explanation.

“You’ve a strong moral code, Ruth. You would not permit yourself to act against your daughter, though her Talent frightened you. But you will have to waive that most laudable principle. Until Dorotea has developed sufficient discretion to handle her mental gift, you are going to have to block it.”

Ruth blinked in surprise and then her eyes brightened, her mouth formed an “O” of astonishment as she began to understand.

“Of course. Of course, I understand.” Tears of relief welled in her eyes. “Oh, of course.”

Op Owen smiled at her. “Yes, Dorotea cannot be permitted to dip into any mind she chooses. You must restrict her by your ability to block. You won’t need much pressure to dissuade her from broadcasting or eavesdropping.”

“But won’t Dorotea resent it? I mean, she’ll feel me doing it, won’t she?”

“All children require limits. Want them. As long as those limits are consistent and reasonable, a child as aware as Dorotea of her parents’ approval and affection won’t resist. In any event, by the time she could, or would, we shall have been able to instill discretion and your moral code. Right now, Ruth, you have all that’s required to keep Dorotea from becoming a nuisance and a brat.”

Ruth instantly reacted with indignation to his calculated insult and then laughed as she recognized the bait. She left his office considerably reassured, once again at harmony with her situation.

Op Owen envied her that carefree assurance. He still didn’t know what to call what she’d done. Yes, she had suppressed Lajos’s precog over the last six weeks, but in the four months prior to that Lajos’s abilities had increased in strength and efficiency and, except for duration and width, by a similar application of psionic effort on Ruth’s part. What did her Talent actually affect? And would it, as he had so blithely assured her, be able to “block” Dorotea?

Well, if she thinks she can, she will. At least she is no longer afraid of her precocious child, he thought. He swung his chair round, gazing out at the peaceful view of the grounds of Beechwoods, seeing the city beyond with its spires, towers and living blocks.

Was I right in my analogy that Talent is in its infancy, and the public is the parent? With the duty to block the undisciplined child? The Talents are more disciplined than the average citizen we often have to search out and rebuke, protect and cherish. It would be catastrophic for the parent to fear the child.

How much of the whole truth would reassure, as it had Ruth?

Those who truly understand psionic powers need no explanation. Those who need explanation will never understand.

Two mornings later, while reviewing contracts covering institutions holding government research grants, Lajos experienced one of his strongest Incidents. So powerful was the flame-fear that it was all he could do to pull the Goosegg recording web to his skull and depress the key that would relay the reading back to the Center.

“Flames!” he said, gasping; his mind reeled with the panoramic intense preview.

“Where?” he was prompted.

“A sheet, in front of a huge window, overlooking…the grounds.

Rhododendrons. Red ones. The clock in the church tower…nearly twelve. Too much heat! The converter is flawed. It’ll blow. There are so many people watching. They don’t belong there.” Lajos was abstractedly curious at the sound of indignation in his voice. “They caused the fire. Meddling. I know him!” Lajos struggled to get a clear picture of that face.

“You don’t like him. Who is he?”

“Ahhh…the flames. Obscuring everything.” Lajos fell back in his chair, shaken and sweating.

“Can you make it to the Center? I’ll send transport,” the duty officer said.

By the time Lajos reached the computer room in the Center, the system was already chuckling away at the details, locating which laboratories had scheduled visitors in the a.m.: laboratories using heat converters. The church clock tower suggested a college so that data was added as well as the planting of red rhododendrons.

Op Owen greeted Lajos with a grin of approval. “That was the most intense pattern you’ve ever projected. Have you any idea why that premonition should affect you so?”

“None, sir,” Lajos replied, taking the seat op Owen indicated. He was still shaken.

“The man you knew: he was someone you obviously dislike. Do you have the impression that you’ve met him personally?”

“No. I recognized his face, that’s all. Then the flames leaped up.”

“We don’t have much time,” and op Owen’s eyes glanced towards the wall clock, registering quarter to eleven. “Your precog came at 10:12. Unfortunately this appears to be appropriation time and every lab in the country is having its share of visitations. I want to play back your answer, Lajos. I was struck by two things and if you can pinpoint them also, we’ll have the ‘where’ at least.”

“Anything.” Lajos could see the vivid overprint of the flames in his mind and tried to see beyond their obscuring curtain. “And one day, figure out why I have a pyroaffinity.”

“Keeps insurance rates low, Horvath,” Welch said drily as he rewound the tape.

“Don’t knock small favors.”

Lajos listened as objectively as he could, appalled at the odd wooden quality of his voice, the fear when he mentioned the flames.

“I’ve got it, sir,” he said. “The converter, the lab, the church tower. Knowing that the people didn’t belong there. Wherever it is, is familiar to me.”

“Charlie,” Welch spoke over his shoulder to the programmer, “add Horvath’s place and travel card.”

Almost immediately a print-out appeared.

“Sir, it’s North East University. Checks out, clock in church tower, visible from research laboratory which uses a heat converter.”

“Any visitors scheduled today?”

“No report on that yet, sir, but they do have a government funded research project in neo-protein and sub-cellular engineering.”

“Check the university direct,” Welch said after a nod from op Owen.

“Only limit it to a request about visitors,” op Owen added. “There was something else I want to check first.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Charles broke in as op Owen lifted his desk phone. “Several parties are expected during the course of the day. Dr. Rizor wishes to speak to you.”

“When your office puts in a guarded call, Daffyd op Owen, I’m curious. Come clean.”

“Henry, we are not alarmists…”

“Precisely. So…?”

“We’ve had a valid Incident that appears placed at North East. Several of the details have not coincided, however. We are fallible, you know.”

Rizor’s snort was derogatory. “What’s the rest of the precog?”

“It centers around the heat converter in the lab building opposite the church tower.”

“And? God, it’s like pulling nails from you, Dave.”

“The heat converter may be faulty. The precog was that it will blow due to a sudden hot lab fire, just before noon, while visitors are on the premises.”

“I’d hate for something to happen there now, Dave. We’re on the verge of a breakthrough in the neo-proteins. Running tests that are awfully good. But no visitors are expected there.”

“Then a variable has already altered the precog.”

“That’s too glib a dismissal, Dave. Why would a lab fire stimulate your precog?

I didn’t think they usually worked out of their own area.”

“Our precog recognized one of the visitors.”

Welch signaled urgently to op Owen.

“Look, Dave,” Rizor was saying, “I’m taking no chances. I’ll have that converter checked and the building cleared. That’ll alter circumstances, too. Besides I don’t want visitors in that building until we complete the program. A breakthrough will warrant government funding all next year. I appreciate your calling, Dave. Let me know when I can help again.”

Welch was practically apoplectic before op Owen hung up.

“ Washington sent in an urgent personal precog for Mansfield Zeusman!”

“That’s who I saw,” Lajos cried, jumping to his feet.

“Get Senator Zeusman’s office on the phone, Charlie, and don’t indicate the origin,” op Owen said.

“Dave,” and Les Welch had a peculiar expression on his long face, “he’s the last person to warn. One, he won’t believe you. Two, he’s our principal antagonist.

Let that damned hero perish.”

“Les, you have a dry sense of misplaced humor.”

“I’m practical as all hell, too,” Welch added.

“Can you tell me if Senator Zeusman is expected in the office this morning?”

Charlie’s voice carried clearly in the tense silence. “Oh, I see. Can you tell me where he plans to be in the morning hours? But surely, he left an itinerary?

Thank you.” Charlie’s voice was wooden and his face expressionless. “He is not in the office. The assistant is a very rude, uncouth bumptious twit.”

“If he’s not in the office,” op Owen said, “he’s college hopping-him and that Research Appropriations Committee of his. He’s the sly kind is Zeusman, loves to arrive unannounced.”

“He could be on his way to North East then,” Lajos said.

Op Owen told Charlie to get Rizor back on the line.

“Sir,” Charlie reported, concerned, “Dr. Rizor has left his office. Is there a message?”

Op Owen picked up an extension phone. “Miss Galt? Daffyd op Owen here. We have reason to believe that Senator Mansfield Zeusman will pay an unscheduled visit to your campus before noon. Will you please inform Dr. Rizor immediately? Good.

Thank you. I can be reached at the Center on a priority call basis. Yes, the situation could be considered critical.”

Lajos felt himself unwind a trifle but his apprehension did not completely abate. He smiled weakly at op Owen.

“Paradox time.”

“How so, lad?”

“Dr. Rizor believes. He is already altering the circumstances I foresaw. We may have undone ourselves!”

Op Owen’s eyes flashed. “At the risk of Zeusman’s life, and that of how many others you saw in the precog?”

“No, sir, I didn’t mean it that way,” Lajos replied, stung by op Owen’s scorn.

“I meant, that fire can’t happen now because Rizor will prevent Zeusman from entering the lab.”

“I’d still prefer to see that sparrow fall!” Welch’s mutter was clearly audible.

Op Owen swung his chair in idle half-arcs but his eyes remained on his dissident engineer.

“I am not in the least tempted, gentlemen,” he said in his usual easy voice. “We are not God. Nor are we trying to replace God. The psionic arts are preventive, not miraculous. We are fallible, and because of that fallibility we have to be scrupulously impartial, and try to help any man our senses touch, whoever he may be, whenever we can. Lajos is right. We have already…”

“Sir,” Charlie’s interruption was apologetic but determined, “two more danger precogs involving Mansfield Zeusman. One from Delta and one in Quebec. Neither could get through to Zeusman and are applying to us.”

Op Owen looked as if he might be swearing silently. He glanced up at the clock, its hands inexorably halfway past eleven.

“We haven’t altered the future enough,” Lajos said with a groan.

“Charlie, alert all rescue teams in the North East area,” op Owen said, his words crisp but calm. “I’ll try for Rizor. Les, get Lajos a sedative. Henry, I’m glad I could reach you…”

“Don’t worry about a thing,” Dr. Rizor replied cheerily. “I’ve a crew checking the converter and the building is completely off limits. What’s this Miss Galt says about Zeusman paying us an unexpected visit?”

“Evidence points in that direction, and we’ve new precogs of danger for him.”

“Look, we’re all set here, Dave,” Rizor told him in an easy drawl. “No one can pass the gate without checking through my office and…Oh, no! No!”

The connection went dead. Op Owen looked around at the others.

“That’s known as locking the barn when the horse is gone,” said Welch in a flat voice. “Lay you two to one and no previewing, Rizor just discovered that Zeusman uses a heli-jet for these jaunts of his.”

“Charlie, get me through to one of the mobile rescue team trucks.”

“Sir, they’re converging on the campus. Only they’ve been delayed at the gate,” Charlie said in a quiet sad voice after a moment of urgent cross-wire phoning.

Welch scratched his head, smoothing his hair back over his ears, trying not to stare at op Owen’s expressionless face. Lajos wondered how the Director could sit so calmly, but suddenly, not the tranquillizer but an inner natural composure settled Lajos’s tensions.

“Sir,” he said to op Owen, “I think it came out all right.”

Everyone glanced up at the clock which now ticked over to high noon. The secondhand moved forward again, and again, the sweep-second duly circumscribing its segments of time. The phone’s buzz startled everyone. Op Owen depressed

Receive and Broadcast.

“I want to speak to the Director of this so-called Center,” a bass voice demanded authoritatively.

“Op Owen speaking, Senator Zeusman.”

“Well, didn’t expect to get you.”

“You asked to speak to the Director; I am he.” Op Owen hadn’t switched on his visual.

The composed answer appeared to confound the Senator briefly. He had not activated the screen at his end either.

“You’ve outsmarted yourself, Owen, with this morning’s exhibition of crystal-balling. I thought you’d have better sense than to set one up and try to fool me into believing in your psionic arts bunk.” The senator’s voice was rich with ridicule and self-satisfaction. “Heat converter’s blowing, indeed! They’re constructed not to blow. Safest, most economical way of heating large institutional buildings. A scientific way, I might add.”

“I tell you, Senator,” Rizor interrupted, “there is a flaw in the bleed-off of that converter. My engineers reported it.”

“Get off the extension, Rizor. I’ll settle your hash later. Applying for funds to run a research program which you arbitrarily interrupt at a vital stage on the say-so of crackpots and witch doctors? Your university is unfit to handle any further public monies over which I have any control,” Zeusman was almost snarling.

“I won’t get off the extension, Zeusman. This is my college, in what is reputedly still a free country, and I don’t regret in any way having listened to Dr. op Owen. There was a flaw which would have exploded under conditions foreseen…”

“Don’t defend Owen, Rizor,” Zeusman said. “His meddling costs his defenders too damned much. How’s Joel Andres feeling these days, Owen? How’s his amyloidosis progressing? Just remember when you predict his death that the research your scheme interrupted here might have saved his life.”

There was a loud clack as Zeusman broke the connection.

“Dave?” Rizor sounded defeated.

“I’m still here,” op Owen replied. “What’s this about Joel Andres?”

“You’ve had nothing? I thought you always kept a check on important men…like Zeusman.” The name was grated out.

“Nothing’s been reported on Joel. Precog is highly unpredictable, as you’ve just witnessed.”

“That damned converter was faulty,” Rizor was angry now and defiant. “It would have blown in the next overload. You saved Zeusman-and you’ve also saved other people.”

“And Joel? Is it true about his liver?”

“So I understand,” Rizor said in a heavy voice. “And our research was for a neoprotein to replace the faulty endogenous protein and restore a normal metabolism. Don’t worry. The experiments can be reinitiated.”

“With Zeusman withholding funds?”

“There are other sources of funds and I intend to use your so-called ‘meddling’ to advantage. Damn it, the converter would have blown!” Rizor was muttering as he ended the call.

Lajos was utterly spent when he returned to his apartment. Ruth took one look at his face and fixed him a stiff drink. He took it down, and with a weary smile flopped onto the bed.

“Dorotea asleep?” he asked hopefully. He was too disturbed not to generate emotional imbalance and too tired to suppress it.

“Fast asleep. Good for a couple of hours, honey,” Ruth replied, her strong fingers already at work on his tense muscles. She did not question his depression and weariness. Slowly she felt him relax as her massage and the stiff drink combined to bring surcease.

He woke in tune for dinner and seemed in control again, laughing at Dorotea’s antics, playing with her on the floor until her bedtime. Only when the baby was safely asleep in her shielded room did he tell Ruth all that had happened.

“Oh, no, not Mr. Andres,” she said when he finished. Lajos didn’t notice her quick flush as she recalled her one personal encounter with the magnetic Senator

Andres. He’d been…so kind to her and she’d been so embarrassed.

“How could I guess that he’d be involved? It was the flames. And how could I know that Zeusman would be saved at Andres’s expense?”

“Why, you couldn’t, darling,” Ruth cried, alarmed at his self-castigation. “You couldn’t! You mustn’t blame yourself. You saved lots of lives today! Lots!”

Lajos groaned, miserable. “But why, Ruthie…why does it have to ricochet off Andres? If Rizor hadn’t ordered the converter off, the experiment would have been concluded. All they had to do was keep visitors out.”

“No, that’s not quite true,” Ruth told him in stern contradiction. “You said yourself that the heat-converter proved to be flawed. That flaw would not have been discovered without your precog. It would have exploded during the next lab fire. Who knows who might have been killed then?”

“But Andres is the one who needed the neo-protein!”

“They’ll come up with a neo-protein somewhere else, then,” Ruth said, very positively to distract Lajos. “They’ve made so many strides in organ replacement…”

“Except livers! That neo-protein was supposed to correct some kind of abnormal protein growth…faulty endogenous protein metabolism…that’s what’s killing Senator Andres…stuff is cramming into his liver and spleen, enlarging them and there’s no known way to clear the amyloids. And when the liver doesn’t work, that’s it, honey. Ticket out!”

Ruth went on stroking Lajos’ forehead gently, knowing that he must find his own way out of this. He burrowed his face into her neck, entreating the comfort that she never denied him. Later her mind returned to the terrible paradox, the tragic linkage of circumstance and the sorrow of the well-intentioned Good Samaritan.

God gives man stewardship of his gifts and the free will to use or deny them.

Why must it be, that a man acting in good faith, finds himself reviled?

As sleep finally claimed her in the early morning hours, she wondered if she ought now to use her Talent to prevent Lajos from precogs like this. No, she drowsily realized, she had no right to take negative action. One must always think positively. One is one’s brother’s keeper, not his warder!

“I rather expected a call from you, Dave,” Joel Andres said, his grin on the vidscreen slightly waving from atmospheric disturbance. “And that’s no precog.

No indeed,” he rattled on, without permitting op Owen to speak. “The good senator from that great midwestern state called especially to warn me that I’m the next sparrow to fall because my pet witch doctor read the wrong crystal ball. Hey, that rhymes. Now, I don’t believe that for a moment, Dave, on account of I don’t think that that stupid mock-protein goop would have been jelled or curdled or what have you, in time to save my misspent life anyhow.” The words were lightly said but there was an edge to Andres’s voice that ruined the jovial effect

“How long, Joel?”

“Probably long enough to get that Bill out of Committee, Dave, and I’ll count the time well spent. Zeusman can’t put down the mass of evidence in favor of psionics, the tremendous saving of loss and life already effected by validated precogs. By the way, Welch told me that the precog came in at 10:12. Do you know the time when Zeusman gave his pilot orders to fly to North East?”

“ 10:12?”

“Right, man. And that’s in the record! Right in his flight log and a friend of mine impounded it because the pilot isn’t so contemptuous of the circumstances as Zeus man. That pilot was scared silly by the coincidence. And don’t think I’m not going to ram that down Zeusman’s double-chins.”

“He’ll never admit our warning saved his life, Joel,” Daffyd said.

“Hell, he doesn’t have to admit it. The facts prove it. But I must say, Dave, you made one mistake.” Joel’s chuckle was rich.

“Had I known what I know now, I do believe that this once I’d’ve sat back and twiddled my thumbs.”

“Ha! I don’t believe that for a minute…no, maybe you would have,” and the lawmaker’s voice rippled with amusement. “If this has buckled your altruistic armor, it’s worth it. Worth dying for, because there’s nothing trickier to tie down than an honest man gone bad! Now let me go to work.”

“Joel, let me know…”

“Hang loose, man. Don’t rob me of my cool. Not now!”

The senator signed off but Daffyd op Owen sat staring moodily at the wall opposite his desk, unable for the first time in his life to divert his train of thought. His mind writhed in recrimination as bitter as an ancient inquisitional penance.

“Dave?” Welch’s brisk voice broke through his introspection. “There’s an anomaly on…Oh, I’ll come back later…”

“No, Lester, come in.”

Welch gave his friend a speculative look but he unrolled the graphs without comment.

“Ruth Horvath!” Op Owen was surprised, almost irritated that she should be the subject of the intrusion.

“Couple of things. Here…on the baby’s chart…Incident after Incident.

…compare it with Ruth’s. No pattern. Not even an inky hiccup. I thought you said she could block that baby.”

Curious now, op Owen scanned the charts. “What’s this?” he asked, pointing to a sustained emphatic variation.

“That’s the anomaly. Happened last night. It’s a spontaneous variation. All her others have been triggered, usually by Lajos. And, if you’ll look at the peaks and valleys in last night’s records, you’ll see that the pattern is kinetic.”

“That’s too tight for a true kinetic touch.”

“Well, it’s not TP, it’s not ‘finding’ and what’n’hell would she be trying to do, fast asleep? ‘Finding’ is a conscious application, anyway. No, this is a kinetic pattern.”

“For what reason? Against what?”

“Who knows? The point is, while she has stopped suppressing her husband, she hasn’t started blocking her daughter. And that’s going to be serious. I mean, we don’t need a teething telepath broadcasting discomfort.”

“Teething?”

“I forget you’re not a parent,” Welch said with tolerant condescension, “to small babies, that is.”

Op Owen was engrossed in the patterns and it was obvious that Ruth was not responding and seemed unable to use a conscious block. And that was too bad. He frowned at the unusual kinetic display of the previous night.

“She’s got it. She used it.”

“Not consciously.”

“I hate to resort to therapeutic interference. It might jeopardize her ever using it consciously.”

“It’s therapy for Ruth, or that baby’ll tyrannize both parents. And that’s bad.

A kid that strong has got to have limits, right now, before she can develop precocious resistance.”

Op Owen examined the charts one last time, shaking his head as he noticed the telepathic patterns on Dorotea’s chart, saw the impingement on the mother’s and no block.

“These could be legitimate calls…”

“Don’t evade, Dave. I know you hate interfering with Talent; that it should be spontaneous. Admit Ruth Horvath is one of those who cannot use Talent consciously. Meddle a little!”

Op Owen rose, his face drawn. “I’ll drop over to see them today. Let’s hope she responds well to hypnosis,”

“She does. I looked up her training record.”

Two days later Welch came back in triumph, trailing two sheets of graphing tissue like victory streamers.

“You did it, Boss. Look, pass blocked, tune and again, with a minimum of effort on Ruth’s part. But damn it, she’s not a pure kinetic. What could she be moving with such an infinitesimal touch? How does she apply the block?”

“Unconsciously,” op Owen replied with a sly grin. “However, it may be because that touch is so delicate, she can’t do it consciously. I didn’t look very deeply. But so many kinds of Talent are fairly heavy-handed, violent. Like using awls in place of microneedles.” He winced a little, remembering how his mental touch had uncovered Ruth’s pitiful lack of self-confidence in her Talent. All her Incidents occurred without her awareness, deep in the subconscious levels of her mind into which Daffyd saw no need to trespass. She was a nice womanly person: her surface thoughts revolving around her husband, her daughter: all her anxieties were needless guilts over minor details. It was, therefore, relatively easy to block her notions that she would inadvertently harm Dorotea, or try to suppress Lajos. It was easy to erase conscious knowledge of her Talent, replacing it with a feeling of accomplishment and well-being: the post-hypnotic command to respond to Dorotea’s telepathic demands and channel them firmly into speech centers. He also displaced her reluctance to have other Talented children because she felt inadequate. Ruth must have great resources of self-assurance.

He planted them.

Now op Owen turned to Welch. “Ask Jerry Frames how soon Ruth Horvath can bear another child. I’d like her first two fairly close together before she gets cold feet.” “Cold feet he calls it!” was Welch’s parting crack.

“I’m sorry, Daffyd,” the Washington precog said, “I’ve stared at Joel Andres’s picture for hours. I’ve read his House speeches, I’ve read his memoirs. I’ve sat in his outer office until the Senate police asked to have a word with me. Then he came in, and recognized me, of course. And gave me a scarf to hold.” Mara

Helm paused. “As a memento, he said. But I don’t see it.”

“You’ve had no stimulation about him at all?”

“Nothing dire.”

“What do you mean, nothing dire?”

“That’s what I mean and all I mean, Dai. Nothing conclusive, in that his life concludes. And, as you know, my accuracy is unfortunately high.”

“I don’t understand this, Mara.”

“No more do I when I hear the gossip around town,”

“Which is?”

“That Senator Andres is spending his last moment helping a minority group that not only has predicted his imminent demise but destroyed his one chance of a cure.” Her voice held no inflection as she uttered these quick sentences, but her dislike of imparting the gossip was obvious to her listener. Mara cleared her throat suddenly. “I do have a precog though,” she added, mildly amused.

“A good one, if I recognize that tone of voice. I could stand some pleasant tidings.”

“I’ll be seeing you shortly,” and she laughed mischievously. “In the flesh, I mean. Here!”

“In Washington?” Daffyd op Owen was startled. He rarely left the Center and, at this moment, he had no desire under heaven to set foot in Washington.

Two weeks later, Daffyd op Owen, in a swivet of anxiety which no perception could dispel, disembarked from the heli-jet on the Senate landing pad. Mara Helm and Joel Andres were waiting for him. Daffyd had no eyes for anyone but the senator who strode forward, grinning broadly, eagerly grasping the telepath’s hand, forgetting in the excess of his welcome that Daffyd avoided casual physical contacts.

However, op Owen wanted more than anything to touch-sense his friend. And was reassured by the vigorous sensation he felt equally strong through mind and body. He might disbelieve the evidence of his eyes as he stared at Andres’s clear pupils, the healthy tanned skin with no trace of the yellow, indicative of liver disorder. Op Owen could not deny the feeling of health and energy that coursed to him in that hearty handclasp.

“What happened?” he asked hoarsely.

“Who knows?” Joel replied. “The medics called it a spontaneous remission. Said my body had started manufacturing the right enzymes again. Something to do with a shift in the RNA messenger proteins or some rot like that. Anyhow, no more amyloids in the perivascular spaces-if that makes any sense to you-the old liver and spleen are back to normal size and I can feel that. So, friend, I no longer need that neo-protein research that Zeusman scrapped.”

Mara Helm remained aside, smiling benevolently at the two men, until they finally remembered her presence.

“Dai, see?” and she laid a finger fleetingly on his sleeve. “You’re here as predicted!”

“Did you bring the graphs and records I asked for?” Joel inquired.

“Here they are,” and Daffyd handed the neat package over.

“Good,” and the senator’s expression was maliciously gleeful. “We’re going to hoist Senator Mansfield Zeusman today on his petard. However,” and black anger surged across Andres’s face, “I beg your indulgence, Daffyd. Certain-what would you call them, Mara-security measures?”

Mara’s lips twitched but there was an answering indignant sparkle in her eyes.

“A shielded cage?” Daffyd asked.

“Yeah,” and the sound was more of a growl than an affirmative. “Don’t think I didn’t protest that insulting…”

“In fact,” Mara said, “he ranted and screamed at the top of his voice. All

Washington heard. I elected to keep you company in the gilt-wired gold-fish bowl,” and she gave op Owen a flirtatious wink.

“You’ll have an advantage over me,” Andres said. “You can switch off the sound of Zeusman’s voice.”

“Who? Me?” Daffyd asked and the three entered the Senate Building laughing.

Op Owen was not surprised at Mansfield Zeusman’s insulting treatment. He expected little else. Although the senator had initiated the investigation of all the Centers, he had never personally entered one. Obviously Zeus-man was among those who believed that any telepath could read every mind: he would be unlikely to believe that telepaths performed their services much as a surgeon does an exploratory operation in the hope of uncovering a patient’s malignant disease. Zeusman also decried the psychiatric sciences, so his attitude was at least consistently narrow-minded.

“One more thing,” Andres said as he held open the door into the shielded room, “you’re here at the Committee’s request, not Zeusman’s, or mine. They may want to question you. Please, Dave, don’t tell all you know?”

“I’ll be a verbal miser, I promise.”

“That’ll be our saving,” Andres replied. He obviously distrusted op Owen’s sudden meek compliance.

“Doesn’t Joel look wonderful?” whispered Mara as they seated themselves.

“Yes,” Daffyd replied and then shut his lips. Even that interchange, broadcast into the chamber beyond, drew every eye to them. Op Owen crossed his legs, clasped his hands and composed himself outwardly.

Zeusman was not as large a man as op Owen thought he’d be. Nor was he a small man in stature which might have explained the aggressive, suspicious personality. He resembled a professor more than a senator, except for the elaborate gesticulations which were decidedly oratorical. And he was expatiating at length now with many gestures, pointedly ignoring Andres who took his place at the conference table.

The other five members of the Committee nodded towards Andres as if they welcomed his arrival. Their smiles faded as they turned back to the speaker. It was apparent to Daffyd that Zeusman’s audience was heartily bored with him and had heard the same arguments frequently.

“These Experts claim…” and Zeusman paused to permit his listeners to absorb the vitriol he injected into that label, “that even the advertisement of that precognitive word changes events. Now that’s a cowardly evasion of the consequences of their pernicious meddling.”

“We’ve been through that argument from stem to stern before, Mansfield,” the lanky bald man with a hawk nose said. Op Owen identified him as Lambert Gould McNabb, the senior Senator from New England. “You called this extraordinary session because you claim you have real evidence prejudicial to this Bill.”

Zeusman glared at McNabb. McNabb calmly tamped down his pipe, relit it, pinched his nose between thumb and forefinger, blowing against the pressure to relieve his eardrums, sniffed once or twice, put the pipe back in his mouth and turned an expectant face towards Zeusman.

“Well, Mansfield, either hang ‘em or cut ‘em down.”

“I have your attention, Senator McNabb?”

“At the moment.”

“My contention has always been that protection for these meddlers is against common sense, ethics, and all the laws of man and God. They usurp the position of the Almighty by deciding who’s to live and who’s to die.”

“To the point, Mansfield,” McNabb said.

“Senator McNabb, will you desist from interrupting me?”

“Senator Zeusman, I will-if you will desist from jawing.”

Zeusman looked around for support from the other five members of the Committee and found none.

“On the 14^th of June, I left my offices in this building for the purpose of visiting several of the universities requesting the renewal of Research Funds.

As you know, it is my custom to arrive unannounced. Therefore, it was not until we were airborne that I gave my pilot his directions.”

“What time was that?” asked Andres quickly.

“The time is irrelevant.”

“No, it isn’t. I repeat, at what time did you give your pilot his flight directions?”

“I fail to see what bearing…”

“I have a transcript of the pilot’s log, from the files of the Senate Airwing,” Andres said and passed the copy over to McNabb.

“Ten-twelve, Daylight Saving time, the record says,” McNabb said in a drawl, his eyes twinkling as he casually flipped the record across the table to the others.

Zeusman watched, frowning bleakly.

“I have here,” Joel went on before Zeusman could grab the floor, “authenticated graph readings of four precognitive Incidents: one from Eastern American Center, the Washington Bureau, Delta Center and Quebec. The period, allowing for time zones, in which these precogs occurred is between 10:12 and 10:16. Excuse the interruption, Zeusman, but I’m trying to keep things chronological.”

Zeusman awarded Andres a vicious smile and then a keener look. Op Owen wondered if Zeusman was only now aware of Andres’s improved health.

“Ahem. When my heli-jet landed at North East University, I and my party were physically restrained by Dr.

Henry Rizor, the Research Dean and members of his staff, from conducting our investigation of their project on the specious grounds that a precog had been issued, predicting a flaming death for me and my party, due to a faulty heat converter which was supposed to explode. Well, gentlemen, I fathomed this little trap immediately.”

“Whoa, whoa, Mansfield,” Robert Teague said, tapping the material now in front of him. “The precog reports I have here…by God, I’m getting so I don’t need an expert to translate them for me anymore…indicate that’s exactly what was to have happened. At…ah, shortly before noon. When did you arrive at

North East?”

“ Quarter to twelve.”

“Then you’d’ve been in the building around twelve. I’d say you owed these precogs your life.”

“My life? Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I’m not. You are,” Teague replied with considerable exasperation.

“I’m no fool, Bob. I know when I’m being had, in spite of all the forged records going. The whole business was rigged. Heat converters don’t blow.”

“Right, so how could one be rigged to blow at precisely twelve noon at North

East when no one, including yourself, knew when or where you were going that morning until 10:12?”

“A flaw was discovered when the heat converter was dismantled: air bubble in the steel tank,” Joel Andres said, passing another affidavit to Teague. “The main chamber has been replaced. It could have blown, through that air-bubble flaw, under just such circumstances of overload as predicted.”

“But it didn’t!” Zeusman said in a roar.

“No, because it had been turned off to prevent such an occurrence.”

“Exactly. The whole thing was a hoax. Ten-twelve, twelve noon, whatever. And,”

Zeusman rattled the words out so loud and so fast that no one could interrupt him, “in turning off that so-called faulty converter, the experiment then in progress, paid for by government funds, was ruined just before what was certain to be a successful conclusion of a highly delicate, valuable project. I’ve papers of my own to present”-he dramatically flung stapled sheets to the table- “despositions from the various qualified, highly trained, highly reputable scientists in charge of the neo-protein research. And here is where these…these meddling godlets overreach themselves. That neo-protein research, so rudely interrupted on the brink of success would have produced, by scientific methods-accurate, repeatable, proven-a substance that would prevent certain all-too-common and terribly painful deaths due to liver failure. Prevent an agonizing death facing a certain member of this august Committee. And, if these precogs are so omniscient, so benign, so altruistic, so wise, why-I ask you, why, did they not foresee the effects of their own meddling on their avowed champion?”

Op Owen’s altruism and benignity hit an all-time low and he found himself obsessed with an intense desire to turn kinetic and clog Zeusman’s windpipe permanently.

“Ah ha,” crowed Joel Andres, leaping to his feet, “why should they foresee my demise, my dear colleague? Due to liver failure? How interesting! Of course, you have a paper to prove it, Senator, such as my death certificate?”

“Easy, Joel,” said McNabb, squinting at Andres keenly, “Anyone can see you’re healthy as a hog, though I must admit you had been looking a bit jaundiced. You look great now, though.”

“But I had a report that he was dying of liver failure,” Zeusman said.

“Got that authenticated?” Teague asked sarcastically.

“Easy, Bob. We know Mansfield ’s been doing the job he was elected to do, protect his constituents and this country. That used to be as easy to do,” McNabb paused to drag on his pipe, “as finding decent substitute tobacco. But Mansfield proved that was bad for most of us.”

“We’re discussing experts, not tobacco,” Zeusman reminded him.

“No, we’re discussing progress, on a level some of us find as hard to take as giving up tobacco. However, it was proved that tobacco was unhealthy. These people have proved that their Centers protect health and property, and they go about it scientifically. Everything I’ve heard today,” and McNabb jerked his pipe stem at Zeusman as the latter started to interrupt, “proves conclusively to me that you’ve been putting the wrong eggs in the right basket. That precog was for your health and well-being, Mansfield, which these people are pledged to protect: you didn’t have to take the warning…”

“I was forced…”

“Lots of us were forced to stop smoking, too,” McNabb said, grinning. “This artificial stuff still doesn’t taste right but I know it’s better for me.

“Most important of all, Mansfield, and it seems to have completely escaped your logical, scientific, one-track mind, is the very fact that these people warned you! Whether they knew the consequences to Joel Andres or not if they also stopped the experiment, they had to warn you and your party! So stop your maundering on about their ethics and meddling. I’d’ve let you burn!”

Zeusman sank down into a chair, blinking at McNabb’s craggy face. Then the New England senator rose, a slight smile on his lips.

“Gentlemen, we’ve hassled this Bill back and forth for close to two years. We’ve satisfied ourselves the provisions protecting the parapsychic professions, as outlined in Articles IV and V, do not threaten the safety of the citizens of this country, do not jeopardize personal liberty, et cetera and all that, and, hell, let’s place it on the agenda and start protecting these poor idealistic bastards from…from them as don’t wish to be protected.”

McNabb’s grin was pure malice but he didn’t glance in Zeusman’s direction nor was the midwesterner aware of anything but this unexpected defeat.

Op Owen reached the Center after full dark of the late spring evening. The pleasant sense of victory still enveloped him in contentment. He found himself, however, turning toward the apartments rather than his own quarters. The news that the Andres Bill had left Committee and would be presented to the Senate next session had already been relayed to the Center. He heard echoes of the celebrating which appeared to be going on all over the grounds.

A little premature, he thought to himself, for the Bill must pass Senate and Congress. There would be sharp debate” but they predicted it would pass. The President was already in favor of protection for the Talented since he benefited from their guardianship.

Op Owen entered the building where the Horvaths lived. He hesitated at the elevator, then made for the steps, pleased to arrive without breathlessness at their apartment door.

He had a split second of concern that he might be interrupting the young couple but it was quickly dispelled when Lajos, still dressed, flung the door wide.

“Mr. op Owen!” The precog’s face was a study in incredulous amazement. “Good evening, sir!”

“I’m sorry. Were you expecting someone?”

“No, no one. Exactly. Please, come in. It’s just…well, everyone’s been apartment hopping since the news came…”

“The Director is immune to jubilation?”

Lajos was spared the necessity of answering because Ruth entered from the kitchen, her face lighting up as she rushed forward to greet their guest. Op

Owen was relieved at her obvious welcome: she could have developed a subconscious antipathy for him after their recent session.

“I don’t think anyone expected you back tonight, sir,” Lajos was saying, pressing a drink on op Owen.

“We’re all so proud of you, sir,” Ruth added shyly.

“I did nothing,” op Owen replied. “I sat in a shielded room and listened. It was Lajos’s precog…”

“There were three other reports, sir,” Lajos said, “but is it really confirmed that Senator Andres has had a remission of that liver ailment?”

“Yes, absolutely, demonstrably true. I know we’ve all felt burdened with a certain…regret, on that aspect of the North East Incident. It is the inevitable concomitant of the precognitive gift.”

“And Dr. Rizor’s grant will be restored?”

Op Owen was taken by surprise. “I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t think to inquire.” He felt himself coloring.

“We can’t think of everything, can we?” Ruth asked, her lips twitching with a mischievous smile.

Op Owen burst out laughing and, after a startled pause, Lajos joined him.

“I’ll bet it will be restored,” Ruth went on, “and that’s no precog: just plain justice.”

“How’s Dorotea?” op Owen asked.

“She’s asleep,” and there was nothing but pride and pleasure in Ruth’s face as she glanced towards the closed nursery door. “It’s fascinating to listen to her figuring out how to get out from under the table.”

Lajos echoed her pleasure. Op Owen rose, suddenly conscious of the rippling undercurrent between the two young people. His presence constituted a crowd.

“I wanted you to know about Joel Andres, Lajos.”

“Thank you sir, I do appreciate it.”

“It was good of you to tell us. You must be so tired,” Ruth said, linking arms with her husband and standing very close to him.

“Save your maternal instincts for your children, Ruth,” he said kindly and left.

Once again in the soft night air, op Owen felt extremely pleased with life.

Obeying an impulse, he glanced over his shoulder and noticed that the lights in the Horvath apartment were already out. He had interrupted them after all. Sometimes, shield as he could, the stronger emotions, sex being one of them, seeped through.

He took his time walking back through the grounds, permitting himself the rare luxury of savoring the happy aura that permeated the Center. He stored up the fragrance of the joyful night, the exuberance that penetrated the dark, the hopefulness that softened the chill of the breeze, against those desperate hours that are the commoner lot of man. These times of harmony, concert, attunement came all too seldom for the Talented. They were rare, glorious, treasured.

Habit made him stop in at the huge control room. Surprise prompted him to enter-for Lester Welch, a dressing robe thrown over his nightclothes and a drink in one hand, was bending over the remote graph panels. His attitude, as well as that of the duty officer, was of intense concentration.

“Never seen anything like that before in a coital graph,” Welch was muttering under his breath.

“Turned graphic voyeur, Lester?” Daffyd asked with tolerant amusement.

“Voyeur, hell. Take a look at these graphs. Ruth Horvath’s doing it again. And at a time like this? Why?”

Welch was scarcely a prurient man. Stifling his own dislike of such an unwarranted invasion of privacy, op Owen glanced at the two graphs, needles reacting wildly in response to the sexual stimuli mutually enjoyed. Lajos’s graph showed the normal agitated pattern: Ruth’s matched his except for the frenetic action of the needle, trying valiantly to record the cerebrally excited and conflicting signals its sensitive transistors picked up. The needle gouged deep into the fragile paper, flinging its tip back and forth. Yet the pattern of deviation emerged throughout the final high-a tight, intense, obviously kinetic pattern.

Abruptly the frantic activity ceased, the lines wandered slowly back to normal fatigue patterns.

“That was most incredible. The most prodigious performance I have ever witnessed.”

Op Owen shot Welch a stern glance, only to realize that the man meant the electronic record. He was momentarily embarrassed at his own thoughts.

“What does she do?” Welch continued speaking and the technician glanced up quickly, startled and flushing. “The kinetic energy is expended for what reason?

Not that she’d be able to tell us anyhow.”

“For what reason?” op Owen asked quietly, answering the safest question. “For the exercise of a very womanly talent.” He waited, then sighed at their obtuseness. “What is the fundamental purpose of intercourse between members of the opposite sex?”

“Huh?” It was Welch’s turn to be shocked.

“The propagation of their species,” op Owen answered his own inquiry.

“You mean…you can’t mean…” Welch sank, stunned, into a chair as he began to comprehend.

“It hadn’t occurred to me before now,” op Owen went on conversationally, “that it is rather odd that a brown-eyed, black-haired father and a grey-eyed, brown haired mother could produce a blue-eyed blonde. Not impossible. Just quite improbable. Now Lajos is precog, and we have to grant that Ruth is kinetic. So how do these genes produce a strong, strong telepath?”

“What did she do?” Welch asked softly. His eyes knew the answer but he had to hear op Owen voice it.

“She rearranged the protein components of the chromosome pairs which serve as gene locks and took the blue-eyed genes and the blonde-haired ones out of cell storage. And what ever else she wanted to create Dorotea. That would be my educated guess. Just the way she unlocked the RNA messengers for…” Op Owen hesitated: no, not even Lester Welch needed to know that bit of Ruth’s tinkering-“whatever it is she has in mind for this child.” Welch had not apparently noticed his hesitation. “It’ll be interesting to see the end product.”

Welch was speechless and the technician pretended great industry at another panel. Op Owen smiled gently.

“This is classified, gentlemen. I’ll want those records removed as soon as you can break into the drums,” he told the technician, who managed to respond coherently.

“I’m glad of that,” Welch said with open relief. “I’m glad that you’re not blabbing all this to the world. Are you going to tell Lajos?”

“No,” Daffyd replied with deliberation. “He obviously intends to cooperate. And they’ll be happier parents without that knowledge.”

Welch snorted, himself again.

“You sound like you’re getting common sense, Dave. Thank God for that.” He frowned as the drum wound the last of that Incident out of sight. “She can actually unlock the genes!” He whistled softly.

“ ‘One science only will one genius fit. So vast is art, so narrow human wit!’ “

“How’s that again, Dave?”

“A snitch of Popery!” op Owen remarked as he left.