Gillings was not looking at the graphs. He was staring at Charlie.

"Next time, aim at the chest first, mister."

"Sorry I stopped him at all... mister," replied Charlie, with such deliberate malice that Gillings colored and stepped towards him.

Op Owen quickly intervened. "You dislike, distrust and hate us, Commissioner," he said, keeping his own voice neutral with effort.

"You and your staff have prejudged us guilty, though you are at this moment surrounded by incontrovertible evidence of our co llective innocence. You arrived here, emanating disruptive emotionsno, I'm not reading your minds, gentlemen." Daffyd had all Gillings's attention with that phrase. "That isn't necessary. You're triggering responses in the most controlled of usnot to menti on that poor witless telempath we had to tranquilize. And, unless you put a lid on your unwarranted hatred and fears, I will have no compunction about pumping you all full of tranks, too!"

"That's coming on mighty strong for a man in your position, Owen," Gillings said in a tight hard voice, his body visibly tense now.

"You're the one that's coming on strong, Gillings. Look at that.

dial behind you."

Gillings did not want to turn, particularly not at op Owen's command, but there is a quality of righteous anger that compels obedience.

"That registersas Harold Orley doesthe psychic intensity of the atmosphere. The mind gives off electrical impulses, Gillings, surely you have to admit that. Law enforcement agencies used that premise for lie detection. Our instrumentation makes those early registers as archaic as space ships make oxcarts. We have ultradelicate equipment which can measure the minutest electrical impulses of varying frequencies and duration. And this PA dial registers a dangerous high right now. Surely your eyes must accept s cientific evidence.

"Those rows of panels there record the psychic activity of each and every member registered with this Center. See, most of them register agitation right now. These red divisions indicate a sixty-minute time span. Each of those drums exposes the graph as of the time of that theft. Notice the difference. Not one graph shows the kinetic activity required of a 'lifter' to achieve such a theft. But every one shows a reaction to your presence.

"There is no way in which a registered Talent can avoid these graphs.

Charlie, were any kinetics out of touch at the time of the theft?"

Charlie, his eyes locked on Gillings, shook his head slowly.

"There never has been so much as a civil misdemeanor by any of our people. No breach of confidence, nor integrity. No crime could be shielded from fellow Talents.

"And can you rationally believe that we would jeopardize years and years of struggle to become accepted as reliable citizens of indisputable integrity for the sake of a fur coat and a string of baubles? When there are funds available to any Talent who migh t want to own such fripperies?" Op Owen's scorn made the Cole man wince.

"Now get out of here, Gillings. Discipline your emotions and revise your snap conclusion. Then call through normal channels and request our cooperation. Because, believe me, we are far more determined...

and better equipped... to discover the real crimin al than you could ever be, no matter what your personal stake in assigning guilt might conceivably be."

Op Owen watched for a reaction to that remark but Gillings, his lips thin and white with anger, did not betray himself. He gestured jerkily towards the one man in police blues.

"Do not serve that warrant now, Gillings!" op Owen said in a very soft voice. He watched the frantic activity of the needle on the PA dial.

"Go. Now. Call. Because if you cannot contain your feelings, Commissioner, you had better maintain your distance."

It was then that Gillings became aware of the palpable presence of those assembled in the corridor. A wide aisle had been left free, an aisle that led only to the open elevator. No one spoke or moved or coughed. The force exerted was not audible nor physic al. It was, however, undeniably unanimous. It prevailed in fortyfour seconds.

"My firm will wish to know what steps are being taken," the Cole's man said in a squeaky voice as he began to walk, with erratic but ever quickening steps, towards the elevator.

Gillings's three subordinates were not so independent, but there was no doubt of their relief as Gillings turned and walked with precise, unhurried strides to the waiting car.

No one moved until the thwapping rumble of the copter was no longer audible. Then they turned for assignments from their director.

City Manager Julian Pennstrak, with a metropolis of some four million to supervise, had a habit of checking up personally on any disruption to the smooth operation of his city. He arrived as the last of the organized search parties left the Center.

"I'd give my left kidney and a million credits to have enough Talent to judge a man accurately, Dave," he said as he crossed the room. He knew better than to shake hands unless a Talented offered but it was obvious to Daffyd, who like Pennstrak, that the m an wanted somehow to convey his personal distress over this incident. He stood for a moment by the chair, his handsome face without a trace of his famous genial smile.

"I'd've sworn Frank Gillings was proTalent," he said, combing his fingers through his th ick, wavy black hair, another indication of his anxiety. "He certainly has used your people to their fullest capabilities since he became LEO Commissioner."

Lester Welch snorted, looking up from the map he was annotating with search patterns. "A man'll use any tool that works... until it scratches him, that is."

"But you could prove that no registered Talent was responsible for that theft."

" 'A man convinced against his will, is of his own opinion still,' " Lester chanted.

"Les!" Op Owen didn't need sour cynicism from any quarter, even one dedicated to Talent. "No registered Talent was responsible."

Pennstrak brightened. "You did persuade Gillings that it's the work of an undiscovered Talent?"

Welch made a rude noise. "He'll be persuaded when we produce both missing person and missing merchandise. Nothing else is going to satisfy either Gillings or Cole's."

"True," Pennstrak agreed, frowning thoughtfully. "Nor the vacillating members of my own Council. Oh, I know, it's a flash reaction but the timing is so goddamned lousy, Dave. Your campaign bore down heavy on the integrity and good citizenship of the Talent ed."

"It's a deliberate smear job..." Welch began gloomily.

"I thought of that," Pennstrak interrupted him, "and had my own expert go over the scanner films. You know the high security risk setup: rotating exposures on the stationary TV eyes. One frame the model was clothed; next, exposed in all its plastic glory.

It was a 'lift' all right. No possibility of tampering with that film." Pennstrak leaned forward to Dave, though there was scarcely any need to guard his statements in this company. "Furthermore, Pat came along. She 'read' everyone at the store, and Gillin gs's squad. Not Gillings, though. She said he has a natural shield. The others were all clean... at least of conspiracy." Pennstrak's snide grin faded quickly. "I made her go rest. That's why there's no one with me."

Op Owen accepted the information quietly. He had halfhoped... it was an uncharacteristic speculation for him. However, it did save time and Talent to have had both store and police checked.

It had become general practice to have a strong telepathic receiver in the entourage of any prominent or controversial public figure. That Talent was rarely identified publicly. He or she usually performed some obvious service so that their constant presence was easily explicable. Pat Tawfik was overtly Pennstrak's chief speech writer.

"I have, however," Pennstrak continued, "used my official prerogative to supervise the hunt. There're enough sympathetic people on the public media channels to play down the Talent angleat my requestbut you know what this kind of adverse publicity is going to do to you, this Center and the Talented in general. One renegade can discredit a hundred honest injuns. So, what can I do to help?"

"I wish I knew. We've got every available perceptive out on the offchance that thisahrenegade happens to be broadcasting joy and elation over her heist."

"Her?"

"The consensus is that while a man might lift furs and jewels possibly the dress, only a woman would take the shoes, too. Top finders are coming in from other Centers..."

"A 'find' is reported, Boss," said Charlie over the intercom. "Block (' As Pennstrak and op Owen reached the map, Welch announced with a groan. "Gawd, that's a multilayer apartment zone."

"A havenot," added op Owen.

"Gil Gracie made the find, Boss," Charlie continued. "And the fur is not all he's found but he's got a problem."

"You just bet he has," Les said under his breath as he grimaced down at the map coordinates.

"Charlie, send every finder and perceptive to Block Q If they can come up with a fix..."

"Boss, we got a fix, but there's one helluva lot of similarities."

"What's the problem?" asked Pennstrak.

"We'll simply have to take our time and eliminate, Charlie. Send anyone who can help." Then op Owen turned to Pennstrak. "In reporting a 'find,' the perceptive is aware of certain particular spatial relationships between the object sought and its immediate surroundings.

It isn't as if he has seen the object as a camera sees it. For example, have you ever entered a room, turned down a street, or looked up quickly and had the feeling that you had seen just (and Daffyd made a bracket of his hands) that portion of the scene before, with exactly the same lighting, exactly the same components? But only that portion of the scene, so that the rest was an indistinguishable blur?"

Pennstrak nodded.

"'Finding' is like that. Sometimes the Talent sees it in lucid detail, sometimes it's obscured or, as in this case, there are literally hundreds of possibilities... apartments with the same light exposure, same scene out the window, the same floor plan an d furnishings. Quite possible in this instance since these are furnished, standard subsistence dwellings. Nothing to help us single out, say Apartment 44E, Building 18, Buhler Street."

"There happens to be a Building 18 on Buhler Street, Boss," Les Welch said slowly, "and there are 48 levels, 10 units per floor."

Pennstrak regarded op Owen with awe.

"Nonsense, this office is thoroughly shielded and I'm not a precog!"

"Before you guys took the guesswork out of it, there were such things as hunches," Pennstrak suggested.

For op Owen's peace of mind and Lester's pose of misogyny, it was neither Building 18 nor Buhler Street nor Apartment 44. It was Apartment 1E, deep in the center of Q Block. No one had entered nor left itby normal meanssince Gil Gracie and two other finder s had made a precise fix. Gil handed op Owen the master key obtained from the dithering super.

"My Gawd," Pennstrak said in a voice muted with shocked surprise, as they swung open the door. "Like an oriental bazaar."

"Indiscriminate pilfering on a wholesale basis." Op Owen corrected him, glancing around at the rich brilliant velvet drapes framing the dingy window to the wildly clashing pillows thrown on the elegant Empire loveseat. A marbletopped table was a jumble of pretty vases, silver boxes and goblets. Priceless china held decaying remains of food. Underneath the table were jaggedly opened, empty cans bearing the label of an extremely expensive caterer. Two empty champagne bottles pointed green, blind eyes in their direction. A portable color 'caster was piled with discarded clothing; a blacklace sheer body stocking draped in an obscene posture across the inactive screen. "A magpie's nest rather," he sighed, "and I'd hazard that Maggie is very young and has been poo r all her life until..." He met Pennstrak's sympathetic gaze. "Until our educational program gave her the hints she needed to unlock her special Talent."

"Gillings is going to have to work with you on this, Dave," Pennstrak said reluctantly as he reached for the intercom at his belt. "But first he's going to have to apologize."

Op Owen shook his head vigorously. "I want his cooperation, Julian, grudged or willing. When he really believes in Talent, then he will apologize voluntarily... and obliquely."

To op Owen's consternation, Gillings arrived noisily in the cowlike lab copter, sirens going, lights flashing.

"Don't bother now," op Owen said to Pennstrak for he could see the City Manager forming a furious reprimand. "She might have been warned by the finders' activity anyhow."

"Well, she's certainly been warned off now." Pennstrak stalked off, to confer with one of his aides just as Gillings strode into the corridor with his technicians.

According op Owen and Gracie the merest nod, Gillings began issuing crisp orders. He knew his business, op Owen thought, and he evidently trusted the technicians for he didn't bother to crowd into the tiny apartment to oversee them.

"As soon as your men have prints and a physical profile, Commissioner, we'd like to run the data through our computer. There's the chance that the girl did take advantage of the open Talent test the Center has been advertising."

"You mean you don't know who it is yet?"

"I could 'find' the coat only because I knew what it looked like," Gil Gracie said, bristling at Gillings's manner.

"Then where is it?" and Gillings gestured preemptorily to the sableless apartment.

"These are the shoes, Commissioner," said one of his team, presenting the fragile strap and jeweled footwear, now neatly sealed in clear plastic. "Traces of dirt, dust, fleck of nail enamel and from the 'scope imprint, I'd say they were too big for her."

Gillings stared at the shoes disinterestedly. "No sign of the dress?"

"Still looking."

"Odd that you people can't locate a girl with bare feet in a sable coat and a bright blue silk gown?"

"No odder than it is for your hundreds of patrolmen throughout the city, Commissioner, to overlook a girl so bizarrely dressed," said op Owen with firm good humor. "When you 'saw' the coat, Gil, where was it?"

"Thrown across the loveseat, one arm hanging down to the floor. I distinguished the edge of the sill and the tree outside, the first folds of the curtain and the wall heating unit. I called in, you sent over enough finders so that we were able to eliminate the similarities.

It took us nearly an hour..."

"Were you keeping an 'eye' on the coat all the time?" Gillings demanded in a voice so devoid of expression that his contempt was all the more obvious.

Gil flushed, bit his lip and only partially inhibited by op Owen's subtle warning, snapped back, "Try keeping your physical eye on an object for an hour!"

"Get some rest, Gil," op Owen said gently. He waited until the finder had turned the corner. "If you are as determined to find this criminal as you say you are, Commissioner Gillings, then do not destroy the efficiency of my staff by such gratuitous critic ism. In less than four hours, on the basis of photographs of the stolen objects, we located this apartment..."

"But not the criminal, who is still in possession of a sable coat which you found once but have now unaccountably lost."

"That's enough, Gillings," said Pennstrak who had rejoined them.

"Thanks to your arrival, the girl must know she's being sought and is shielding."

Pennstrak gestured toward the dingy windows of the flat, through which the vanes of the big copter were visible. A group of children, abandoning the known objects of the development play-yard, had gathered at a respectful, but curiositysatisfying distance.

"Considering the variety of her accomplishments," op Owen said, not above using Pennstrak's irritation with his Commissioner to advantage, "I'm sure she knew of the search before the Commissioner's arrival, Julian. Have any of these items been reported, Co mmissioner?"

"That console was. Two days ago. It was on 'find,' too."

"She has been growing steadily bolder, then," op Owen went on, depressed by Gillings's attitude. And depressed that such a Talent had emerged twisted, perverted, selfish. Why? Why? "If your department ever gets the chronology of the various thefts, we'd ap preciate the copy."

"Why?" Gillings turned to stare at op Owen, surprised and irritated.

"Talent takes time to developin ordinary persons. It does not, like the ancient goddess Athena, spring fullgrown from the forehead. This girl could not, for instance, have lifted that portable set the first time she used her Talent. The more data we have o n... the lecture is illtimed."

Gillings's unspoken "you said it" did reach op Owen whose turn it was to stare in surprise.

"Well, your 'finders' are not novices," the Commissioner said aloud.

"If they traced the coat once, why not again?"

"Every perceptive we have is searching," op Owen said. "But, if she was able to leave this apartment after Gil found the coat, taking it with her, because it obviously is not here, she also is capable of shielding herself and that coat. And, until she slip s that guard, I doubt we'll find it or her."

The report on the laboratory findings was exhaustive. There was a full set of prints, foot and finger. None matched those on file in the city records, or Federal or Immigration. She had not been tested at the Center. Long coarse black hair had been found.

Analysis of skin flakes suggested an olive complexion.

Thermophotography placed her last appearance in the room at approximately the time the four 'finders' fixed on her apartment, thus substantiating op Owen's guess. The thermal prints also revealed that she was of slender build, approximately 5'4", weighing 105 pounds.

Stains on a paring knife proved her to possess blood type O. No one else had occupied the apartment within the eight day range of the thermography used.

From such records, the police extrapolator made a rough sketch of "Maggie O" which she was called for want of a better name. The sketch was taken around the neighborhood with no success. People living in Block Q_didn't bother people who didn't bother them.

It was Daffyd op Owen who remembered the children crowding the police copter. From them he elicited the information that she was new in the building. (The records indicated that the apartment should be vacant.) She was always singing, dancing to the wall ' caster, and changing her clothes. Occasionally she'd play with them and bring out rich food to eat, promising they could have such good things if they'd think hard about them. While the children talked, Daffyd "saw" Maggie's face reflected in their minds.

The police extrapolator had been far short of the reality. She was not much older than the children she had played with. She had not been pretty by ordinary standards but she had been so "different" that her image had registered sharply. The narrow face, t he brilliant eyes, slightly slanted above sharp cheekbones, the thin, small mouth and the pointed chin were unusual even in an area of ethnic variety.

This likeness and a physical description were circulated quickly to be used at all exits to the city and all transportation facilities. It was likely she'd try to slip out during the dayend exodus.

The south and west airstrips had been under a perceptive surveillance since the search had been inaugurated. Now every facility was guarded.

Gil Gracie "found" the coat again.

"She must have it in a suitcase," he reported on the policeprovided handunit from his position in the main railroad concourse. "It's folded and surrounded by dark. It's moving up and down. But there're so many people. So many suitcases. I'll circulate. May be the find'll fix itself."

Gillings gave orders to his teams on the master unit which had been set up in the Center's control room to coordinate the operations.

"You better test Gil for precog," Charlie muttered to op Owen after they'd contacted all the sensitivities. "He asked for the station."

"You should've told me sooner, Charlie. I'd've teamed him with a sensitive."

"Look at that," Charlie exclaimed, pointing to a wildly moving needle on one of the remotes.

Les was beside it even as the audio for the Incident went on.

"Not that track! Oh! Watch out! Baggage. On the handcart! Watch out. Move, man. Move! To the right. The right! Ahhhh." The woman's voice choked off in an agonized cry.

Daffyd pushed Charlie out of the way, to get to the speaker.

"Gil, this is op Owen. Do not pursue. Do not pursue that girl! She's aware of you. Gil, come in. Answer me, Gil.... Charlie, keep trying to raise him. Gillings, contact your men in the station. Make them stop Gil Gracie."

"Stop him? Why?"

"The precog. The baggage on the handcart," shouted Daffyd, signaling frantically to Lester to explain in detail. He raced for the emergency stairs, up the two flights, and slammed out onto the roof. Gasping physically for breath, he clung to the high retaining wall and projected his mind to Gil's.

He knew the man so well, had trained Gil when an employee brought in the kid who had a knack for locating things. Op Owen could see him ducking and dodging through the trainward crowds, touching suitcases, ignoring irate or astonished carriers; every nerve , every ounce of him receptive to the "feel" of a dense, dark sable fur. And so single-minded that Daffyd could not "reach" him.

But op Owen knew the instant the loaded baggage cart swerved and crushed the blindly intent Talent against an Ibeam. He bowed his head, too fully cognizant that a double tragedy had occurred. Gil was lost... and so now was the girl.

There was no peace from his thoughts even when he returned to the shielded control room. Lester and Charlie pretended to be very busy.

Gillings was. He directed the search of the railway station arguing with the stationmaster that the trains were to be hel d and that was that. The drone of his voice began to penetrate op Owen's remorse.

"All right, then, if the Talents have cleared it and there's no female of the same height and weight, release that train. Someone tried the johns, didn't they? No, Sam, you can detain anyone remotely suspicious. That girl is clever, strong, and dangerous.

There's no telling what else she could do. But she damn well can't change her height, weight and blood type!"

"Daffyd. Daffyd." Lester had to touch him to get his attention. He motion op Owen towards Charlie who was holding out the handunit.

"It's Cole's, sir."

Daffyd listened to the effusively grateful store manager. He made the proper responses but it wasn't until he had relinquished the handunit to Charlie that the man's excited monologue made sense.

"The coat, the dress and the necklace have reappeared on the store dummy," op Owen said. He cleared his throat and repeated it loud enough to be heard.

"Returned?" Gillings echoed. "Just like that? Why, the little bitch!

Sam, check the ladies rooms in that station. Wait, isn't there a discount dress store in that station? Have them check for missing apparel. I want an itemized list of what's gone, and an exact duplicate from their stock shown to the sensitives. We've got her scared and running now."

"Scared and running now." Gillings's smug assessment rang ominously in Daffyd's mind. He had a sudden flash. Superimposed over a projection of Maggie's thin face was the image of the lifeless store dummy, elegantly reclad in the purloined blue gown and dar k fur. "Here, take them back. I don't want them anymore. I didn't mean to kill him. I didn't mean to. See, I gave back what you wanted. Now leave me alone!"

Daffyd shook his head. Wishful thinking. Just as futile as the girl's belated gesture of penance. Too much too soon. Too little too late.

"We don't want her scared," he said out loud. "She was scared when she toppled that baggage cart."

"She killed a man when she toppled that baggage cart, op Owen!"

Gillings was all but shouting.

"And if we're not very careful, she'll kill others."

"If you think I'm going to velvet glove a homicidal maniac..."

A shrill tone issuing from the remote unit forced Gillings to answer.

He was about to reprimand the caller but the message got stunned attention.

"We can forget the paternal bit, Owen. She knocked down every one of your people and mine at the Oriole Street entrance. Your men are unconscious. Mine and about twenty or more innocent commuters are afflicted with blinding headaches. Got any practical ide as, Owen, on catching this monster you created?"

"Oriole? Was she heading east or west?" He had to stop that line of talk.

"Does it matter?"

"If we're to catch her it does. And we must catch her. She's operating at a psychic high. There's no telling what she's capable of now. Such Talent has only been a theoretic possibility..."

Gillings lost all control of himself. The fear and hatred burst out in such a wave that Charlie Moorfield, caught unawares, erupted out of his chair towards Gillings in an instinctive defense reaction.

"Gillings!"

"Charlie!" Les and Daffyd shouted together, each grabbing the wild combatants. But Charlie, his face white with shock at his own reaction, had himself in hand. Sinking weakly back into his chair, he gasped out an apology.

"You mean, you want to have more monsters like her and him?" Gillings demanded. Between his voice and the violent emotions Daffyd's head rang with pain and confusion.

"Don't be a fool," Lester said, grabbing the Commissioner by the arm.

"You can't spew emotions like that around a telepath and not get a reaction. Look at Daffyd! Look at Charlie! Christ man, you're as bad as the scared, mixedup kid..." and then Les dropp ed Gillings's arm and stared at him in amazement. "Christ, you're a telepath yourself!"

"Quiet, everybody," Daffyd said with such urgency he had their instant attention. "I've the solution. And there's no time to waste.

Charlie, I want Harold Orley airbound in the Clinic's copter heading south to the Central Station in nothing flat. We'll cor rect course en route. Gillings, I want two of the strongest, most stable patrolmen on your roster. I want them armed with fastacting, doublestrength trank guns and airborne to rendezvous near Central Station."

"Harold?" Les echoed in blank astonishment. Then relief colored his face as he understood Daffyd's intentions. "Of course. Nothing can stop Harold. And no one can read him coming."

"Nothing. And no one," op Owen agreed, bleakly.

Gillings turned from issuing his orders to see an ambulance copter heading west across the sky.

"We're following?"

Daffyd nodded and gestured for Gillings to precede him to the roof. He didn't look back but he knew what Les and Charlie did not say.

She had been seen running east on Oriole. And she was easy to follow.

She left people doubled up with nausea and crying with head pains.

That is, until she crossed Boulevard.

"We'll head south, south east on an intercept," Gillings told his pilot and had him relay the correction to the ambulance. "She's heading to the sea?" he asked rhetorically as he rummaged for the correct airmap of the city. "Here. We can set down at Seaman 's Park. She can't have made it that far... unless she can fly suddenly." Gillings looked up at op Owen.

"She probably could teleport herself," Daffyd answered, watching the Commissioner's eyes narrow in adverse reaction to the admission. "But she hasn't thought of it yet. As long as she can be kept running, too scared to think..." That necessity plagued Daf fyd op Owen. They were going to have to run her out of her mind.

Gillings ordered all police hovercraft to close in on the area where she was last seen, blocks of residences and small businesses of all types.

By the time the three copters had made their rendezvous at the small Park, there were no more visible signs of Maggie O's retreat.

As Gillings made to leave the copter, Daffyd op Owen stopped him.

"If you're not completely under control, Gillings, Harold will be after you."

Gillings looked at the director for a long moment, his jaw set stubbornly. Then, slowly, he settled into the seat and handed op Owen a remote comunit.

"Thanks, Gillings," he said, and left the copter. He signaled to the ambulance to release Harold Orley and then strode across the grass to the waiting officers.

The two biggest men were as burly as he could wish. Being trained law enforcers, they ought to be able to handle Orley. Op Owen "pushed" gently against their minds and was satisfied with his findings. They possessed the natural shielding of the untemperame ntal which made them less susceptible to emotional storms. Neither Webster nor Heis were stupid, however, and had been briefed on developments.

"Orley has no useful intelligence. He is a human barometer, measuring the intensity and type of emotions which surround him and reacting instinctively. He does not broadcast. He only receives. Therefore he cannot be harmed or identified by... by Maggie O.

He is the only Talent she cannot 'hear' approaching."

"But, if he reaches her, he'd..." Webster began, measuring Harold with the discerning eye of a boxing enthusiast. Then he shrugged and turned politely to op Owen.

"You've the double strength tranks? Good. I hope you'll be able to use them in time. But it is imperative that she be apprehended before she does more harm. She has already killed one man...."

"We understand, sir," Heis said when op Owen did not continue.

"If you can, shoot her. Once she stops broadcasting, he'll soon return to a manageable state." But, Daffyd amended to himself, remembering Harold sprawled on the ground in front of the build ing, not soon enough. "She was last seen on the east side of the Boulevard, about eight blocks from here. She'd be tired, looking for someplace to hide and rest. But she is also probably radiating sufficient emotion for Harold to pick up. He'll react by he ading in a straight line for the source. Keep him from trying to plow through solid walls. Keep your voices calm when you speak to him. Use simple commands. I see you've got handunits. I'll be airborne; the copter's shielded but I'll help when I can."

Flanking Harold, Webster and Heis moved west along Oriole at a brisk, even walk: the two officers in step, Harold's head bobbing above theirs, out of stepa cruel irony.

Daffyd op Owen turned back to the copter. He nodded to Gillings as he seated himself. He tried not to think at all.

As the copters lifted from the Park and drifted slowly west amid other air traffic, op Owen looked sadly down at the people on the streets.

At kids playing on the sidewalks. At a flow of men and women with briefcases or shopping bags, hurrying home. At snu bnosed city cars and squatty trucks angling into parking slots. At the bloated crosscity helibuses jerking and settling to disgorge their passengers at the street islands.

"He's twitching," reported Heis in a dispassionate voice.

Daffyd flicked on the handset. "That's normal. He's beginning to register."

"He's moving faster now. Keeps wanting to go straight through the buildings." Reading Heis's undertone, op Owen knew that the men hadn't believed his caution about Orley plowing through solids. "He's letting us guide him, but he keeps pushing us to the rig ht. You take his other arm, Web. Yeah, that's better."

Gillings had moved to the visual equipment along one side of the copter. He focused deftly in on the trio, magnified it and threw the image on the pilot's screen, too. The copter adjusted direction.

"Easy, Orley. No, don't try to stop him, Web. Stop the traffic!"

Orley's line of march crossed the busier wide northsouth street.

Webster ran out to control the vehicles. People turned curiously.

Stopped and stared after the trio.

"Don't," op Owen said as he saw Gillings move a hand towards the bullhorn. "There's nothing wrong with her hearing."

Orley began to move faster now that he had reached the farther side.

He wanted to go right through intervening buildings.

"Guide him left to the sidewalk, Heis," op Owen said. "I think he's still amenable. He isn't running yet."

"He's breathing hard, Mr. Owen," Heis sounded dubious. "And his face is changing."

Op Owen nodded to himself, all too familiar with the startling phenomenon of watching the blankness of Orley's face take on the classic mask of whatever emotions he was receiving. It would be a particularly unnerving transition under these conditions.

"What does he show?"

"I'd say... hatred," Heis's voice dropped on the last word. Then he added in his usual tone, "He's smiling, too, and it isn't nice."

They had eased Orley to the sidewalk heading west. He kept pushing Webster to the right and his pace increased until it was close to a run. Webster and Heis began to gesture people out of their way but it would soon be obvious to the neighborhood that some thing was amiss.

Would it be better to land more police to reassure people and keep their emanations down? Or would they broadcast too much suppressed excitement at police interference? She'd catch that. Should he warn Heis and Webster to keep their though ts on Harold Orley? Or would that be like warning them against all thoughts of the camel's left knee?

Orley broke into a run. Webster and Heis were hard put to keep him to the sidewalk.

"What's in the next block?" op Owen asked Gillings.

The Commissioner consulted the map, holding it just above the scanner so he could keep one eye on the trio below.

"Residences and an area parking facility for interstate trucking."

Gillings turned to op Owen now, his heavy eyebrows raised in question.

"No, she's still there because Orley is homing in on her projection."

"Look at his face! My God!" Heis exclaimed over the handunit. On the screen, his figure had stopped. He was pointing at Orley. But Webster's face was clearly visible to the surveillers and what he saw unnerved him.

Orley broke from his guides. He was running, slowly at first but gathering speed steadily, mindlessly brushing aside anything that stood in his way. Heis and Webster went after him but both men were shaking their heads as if something were bothering them.

Orley tried to plunge through a brick store wall. He bounced off it, saw the unimpeded view of his objective and charged forward. Webster had darted ahead of him, blowing his whistle to stop the oncoming traffic. Heis alternately yelled into the handunit a nd at startled bystanders. Now some of them were afflicted and were grabbing their heads.

"Put us on the roof," op Owen told the pilot. "Gillings, get men to cover every entrance and exit to that parking lot. Get the copters to hover by the open levels. The men'll be spared some of the lash."

It wouldn't do much good, op Owen realized, even as he felt the first shock of the girl's awareness of imminent danger.

"Close your mind," he yelled at the pilot and Gillings. "Don't think."

"My head, my head." It was Heis groaning.

"Concentrate on Orley," op Owen said, his hands going to his temples in reaction to the knotting pressure. Heis's figure on the scanner staggered after Orley who had now entered the parking facility.

Op Owen caught the mental pressure and dispersed it, projecting back reassurance/help/protection/compassion. He could forgive her Gil Gracie's death. So would any Talent. If she would instantly surrender, somehow the Center would protect her from the legal aspects of her act. Only surrender now.

Someone screamed. Another man echoed that piercing cry. The copter bucked and jolted them. The pilot was groaning and gasping. Gillings plunged forward, grabbing the controls.

Op Owen, fighting an incredible battle, was blind to physical realities. If he could just occupy all the attention of that overcharged mind... hold it long enough... pain/fear/black/ red/moiledorange/purples... breathing... shock. Utter disbelief/fear/ loss of confidence. Frantic physical effort.

Concrete scraped op Owen's cheek. His fingers bled as he clawed at a locked steel exit door on the roof. He could not enter. He bad to reach her FIRST!

Somehow his feet found the stairs as he propelled himself down the fire escape, deliberately numbing his mind to the intensive pounding received. A pounding that became audible.

Then he saw her, fingers clawing for leverage on the stairpost, foot poised for the step from the landing. A toothin adolescent figure, frozen for a second with indecision and shock; strands of black hair like vicious scars across a thin face, distorted an d ugly from the tremendous physical and mental efforts of the frantic will. Her huge eyes, black with insane fury and terror, bloodshot with despair and the salty sweat of her desperate striving for escape, looked into his.

She knew him for what he was; and her hatred crackled in his mind.

Those wordsafter Gil Gracie's deathhad been hers, not his distressed imagining. She had know him then as her real antagonist. Only now was he forced to recognize her for what she was, all s he wasand regrettably, all she would not be.

He fought the inexorable decision of that splitsecond confrontation, wanting more than anything else in his life that it did not have to be so.

She was the wiser! She whirled!

She was suddenly beyond the heavy fire door without opening it. Harold Orley, charging up the stairs behind her, had no such Talent. He crashed with sickening force into the metal door. Daffyd had no alternative. She had teleported. He steadied the telempa th, depressed the lock bar and threw the door wide.

Orley was after the slender figure fleeing across the dimly lit, lowceiling concrete floor. She was heading towards the down ramp now.

"Stop, stop," op Owen heard his voice begging her.

Heis came staggering from the stairway.

"Shoot him. For Christ's sake, shoot Orley, Heis," op Owen yelled.

Heis couldn't seem to coordinate. Op Owen tried to push aside his fumbling hands and grab the trank gun himself. Heis's trained reflexes made him cling all the tighter to his weapon. Just then, op Owen heard the girl's despairing shriek.

Two men had appeared at the top of the ramp. They both fired, the dull reports of trank pistols accentuated by her choked gasp.

"Not her. Shoot Orley. Shoot the man," op Owen cried but it was too late.

Even as the girl crumpled to the floor, Orley grabbed her. Grabbed and tore and beat at the source of the emotions which so disturbed him.

Beat and tore and stamped her physically as she had assaulted him mentally.

Orley's body jerked as tranks hit him from all sides, but it took far too long for them to override the adrenal reactions of the overcharged telempath.

There was pain and pity as well as horror in Gillings's eyes when he came running onto the level. The police stood at a distance from the bloodspattered bodies.

"Gawd, couldn't someone have stopped him from getting her?" the copter pilot murmured, turning away from the shapeless bloodied thing halfcovered by Orley's unconscious body.

"The door would have stopped Orley but he," and Heis grimly pointed at op Owen, "opened it for him."

"She teleported through the door," op Owen said weakly. He had to lean against the wall. He was beginning to shudder uncontrollably from reaction. "She had to be stopped. Now. Here. Before she realized what she'd done. What she could do." His knees buckled. "She teleported through the door!"

Unexpectedly it was Gillings who came to his aid, a Gillings whose mind was no longer shielded but broadcasting compassion and awe, and understanding.

"So did you."

The phrase barely registered in op Owen's mind when he passed out.

"That's all that remains of the late Solange Boshe," Gillings said, tossing the file reel to the desk. "As much of her life as we've been able to piece together. Gypsies don't stay long anywhere."

"There're some left?" Lester Welch asked, frowning at the three-inch condensation of fifteen years of a human life.

"Oh there are, I assure you," Gillings replied, his tone souring slightly for the first time since he had entered the office. "The tape also has a lengthy interview with Bill Jones, the cousin the social worker located after Solange had recovered from the bronchial pneumonia. He had no idea," Gillings hastily assured them, "that there was any reason other than a routine check on the whereabouts of a runaway county ward. He had a hunch," and Gillings grimaced, "that the family had gone on to Toronto. They ha d. He also thought that they had probably given the girl up for dead when she collapsed on the street. The Toronto report substantiates that. So I don't imagine it will surprise you, op Owen, that her tribe, according to Jones, are the only ones still maki ng a living at fortunetelling, palmreading, tealeaves and that bit."

"Now, just a minute, Gillings," Lester began, bristling. He subsided when he saw that his boss and the Police Commissioner were grinning at each other.

"So... just as you suspected, op Owen, she was a freak Talent. We know from the ward nurses that she watched your propaganda broadcasts during her hospitalization. We can assume that she was aware of the search either when Gil Gracie 'found' the coat, or when the definite fix was made. It's not hard to guess her motivation in making the heist in the first place, nor her instinctive desire to hide."

Gillings gave his head an abrupt violent jerk and stood up. He started to hold out his hand, remembered and r aised it in a farewell gesture.

"You are continuing those broadcasts, aren't you?"

Lester Welch glared so balefully at the Commissioner that op Owen had to chuckle.

"With certain deletions, yes."

"Good. Talent must be identified and trained. Trained young and well if they are to use their Talent properly." Gillings stared op Owen in the eye. "The Boshe girl was bad, op Owen, bad clear through. Listen to what Jones said about her and you won't regre t Tuesday too much.

Sometimes the young are inflexible, too."

"I agree, Commissioner," Daffyd said, escorting the man to the door as calmly as if he hadn't heard what Gillings was thinking so clearly.

"And we appreciate your help in the cover yarns that explained Tuesday's odd occurrences."

"A case of mutual understanding," Gillings said, his eyes glinting.

"Oh, no need to see me out. I can open this door."

That door was no sooner firmly shut behind him than Lester Welch turned on his superior.

"And just who was scratching whose back then?" he demanded. "Don't you dare come over innocent, either, Daffyd op Owen. Two days ago that man was your enemy, bristling with enough hate and distrust to antagonize me."

"Remember what you said about Gillings Tuesday?"

"There's been an awful lot of idle comment around here lately."

"Frank Gillings is telepathic." Then he added as Lester was choking on the news: "And he doesn't want to be. So he's suppressed it.

Naturally he'd be antagonistic."

"Hah!"

"He's not too old, but he's not flexible enough to adapt to Talent, having denied it so long."

"I'll buy that. But what was that parting shot'I can open this door'?"

Lester mimicked the Commissioner's deep voice.

"I'm too old to learn new tricks, too, Les. I teleported through the roof door of that parking facility. He saw me do it. And she saw the memory of it in my mind. If she'd lived, she'd've picked my mind clean. AndI didn't want her to die."

Op Owen turned abruptly to the window, trying to let the tranquillity of the scene restore his equilibrium. It diduntil he saw Harold Orley plodding along the path with his guide. Instantly a white, wideeyed, hairstreaked face was superimposed over the vie w.

The intercom beeped and he depressed the key for his sanity's sake.

"We've got a live one, Boss," and Sally Iselin's gay voice restored him. "A strong precog with kinetic possibilities. And guess what?"

Sally's excitement made her voice breathless. "He said the cop on his beat told him to come in. He doesn't want any more trouble with the cops so he..."

"Would his name be Bill Jones?"

"However did you know?"

"And that's no precog, Sally," op Owen said with a ghost of a laugh, aware he was beginning to look forward again. "A sure thing's no precog, is it Les?"

PART FOUR A BRIDLE FOR PEGASUS

Julian Pennstrak, Jerhattan City Manager, Daffyd op Owen, Director of the East American Parapsychic Center, and Frank Gillings, Commissioner of Law Enforcement and Order, had gathered in the latter's office: an appropriate setting as the four sides of the tower office were tough plexiglass so the occupants had a full panoramic view of the city they managed or fore saw and protected.

"The Maggie O affair was not without some reward," Daffyd op Owen reminded the other two. "Her... relation... in whatever degree of cousinship Bill Jones stood... is proving to be a sound precog."

Gillings grunted and rubbed the side of his fleshy nose, registering skepticism.

"Half a city semiparalyzed with blinding headaches, two dead, and a lot of public lying and you say there was some reward!"

"You do tend to adopt a negative attitude, don't you, Frank?" the City Manager remarked, half amused. He was watching op Owen from the corner of his eye. He knew that the Director of the Parapsychic Center had been deeply shaken by the deaths of Gil Gracie and Solange Boshe, a.k.a. Maggie O. And the curious sparring between Gillings and op Owen dated from that incident: the one grudging admiration and the other exhibiting wistful regret. Well, Pennstrak possessed a certain empathy himself which told him not to delve too deeply into the denouement of that incident. Suffice it to say, the truth about Maggie's sudden rise and demise had been successfully obscured from public notice and, if Daffyd were satisfied that some profit existed on the black side of the ledger, the City Manager would be content. "Nonetheless," Julian Pennstrak continued, "the Professional Immunity Law is now, as of yesterday, programmed into Federal Books and State Law Machinery.

What's your problem now, Frank?"

"It's this: if renegades like Solange Boshe can exist, how do we smell 'em out before they cause trouble? Now," and he held up his hand as Daffyd op Owen opened his mouth to speak, "I know you've got a subliminal TRID program going, Dave, but just how succ essful is it in routing out the oddballs?"

Op Owen winced at Gillings's phraseology.

"Unfortunately only time will tell. We do have Bill Jones, Maggie O's cousin, and he'll be a first rate precog. Sally Iselin at the Testing Clinic has upwards of fifty applicants a day." He sighed. "Most are wishful thinkers, I'm afraid, but occasionally a live one does come in.

You can't make people get Talenttested."

"What we need," the LEO Commissioner said in a deadly voice, "is enforced testing."

"Of nine million people?" asked Pennstrak, goodhumoredly aghast.

Gillings grunted. "The mavericks cost us more' Pennstrak agreed to that.

"Better still, early testing would be a tremendous help," Daffyd op Owen said. "Our sensitives in the maternity wards do catch the occasional strong one at birth. But we lack adequate facilities and more important, the personnel. It takes a special kind of Talent, in itself, to spot embryo Talents. Sally Iselin is acutely sensitive in this area and I thank Providence for her presence in the Clinic. She's never been wrong in her assessments. But she's the only one Eastern has and she's overworked as it is."

Daffyd smiled and decided against what he'd been about to confide. The dour face of Lester Welch leered at him: For Christ's sake, Dave, don't tell everybody everything you know. They don't always want to hear it.

For instance, Daffyd doubted that Frank Gi llings would take kindly to the notion that Sally Iselin's chief assistant at the moment was the twoyearold Dorotea Horvath, the extraordinarily Talented daughter of two of his people. Dorotea came every morning and afternoon to the Clinic, to "play" in th e room full of applicants. She'd instinctively approach anyone with the least vestige of Talent so that Sally could give the deeper testing. The others could be dismissed after the routine examinations, none the wiser for the preselection. Dorotea was blis sfully unaware of what she could do she simply did it.

"Talent is sometimes latent," Daffyd told Gillings, "as it was in Solange Boshe, springing into maturity under pressure. But different minds react to different stimuli and the powerful Talent, such as Solange's, to another set entirely. Talent can also be consciously or subconsciously suppressed since any Talent singles one out for the unwelcome attentions of the less gifted. We do try to alleviate that envy with our public information broadcasts on what Talent does to relieve..."

Gillings cut him off with a brusque wave of his hand. As much, Daffyd op Owen thought wryly, because Gillings was a latent who had no wish to be trained or reminded of this defection.

"Sorry for the lecture," op Owen said with an apologetic grin, "but you must realize that we are limited in what we can do even with all the Talent at our disposal. Nor can we foresee the stray maturing of Talent. Your LEO operatives, Frank, have all the i nformation we've collated on how to spot the latent or unconscious Talent. What more can we do?"

"Get your Senator friend to write a rider on that Immunity Law," said Gillings in a growl, "that it's illegal to be Talented and conceal it."

Daffyd returned Gillings's half guilty glare with a wideeyed look of surprise. Gillings's perception was not dull: he knew what was behind op Owen's grin and he scowled fiercely at him.

"I'll suggest it to Joel Andres when next we meet," op Owen said politely. "It's a point well taken."

"How in hell could you implement such a statute under the conditions you've just cited, Daffyd?" demanded Pennstrak with understandable disgust. "No facilities, not enough Talent. Besides, latents wouldn't know and therefore wouldn't register, and a Talent who knew of his ability could claim he didn't."

"Well, it'd be a help to me," Gillings said, still in a growling mood.

Yet he glanced at op Owen with less choler. Obviously the telepath hadn't mentioned Gillings's latent abilities to the City Manager. The man knew when to keep his mouth shut. "I could s hut up suspects and keep them from running amok like that gypsy girl."

Op Owen's smile faded.

"You can't suppress or contain Talent, Frank. That'd put exactly the sort of pressure on them we'd want at all costs to avoid. There's so much we don't know about the parapsychic, so much."

"Like what for instance?" asked the LEO Commissioner, steeling himself for unwelcome information.

Op Owen spread his hands wide. "I can't tell you. I'm not a precog."

To which he added a devout and silent "Amen!"

Gillings unloosed another grunt. "Now, on that score, have your Talents come up with anything on this ethnic employment allocation nonsense? You guys are, I sincerely trust, panethnic?"

"Demonstrably." Gillings gave him a long look as if he suspected op Owen of facetiousness. Julian Pennstrak cleared his throat hastily.

"That's one less headache at any rate," the LEO man went on "but your precogs haven't had any Incidents beyond this nebulous warning?" He tapped the Incident readings which had been sent to his office the previous day.

Daffyd shook his head. "The precognitive faculty is the most erratic but generally speaking, the larger the number of people involved, the greater the possibility of detailed Incidents. Or, conversely, the severer the change to a prominent person or a link ed or emotional association, the more likelihood of a definitive Incident.

"The old tealeaf and card readers attempted to tell the future, anyone's future: and while I suppose they could generalize for the average soul well enough, the best of them were only accurate when predicting the future of lives which affected a large sect ion of general mankind. Some precogs operate only on a direct confrontation with a personality, which is why we keep key personnel folders with those sensitives. But you can't actually provoke a precog.

"In the instance of Maggie O: she was a fluke to begin with, an isolated case, unintegrated in any group or with any affiliation that would cause one of our precogs to 'read' for her. That is, until circumstances put her in a position to cross Gil Gracie's lifeline Then we had a reading on him, but only because the precog was tuned to Gil.

"There are, as I keep saying ad nauseam I know, a lot of parapsychic manifestations about which we know nothing. Every time I believe I understand one combination or facet, exceptions to that comprehension appear to confound me.

"Henry Darrow said that having any Talent is like riding a winged horse, you get a magnificent view but you can't always dismount when you want to."

Gillings had waited patiently through op Owen's peroration; now he rattled the urgently tagged tapes on his desk. Pennstrak regarded the Director with new insight.

"I'd always thought that Pegasus was the symbol of poetry... flights of verbal fantasy. But I must say, I like your notion, Dave. A winged horse is an appropriate mount for you people. Not that I'd have the courage to hop on its back."

"If you two would deign to consider the mundane problems of the earthbound," Gillings said in an acid tone of voice, "just how in hell are we going to find jobs for all these eager mudgrubbers?"

On a morning some two months later when Daffyd op Owen reached his office, there was a message on his desk to call Sally Iselin as soon as he had a moment. To a semanticallysensitive personality, the phrasing was provocative, added to the fact that Sally I selin was in charge of recruittesting. Daffyd punched her call numbers as soon as he read the note, disregarding other red and white flagged tapes and messages. If only one psilatent was uncovered in a month of public information broadcasts, the program wo uld be worth its cost.

"Daffyd here, Sally. You rang me?"

"Oh, Daffyd!" She sounded surprised and a tinge embarrassed. "I'm not really certain if I should bother you..."

'My greatgrandmother used to say, 'If it's doubtful, it's dirty."

" "I'm not talking about a shirt, Daffyd," and Sally's usual levity was missing. "I'm talking about people."

"Which people?" It was like pulling screws from wood: intriguingly unSallyish.

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

"Curiouser and curiouser. You've hooked me..."

"Oh, damn. I don't want to hook you. I've gone and done what I shouldn't ta oughta."

Daffyd laughed. "Sally, all you've done is arouse my very considerable, insatiable curiosity."

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

"With as many bundles as Lester will allow me. At nine!"

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

"What's on Iselin's alleged mind?"

"I can't 'path over a phone," Daffyd replied, deliberately misinterpreting Lester.

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

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

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

"Some local yokel from East Waterless Ford upstate wants to tax the Center's residential accommodations, same as any other apartment block.

Claims the revenue on such 'high income residents' would reduce the state's deficit by 9%."

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

"Listen, Dave, he's building a pretty good case."

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

"They did the same thing in New Jersey, you know, when the Princeton University Complex put up those academician villages to counteract the high price of real estate and taxes," Lester reminded him sourly.

"I'll listen, I'll listen. Now, go away, Les." Daffyd inserted Welch's tape in the console.

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

"Get me Julian Pennstrak, please," Daffyd asked his secretary.

The City Manager might be of some assistance here. Certainly he'd be interested in what this upstate character, Aaron Greenfield (am I always to be "fielded," Daffyd wondered wryly, remembering his battle with the US Senator Mansfield Zeusman) is proposing. If Julian didn't already know. Not much slipped past Pennstrak's affable eagleeye.

Pennstrak wasn't available but his secretary tactfully put Daffyd through to Pat Tawfik, Pennstrak's speech writer who was, in actual fact, his Talent guard.

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

"Julian told him that the residential buildings are communal... ?"

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

"The Center is also in Jerhattan proper."

"Julian made that point but Greenfield's one of those allocation goons: all for one and one for all... all monies being in one kitty his.

He's State Budget Chairman, you see."

Daffyd nodded.

"I didn't want to worry you unnecessarily, Daffyd," Pat went on apologetically.

Daffyd suppressed a tart rejoinder and sighed instead.

"Pat, it's easier to pull a weed if it's small."

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

"No. I'm not worried, Pat. Not yet."

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

"Is there a precog?"

"No specific ones. But frankly, Dave, I'm far more worried about the city's climate than anything old Aaron Leftfield perpetrates. And so is Julian. He's streetwalking today." She gave a reassuring wave of her hand. "Oh, I sent one of the LEO sensitives wi th him. I can't move so fast these days." She glanced down at her gravid abdomen.

"You've seen my report?"

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

"It should be on your desk. It'd better be on your desk."

Daffyd found the purplebacked City Admin tape and waved it at her.

"It is. Lester Welch had first crack at me."

"And he didn't mention our tape?" She made an exasperated noise.

"Look, Dave, listen to it now because, believe me, it's more important than Greenfield even if Lester doesn't think so."

"Is that a precog, Pat?"

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

"Pat, d'you want a few weeks relief?"

Daffyd op Owen caught the shifting emotions on her face: sullen resentment giving way to hope, instantly replaced by resignation.

"Don't, Dave."

"I wouldn't and you know it. I can send out a mayday..."

"And overwork some other poor Talent?" Pat's chin lifted. "I'll be all right, Dave. Honest! It's just that... well, hell, listen to the report. And remember, it's a panethnic problem this year."

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

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

"The man's public mind is a sewer," was the final comment.

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

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

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

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

And thank god, Talent was panethnic, thought Daffyd. He didn't have to worry about that ugly head rising against the Center.

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

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

"I knew it. I knew it." And she all but wardanced a circle as she inspected his costume.

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

"You dressed just right. How'd you know? I'm sure I didn't clue you.

Are you positive you're not a precog, too, Daffyd?"

"I'd rather not be."

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

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

Sally's eyes crinkled and her mouth tilted up as she cocked her head to one side. "You are indeed joyous," she said saucily as her glance took in his royal blue blacktrimmed coverall.

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

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

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

Sally was a compulsive talker but Daffyd became aware that her present garrulity was a shield. He wondered what Sally would need to obscure.

Propriety prohibited his making a quick probe but undoubtedly there'd be clues later on. Sally was entirely too ope n to be devious for very long.

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

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

Sally winced, eyeing the ranks of citycrawlers and the presence of both private and public transport copters. "Doesn't take long, does it, for the masses to latch onto a new thrill!"

"Oh? This is new?" He'd caught the worry tone of her thoughts.

"Crowd bad for the project?"

"I don't know." She was more than worried. "I just don't know. It's just that..." She broke off, firmly pressing her lips together.

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

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

"Guarding it, too," Daffyd said, noting the strongarm types in meshed dutyalls.

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

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

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

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

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

"What's available?" Sally asked, simulating bored indifference.

Daffyd was surprised that she felt the need to dissemble.

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

Sally "told" Daffyd that this, too, was an innovation.

"Try something simple, schatzie," Daffyd said, managing the verbal slurs of their assumed roles. "The Medboard warned you and I'm not copting you to the drainbrain again this month."

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

"Nor am I copting you!"

"Make it two milds and bring the pot."

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

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

Sound had come on, more frequency drone than actual note. The dim lights on the girders were beginning to fade completely, and ground spots lit up, adding their eerie moiety to the ambience. Sally looked toward the halfcircle of stage which had remained se milit. The aura of expectation, of voracious emotional appetite increased perceptibly.

Sally shivered and folded her arms across her breasts but Daffyd sensed that the created atmosphere irritated more than distressed her.

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

The auditorium was almost full now and the conversational murmur impinged on Daffyd's senses as the snarl of the unfed. Yes the climate of the city was very uncertain indeed. He could feel the tension building rapidly now, with so many feeding it. He notic ed the muscle boys spreading through the tables and couches, and he worried harder.

The psychology of a crowd was theoretically understood but there was always that gap between theory and reality that dangerous gap which could be bridged by the most insign ificant eventwhen crowd exploded into Riot. Daffyd and Sally were far too familiar with the "tone" of Riot to be very comfortable in a pregnant situation.

In fact, Daffyd was leaning across the table to warn Sally that they might have to leave when the lighting of the stage area altered and a girl stepped into the center. She wore a white caftantype unadorned robe and carried an oldfashioned twelvestring gui tar. It had no umbilical amplifier which surprised Daffyd as much as the girl's regal poise and simple appearance.

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

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

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

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

Noand Daffyd sat up straightevery nerve in his body aware of a subtle, incredible pulse that picked up the gentle melody and expanded ittelepathically!

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

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

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

The girl continued with a more complicated tune from some early nineteenthcentury religious minority which had settled in the eastern United States. And the "message" of the song was a soothing statement of acceptance. She was deliberately taking the audie nce out of the technocratic trap, transferring them to less complex days, lulling them into a mood of even greater receptivity. Nor was Daffyd immune to the charged atmosphere... except for that part of his brain which could not perceive how she was effec ting this deft, mass control.

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

She was preparing her audience, Daffyd realized, deftly and carefully.

He began to relax, or rather, the intellect which had been alerted, responded to the beguiling charm of her performance.

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

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

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

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

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

And that's the most dangerous thing she could do, Daffyd "told" Sally.

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

"They don't know she's not coming back. When they do..."

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

They couldn't just leave. But they had to...

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

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

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

"I can't sit around in this damp dress," Sally said in a nasal whine.

"It'll stain and you know it's only this week's issue."

"Honlove, it'll dry in a few moments. It was only..."

"You would be clumsy and right now..."

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

"If you make me miss any of Amalda's songs, I'll never, never forgive you..."

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

"Sally, how many minorities did you notice represented there?"

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

"I'm calling Frank Gillings."

Sally pulled from him. "I'll find the girl. She's got to have protection..."

"Can you find her?"

' I'm not sure. But I've got to try. Once that crowd realizes she's left..." Sally turned to the right, toward the rear of the factory, slipping past the little city crawlers until she was out of Daffyd's sight. He made for his copter and opened the emerg ency channel to the Center.

Charlie Moorfield was on duty and he instantly patched Daffyd through to the office of Law Enforcement and Order as he was rousing the Center's riot control people. If they could get enough telepaths to the site in time, they might dampen the incipient rio t before LEO needed to resort to the unpopular expedient of gas control.

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

"Roznine? What'n hell would he be doing listening to a singer?" the man asked.

"If you'd heard the effect this singer has on people, you'd understand." The officer swore, at a loss for other words. Daffyd wished that swearing were as therapeutic for him.

"Keep the band open, Charlie..."

"Dave, you can't stay there..." Charlie's voice reached Daffyd's ears even several yards from the copter. Daffyd wished he'd be quiet. He had to concentrate on "listening" for the girl. He could sense Sally's direction but he was used to Sally's mind, he could have "found" her at a far greater distance. But the singer was unknown: alarmingly unknown, Daffyd realized, because he ought to be able to "find" her.

He'd been in her presence, in "touch" with her for over half an hour, long enough for him to ident ify most minds and contact them again within a mile radius. She couldn't have got very far away in such a short time.

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

The customers were getting restless. He hoped they hadn't yet realized that the singer wasn't taking a short break.

Someone opened a section of the big main doors, stood framed in the rectangle of light for a moment, peering out. Daffyd identified the stocky figure as Roznine's. Suddenly the figure of the ethnic leader froze. He stepped out, into the night, head up. The man's curses floated toward Daffyd as he slammed back into the building. Daffyd hurried in search of Sally, wondering what Roznine would do now he knew a LEO squad was on the way. Only... and Daffyd faltered midstride how could Roznine know, if he did, t hat the big copters were LEO. Cargo firms used the same type. Yet op Owen knew with unarguable certainty that Roznine had properly identified the aircraft.

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

"Copouts." Plural, thought Daffyd. Who beside Amalda? No time now for speculation. Daffyd sent a quick warning to Sally to leave off the search and get back to the copter. She was there when he returned, easily eluding the searching muscle men who were as noisy mentally as they were physically.

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

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

"Not long now."

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

Daffyd wasted no time. He halfthrew Sally into the copter, jammed in the rocketlift, warning Sally to hang on. The head LEO copter blared its summons before he could turn on his distinctive identity lights.

As it was, he only just got out of stun range.

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

"I wasn't honestly certain, Daffyd," Sally said, curled in a small contrite ball on the suspended couch in his quarters. She kept examining her glass as if the amber liqueur were fascinating. She'd the appearance of a small girl trying to get out of a scold. Actually her public mind was wide open to Daffyd's, permitting h im a review of her initial impressions of the singer. "I mean, while I couldn't think what else she might be, there was the possibility that it was all sonic amplification. You know what a skilled operator can do."

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

"And not a clue about the girl?"

"Not yet." The licensed owners of the Factory were among those drowsily helpless inside the office in the lobby of the building.

They'd be questioned, of course, by Gillings's men. Perpetrators of riots could expect scant mercy from the LEO office.

"We've got to get to the girl first, Sally."

"If only I'd told you sooner..." Sally was floating in chagrin.

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

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

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

"You first heard her..."

"Just two days ago. I tried to get backstage to see her..." Sally shrugged her failure.

"Muscle boys?"

"No." Sally was astonished. "Everyone else wanted to get next to her.

I'd never have had a chance to find out for sure with so much interference, much less suggest she come to the Center."

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

"We both sensed her fright?"

Sally nodded.

"We are both agreed that she is a broadcasting empath?"

Sally nodded again, more emphatically. "Could she also receive? I mean, that would account for that 'echo' phenomenon, wouldn't it? She throws the emotions out and then magnifies them on retrieval" "That's one explanation."

"Hmm, but you don't subscribe to it with any enthusiasm."

Daffyd grinned at Sally. "It doesn't fit all the circumstances.

Besides, Roznine used a plural... 'those effing copouts."

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

"Probably not. We shall have to inform her."

"And how do you plan to do that?"

"I think we ask for Frank Gillings's help..."

"But... but... she started the riot. You know what happens to riot provokers."

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

"We can trace Cinderella and fit her out with glass slippers..."

Sally grinned saucily as she picked up the analogy.

"Before Pegasus flies away with her."

"Pegasus? He's a myth, not a fairy tale. That's not fair, Daffyd!"

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

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

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

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

"Tracking a rather unique Talent."

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

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

Gillings frowned. "She shouldn't be allowed a public performer's license."

"I wanted to find out if she had one."

Glaring, Gillings icily banged at his desk comset and demanded to be put through to ID. No license had been issued to anyone answering the description of the singer, Amalda: nor had there been a license issued to the Fact for solo entertaining. There were, however, specifications on record as to what mechanical amplification was permitted the management of the Fact, the frequency of the programming and the nights on which public gatherings could be held and the maximum number of people permitted to gather.

Last night's performance, it transpired, was completely illegal.

Gillings issued a summons for the owners, brothers named Dick and Harry Ditts, who had told an entirely different tale the previous evening when they had recovered from sleepy gas. Five minut es later, Gillings was informed that neither Dick nor Harry Ditts could be located at their residences on record.

"Have they any known connection with Roznine?"

"Roznine?" Gillings regarded Daffyd with a combination of disgusted annoyance and startled concern which faded into deep reflection. "You saw him there?"

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

"Don't be naive. Roznine looks after Roznine, first, last and always or I'd've had him cooled long ago. But Sector K is far from his bailiwick..." Gillings stared out across the city with narrowed eyes.

"He's been getting too damned powerful in the City a nd not just with the Slavs. A megalomaniac is what he is and they operate with a curious ability to avoid minor disasters... until they get overconfident. Roznine hasn't made that mistake... yet..

"I shouldn't wonder that there's some Talent in a megalomaniac, apart from his madness."

"Talent?" Gillings erupted as Daffyd had known he would. "Christ, that's all I need is a Talented panethnic leader. Goddammit, why don't you people get on the ball and round up all these goddamn freaking Talents before they go haywire. We've got enough pro blems keeping that..." and his bluntfingered hand described a circle at the panoramic metropolis outside the plexiglass, "... from exploding as it is without unnatural hazards like latent Talents..."

"... Then help us find Amalda. She can be immensely useful..."

"She's a riot provoker..." Gillings's eyes narrowed with a flash of vindictiveness.

"Are you going to help me, or hinder me, Frank? The girl is valuable to both of us but not in your cooler as an RP. She's an intelligent broadcasting empath of tremendous range and power. I don't think she realizes what she is... or didn't until possibly last night.

Something frightened her out of her wits halfway through her third song. She ran! I don't know what it was nor do I know exactly how she can broadcast the way she does, but it's imperative that the Center find and protect her."

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

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

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

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

"Okay, you handle it, but I want that girl found and trained or whatever it is you do with them. And quick. I'll shunt the report on her to your computer. Shouldn't take long to trace her." t took two days to trace the girl known as Amalda. And the printout had many gaps.

She'd been born and reared in a small Appalachian commune: educated to her sixteenth year in the County School system which she quit to "travel"... a not uncommon pattern for an undirected or unmotivated youngster. There was no record of formal music inst ruction but music was a feature in her environment: no official record of her for several years until she took work in a Florida food control complex. Two applications for performer's license in Florida were denied by the Audition Board there. The third ap plication was provisionally granted and lapsed without formal request for an extension, but several short term engagements were on record for her as an unamplified, stringinstrumented folk singer. A new application as apprentice, nonsinger, had been filed in Washington, D. C. four months before: one engagement was listed without a termination date. Then Daffyd had a check made on the play in which she had appeared. Amalda, who had started as a walkon, had been abruptly promoted to an important supporting ro le. The play was scheduled for a metropolitan opening in three weeks.

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

In the meantime, he and Sally worked with the propaganda de appeal for someone in Amalda's situation. Daffyd also got in touch with the play's producer.

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

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

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

Daffyd knew the man was considerably perplexed by the Center's interest in his exactress.

"First, she latches on to my stage manager, Red Vaden... good man, Vaden. Solid. Dependable. Only this little twit has him hopping to her tune like he'd never tried to brush off a stagestruck tail before.

Red doesn't ask many favors so when he wants this bird in the cast...

so when the show travels, he's not lacking what he's been having regular... I say, yes. What harm? Suddenly I got Red begging me to give her an audition for one of the secondary leads. I already got a good PA picked out for the part.

.." Kabilov's expression told Daffyd that his choice had been personal rather than professional. "... but I gotta keep 'em happy so I audition the girl." The little producer frowned now, his thoughts vivid to Daffyd. The man had been surprised out of bored om at the quality of the audition and immediately signed Amalda for the role, despite the fact that he'd known he'd be in for a heavy time with the disappointed candidate. "Mind you, it wasn't that great a part until that kid reads it." Another headshake o f perplexity. "I dunno how she did it because she sure had no theatre arts credits but I couldn't not give her the part. And then the author comes to rehearsal and hell, he's rewriting the part to give her more. I damn near have a jeopardy action from Carl a Jacobs who's the name in the play. Only Red goes to work on her and she quiets down like a lily. And you gotta believe that Jacobs don't handle that easy. She's pushing fifty, y'see, and any new bird is a threat. Funny thing," and Kabilov stared off abov e Daffyd's head, his mind taking up and discarding a hundred different glimpses of Carla Jacobs in high tantrum, Carla Jacobs soothed and very few snatches of Amalda. The man was unconsciously censoring those recollections. "Once La Jacobs got to working w ith the kid, things were okay. Wanta see the reviews we got?"

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

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

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

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

"You better find that girl," Gillings told op Owen, "or I'll find her and make her answerofficiallyfor that riot."

"Frank, don't provoke another Maggie O."

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

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

Gillings growled something dire as he broke the connection.

There were days when Gillings was not Daffyd's only cross. He and Sally had spent most of the morning trying to figure out a way to attract Amalda to them. Lester Welch walked in, listened a few minutes and then snorted in disgust.

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

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

"I'm not sure what we'd ever do without your common sense, Les."

"Oh, someone else'd tell you your nose is on your face." And Les left.

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

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

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

" 'If he were interested' indeed," Daffyd repeated, breaking the connection with uncharacteristic irritability.

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

Her suggestion elicited the needed address in five minutes and in less than half an hour, they were on their way by copter to an isolated area of the Coast. The small seasilvered cottage was tightly locked and obviously untenanted. Rather depressed, Sally and Daffyd returned to the Center. Lester met them at the roof stairs.

"You're covered with canary feathers," said Sally.

"I thought you couldn't read my mind," Lester replied, startled.

"With your expression I don't need to."

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

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

"We found you," replied the man. "I'm Bruce Vaden."

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

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

"That's just a sample of what I can do." Despite a southern softness, the girl's voice grated in their ears and was echoed by an intense mental shout that caused both Daffyd and Sally to shake their heads.

"I don't want this. It doesn't matter any more if Red is in or out of the room. It works anywhere now." She was drenched in bitterness, but there was pity as well as satisfaction to be read from her glance as she watched Sally beginning to shake with reaction.

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

Daffyd winced slightly as Sally slammed the door behind her.

"You're an empath," Daffyd told Amalda, trying to reach through her broadcast to soothe her stampeding emotions.

"I don't care what I am. I want you to stop it. Now!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Then the Center teaches her to control this Talent."

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

"Any Talent is a twoedged sword, Vaden," op Owen said, swinging his chair a little, a soothing motion.

"What kind of a freak is she?"

"She's by no means a freak," Daffyd answered in rather severe tones.

"She's a broadcasting telempath..."

"And I'm the booster station?"

"I think that would be a good analogy."

"Look, op Owen, I've read a good bit about you Talents and nothing was said about what Amalda does..."

"Quite likely. We're just beginning to appreciate the mutations possible in the parapsychic. We have only one true telempath here. He unfortunately has no more mind than a rabbit and he only receives.

Amalda can apparently transmit exactly what she chooses. I gather the phenomenon only began when she met you?"

On the top of Vaden's mind was the actual first meeting: a sort of dazed comprehension that they were "meant for each other." Their first lovemaking had been a revelation to the blase, sex-wearied Vaden and each succeeding day had strengthened their interd ependence.

"She was down and out," Vaden said aloud in an expressionless voice.

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

"I'd hazard that you were the missing factor."

"A modern Svengali?" Vaden was bitter.

"Not exactly. But the brain generates electrical currents. And in the same way that a receiver must be tuned to a certain wavelength to get a message broadcast on that same wavelength, minds must be broadcasting on the same frequency. Yours and Amalda's ar e. Were either of your ever parapsychically tested?"

"Not that I know of."

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

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

at least not yet.

"Granted you serve in the capacity of an amplifier for whatever mood Amalda creates, what happened the other night at the Fact? What terrified her so that she fled from what obviously was a smashsuccess?

She had that audience in the palm of her hand."

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

"You were in the audience?" Vaden asked, temporizing.

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

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

"That's why you've got to help us, op Owen. Turn Amalda off!"

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

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

"You'd better see," Vaden cried, leaning urgently toward op Owen. His eyes were blazing with anger, fear and a sense of impotence which would be more frightening and humiliating to a man of Vaden's temperament.

"You'd better see that it's crushing Amalda t o the point where she was willing to commit suicide rather than live with what she's become!"

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

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

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

"That's very interesting," he told Vaden. "Does Amalda have any idea of the man's identity?"

"How could she?" Red Vaden asked scornfully. He was making a notable effort to cover his inner perturbations. He couldn't bear even the notion of sharing Amalda with anyone. "The minute she realized what was happening, how strong the guy was, and what he w anted her to do, she made as if she was taking a short break. And told me to follow.

But she won't ever sing again. You don't know what it does to you..."

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

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

"You've got to understand that Amalda must be turned off."

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

"Don't you dare!" Vaden moved with surprising speed and grabbed op Owen's hand.

"I thought you'd understand, op Owen. Whoever that guy is is double dangerous!"

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

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

"How?" asked Daffyd blandly.

"By... by... doing what that mind wanted her to do the other night."

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

"I don't believe you."

"How old is Amalda?"

"What? What has that got to do?"

"How old?"

"She's twentytwo...."

"Twentytwo. And rather young for twentytwo, I should imagine. That's still a tender age." Daffyd could've wished for some of Amalda's empathic strength but he was getting through to Vaden's basic reasonableness. "And she has become emotionally involved wit h you...

No offense, please, Mr. Vaden. From a rather humdrum frustrating existence, she has erupted onto the stage, into prominence... Even a mature personality could be dazzled. Then she is thrown into a highly charged situationthe concert at the Facti t was unnerving for me as an observer, and I'm well in command of my emotional responses. She is frightened and runs! For which I don't blame her at all. In short, Amalda has been operating on high for some time. We are still frail masters of our powers, M r. Vaden. And that receiver/broadcaster unit which is Amalda is overcharged.

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