Nightmare Journey

31

IN the first two weeks of her term as the Preakness Bay General Merka Shanly drafted a complex set of rationing laws and initiated a governmental committee to research the science of agriculture and the many sciences of manufacturing with a mind toward making the enclave self-sufficient within the decade. In the fourth week the rationing laws were put into force, and the research committee delivered its initial report, listing possible research material sources “and manpower requests for the main body of the task. Merka personally supervised the punishment of ration-law violators and issued decrees for the conscription of men and women to work under the direction of the research committee. The historical tradition of, and the ages-old respect for, the office of General was such that — although they muttered disconsolately among themselves — none of the population took public exception to the new order of things.

In the fifth week of her reign Merka Shanly was moved back into the Military Suite, where the quarantine had been lifted after careful sterilization of every room. She put her clothes in the closets, disposed of the garments of the dead man. At night she expected to be plagued by his ghost or, at the very least, by nightmares in which the old General played the leading role, but neither came to pass. Perhaps that was because she had no time to wallow in guilt. She had time only to make changes in the enclave's life — and to wait fearfully for someone to discover that she was an esper, a tainted creature worthy only of death.

Throughout the sixth, seventh, and eighth weeks she administered the affairs of Preakness Bay with a single-mindedness that prompted Ober Iswan to comment, in private, that never had the Committee on Leadership exhibited such foresight as in the selection of Merka Shanly. When the holy Iswan made this observation to other members of the committee, they only smiled and nodded polite agreement. Iswan took their taciturn reactions to imply that they were more modest men than he had once thought. He never seemed to notice that his comrades had received special governmental considerations ever since the election of the new General — almost as if they were being repaid for some special service to the enclave.

In her ninth week, having read preliminary reports from the research committee, Merka Shanly instituted the first working farm within the boundaries of the enclave. Soil tenders were conscripted, crops were planted, and experiments in self-reliance were begun.

In her tenth week, when she should have been glorious beneath her wreath of accomplishments, Merka Shanly was in the lowest emotional ebb of her entire life. Two things conspired to bring about this gloom: her own developing esp power, which labeled her as an outcast but which she could not accept, being so dedicated to Lady Nature and so certain that her plans would benefit her kind; and her need for a man. The first she had learned to accept, and she had become adept at concealing her telepathic radiations. But the second was a greater problem. She was one of those people who needed physical contact, sexual experience, as much as water and food. Her self-denial, generated by her fear that a lover would learn of her extrasensory perception, had led to a frustration she could not much longer bear.

In the middle of her eleventh week in the august post of commander in chief of Preakness Bay she convened the Committee on Fruitfulness, of which she was chairwoman. The last meeting had been two months earlier, and much business had accumulated. At the end of the session, as the committee members were rising to leave, she ordered them seated and presented her own petition for a mate. She had one man in mind, Kolpei Zenentha, by whom she had once borne a child and who was the best lover she had ever had. He was currently engaged in attempted offspring generation with a woman named Kyla Daggeron, and the preemption of an already established sexual relationship was unheard of. Merka Shanly suggested that this was another rule that must be changed.

It was.

At the end of the eleventh week Kolpei Zenentha, a tall, slim, dark-haired man in his early thirties, moved into the Military Suite.

That first night Merka Shanly wore him out, then issued him a hypodermic of a virility drug and wore him out again. He slept all through the next day, like a child who had played too hard.

In her twelfth week of office Merka Shanly created another research committee and assigned it the task of establishing a large library of prewar books and tapes. By radio the committee could learn what titles other enclaves possessed and arrange for the copying of what volumes Preakness Bay lacked. The transportation of these books from one enclave to the other would entail arduous journeys for conscripted soldiers, but the establishment of a good reference library was essential to the rebuilding of a human Golden Age.

In the thirteenth week she rested.

In the fourteenth week as she was caught up in orgasmic delight, playing rider to Kolpei Zenentha's mouth, she forgot herself, and let her mind reach out for his. She touched him telepathically, transmitted her joy to him without words…

And was found out.

32

The five espers stood at the top of the hill, with the cold wind in their faces, and they watched the horses grazing and gamboling below. A good hundred of the dark brown, shaggy beasts stood on the flat plain at the base of the icy hills, as yet not cognizant of the espers. If the wind changed they would know danger was near, and they would run. That was the last thing any of the five on the hill wanted. They had obtained food within the last few days, but this success was offset by the gradual realization— obtained through a close study of Tedesco's third map and a comparison of that paper with the previous maps — of how far they had to travel until they reached the landmark known as Deathpit. This journey was to be three times longer than that from the glass craters to the Glacier of Light; without mounts they could expect to spend six months walking.

Melopina huddled against Jask's side, her arm around him. Do you think I could really ride one of those?

You could learn.

They look enormous.

Three meters from ground to shoulder, I make them, Tedesco 'pathed.

And wild — Kiera reminded them. She was sitting in front of the group, on her supple haunches, her hands out on the snow, like a real wolf might sit.

Any suggestions for corraling a few? Jask asked.

The whinny of the beasts rose to them, like distant laughter.

We could employ our extrasensory perception to pacify them, Jask suggested.

How? — Kiera.

Jask considered the exact nature of the problem for a moment, and when he had figured it out, he was somewhat surprised that he should be able to conceive of such a thing and propose it with moral impunity. At one time, not so many months ago, he would have considered his idea perverted, wicked, generated by the Ruiner. Now, because it seemed the easiest way to achieve their ends, he said, Each of us could reach out for a different horse's mind, find it, touch it, mesh with it, pacify the horse and learn its nature intimately. In minutes we should be able to establish a rapport with our mounts that most riders require months to gain.

I thought Tedesco said we must avoid meshing with any but the minds of other human beings.

That would be safest, the bruin 'pathed. He shifted from one heavy foot to the other as he watched the horses, but he made no telltale sound.

No, Jask explained, what the living city taught us was never to mesh our consciousness deeply with an intelligent creature of another race. These horses are by no means intelligent, merely dumb animals.

The others hesitated.

Melopina? Jask asked.

I don't know, she 'pathed. I think we ought to take the living city's message more to heart. I don't think we should risk this.

There'd be no risk.

You can't say for sure — Kiera.

Jask wiped irritably at his eyes, which the biting wind had made slightly teary. His hands were red and chapped, though this was the first day he had not worn gloves since they had entered the highlands. He 'pathed, How else do you suggest we get hold of those tough little beasts — and keep hold of them?

Chaney spat in the thin skiff of snow, through which green-brown grass poked like the hair of a corpse, and he 'pathed, Expediency should not be the only consideration in a situation like this.

Like what? — Jask.

We must be careful — Kiera.

Tedesco nodded.

Melopina remained quiet.

Jask looked at them, perplexed by their attitude, then opened his esp powers and more vigorously sought their thoughts. He was suddenly surprised by what twisted motivations lay behind their reluctance to act.

He 'pathed, You frauds!

Tedesco looked sheepishly at the snow before him, kicked it away from the grass as if he were going to bend over and take a bite.

Making moral judgments again, Chaney said.

Oh boy! Jask roared. When I was reluctant to share telepathic conversation, afraid to use my powers, you labeled me a snob, bigot, idiot and other choice things.

We were hardly that crude, Kiera said, looking over her shoulder but not rising from the cold earth.

You were worse!

But there was a difference, Tedesco said.

Which was?

The bruin sighed, scratched behind his right ear, picked off some ice from his beard and finally explained: You may have considered the rest of us your inferiors, back then, but we were human beings, too. That was different from this. These horses are clearly not our equals. They are inferior to us. We have a right to exercise some prejudice when it comes to meshing minds with mere beasts.

How you rationalize — Jask.

Not rationalization. Common sense, Chaney 'pathed.

What you are suggesting, Jask 'pathed, is that a man becomes — well, tainted by whatever he touches. He shook his head against the wind, hair whipping about his face. Does that mean that a man who collects trash is nothing but trash himself? Does that mean that a man who cures the ill is bound to become ill in a like manner?

You're generalizing — Tedesco. He was still embarrassed for himself and the other three reluctant espers, and he must have already realized that his prejudice was silly. Yet he argued. It was not like the bruin to give up too soon, without at least minimal defense of his position.

According to this new philosophy of yours, Jask goaded them, does a man become a beast because he passes through the Wildlands? If so, we're all beasts already. Do you mean to imply that we are all insane because we meshed with the psychic force that was the living city? Do you further mean for me to believe that Chaney and Kiera are primitives because they hunted our meat with their teeth and claws, like mindless animals?

The wolf-man growled his disapproval of that last remark, and he unthinkingly popped his shiny claws from their protective sheaths, hunched his head forward so that his jaw was more prominent.

I'm not saying that you are an animal, Jask 'pathed to the wolf-man. In fact, I don't think so at all. I'm merely applying the philosophy that you've spouted to me in the last few minutes.

Chaney looked away from him, retracted his wicked claws, spat in the snow and tried to find something to look at besides his four companions and the hundred horses below. He finally settled on lifting his head back and staring at the sky, which was dotted with swiftly moving clouds and stained with late-afternoon sunshine.

Well? Jask asked them again.

No one responded.

Melopina?

I'm afraid, Jask.

He looked at the horses again.

They still grazed peacefully, unaware of the discussion on the hilltop, their long hair shifting this way and that in the wind.

Well, he 'pathed to the other four, I don't intend to walk. If you want to wear your feet to the knees and arrive at the pit four months later than I do, you're welcome to that idiosyncrasy.

He stepped forward, past Kiera.

The horses paid no attention.

He picked out a large, dark mount, sought the shell of its mind with esp fingers, found it, touched it. It was nearly featureless, a smooth shell filled more with general impressions than with details, with emotions rather than intellect, with hazy memories in place of the clarity of a four-dimensional, intellectual understanding of the nature of time. All this was easily grasped— even more easily controlled,

Jask stood for five minutes, motionless, learning the horse, seeking its fears and allaying them, locating its pleasures and promising those.

The horse turned, looked up the hill at him, but did not panic.

Come here.

It snorted, bent, took a mouthful of grass, and, trotting at a brisk pace but not so fast as to frighten the other beasts, it climbed the hill and came up to Jask.

Jask patted its black nose.

The horse snuffled and nuzzled his head. Its tail swished back and forth, evidence of its trust in him.

He walked around its side, grabbed a handful of the thick mane along its spine, and swung himself to the center of its back.

Well? he 'pathed to the others.

Melopina walked forward, surveyed the animals below, chose one, and in minutes was mounted beside Jask.

We've acted somewhat like fools, Tedesco 'pathed.

Somewhat! Jask 'pathed.

You had your turn at bullheadedness, the bruin said. Have grace enough to permit us ours.

In ten minutes they were all seated atop the wild horses, though none of the horses was wild any longer.

As they rode down the hillside and sent the other horses galloping in a herd before them, Tedesco 'pathed to Jask, You're not the same Pure lad I led out of the Highlands of Caul.

I know, Jack said. But you are the same Tedesco — and I'm damned glad of that!

They grinned at each other for a moment, before the bruin suddenly became self-conscious.

Let's make some time now that we're off our feet! Tedesco roared.

He leaned over his enormous mount's sleek neck, clinging to the copious blanket of hair that lay over its back, kicked its sides lightly, and galloped swiftly away.

They rode during the day, stopping every two hours to walk their horses, water them, and stretch their own legs. They did not press the well-muscled beasts to achieve too great a distance in any single day, though they suspected the horses' endurance was greater than theirs; they all got blistered rumps in short order. Two things kept them from abusing the horses: First, they knew that they would need them for many weeks, and they did not want to wear them out and be left with hundreds of kilometers to cover on foot; second, since they had meshed with the beasts, they felt a certain sympathy, a tenderness, an obligation to be good masters.

From January Slash they passed into the sparsely populated buffer nation of McCall's Hold, a narrow strip of country, beyond which lay another pocket of the ubiquitous Wildlands, Iron Man's Trust. In the week they took to cross this small territory, they saw thousands of robots piled in rusting heaps in the streets of crumbling villages, which — judging from the scarcity of human skeletons — had been built for machines instead of for citizens of flesh and blood. They passed hundreds of robots that still performed tasks they had been programmed for, tasks now meaningless but carried out with an admirable diligence nonetheless. Still other metal men clanked mindlessly from building to building, sometimes turning baleful yellow sight receptors on the five espers as they passed through, more often ignoring them altogether. A few guardbots stopped them and demanded their business, threatened them with stubby guns built into metal chests and foreheads, but always let them pass when they said they were humans and had a right to go where they wished.

I feel so sorry for them — Melopina 'pathed.

Sorry? — Chaney.

They've got just enough intelligence to know things are not right and to want to set things straight, but they've not got the ability to cope with anything but an ordered world. From now until they all fall apart and rust, this world offers them no hope.

Machines can't feel — Chaney.

Not as we can, at least. But somehow, deep down within, I suspect they have a trace of a soul.

Romanticist, Chaney 'pathed.

Cynic.

In the center of Iron Man's Trust they came across a huge, coppery building which had withstood the centuries quite well but did not seem to be inhabited by anyone, man or machine. Inspecting it while their horses rested and grazed, the espers found ten thousand more robots, none of which had ever been activated or seen any use at all. They lay in airtight storage drawers that slid from the walls. Chaney used the butt of his power rifle to smash in the plasti-glass over one of these drawers to see, he said with a straight face, if the metal-man within could crumble into dust.

It did not.

They left Iron Man's Trust and ventured into the far western nation of Caloria Sunshine, struck south and, in twelve more days, reached the ruins of Velvet Bay. This city had been called by other names in the centuries man had lived in it, but all of these names were now forgotten. Nature had come back to claim the land, and from Nature came the crumbling city's name, for it was constructed on the hills surrounding a gorgeous, wide-mouth inlet of the great West Sea.

It was here, in Velvet Bay, that Deathpit waited.

The map Tedesco had did not pinpoint the location of the pit. For three days they quartered the ancient city, looking for something that might deserve such a sinister name — and in the late afternoon of their third search period, they discovered it. In the midst of dust and worm-eaten mortar, mold-laced plastics and shattered glass, the approach to Deathpit stood out like a beautiful woman in a group of crones…

The courtyard between the four large, prewar buildings was twenty meters across. The old cobblestones had been covered with some slick, shining material, like millions of silver flecks suspended in a two-foot thickness of glass. This caught the sunlight and dazzled the eyes with bright reflections. From each of the four entrances to the courtyard a meter-wide path of lusterless black stone led through the glittering material on both sides and directly to the pit. This was a hole, one meter in diameter, cut in the center of the courtyard floor. It was rimmed with a black stone curb and filled with rich darkness clear to its bottom.

This is it! — Melopina.

Don't get your hopes up — Tedesco.

But what else could it be but an accessway to the Presence?

Many things, the bruin 'pathed. None of which we've ever heard of.

Chaney retrieved a brick from one of the dilapidated buildings and dropped it into the pit. From the time it took to strike bottom, they learned the depth of the well was somewhere near thirty meters.

I can sense an intelligent mind, Melopina said.

And alien — Kiera.

But it seems more distant than a hundred feet — Jask.

If this is the Black Presence, Chaney said, why doesn't it contact us? We're what it's been waiting for.

Perhaps it is something else altogether — Tedesco.

I can sense alien landscapes, strange thoughts, too strange for a creature of this world to have — Kiera.

The living city's emanations were alien, too, Chaney reminded them. Yet it was not the Black Presence.

They formed a meditation circle beside the pit, joined hands and linked minds until their esp powers had coalesced into a single, strong psychic probe.

One hand… one hand… grasping, seeking… we are all one hand… Melopina directed them.

They managed to touch the shell of the creature's mind where it lay beneath the earth, feel the humming power of an extraterrestrial consciousness.

This is it! — Tedesco.

For once I do not need to play the devil's advocate, Chaney 'pathed. If there is a Black Presence, this being is what we want.

But it still remained detached, distant, unresponsive to their best efforts to establish telepathic contact. Indeed, except for a shudder now and again, the creature seemed oblivious to them.

They broke up their gestalt and rose from the ring.

Someone will have to go down there, get closer, find out why it isn't responding, Chaney 'pathed.

I will, Jask said at once. He felt, unaccountably, that if he did this last thing for them, he would have expunged the last traces of his own guilt for having snubbed them so long in the beginning of their journey. As one, the others 'pathed to him the understanding that all his early stupidities had been forgiven, that proving himself here was not necessary, and he believed them. Still, for his own peace of mind, he wanted to be the one sent down to find the Presence.

This place is not called Deathpit without reason, Melopina reminded him, holding tightly to his hand.

Someone must go down.

Why you?

Why not? He turned to Tedesco. We can make a harness with the rope in your rucksack. You and Chaney should be able to support my weight without any trouble. Lower me slowly enough so I can avoid whatever obstacles there might be.

The rope was fetched and, in short order, the harness was made. Jask climbed into it, sat on the edge of the wall as Tedesco and Chaney got good handholds on the loose rope, which, when the initial slack was taken up, they would lower after him. Melopina kissed him, did not want to let go, finally had to. Jask slid off the edge of the pit and dropped…

He fell two meters, jerked hard as the slack snapped tight. He slammed sideways into the pit wall, hard enough to hurt himself but not with enough force to lose consciousness. He rubbed his aching chest, winced at the pain, which lay like hot metal between his ribs. When his heart had slowed and he could get his breath again, however, he decided that the injury was a small enough price to pay for getting to the Presence. The reward, after all, was great: the stars.

He tugged on the rope and 'pathed, Lower away!

Tedesco and Chaney fed the rope into the well.

At ten meters the pit entrance had dwindled until it was only a tiny coin of bright light overhead.

At fifteen meters it had shrunk to half a coin, a bead.

At twenty it was only a point of light, a pinprick in the darkness.

When he reached twenty-five meters, nearly to the bottom of the shaft, the darkness suddenly exploded in cold, white light.

Jask! — Melopina.

What's down there? — Tedesco.

Jask screamed as the light passed through him like a thousand pins. He jerked in his harness, fell, and before he could draw another breath, he died.

A second later a huge, dark form entered the bottom of Deathpit. It was shapeless and looked more like an incredibly dense cloud of smoke than like living flesh, constantly churning but never dissipating as smoke would be expected to. When it encountered the esper's body, it twisted and writhed more furiously, split into three separate entities, each as shapeless as the motherform. One of these returned to the ship from which the creature had originally come; one remained behind with the crumpled body of the esper; the third soared up the length of the shaft, like a hellish spirit cannoned into the world. It erupted into the late afternoon sun, bobbling in the warm air before the four living espers, who had fallen to the courtyard in shock and terror at the death of Jask.

Good god, what have we unleashed? Chaney asked.

Melopina threw her head back, sought Jask's mental aura, could not find it. She screamed and screamed.

33

The Watcher wakes from his nap, cut deep by a psychic radiation the like of which he has never before encountered on this world.

He rises up, moves forth, seeking the source.

He finds the ebbing life force in the corpse, locates the espers in the courtyard above, and he realizes that his brief nap has been extremely costly.

He moves out to make repairs.

34

At first, when they removed her from her post as General of the Preakness Bay enclave and imprisoned her prior to her execution, Merka Shanly did not so much mourn her own coming death but the end of the programs she had initiated, and which might eventually have saved the Pures from extinction. None of the Preakness Bay people had been exactly enthusiastic about the new order of things; and they were eager to terminate all the programs instigated by a tainted General. Even if some man with insight were to be elected to her post, he would not dare suggest the reactivation of researches and experiments that had originally been proposed by a mutant. She mourned the coming era of shame, from which her people would never pass, and she damned herself for her desires, which had in the end led to her discovery by Kolpei Zenentha.

As the time for her torture and death grew near, however, she began to think less of the people of the enclave and more of herself. She did not want to die. She might be tainted, a child of the Ruiner, with no hope now of eternal salvation, but she wanted to hold onto this world anyway. It was a reaction that surprised her. She soon reasoned, however, that if one were to be damned upon death, no matter what, it was best to live in this world as long as one could. The sooner death came, the sooner came hell.

She knew that Jask Zinn, the last esper found in the enclave, had killed his guards with his mental powers and escaped. She tried to tap similar abilities in herself but could do no more than read the minds of those around her.

On the morning of the Purification Ceremony she was taken from her cell to the main theater on the first level, where she was stripped and clamped to a large slate table whose edges were channeled with blood gutters. To begin with, as the congregation chanted, she was ritualistically slashed with scalpels, decorated with traditional religious signs that made her blood flow freely.

They daubed salt in her wounds.

When she passed out, she was revived.

A waste of supplies, she thought.

Then, when she began to laugh hysterically, tossing her pretty head from side to side, the congregation and the priests were certain that this was a sign of the Ruiner's presence and that he was mocking Lady Nature's people. They chanted louder and ordered the preparation of the Executioner's Pendulum somewhat sooner than they ordinarily might have. As the tenor of Merka Shanly's laugh grew madder and madder, they looked nervously this way and that, wondering if the Ruiner would dare make a direct appearance in this holy hall.

At the penultimate moment, as the Pendulum was moved into place above the table, their worst fears were realized. A mammoth, shapeless black being materialized in the center of the altar, floating in the air. It moved down the front of the church toward the slate table, scattering the priests before. The straps circling Merka Shanly's ankles and wrists snapped loose. At this, those last few brave souls in the audience turned and fled, shouting as hysterically as the girl had done moments before.

Merka Shanly lay still, looking up at the Ruiner, more terrified than those who had been able to flee.

The Presence 'pathed images of reassurance.

“You're the Ruiner?”

It 'pathed a negative concept, then presented a brief, imagistic history of itself and its purpose there. When it found that she was frightened by its magical appearance in the center of the altar, it 'pathed images of its ship and of the teleportation equipment on board, tried to encapsulate the theories of instantaneous travel in nonverbal images and left her more confused than frightened — which was some improvement anyway.

“And what will you do to me now?” she asked.

It 'pathed the images of other worlds, other stars, other races of intelligent beings.

“I don't know if I want—”

It swept forth, scooped her within the effect of its teleportation field and, turning, popped out of the temple and back to the starship below the courtyard in the city of Velvet Bay in the nation of Caloria Sunshine, across an entire continent. There, Merka stepped from the transmission booth into an enormous room in which two hundred other human beings — some Pure and some tainted — were sitting and standing in groups, obviously involved in conversation but not making any sound at all. These were the others the Presence had so far located on its search of the Earth; it went, now, to look for still others, leaving Merka Shanly alone.

Jask woke in a softly lighted room, in the middle of an invisible bed of force webs, which held him more comfortably than any mattress he had ever slept on before. He smacked his lips and wondered how he had gotten into such a place as this, when he abruptly remembered the flash of light, the pain, the oncoming darkness, which had been too intense to have been mere unconsciousness. He sat straight up, whimpering.

Melopina was there, as were Tedesco, Chaney and Kiera.

You're all right, Melopina 'pathed.

I died!

Yes.

Then— He looked sorrowfully from one to the other of his friends. Then, you're all dead too?

Tedesco burst out laughing.

Cynical as always, Chaney 'pathed, This isn't the afterlife, Jask. You didn't die and get sent to heaven or anything so good as that.

But I died!

And were resurrected, Kiera said.

But the Resurrectionists can't be—

Not resurrected in that sense, Tedesco said. You were killed by a device meant to guard the Presence against intruders. But it seems, that our friend from another world has access to miraculous machines we have never even imagined. He has one that, if it is supplied with a corpse in time, can seven times out of ten return the unfortunate to life.

And you four?

Not hurt.

Why did it let me be hurt? Jask wanted to know.

It didn't register our esp power, Melopina explained, because it was fifteen years into a twenty-year-long nap.

Twenty years!

The Presence has been on Earth more than eighty-five thousand years, but it's only lived a small portion of its life. A twenty-year nap is only standard procedure.

While it napped, Jask said, how many espers died?

That's a pointlessly vicious attitude, Tedesco 'pathed. We're lucky it was here at all.

Jask knew the bruin was right, but his own death was too fresh in his mind to permit him complete objectivity just now.

Besides, Kiera said, it uses images, not words, in telepathic talk. At first, it could not understand us at all. Apparently we aren't using our esp ability to its full potential. Until we do, we will stay here on Earth, taking instructions from the Presence, learning to overcome the handicap of being raised in a verbal society.

Any optimism Jask was beginning to allow himself sank without a trace as Kiera spoke. Stay on Earth? How long?

No more than a year, Kiera said. That's how long the Presence feels it will take to teach us imagistic communication.

Besides, Melopina added, the ships the Presence sent for will not be here for another eight or nine months anyway.

Why not?

They need that long to cross the gulf of space.

Then — the stars for us! Tedesco said.

Jask looked at each of them in turn, these four he loved and with whom he had been through so much. He said, Are you sure you want the stars any longer?

They 'pathed surprise.

Jask 'pathed, Even if we can be taught imagistic telepathy, we'll always find ourselves thinking in verbalized frames. We won't be able to help making a slip now and again. We'll be marked as children, as cripples, all our lives.

I doubt it'll be as bad as that, Tedesco 'pathed.

And how will we comprehend and learn to work with all the pieces of miraculous science and machines they take for granted? We'll be like primitives. There is nothing special about us to make them want to welcome us into the society of the many worlds.

That would be true but for one thing, Tedesco 'pathed.

What thing?

Despite all the advanced races of the galaxy, all those who have been telepaths for tens of thousands of years, no other race has any other psionic abilities.

So?

We have them! Consider your own ability to kill, to frighten a man to death. Further consider the trick Melopina taught us— the fireballs. And, finally, our ability to mesh into a single psychic force.

They can't?

No.

Chaney 'pathed, Among the other espers the Presence has already rounded up, there are people who can levitate themselves and move small objects without touching them. Others seem able to see parts of the future.

One woman can do the most exceptional thing of all, Tedesco said. She can concentrate and make moving pictures in the empty air, colors and designs, the most artistic things!

It seems to me, Jask said, that some of these other talents are more exceptional than that.

He's prejudiced, Chaney said. The artist he speaks of is a young bruin mutant named Kathalina.

You just don't appreciate good art, Tedesco grumbled.

Melopina 'pathed, Come on, Jask. Get dressed and come into the main lounge, where the others are.

I think I'd like to stay here with you a bit, alone, he 'pathed, making her blush a brighter blue-green.

You've a job, though, she 'pathed.

A job?

Tedesco explained. The Presence tells us that when mankind first journeyed to the stars, he was not telepathic — but he had the grains of the talent in his genes. The Presence's people could have helped man develop that drop of talent, but they were refused when they made the offer.

Refused? Whyever—

The big thing holding us back from space last time was xenophobia, Tedesco said. Mankind couldn't cooperate on an intimate level with other races. Even men of different skin color argued among themselves. The idea of such close contact with alien nonhumans was more than most men of that time could accept.

Perhaps that's why men developed the artificial wombs, Kiera said. They knew they had not deserved the stars, and they were trying to become acclimated to the idea of nonhumans among them. Maybe they would have adjusted by having mutated children and finally been able to face the real aliens. But things fell apart too fast for them to make the grade. Their society decayed, and the Last War finished them.

But what has this to do with my — job? Jask 'pathed.

We can't afford to let simpleminded prejudices stand between us and the stars, Tedesco said. Not this time. We need every human esper we can get, but—

But?

Some of those the Presence has rounded up are Pures, Melopina said. They're the only ones in the lounge who refuse to communicate telepathically with anyone but their own kind.

Chaney wiped at his muzzle and said, And you've been where they are now. You can teach them much.

I guess I can at that, Jask said.

Come on, Melopina said. These eight or nine months are going to pass as quickly as twenty years passes for the Presence. We've lots to do!

Smiling at the way her behind swayed when she walked, Jask followed the blue-green girl from the sickbay, down a long corridor, and into the main lounge, where the future parents of countless starchildren spoke animatedly in utter silence.