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

"I just said so."

"No," and Vaden shook his head angrily as if he'd thought Daffyd would "know" his exact referents.

"Emotion is as much a tool as a pen or a pneumatic drill..."

Vaden stared at him, and then unexpectedly chuckled. "And Amalda's been swinging the drill?"

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

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

As it was..."

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

"I don't think she'll have any alternative," Daffyd replied severely.

Vaden frowned, his eyes narrowing, but op Owen returned the look, adding a mental reinforcement. "She is exhausted from the look of her, which is what happens when you run an engine on f ull power for any length of time. We'll sedate her sufficiently to let her body and mind rest. And we'll keep her sedated until she begins to realize that she cannot control everything around her with the grip of a tyrant... for that seems to be her main fear. Rather commendable, actually."

"And?" Vaden said in a flat, noargument voice.

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

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

"What took you so long?" he asked Sally.

"What d'you think I am? A lousy pop Talent?"

She s able to cover completely now, Daffyd," Sally said with understandable pride.

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

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

Daffyd thought fleetingly of Solange Boshe.

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

"She's off all tranks now?" he asked, grateful to her.

"Heavens yes. She's got to concentrate on Harold, you know."

"Then let's start them moving about outside."

"I would if I were you. The Red Bear's about to go stir crazy."

"Red Bear?"

Sally wrinkled her nose. "That's what I call Vaden."

"Then Amalda's Goldilocks?"

"Good heavens, no. She's Cinderella, remember?"

"Cinderella and the One Bear?"

"Cinderella, the One Bear and... the Wolf!"

Daffyd frowned. "I thought I was a better therapist than that."

"Oh, it's just a backofthemind worry. She's not going to trust herself until she does meet and vanquish the Wolf. And then we can all live happily ever after."

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

In the month Amalda had been at the Center, the overthin, intense girlchild had been replaced by a still slender but composed young woman. Her fears had slowly been eased by Daffyd's adroit therapy and by her own ability to discipline her emotions, to chan nel the vital energies deftly.

The first sessions with Harold Orley had been conducted with Amalda fairly well sedated. The girl had been revolted by Harold's witlessness. There could have been no clearer mirror for her reaction.

Pity for the moronic empath had been quickly suppressed b ecause Harold would disconcertingly burst into tears. At first Amalda had rebelled at being forced to work with Harold but she could not refute the fact that he would react instantly to her emotions and until she could control them in his presence, she cou ldn't expect to be able to control them sufficiently in public.

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

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

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

"You have to learn to balance the toy just as Dorotea does..." Daffyd said gently.

"So they won't all fall down and go boom?"

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

Despite sedation, Amalda paled and shuddered.

"He can't find me, can he?"

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

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

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

"Limited?" Sally was surprised.

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

"An incipient riot?"

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

"Well, so that's what you've had in mind."

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

"And what about the Wolf?"

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

"And Amalda?" Sally "sounded" furious with him.

"Which would you wager on? A Wolf or a Bear?"

Daffyd op Owen was by no means as callous of Amalda's safety as Sally might think, for he'd circulated a warning to all sensitives for any inquiry about Amalda or Bruce Vaden and any un usual activity on Roznine's part. Ted Lewis, the chief police Talent, gave them their first hint of interest. A wellknown and respected Performer's Agent who just happened to be Polish, asked for assistance from Central Casting to find a missing PA, Bruce "Red" Vaden who was reportedly employed but who had obviously not appe ared with any working company.

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

"What about an unamplified folk singer?"

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

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

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

"Vsevolod Roznine is no man's fool, boss," Ted Lewis was saying to Daffyd's further agitation. "He's got every single employment and patronage plum available for his Slavs. Oh, all very legal; a bit dicey if you're looking at it from some other ethnic corn er, but legal. And he's fast moving out of his own bailiwick. He's been getting cooperation where no PanSlav has ever got it before. How, why, what he does, we don't know. He may use a common garden variety of blackmail or he may even have a genuine Talent. Though Gillings'll flip if he's got to deal with a Talented ethnic leader!"

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

Ted Lewis shot his superior a disgusted look. "They're all sleeping on papered pillows."

"And?"

"Boss, you know you can't force a valid precog."

"No Incidents at all?"

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

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

"You want that?"

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

Gillings was delighted to use Amalda and Bruce Vaden as riot prevention. He even offered to take the charge off the books but Daffyd suggested that it remain a while longer. The team was instantly assigned to a round of rallies, meetings, conferences, and conventions.

Such gatherings were encouraged to divert a population with too much unoccupied time but any one of them might explode into a riot, given the proper stimuli. Decibel alarms were legally required in every meeting hall, including churches, but c lever agitators could and had sabotaged them so that the suppressant gases were not released when the "noise" level reached the sharp pitch of incipient riot. The professional agitators had also learned how to modulate their voices below the danger level, carefully goading their victims into the spontaneous combustion which neither gas nor water jets could control.

And which no precog could be expected to accurately predict until too late for effective action.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And yet, Amalda reluctantly admitted, she didn't dislike it. If only... She wouldn't think about that. It'd ruin her appetite. After all, now she'd got the hang of this trick mind of hers, she could make whole bunches of people feel what she wanted them t o. When the time came, she could control him, too. Bruce was never far from her. She smiled, the warmth of his infinite love a presence to counteract any nibble of fear. Sometimes when Bruce made love to her, she wanted to embrace the whole world with its beauty, but that sort of broadcasting wasn't even moral: that was private between her and Bruce and... He'd thought things at her that night... Things she didn't even dare to think about...

Harold was getting restless. She curbed her reminiscences.

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

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

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

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

Part of her mind wanted to search for him, but her strongest desire was never to be touched by him again, ever. She scanned the room now, certain she'd be able to locate his evil self. She'd certainly studied his Ids long enough to spot him physically anyw here. Waiters were coming and going from the kitchens. He wasn't one of them. He wouldn't be one of the conventioneers. She'd've identified him long before now. She opened her mind, making it, as Dave had suggested, like the lens of a camera, slowly wideni ng. She didn't really want to: too much of an appalling and revolting nature seeped in. She wondered how Dave, who was a full telepath and "heard" actual thoughts, not just emotions as she did, could bear it. She wondered how much he had "conditioned" her mind to accept her Talent. She knew he had: he'd told her so. She didn't mind... probably Dave had done that, too.

But he was so kind. Now if only he'd...

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

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

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

"I'm sorry. I didn't hear you," she said, smiling up at him.

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

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

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

"I ask her a simple question and she gives me this sosorry routine," he said. But he was incensed about something. And his urgency intensified.

"Really, there's so much noise," Amalda said.

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

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

"I certainly don't want to cause trouble." And Amalda began to broadcast soothing thoughts.

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

"You just come with us, miss. You just come with us."

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

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

Then Bruce and two officials closed in on the knot of people and somehow the unconscious waiters were being whisked from the banquet hall."Calm 'em, Mally," Bruce hissed at her and she began to pour out such sweetness and light that everyone at her table stopped eating to beam at each other. She modified the broadcast, got Harold and herself reseated. She even managed to keep her trembling reaction inward so that none of it boiled over to erase the idiotic smile from Harold Orley's face.

By the time the luncheon ended, however, the effort began to tell on her and was reflected in Harold's nervousness. She felt physically drained. What if he had been able to get her away before Harold could react? Before Bruce, on the other side of the hall , had been able to get to her? Supposing he had...

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

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

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

"Let's get her out of here," Red said and gestured the LEO man to lead Harold.

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

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

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

"I'm so sorry. So sorry." Amalda had a sense of failure. The first time she came up against him she had fallen apart. She wanted to cry.

She was a failure. After all Daffyd and the others had done to help her... to swoon like any vapid female...

"I'll get you. I'll get you the next time." The voice was as loud in her ears as Bruce's exclamation.

"Bruce... " Charlie Moorfield came through Daffyd's door without bothering to knock.

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

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

"Who did what?" demanded Sally, excitedly. She wasn't accurate enough to 'path the sequence.

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

"Only she got Harold to bash their skulls in."

Sally gasped.

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

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

"How do you construe that?" Daffyd asked.

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

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

"Wait a minute, Lester," Charlie said, "that Immunity Law only means that you can't get sued when..."

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

"This would be the first time we've had to invoke the law," Daffyd said.

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

Op Owen made a cutoff gesture with one hand. Lester Welch muttered in disgust.

"I thought by this time you'd've learned the cost of idealism, Dave.

We sweated out that Bill: it damned near cost us Joel Andres's life; we have a clear case of an infraction and by God's little chickens, you're going to invoke it. If Gillings hasn't alre ady."

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

"Commissioner Gillings, sir, urgently."

Daffyd nodded acceptance.

"Op Owen, we're getting a lot of static from the Waiters Union, about Amalda, false arrest and all that crap," Gillings stated with no preamble. "So far I've played it that their member was pushing a lust act and got told to bug off: that the ladyinquestio n is sufficiently upset to invoke female citizen's rights. Then we got the honestemployees, good union men with clean sex records and she's a pervertafterthedamages claim." Gillings sighed with heavy disgust.

"You know, the usual convention static. Now, we can clear all this up by invoking the Professional Immunity Act but..." and Gillings waggled a thick finger at Daffyd. "I'm not all that eager to break the team's cover. Bruce Vaden told my men that something had scared Amalda and the only thing I know s he's scared about is what happened at the Fact. Was there a repeat at the Morcam?"

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

"Don't take too much. That Waiters Union packs quite a wallop."

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

"Ted, you heard about the snatch attempt on Amalda?"

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

"Is Roznine involved in any way in the Waiters Union?"

"Hell yes. There isn't one Union he isn't involved with right now."

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

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

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

"Then he suspects he's been under surveillance and is ducking out the other exit of the TRID. Fine." This was an unsettling development because it could mean that Roznine was developing as a Talent. If he got pushed too hard.... op Owen shuddered. "Let's g o see Amalda."

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

"How close to you?"

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

"Were you aware of anything, Red?" Daffyd asked.

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

"After the attempt, were you aware of Roznine's mind, Amalda?"

"Not until we were leaving the hall." She closed her eyes. "He said 'I'll get you. The next time I'll get you."

" Daffyd looked questioningly at Red who shook his head.

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

Amalda looked at him startled and then shook her head, smiling shyly.

"Only from you. Before now." She was aware of his concern. "That's bad, ain't it?" she asked, her soft southern inflection intensifying her regret.

"Not necessarily. We have a problem," he began, choosing his words carefully. "We know that Roznine would like to... get you, Amalda, to accomplish his own ends which, knowing your capability, must be illegal control of men's emotions. We have to assume h e's been trying to locate you. We must also assume that he may not realize that Bruce is part of your ability. And that's a link that can and will protect you, Amalda." Daffyd reinforced that notion with a stern telepathic voice.

"Roznine couldn't succeed in kidnapping you today, could he? Well, he damned well won't be able to anywhere else either."

"You can't be sure of that, Daffyd," she said in a very small scared voice.

"I don't intend to put it to the test, Amalda," Daffyd continued smoothly, smiling at the apprehensive girl, "but kindly remember that you have successfully eluded him twice now. Once by running away and hidingsuccessfully. And today by direct action again st his agents."

Amalda slowly nodded her head in agreement.

"Now, while Roznine is keen to get his hands on you, we... and I include the Commissioner... are very anxious to get Roznine." It was Bruce Vaden who stiffened and looked with an intensity close to hatred at Daffyd op Owen. The telepath returned that look calmly, knowing in that exchange that Vaden understood the implication even if Amalda didn't.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Standin?" Gillings appeared to reject the stratagem instantly and just as abruptly, he frowned thoughtfully. "Why? You don't think anyone would be crazy enough to try and snatch Amalda in court, do you?

Although..." he glanced over at the windows, "the a tmosphere is damned unstable..."

"I know," Daffyd agreed. Even during the short copter flight to : the LEO Block, he'd been aware of the pervasive "darkness" of the city's emotional aura. The weather had been miserable, which didn't help; general employment was down; there'd been the usua l complaints about the subsistencelevel foods; gripes about the TRI-D programming; nothing out of the ordinary... yet. There might indeed be the makings of a major blowup.

It would take two weeks for an improvement in the food to have a perceptible effect: TRID programming was undoubtedly being altered but even the most perceptive Talents could be fooled over what the public really wanted on the boob tubes. The variety of "c ircuses" available was almost as infinite as foodtastes and yet one never knew precisely what would satiate the public appetite. Op Owen made a mental note to check all precog rumblings. Strange there hadn't been any definite Incident by anyone when such a large population unit was involved.

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

"Then we send Amalda to the hearing madeup."

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

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

Op Owen took a deep breath. "I don't think it would be advisable to cool Roznine."

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

"I haven't suggested you arrest Roznine. In fact, that would not only be impolitic but dangerous."

Gillings glared at him, snapping out one short explosive word.

"How?"

"Because Roznine is a latent Talent. That's what scared Amalda."

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

"No!" Daffyd's negative, forcible mental as well as audible, carried weight on every level and blocked those avenues of action which he could perceive Gillings already plotting. "Roznine is contained... at the moment. Butthis time we don't force a latent into a position where he can become dangerous to an entire city. I want to avoid another Maggie O far, far more than you do!"

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

"Roznine is no threat to us... yet. But he does threaten Amalda," Daffyd went on. "That threat is real. It would be stupid," and he paused to let that word be absorbed, for Gillings was not a stupid man, "to get Roznine so frustrated that additional facet s of his Talentwhatever it isare stimulated."

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

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

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

"Unaware? My effing foot. With all the publicity you guys have been larding the TRIDs with, he's got to know what he isespecially if he's been playing mental pattycakes with that Amalda. Op Owen, I don't need a Roznine in this city! You Talents put him whe re he belongs and bridle him or lobotomize him or something. Or I'll invoke whatever law on the books suits me and cool him permanently. I can't have this city turned into a battlefield. Or have you forgotten Belfast?"

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

"Well?"

There was a moment's hesitation. Daffyd could almost see the caller swallowing hastily, probably wishing he didn't have to continue.

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

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

"Delay 'em. Someone's on the way down from this office. Then permit bail."

Gillings tossed an oddly designed coat button to op Owen.

"This'll get you anywhere in the building. And keep it."

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

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

Daffyd sauntered by, scanning each man's mind quickly. What he "heard" he didn't like, but it confirmed the fact that Roznine was organizing the proceedings. None of these men knew more than his own assignment.

But each was moved by an intense desire to co mplete it expeditiously and successfully or... The "or else" held dark, dire and fearful consequences.

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

There were times, he finally concluded, when a man had to operate on the "feel" of things alone. He was not, God forfend, a precog, but there were also times when a man simply had to dispense with rational thought and its consequences. Particularly when fa ced by a free agent like Roznine who could not be expected to have predictable responses to stimuli and pressures.

The similarities between Roznine and Maggie O were inescapable, but this time Daffyd had a tool and a resolve.

"We've been fighting fire with oldfashioned water, Frank," he said to the Commissioner when the man stalked back into his office. "From now on we use modern methods, foam and tranquilizers."

"What are you jibbering about?"

"I can't explain, but will you trust me?"

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

"I goddamn well have to, don't l? But, goddamn it, Dave, if you Talents don't contain Roznine..."

"We can," and Daffyd op Owen began to grin with utter malice for the underhanded, immoral, unethical use of Talent he was about to invoke.

Lester wouldn't approve either, but then, he didn't plan to tell Lester Welch.

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

"Repeal the Immunity Act; no extraordinary privilege for minorities!"

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

Precogs began to have troubled Incidents. To alter circumstances, the team began wearing disguises, with Amalda and Bruce Vaden both paired to combattrained LEO men. They were also on twentyfourhour call, hopping from one gathering to another, trying to fo restall explosionsusually at rallies designed to bring their own downfall.

Twice Amalda felt Roznine's mind searching for hers. She'd break off all broadcasting and the team would leave that area instantly.

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

Roznine's strategem also suffered from his zealousness. On the day of the hearing, there were so many people wanting to attend this test of the Immunity Act that he couldn't possibly have attempted a kidnapping.

The press of hopeful attendees provided the LEO officials with an excuse to be selective and, naturally, the audience was conveniently packed with outoftown Talents whom Daffyd had invited. Sensitives at the Court Block entrance tipped the LEO men off whom to exclude and the PanSlavic contingent was decimated. In the wake of the prosecuting force, Roznine was admitted in his capacity as PanSlavic leader since one of the waiters was his ethnic. It was the first opportunity Daffyd op Owen had had to get a good look at the man and he was somewhat surpri sed by Roznine's physical appearance. Daffyd would have liked to "scan" him but the emotional aura of the courtroom made that mentally and physically impossible. The telepath pondered on the subconscious impressions he'd been receiving from Gillings and Am alda, for Roznine was a perfectly presentable, personable looking chap, quietly dressed in a moderately expensive tunic, his heavy head of black hair cut to his shoulders and his thick black moustache trimmed to join the sideburns, leaving the rest of the strong face bare.

Roznine took a seat by the wall and turned for a careful survey of those already seated.

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

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

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

So, thought Daffyd, Aaron Greenfield had a small man's push!

Greenfield leaned over, tapping one of the prosecuting attorneys on the shoulder and engaged him in a guarded conversation, all the time glancing around the audience, pointing at last to the very empty seats on the defendant's side.

The hearing lights went on and the "judge" sounded his electronic gavel for the court to come to order. One of the prosecution team rose to protest the absence of the defendant and counsel but that was Amalda's cue and she, and her escort, made their entra nce.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Daffyd, " she said, her mind tone anxious, "he's after me."

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

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

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

Grand! Let Roznine think only Amalda was responsible! But could Amaldaeven with Red helpingbroadcast so strongly? Could she actually use Roznine without his consent? If so...

The "hearing judge" mechanically sounded the gavel and called for order, its voice getting louder and louder as the giggles continued.

It ordered the courtroom cleared of "obstructionists." The paroxysms which had afflicted everyone abruptly ceased and peo ple weakly wiped their eyes and ordered their clothing. Aaron Greenfield looked anxiously around, his face flushed with anger. The man was no fool, Daffyd realized. He'd know that Talent had been responsible and, with his prickly dignity offended, he'd red ouble his efforts to get the Talented taxed. Oh, well, you couldn't make an omelette without breaking eggs, thought Daffyd philosophically. He nodded approvingly at Amalda who, with her twins, had sneaked a glance at him.

Prosecution then announced possession of a sworn statement from the Morcam Convention Committee that it had requested no LEO surveillance.

Defense replied that all convention situations fell under the RiotPrevention Act and the LEO Commission was quite wit hin its jurisdiction to use such riot prevention techniques as seemed advisable. The uncertain climate of the city was cited to be in the "unsettled" percentile which permitted the LEO Commission to take such precautions as it deemed necessary to ensure la w enforcement and order. The defense counsel reminded the "judge" that any gathering of 200 or more persons (and the Morcam Luncheon had had 525 paid and consumed covers) was liable to auxiliary surveillance whether requested or not when the climate of the city registered in the "uneasy" percentiles. Prosecution demanded to know exactly what riot prevention technique was employed by Amalda. Defense responded that she was a registered empath of a + 15 sensitivity and a perceptive rating of + 12, and offered to produce positive testimonials from organizations which had employed Amalda in her capacity as a Talent for riot prevention. Prosecution repeated its demand for an explicit description of her crowd control technique and defense invoked the provisions of the Law Enforcement and Order Commission.

Daffyd wasn't certain whether the prosecution wanted to separate Amalda from her lookalikes or discover the exact procedure she used.

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

Prosecution insisted vehemently that this was a clear case of personal infringement and misuse of privilege just as the time-limit light came on. There was the rumble as the "hearing judge" searched its programming for precedents. That didn't take long. Mo ments later the date for a trial appeared on the screen: a date seven weeks hence.

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

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

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

"Hey, this guy's passed out," someone cried. "Is there a medic around?"

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

"I'm a physician," a woman said in a firm loud voice, three rows away, holding up her emergency pouch. There was a slight scuffle as Bruce tried to intercept her, but suddenly the PanSlavs moved, jumping over seats, knocking people aside in an effort to pr otect their fallen leader.

Daffyd caught Vaden back, called off the others.

The bailiff scurried from the court, yelling for an ambicopter, as the woman medic and three Slavs lifted the stricken man and carried him to the prosecution's table. The "hearing judge" began to call for order, for the next case, for the obstructionists t o be removed from the courtroom. Its voice got louder and louder until it finally called a recess until the court could be humanly cleared.

"All right, all right, we've got him under heavy sedation in the Court Block infirmary," Frank Gillings told Daffyd, "but that took doing.

The place is crawling with PanSlavs. We can't arrest a man for collapsing in court... and how did you do it?"

"One of the teleports gave him a 'punch,' " Daffyd said with a rueful grimace.

Gillings stared at him with awe and respect.

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

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

Daffyd looked at Gillings and, for a microsecond, hesitated.

"No, not exactly, but we're doing our very best."

"What? What in hell do you mean by that?"

"I mean, we've set the trap and baited it and we simply have to have patience."

"Patience? With this city about to erupt?"

"Curiously enough, Gillings, I don't think the city is going to erupt.

Oh, we've recorded some Incidents, minor ones, involving Talents..."

and Daffyd frowned because the Incidents were distressing and so vague that only a general allTalent warning could be issued.

Gillings gave one of his disgusted growls. "You guys make me sick.

You can't even protect yourselves."

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

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

It took the telepath the entire trip back to the Center to get control of his inner perturbation. Of course, Gillings had to be ruthless and consider only the larger aspect, the safety of the City, but it galled Daffyd to think that Gillings could so offha ndedly dismiss the personal trials of the Talented. It grieved Daffyd that there would be more precedents on the newlyprogrammed Immunity Law after the next few days. The fact that Talents would now have redress for the precogged personal assaults on them was no satisfaction. He'd really have preferred never to have had to invoke that Law.

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

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

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

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

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

His path led him past the playyard where he could hear the children yelling and screaming, arguing over some violently important triviality. Triviality? To him, perhaps, yet they were as devoted to their separate sides of the argument as he was to...

"Well?" Sally Iselin stood in his way, her fists planted on her hips, a mockferocious expression on her pert pretty face. "Aren't you pleased with the outcome of the hearing?" She frowned, sensing his uncertainty. "But you were able to plant a suggestion i n Roznine's mind? Oh, that Gillings. What is it about a cop that sours the man?"

It was Daffyd's turn to be surprised. "That's pretty good reading, Sally."

As suddenly he felt her mind tighten and the contact that had begun to lift his depression was taken away.

"What does Gillings expect of us anyway?" she asked.

"A happy ending!"

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

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

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

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

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

"Just because no one has precogged a disaster of some monumental proportion resulting from this fairy tale affair, you're down in the doldrums. Does everything Talented have to end in disaster? Are you going to be committed to grief for the rest of your bo rn days? Or are you willing to admit that there hasn't been a disaster precog because there isn't going to be a disaster? That things will work out right?

All the sensitives are edgy, but not miserably so. Good God, do we have to wallow in sorrow all the t ime? Do we have to run around wondering if we have a right to be happy?"

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

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

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

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

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

The next morning the nebulous anxieties of the sensitives were translated into attacks on the Talented. One of the finders attached to the LEO Block was beaten up on his way to the Center. A Talent mechanic at the big MidTown Parking Complex was seriously mauled and shoved into the boot of the car he'd been servicing. Two healers in the General Hospital were raped and shorn of their hair but their assailants were caught because the girls had the ability to "call" for help.

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

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

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

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

"I'd hoped he'd come as soon as he regained consciousness."

Sally's eyebrows flicked up. "You've never failed of your mark before.

Unless..." She pursed her lips, frowning.

"Amalda's inhibiting him?" Daffyd caught the halfsuppressed notion.

"You know she's scared of him. I mean, scared as a woman is of a very domineering man... sexually, I mean. Oh, you know what I mean and then there's Bruce Vaden and all that."

"Amalda had proof positive yesterday that Roznine couldn't dominate her."

"Perhaps... I mean, intellectually, Talentwise, yes. But it's Bruce that's holding her back. He's already at the top of the Glass mountain and Amalda doesn't dare roll the other apple."

Daffyd caught the unarticulated ramifications of Sally's thinking.

Part of Amalda's reluctance to admit Roznine's attractiveness to her stemmed from a fear of losing Bruce Vaden, to whom she was equally attracted but for different reasons.

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

"Now it's fables?"

"Why not? You added myths to my fairy tales so it's my shot."

"That only leaves me proverbs."

"So?"

"So! That leaves us with Amalda inhibiting Roznine?"

"He should've been here otherwise."

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

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

Daffyd sighed long and deeply.

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

"Did you inform Gillings?"

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

" 'There's many a slip twixt cup and lip!"

" Daffyd replied. Sally gasped and signaled surrender.

"Huh?" Lester wanted an explanation.

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

"Did you goof, boss? Now what do we do?"

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

" "Amalda and Red?"

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

"Ask him yourself: Charlie says he's just called through."

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

"You got troubles?" Gillings's face was impassive.

"Nothing we can't handle..."

"Oh, the trap's sprung?" Gillings looked almost pleased.

"Hmmmm... but I'd like a few of your riotmobiles around."

Gillings's expression changed rapidly to sour discontent.

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

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

"Roznine's a strong personality...""I'm going after him..."

Gillings now looked like a trap sprung.

"Gillings," and Daffyd's tone of voice was far sterner than people were apt to use in addressing the LEO Commissioner, "don't go after Roznine.

We've exerted all the pressure possible under the circumstances.

He'll come..."

The Commissioner regarded the Director for a long moment.

"You better know what the hell you're doing, op Owen."

"I do."

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

"I really think I do, Sally." Daffyd looked out of his window toward the building which housed Amalda and Red. "Two birds in one bush, two baskets with the same eggs, two minds with the same great thought..."

"Spare me! Uncle! I yield!"

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

"I should have guessed that Shakespeare would be next."

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

"He's coming for me," said Amalda when she and Red noticed the circling picketers and the gathering of curious bystanders.

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

"My dear child, if Roznine has to salve his Slavic ego by resorting to that kind of subterfuge..."

"What on earth do you mean?"

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

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

"Did you really look at Vsevolod Roznine yesterday?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Don't do that, Mally. I've got to think."

She bit her lip apologetically and "buttoned" her emotions up.

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

"It's you I'm worried about, Bruce," she said in a very low voice, her eyes wide and full of tears.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He flung himself from the table, catching the leg with his foot and upsetting the untouched meal, halfstumbling against the door and striking his temple on the frame. He hit his head a second, a third time. And clutching the molding, threw back his head in bitter laughter.

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

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

"NO!"This time his fists thudded into plastic. "Roznine does not come at a woman's call. She comes to him!"

How had they done this to him? How could she call him? Once he'd known her name and that she was at the Center, he'd had his people find out all they could. She was registered as a telempath. Roznine had looked that up and the answer had only confirmed wha t he'd guessed himself: she could transmit emotions and probably receive them.

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

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

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

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

..

"No!"

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

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

Chort vozmi! Would his head never stop aching?

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

"Everyone's in position, Gospodeen."

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

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

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

"And the riot squad?"

"Parked at or working conveniently nearby. The disposal men..."

"Good enough!" His head pounded like a drill press but he remembered.

How could he have forgotten? So she was a riot control team, was she?

Well, let her control this riot! Men would pour in to the Center's so private, so secluded, so sacrosanct grounds fr om all over the city: men from many ethnic groups so it couldn't be blamed on his section.

It had meant cancelling half the favors he was owed but, just let him get his hands on that little riot controller and...

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

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

Charlie Moorfield ran through to Daffyd's quarters.

"Ring Amalda and tell her I'm on my way over."

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

"He is coming. You were too much for him."

"Possibly."

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

"Yes, I see what you mean, Dai."

"Let's reinforce Amalda."

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

"Tell Gillings to get all riot units here on the double. Alert Ours."

Daffyd op Owen swore as he grabbed Sally's hand and pulled her out the door. Short of teleporting, he'd never been down the stairs so fast.

Afterwards Sally told him her feet had touched the steps only three times.

Amalda and Bruce Vaden had exited through one of the sidegates in the grounds. They'd come up on the picketline from one side, mingling with the onlookers until they were directly opposite the main gates. The picketers were dutifully chanting the slogans t hey carried, the four LEO men routinely assigned a picket, were almost as bored with the proceedings. A passenger conveyance settled to the public landing some hundred yards from the gates and the occupants, carrying collapsed signs, descended in an orderl y fashion.

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

She nodded for she'd unerringly sighted the one man who was important.

"He's with them."

"Well, this is the last place he'd be looking for us. Are you shielding tightly?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Don't get scared, honey baby," Bruce told her under his breath, fighting in his mind to hold the broadcast and disguise the inner reluctance of sharing Amalda with anyone at all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Bruce was right that Vascha (she found his nickname easily: though he thought of himself, selfimportantly, only as Vsevolod Roznine, the Vascha personality was there, too) was nice looking, with a strong body and sensitive hands. She liked long, wellsh aped fingers on a manshe liked to have such hands on her body.

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

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

"You 're mine. 1, Vsevolod Roznine, say yo are mine." That was his thought, beating away at her. She wanted to laugh, to sing out because his thought couldn't go any further than her mind. It couldn't reach Bruce, standing not more than five feet away. No t unless she wanted it to go further!

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Easy, Frank. The team's on assignment, completely legitimate."

"Council isn't a riot situation..."

Daffyd raised his eyebrows in polite surprise. "No? According to Roznine, the tempers get so hot no constructive work is ever done.

Each ethnic group insists that its members are being discriminated against with accusations and counteraccusations until the mediator adjourns the hearing with nothing accomplished except exhibitions of parliamentary bad manners. Sorry. The team is going to cool things long enough for common sense to prevail. Roznine's reason for wanting Amalda's Talent in City Hall was valid."

Daffyd also neglected to add that that was the bargain he'd struck with Roznine to join the Center. All the man wanted was to be certain the employment allotments were impartially assigned. Well, not all, Daffyd amended to himself, but Roznine had gone ab out it the wrong way.

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

"But does Roznine?" asked Gillings sarcastically.

"As I've explained to you, Frank, Roznine is paraphysically dead to anyone else. Oh, Bruce Vaden empathizes with him to some extent now they've both had training, but Roznine's is a oneway Talent, right to Amalda. She's the focus of the gestalt. You might say, he's been checkreined."

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

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

"Greenfield?"

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

The LEO Commissioner's frown was partially perplexity. "What'd you guys do to Greenfield? Blanket him with loving kindness?"

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

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

"What did Roznine have on him, Dave?"

"I don't know what you mean, Frank."

The LEO man made a gesture of disgust.

"Dave, don't give me any more problems for a while, will you?"

"Nothing's coming up in the foreseeable future."

The screen went blank on Gillings's incredulous expression.

"Daffyd, that was highly immoral, unethical and downright dirty," said Sally, half scolding as she rose from the couch where she'd been sitting out of lineofvision of the comset. She walked in under his arm, linking him around the waist. He nuzzled her cur ls and kissed her forehead.

"Probably. Les is always reminding me that it's bad policy to tell all."

"It's a shame about Vascha though." Sally sighed.

"Why?"

"Oh, it's rather sad, his being a psychic mule, her Pegasus."

"Thank God he is," Daffyd said so fervently she looked up, startled.

"With the ambition and drive that young man has, he'd rule the world in half a year if Amalda and Bruce weren't there to stop him."

PEGASUS IN FLIGHT

This Book is respectfully and gratefully dedicated to Diana Tyler and Diane Pearson.

PROLOGUE

During the late twentieth century's exploration of space, a major breakthrough occurred in the validation and recording of extrasensory perceptions, the socalled paranormal, psionic abilities long held to be spurious. An alternate application of the Gooseg g, an extremely sensitive encephalograph developed to scan brain patterns of the astronauts who suffered from sporadic "bright spots," temporarily diagnosed as cerebral or retinal malfunction, was inadvertently discovered when the device was used to monito r a head injury in an intensivecare unit of Jerhattan. The patient, Henry Darrow, was a selfstyled clairvoyant with an astonishing percentage of accurate "guesses." In his case, as the device monitored his brain patterns, it also registered the discharge o f unusual electrical energy as he experienced a clairvoyant episode. For the first time there was scientific proof of extrasensory perception.

Henry Darrow recovered from his concussion to found the first Center for Parapsychics in Jerhattan and to formulate the ethical and moral premises that would grant those with valid, and demonstrable, psionic talents certain privileges and responsibilities in a society basically skeptical, hostile, or overtly paranoid about such abilities.

Extrasensory perceptionor Talent, as it came to be calledcame in varying strengths and forms. Simple, shortrange telepathy was fairly common, once inhibitions were discarded. But there were also oneway telepaths, people who could send their thoughts but no t receive those of others, and people who could receive thoughts but not send. Others were empaths, able to adjust immediately to the moods of those around them, sometimes quite unconsciously. Telempaths could sense and react to extreme or more distant emo tions; some of these were able to redirect emotion, by broadcasting other emotions or by neutralizing the negativesuch Talents proved to be invaluable in crowd control, for they could keep a throng from turning into a senseless mob. But the most valuable o f the telepaths were those who could both receive and broadcast thought, speaking to other minds anywhere in the world.

TelekineticsTalents who could move physical objects by sheer mental powerwere also invaluable, their abilities ranging from lifting heavy machinery to manipulating on micro levels.

Clairvoyants or precogs could see future events, either close at hand, or at some remove from their present. Very often their visions allowed the future to be altered and disasters to he averted. Some clairvoyants had special affinities: some sensed events revolving around fire, water, or wind; others were more apt to perceive children, or violence, or criminal intentions.

Finders also had affinitiessome could locate people or animals, while others were able to sense inanimate objectsand their abilities could vary greatly in range.

Talent came in many forms and guises, and not all of the viable types had, as yet, been recognized. The various centers, worldwide, constantly searched for the less dramatic gifts because the need had now far outstripped the supply. For those potential few , the training was arduous, and the rewards did not always compensate for the unswerving dedication required by their taxing positions.

And yet to be found Talented became the aspiration of many and the triumph of few.

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

William Shakespeare.

Chapter 1

Tirla took a quick look from the alley into the Main Concourse of Residential Linear G, then pulled back instantly, flattening her thin twelveyearold body against the plasslab wall. Public Health officials were swarming all over, rounding up the earlymorni ng crowd of ablebodied workers who had been scanning the employment board for a day's work, the mothers with their handicapped kids making their way to the Rehab centers, and the legal children on their way to the Linear's physical-training facility.

Cautiously she took another look, to see what the PHOs were setting up on their tables: vials and the big compressedair bottles that operated the hyposprays. She withdrew, having seen enough to recognize another wholesale vaccination effort. Strange, she h adn't heard of any new 'mune plagues. To give them their due, PHO was swifter than rumor to avert disaster.

Rapidly Tirla ran through her head her current list of those mothers of illegal children whom she should inform: first, because they would pay her for warning them to hide the kids; second, because those who could afford to would pay her for stealing whate ver vaccine was being administered. She counted on her fingers: Elpidia, certainly; the old bouzma, Pilau; Bilala, and Zaveta, Arisan, and Cyotoand she had better ask Mama Bobchik if there were newborns, for they would need the Fiveshotter. She would want one for herself, as well, and could possibly finagle a box, depending on how the current stuff was packaged. It all depended. Mirda Khan, yesshe had best tell that old wagon right after she warned Mama.

She would have to change into clean clothing issueshe had washed, but this week's issue was five days old and looked eight. Public Health were quick to notice details like that. Mama Bobchik was always good for fresh wear, especially if Tirla went to her f irst with her news.

This could be a very good day, Tirla thought with a rise of spirits as she slipped back down the alley for the centershaft emergency stairs on her way down to Mama Bobchik's pad.

Most of Tirla's twelve years had been spent in scrounging a totally unofficial living in the multiethnic thirtystoried community of the Linears. She could not afford to miss a single trick, like today's unexpected Public Health roundup, to escape the strin gent controls, clever obstacles, and little traps ingeniously set up by the Jerhattan Complex Administration Council and the Law Enforcement and Order Organization to identify and control each member of the restless population.

Officially there had never been a record of Tirla's birth. She was however, the fifth child born to Dikkaonly the first, Tirla's brother, Kail, was legal. The government tied a woman off when she gave birth to a second child. Consequently Firza, Lenny, Ahm ed, and Tirla had all been born in Dikka's singleparent squat with the aid of Mama Bobchik, who had had an illegal child every year until her womb had dried up. Kail had been official until Dikka had sold him at ten.

Firza had had the use of Kail's wrist I D for two years until she was profitably disposed of. In the next year, Dikka, Lenny, and Ahmed died of one of the immune plagues that sporadically flared up to decimate the Linears. In the haste and confusion of body disposal, Dikka's death had not been o fficially noted. So Tirla had been left with two ID braceletsa fine legacy. Selfsufficient and resourceful, she had managed to retain the squat, drawing two subsistence rations, until Dikka's ID was canceled after her failure to appear for a routine medica l examination.

Wise in the ways of her society, Tirla had not been caught short by the lockout. She knew Tenancy Articles, Paragraphs, and Subsections by heart, so figuring out the cancellation date had been no problem. Two days prior to the eviction, she moved her few p ossessionshotter unit, the best of the sleep sacks, the 'corder, and the pretties Dikka's men had given her from time to timeinto new quarters five levels below the Main Concourse, in the maintenance segment of Linear G, right beside the charged security g rille that protected the engineering section from unauthorized entry. Only a slight and agile person like Tirla could reach the eyrie, where massive ducts formed a broad platform before bending up the inner wall. She patched her hotter and 'corder wires in to the overhead cables, certain that her small use of electricity was unlikely to be discovered, and settled in. She did miss the allnight informational programs on the squat's trid. The big public trids on the Concourse stopped 'casting at the midnight cu rfew.

Tirla, with her clever, shrewd, and organized mind, was thirsty for knowledge. She even used Kail's ID to log into school. One of Dikka's men had said that one had to know the rules before one could break them. Tirla had never forgotten.

For another two years, Kail's bracelet supplied his small sister with daily subsistence, weekly clothing issue, and other amenities until "Kail" failed to appear at Evaluation Center within three weeks of his sixteenth birthday. The cancellation caused Tir la no problem, for by then she was wellestablished, almost indispensable to most of the Residential clients and gang bosses in the neighborhood industrial complexes. Her ability to translate any of the nearly ninety dialects and languages used in the subsi stencelevel Residential Linears saved clients hours at official trans-speech centers, or worse, misunderstanding. She knew when to be ingratiating or stand firm. She knew what courtesies were due whom and never failed in performing them.

Everyone who knew her knew very well that she was illegal. Because she was so useful to the residents of Linear G, as she would be today with her warning about the Public Healthers, and because officially she did not exist anyway, there was no profityetin reporting her illi cit existence.

The various errands she didand she was scrupulously silent about themoften brought in "floating" credit chips. Floaters were legal tenderPay to Bearer, untraceable chips that changed hands frequently.

Jerhattan Treasury and all the merchant and banking hou ses wisely ignored the circulation of minor amounts of floaters, just as they ignored the petty small traders as long as they made no trouble and their merchandise was harmless. Tirla, and others like her, relied on floaters to support their illegal existe nces in the Linears.

Linear G thrust thirty massive levels above the squat, featureless F and H commercial blocks where residents of Linears E, G, and I worked.

Once, on a Free Day, while Tirla still had her brother's ID, she had gone with Mama Bobchik to the Great Palisades P romenade, where thousands upon thousands of people had swarmed to enjoy a brilliant spring day, to overlook the exclusive hives, platforms, and great cone complexes of Manhattan Island, and to ooh and aah at the monorail cars, large and small, that zipped along the tracks which garlanded the buildings like colored tinsel strands. That was the first time Tirla had seen ships floating on water or the great pleasure skycars. There had even been a special issue of holiday food, yards above the standard fare, at dispensing banks. Buril, Mama's son, had a tripper key that he used on the dispers, so they had managed to stuff themselves before the mechanism's malfunction alarm was triggered. It had been a super day for Tirla. She had never dreamed that the world was that big.

That was the same day that Buril explained to her all about the space platform that was being built, which needed so many workers. When it was completed, he said, all the people living on Manhattan who had enough credit and were the "right kind" would be a ble to go off into space and find other worlds to live on. Then all those beautiful buildings would be empty and there would be enough space for everyone crammed into Linear squats to live in proper big apartments with a bedroom for each family member and no more Public Health or LEO men and women tying men and women off, shaming a virile man.

This morning, as Tirla scratched on Mama Bobchik's door to tell her of the PH presence in the Linear, she heard the old woman gasping and groaning as she struggled off the bedshelf.

"Kto stuchitsya? Perestan 'te udaryat 'sya. Okh, kak bolit goloua!"

Tirla grinned. So Mama had a big head this morning, caused by the vodka she had made from the potatoes Tirla had nicked for her..In that state, she would be easy to wheedle out of a credit.

"It's Tirla, and the Public Health are already on the Concourse."

"Boje moi! Eto tak? Have I not enough pain in my life?" But the door was pushed open wide enough for Tirla to slip inside. "What have you said? The Public Health again? So soon? Why?"

"Another vaccination by the looks of it. They're grabbing everyone, ablebodies, students, handies and their mothers."

"Ah, we must hurry. Elpidia, Zaveta..." Mama Bobchik began reciting the names of her usual maternity patients.

Tirla tugged her arm.

"Nu, what do you want from me?"

"I cannot help unless I have clean issue," Tirla said, managing to look piteous and sound efficient at the same time.

Buril had fixed the clothingissue slot in his mother's squat so that it could be coaxed to extrude more than it ought. His taking ways had been very useful until YassimTirla made the warding sign at just the thought of that manhad paid Mama a huge sum for him. Buril's unusual talent for "fixing" official equipment made him quite valuablehe had not gone the usual route of Yassim's purchases, and Mama had been paid enough floaters to keep her comfortable in her old age.

Mama Bobchik blinked her reddened and bleary eyes and looked at the tiny girl. "Da, that is so!" She patted Tirla's head before she went to the clothing slot and did something that her heavy frame obscured from the girl's sight. When she turned back, she h ad a packet in her hand.

"I washed this morning," Tirla said, immediately unfastening and stepping out of the old suit. She had to roll up the sleeves and legs of the fresh issue, but when she had neatly folded each roll over wrist and ankle and pressed the edges to seal them, sle eve and leg bloused out nicely to give her apparel more style. She retied the pretty braided rope belt that she had inherited from her mother and tucked the excess material neatly back. "Now, I'll tell Mirda Khan, do this level, and then up and down. That' ll be all I think I have time for.

What'll I do for an ID? They'll grab me if my wrist's bare."

What Tirla wanted most in her life was a genuine, valid ID bracelet that would allow her a squat right, the use of a trid, three meals a day, and a fresh weekly issue of clothing. An ID that was all her own and had never been anyone else's! One that would allow her into the school programs that so few of the kids she knew seemed to care about at all.

Now she cocked her head at Mama Bobchik, knowing perfectly well that an ID was essential when the PHOs were swarming the Linear. Mama Bobchik pretended to consider, giving Tirla just a few moments of anxiety.

"Eto tak! For PHOs, we use one." With a flounce of her skirts, for Mama would not wear the singlepiece coverall without proper skirts to conceal her limbs, she turned her back on Tirla again. No matter how hard Tirla listened, she could not tell where Mama secreted those precious counterfeit Ids that Buril had also contrived. They were good for one day's use onlyone day, because while the band would be accepted by a portable reader such as the PHO would have to record vaccinations, it would show up as a fra ud later, when the day's entries were checked.

Mama Bobchik turned around, dangling the precious ID band. "You split the take for the warning with me. As usual."

Tirla nodded solemn agreement to the terms, her eyes watching the swing of the band.

"And if you can steal enough vaccine, I will give you thirty percent of that take," Mama added.

Tirla gave an incredulous snort. "Sixty. I could get caught stealing."

"Forty, then. No one has caught you yet. After all, I gave you the ID at no cost to you and have the expense of the spray gun."

"Fortyfive!"

The two hagglers eyed each other, and then Mama's broad face beamed down at Tirla's unyielding expression. She spit in her palm and engulfed Tirla's delicate hand in her own to seal the arrangement.

"You are a clever one. You must hurry now."

The girl was already slipping through the halfopened door and down the hall to spread the warning.

Despite her speed, Tirla barely finished her route before the PH officers began to penetrate the levels, checking the Ids of each squat's occupants and herding them out and down to line up for their hypospray. She soon learned that the health threat was no t a 'mune plague but a virulent intestinal disease that had started in Linear B with devastating results. All Linears were being vaccinated in an attempt to stem the spread of the ailment. The PH publicaddress system droned on constantly giving a short exp lanation in all the languages registered in Linear G; Tirla did some rapid translations of her own when requested by nervous mothers.

"It's only another food contamination," she assured the skeptical.

"They've isolated the source, who have been heavily fined and lost their license."

"Huh!" Mirda Khan said, her dark eyes glistening with skepticism.

"That will be gone as long as it takes to send in enough credit to reissue it. How long will the protection last us?"

"Oh, this one'll do us for a year!"

"A year? They are improving."

Trudging forward step by step in the long line, Tirla and Mama Bobchik finally reached the PH, dropped their wrists across the reader, and received their shots. Immediately Mama pretended to become faint and staggered against the table. While the PH woman was coping with that, Tirla swept an entire tray of the vaccine ampoules into the shopping sack Mirda Khan had ready as she, too, came to Mama's assistance.

"Okh, kak bolit golova!" Mama said in an appropriately wispy tone, the back of her fat hand against her head. The pain in her voice was not entirely faked, considering the hangover headache.

"What's she saying?" the PH officer asked, hovering between concern and annoyance.

"Her head hurts," Tirla replied.

"Not from this injection," was the callous response of the PHer. "Now move along!"

Solicitously Mirda Khan and Tirla propped up Mama Bobchik as she made her way slowly toward the nearest side aisle. Once safely out of sight, Mama immediately reached for Mirda's sack and peered inside it.

"One whole tray? Miraculous, Tirla, truly miraculous. There are more than enough. Run ahead and tell them to come in small groups. The PHOs have already checked our three levels. It will be safe."

In the course of her errands, Tirla tried her ID bracelet on as many public dispensers as she passed, no matter what commodity emerged from the slot. She tucked each purloined item into the extra material at the back of her coverall, or into a sleeve or a trouser leg. It became harder to move quickly, but she managed. By evening, she had enough small floaters and illegally acquired items to keep her well fed and content for the next month. If she stretched a bit, it might even be six weeks before she need b other about working again.

Chapter 2

"There was no aura of menace or threat," Rhyssa Owen told Sascha Roznine as he stood glaring down at her. To reduce his threatening glower to a more productive, thoughtful mood, she touched his arm, reinforcing her statement with a mental See? Curiosity. A n impingement, not a threat.

Sascha subsided, but he continued to glare at the graph recording of Rhyssa's earlymorning sleep pattern, where the wide black mark of the spoke showed that she had been roused from an REM dream sequence to full alertness by a mental intruder.

As the director of the Center for Parapsychic Talents on the North American East Coast, Rhyssa Owen lived on what had been the Henner estate, a reserve of trees, lawn, and mature gardens above the Hudson River on the Palisades. This archaic remainder of th e twentiethcentury residential suburbs interrupted the flow of Linear structures that housed the millions who lived and worked in the massive Jerhattan complex. Rhyssa's quarters were undistinguished from any of the other threestory apartment blocks set am ong the gardens and trees.

As with all dwellings for the Talented, these were secured and shielded from unannounced entry. In fact, even those who tenanted the Linear constructions running on the long sides of the Center's extensive grounds did not know of its existence, so artful were its screens. No one should have been able to intrude on Rhyssa, much less in her sleep.

"Awkward, rousing you so thoroughly. You need all the rest you can get." Sascha projected a vision of himself and Rhyssa curled together in her bed, the doublethick duvet tucked around their spooned bodies.

Yes, yes, Rhyssa replied. She responded with a vision of a firm foot pushing the Sascha body out of the bed. But even if you had been there physically, you couldn't've helped, Saschabear. It was all in my mind, in my dreams. And that's your duvet, not mine. I never use plaids.

Rhyssa smiled up at him, fluttering her eyelashes to mock his projection. He raised his brows in resignation. They both enjoyed this game. They had been playing it for years.

Picky, picky. Don't avoid the issue, Sascha said. "Who, I'd like to know, could knock in on your mind? And why?"

"Indeed!" Rhyssa crossed her arms and stared off into a view of the lowering clouds and dismal rain that obscured a usually breathtaking view of Jerhattan. That's what perplexes me.

Don 't range, Streaky. Sending your mind out searching for him takes too much out of you. You're going to need all your energy to deal with the Zealots. He projected the vision of three persons with limbs so entangled they resembled an Oriental fetish, eac h caricatured face wearing an expression of mixed intransigence and skepticism.

Oh, don't! She laughed as her return image untangled arms and legs and set each person upright, a whiskbroom smoothing tunic and trousers while emblems of rank were straightened. I can't remember that when I have to deal soberly with their urgent requests for Talents I don't have. They're laughable enough as it is.

"Good. That's all they deserve. Shall I have Sirikit check back and see when this phenomenon first registered?" Sheer impudence! Sascha snorted his annoyance.

"That's an idea." Rhyssa smiled ruefully as she pulled clothes from drawer and closet. She continued to talk as she dressed in the bathroom. "I only thought of checking my graph this morning. I really do need my sleep."

"Probably some emergent Talent who doesn't understand protocol. I do wish they didn't always feel required to overreact to their newfound mindpowers."

"Damned strong one!" Maliciously, Rhyssa projected an image of a very young Madlyn Luvaro, mouth wide open, and the circle of people cringing away from the waves of sound emanating from her.

Sascha grimaced. Madlyn Luvaro had a mental shout that could penetrate to the space station and any of its peripheral dockyards. It had been Sascha's task, as he was nominally in charge of Training and Development, to teach her how to focus and moderate he r mental voice.

Madlyn adored him passionately and was embarrassingly possessive of him, an adulation he was finding increasingly difficult to discountit was the reason that he assiduously cultivated the notion that he and Rhyssa were on the brink of a tot al partnership. Kindly, Rhyssa did not disclaim the rumor.

"I'll have Sirikit run a check on possible emergents," he told her, then sent the request to Sirikit in the Control Room, also asking her to check Rhyssa's encephalograph charts for the previous months.

Emerging washed and dressed, Rhyssa beckoned Sascha to follow her through to her office, which adjoined her living suite. She yawned as she sat down at her desk, kinetically pulling some pencil files into her reach, fanning them out, and turning each until the indexcode side was visible. She selected the one she wanted and neatly piled the others in front of her, code side outward, as her first selection inserted itself in the reply slot. Simultaneously the reader net came off its hook and settled lightly o n her head. With one finger, she poked the left contact pad against her temple in a final adjustment.

"We won't find him there," she said, and was as startled as Sascha was that she used a gender. "Well, I know a trifle more than I thought I did from that fleeting nudge."

"A secret lover?"

"Could be," Rhyssa murmured, projecting an image of a sly grin and a comehither expression directed at an amorphous shadow. Although her tone was light, Sascha perceived that her surprise at making any kind of an identification went deep.

"I'll follow through," Sascha said, and left her office. As he took the antigrav shaft down from her tower to the vast basement complex where most of the Center's training and research was conducted, he carried with him a vivid mental picture of Rhyssa Owe n at her desk, the reader net covering her black hair, a spiderwebbing across the wide silver lock that she had had since her early teens. That streak grew broader every year, and by her late thirties her hair would be all Celtic silver.Rhyssa would alway s have a young face, Sascha thought, as both her father and her illustrious grandfather, Daffyd op Owen, had had: young, vibrant, with dark blue eyes that sparkled and gleamed with intelligence, humor, and unassailable energy. Rhyssa was nearly as tall as the males in her family and a shade too thin, she clothed her long bones in elegant, if often bizarre styles: generally long flowing garments that set her off in a society which had stripped apparel to the minimum.

She was not prettyher features, though small, were too uneven and mismatched, her right eye socket canted above the cheekbone, giving her a gamine expression that no one who knew her would misjudge. Her nose had a slight bump, making her profile look haugh ty, and her mouth was too generous above a strong jawline. Still, one forgot such details within moments of meeting her. She had inherited the full measure of charismatic personality, as well as the strong psionic talents, of her parentsand of the grandfat her who had battled to secure the position of Talents in the present socioeconomicpolitical atmosphere.

Sascha Roznine, himself a thirdgeneration Talent and younger than Rhyssa by three months, preferred his current role as chief trainer and recruiter in the Center. Not for him the petty power ploys that Rhyssa coped with admirably, for he had struggled all his life to manage a quixotic temper. The nerveracking sessions with Jerhattan's managers and all the picayune details she had to deal with would have set him raging in five minutes. Sascha, on the other hand, had immense patience with emergent Talents, co axing, cosseting, and curbing, gently allaying their doubts and building their confidence. When Rhyssa had once pointed out that, in their own way, emergent Talents were as obnoxious as managers, Sascha had replied that at least Talents learned from their mistakes.

There were so many strengths and varieties of Talent. Of the precogs, there were those who could foresee events, generally those which would have a major effect on a large number of other people; those whose prescience was limited to people they knew or we re assigned to watch; and those whose precognitions had affinities with fire, water, males or females, childrenthere was as wide an assortment of focus points as there were strengths of perception.

Telepathy was the most common Talent, though some people could only receive thought, and others only send it. Telempaths felt emotions and responded to the pervading ones. A trained telempath could either dampen negative auras or reinforce positive ones, a Talent useful for altering the tension in a crowd, preventing rampaging emotions from turning groups of people into disorderly mobs.

Finders were those Talents who could locate things, using only a facsimile of the desired item, or, in the case of a missing human or animal, a garment or some other personal object.

Telekinetics could work on the largest objects, or the most minute particles that could not be seen with the naked eye or even a microscope, though there had only been one known genetic manipulator, Ruth Horvath. Telekinetics were invaluable in so many wal ks of life that those with this Talent were encouraged to have as many children as possible.

The rarest of the Talents were the pure and double telepathslike Rhyssa, who could send and receive communications across the world as long as she had met the person she wished to contact She could penetrate any mind not shielded by the thin metal caps the nervous wore or by the natural mental shield that some normal people were born with.

Sascha, also a strong double telepath, lacked the phenomenal range that Rhyssa possessed, but he never resented her for it Once her strength had been established by her grandfather, Rhyssa had been committed to a Center directorship and all its responsibil ities responsibilities that Sascha would never want to take on. As far as he was concerned, Rhyssa was welcome to her Talent He heard Madlyn Luvaro before he landed on the shaft cushion at the basement level. She was trying to be quiet, but she was as successful as if she had been tapdancing across a soundresonant surface.

Until you learn to damp down your aura, it won't work, Madlyn, he told her. Improper flow! Low positive energy is what you need to be "silent."

Dammit, I thought that's what I had! Her mental response was contritely discouraged.

Sascha pushed out of the shaft and there she was, flattened against the wall.

"I did 'hear' you coming," she said aloud.

Sasha: Giant step forward! Madlyn was a powerful sender, but generally she could "hear" only those in her immediate vicinity.

He tugged a strand of her tangled mane of black hair as he passed, and she fell into step behind him, her large and expressive eyes rueful.

Madlyn was a voluptuous eighteenyearold with a sensual nature to match her appearance. She, and her Talent, had matu red at fourteen, and since then Sascha had been struggling to teach her the necessary discipline that any Talent had to master, and that she would certainly require before her penetrating mental shout could be utilized.

Sirikit's already checking Rhyssa's Goosegg readings. Sascha had not tried to dampen his immediate concern. With so many telepaths aware of the alarm, keeping the investigation under wraps had been impossible.

Someone actually intruded on Rhyssa? Madlyn projected an image of herself throttling a large, amorphous intruder and squashing it into a little ball which she then flushed down the toilet.

Sascha snorted. Madlyn was quite capable of attacking anything that threatened Rhyssa. Who in the Center wasn't?

They found Sirikit already scanning Rhyssa's Goosegg encephalographs for the previous month. Several were paused at the spoking that indicated intrusive wakenings. The Goosegg, initially developed to monitor the odd light flashes experienced by astronauts, was especially sensitive in registering delta brain waves, which had been discovered to be the seat of paranormal or extrasensory perceptions. A Talent, trained to recognize his or her own slight mental alteration prior to paranormal activity, slipped on a net that could read brain activity.

Many Talents, particularly the precognitives and clairvoyants, wore them night and day. They were lightweight, of a strong fine mesh matching the wearer's hair color. The net transmitted to the Center's main banks, so that Incidents of paranormal activity could be officially recorded, studied, and consulted. It was proof positive to any skeptics that the extrasensory perceptions did occur.

"Look at Rhyssa's recordings, Sascha. There's no question that the Incidents have been increasing," Sirikit said as Sascha strode to the bank of horizontal spindles used in such comparisons. "First one three weeks ago, second four days later, then three, a nd this past week once a nightabout fourish."

Sasha: Odd time for a voyeur!

Sirikit: With threequarters of the population asleep in bed.

Madlyn: Insomniac?

Sascha smiled, for not only was her mental tone appropriately soft but she had caught the quick exchanges.

Sasha: An adolescent generally has to be pried from his sleep. Rhyssa thinks it's an emergent Talent.

Madlyn: You keep telling me that emergent Talents follow no rule.

"Any statistics on insomniacs?" Sirikit asked.

"I'll program it," Madlyn said, flipping her hair back as she seated herself at a monitor, keying in directories that could access any computer bank in the world under the special concessions granted the Centers. She was cleared for normal use, although pa sswords were needed for any sensitive files. Madlyn might have been blatant in her sexuality, but her mind, open to inspection at all times, was as transparently guileless as a child's. "Well, this won't be productive.

Anyone can have insomniac phases. Anx iety is the biggest cause.

There are some people, the elderly in particular, who can get along on only four hours of sleep a night!" Her mental picture was of a horrified grimace superimposed on a tossing body in a rumpled bed.

"I'm wrecked without eight h ours!"

Sirikit leaned back from the spools, which had all paused to display the telltale spoke of intrusion.

Sirikit: Threethirty to four, predawn, too early for most shift workers, even air and road haulers.

Sascha bent over her shoulder, studying the reels as if he could glower the riddle into the open.

Sascha: Rig her net.

Madlyn gasped and stared at him. Sirikit blinked, sighed, and then, rising from her stool, went to the main board to enable the necessary program.

"Some earlymorning joy seeker has to be overflying the Center. Set an alarm through her net, and we can catch the bugger in the act."

Sascha's voice was vindictive.

Madlyn shot him a worried glance. She could feel the wave of high negative energy he exuded.

Chapter 3

Barchenka, Duoml, and His Highness Manager Prince Phanibal Shimaz arrived promptly for their meeting with Parapsychic Center Director Rhyssa Owen at the Jerhattan City Manager's Tower, a massive structure in the center of Central Park, the last vestige of nineteenth and twentiethcentury Manhattan. The tower, rising above the tallest of the mercantile buildings, was crowned by ziggurats of communication dishes, giving it an appearance from any distance of a grotesque bunch of stiff daisies rammed into an imm ense glass brick. Skycars of varying sizes at the landing level stuck out like a fringe of angular, multicolored leaves.

Space Station Construction Manager Ludmilla Barchenka entered first, her odd bouncing gait indicating that she was wearing her antigrav boots. Her infrequent visits back to surface gravity were difficult for herbut they tended to be worse for those she con fronted. The woman's appearance did nothing to mitigate her abrasive personality: she was stocky, bigboned though not fleshy, with a flat, broad face and unexceptional features. Pale blue eyes and shortcropped hair only added to the image of a tough person a cold, inflexible tenacity. To top that off, Ludmilla invariably wore a thin metal skullcap, a shielding device that was almost an insult to Rhyssa in her capacity as director of the Eastern Center. Rhyssa was not sure if Barchenka used the shield merely out of concern for security or because she was pathologically wary of the Talents whose services she desperately needed even as she deplored their abilities. Sascha was convinced that Barchenka had some sort of Talent, even if it could not be scanned, and that she refused to acknowledge the possibility.

Despite her total lack of social graces, the Exalted Engineer's dedication could not be faulted. Padrugoi Station was due to be completed, and on budget, at the end of the current year.

With interstellar voyages now possible and habitable planets located in two near systems, the pressure to implement the colonization program was incredible. But first the Padrugoi Station, the essential springboard to the stars, had to be completed. The pr oject had worldwide priority and the enthusiastic support of every political and economic faction on Earth.

Considering that the first laboratory station had gone over budget by trillions and had been five years late in completion, Barchenka's achievements so far were considerable. But Rhyssa knew the truth: that the Exalted Engineer was beginning to fall behind schedule despite all her efforts. It was rumored that the woman slept no more than four hours a night and daily accomplished a prodigious amount of workbut that she expected the same dedication from everyone on the project.

Unfortunately she did not have the charisma or leadership ability to generate either loyalty to herself or to the project. Initially many Talents had volunteered to assist, but one after another they declined to renew their contracts. The many enticements to return with their unique cap abilities to work on Padrugoi Station had met with failure.

Personnel Manager Per Duoml, coming in behind Ludmilla, moved with the heaviness of someone accustomed to lighter gravity, but he managed without the antigrav assists. A Finn, as capable and dedicated as Barchenka, he was slightly easier to deal with. And though he, too, tended to wear a metal shield, the Talents had liked working with Duoml: he was fair, competent, and had succeeded in persuading a few Talents to return for special, short-term assignments. But still most had declined to extend their employ ment, and they could not be conscripted. And though Rhyssa had dutifully asked the directors of every Center in the world, she had no takers to offer Duoml.

Program Manager Prince Phanibal Shimaz pounced in behind Per Duoml, and his presence was neither essential nor welcome to Rhyssa. Peculiarly arrogant and impervious to her continued, and lately overt, distaste for his company, he used any excuse available to press his suit on her.

Rhyssa often wondered why he had bothered to develop an impenetrable mind shield when his face revealed all that most men would have had the courtesy to hide. The prince was a computer geniussome said he had thought in binary code s in his creche and teethed on chipsand when he was barely out of his teens, he had mastered the use of the Josephson junctions in what he termed an "idiot proof" application to regulate with complete safety the vast flow of skycars and drones in and out o f major Linear depots and over densely populated areas. He was currently applying his efforts to create a similar basic and safe flow of spatial traffic.

Rhyssa composed her face and her mind, smiling with a warmth she did not feel as the three settled themselves.

"I do not," Ludmilla began with no preamble, her deep voice guttural with only a slight trace of her native language, "have the required personnel." Her pale eyes accused Rhyssa.

"As I have told you repeatedly, Manager, I cannot and will not order the Talented into space."

Ludmilla brought her fist down with a wince that revealed that, in her frustration, she had forgotten the gravitational differences. She brought the bruised hand up in a gesture that in the space station would have been flamboyant but was less graceful on Earth.

"You must insist" "I can insist, but they can resist," Rhyssa replied equably.

"How can I maintain schedules without the personnel to perform the necessary tasks? Day by day we fall minutes behind: minutes which your diffident workers could make up in seconds. I will not fall behind the schedule. We will make our completion deadline.

We must have the suitable personnel. You told me that you have them, and I have here the proof." Triumphantly Ludmilla extracted a pencil disk from her tunic and brandished it at Rhyssa.

"In that reply I said that I would certainly approach all Centers with your specific requirements. I most certainly did not promise to fill the vacancies."

Barchenka narrowed her pale eyes into a basilisk stare. "You recruit constantly. It is public knowledge that you find new Talents" "It does not follow," Rhyssa inserted smoothly, "that those we recruit are the kinetics that you specifically request. Certainly I could not ask untrained Talents to go into the hazards of space."

"Why not?" Ludmilla dismissed that consideration with a broad wave of her hand, inserting the pencil file back into its pocket at the end of the gesture. "We will train them on the jobto be useful, to be careful, to be specialists. They will love space. Th ey will make many credits and be wealthy."

"The Talented do not accumulate wealth, Manager," Per Duoml stated in his flat, nearly toneless voice, his patient eyes never moving from Rhyssa's face.

"Nonsense! Everyone acquires wealth." Ludmilla had more than the usual contempt for altruists. "In the beginning we had many Talents working for us."

"We wished to assist the world project," Rhyssa said. "But you would not accept their stipulations when their contracts came up for renewal."

"Stupid clauses, untenable for us. Shifts of no more than six hours when we work twentyfour on the platform. Special shielding for noise.

There is no noise in space." Her scornful gaze rested hotly on Rhyssa.

"No noise which is audible to you, Madame Engineer, but which is extremely unpleasant to sensitives."

"Bah! Sensitive!" Once again Barchenka summarily dismissed that consideration. "Spoiled, pampered, catered to."

"No, Madame Barchenka, not pampered or spoiled, but yes, catered to," Rhyssa flashed back. "The Talented are skilled personnel and require some minor considerations to enable them to perform at their best in the hostile environment of space."

Barchenka plowed on as if she had not heard. "It is incredible that such a minority can exert so much influence on the economic life of our world. In the airport, in the spaceport, in industry where, while I order materiel, I see the very Talents I must ha ve to complete the most important project of the world, a project which has universal approval, which means mankind may reach beyond the limits of this solar system and explore the very stars themselves. Yet you and the other Center managers do not permit me to hire the specialists I need."