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Hands in her pockets, Pat walked over to the swimming pool and stood watching her daughter. "If you could read my mind," she said, to no one in particular, "you'd
see envy." She turned away from the pool. "You know, Pete, when I first met you I lost some of that. You're one of the most i
"He congratulated me," Pete said shortly, "On my luck."
"Oh yes," Mutreaux said in a jolly tone of voice; he slapped Pete good-naturedly on the back. "Lots of best wishes on the pregnancy."
Pat said, "That was an awful remark your ex-wife made that to Carol about 'hoping it was a baby.' And that daughter of mine, she relished it; I suppose she derives that cruel streak from me. But don't blame Mary A
"Did I?" Pete said.
She met his gaze. "Yes, you did."
"I doubt it," Pete said.
"Let's go inside," Alien McClain said. He cupped his hands and shouted, "Mary A
Splashing, the girl approached the rim of the pool. "Go to hell."
McClain knelt down. "We have business; get inside! You're still my child."
In the air above the surface of the pool a ball of shiny water formed, whipped toward him, broke over his head, splattering him; he jumped back, cursing.
"I thought you were such a great pre-cog," Mary A
old moldy moss." Her white teeth glinted as again she laughed.
Alien McClain, brushing drops of water from his face and hair, walked over to Pete. "It's now eleven o'clock," he said. "I'd like you to call Carol and say you're all right. However, I can look ahead and see you won't, or at least probably won't."
"That's right," Pete said. "I won't."
McClain shrugged. "Well, I can't see what she'll do; possibly she'll call the police, possibly not. Time will tell." They walked toward the motel building, McClain still shaking himself dry. "An interesting element about Psionic abilities is that some tend to invalidate others. For instance, my daughter's psycho-kinesis; as she aptly demonstrated, I can't predict it. Pauli's synchronicity comes in, an acausal co
To Dave Mutreaux, Patricia said, "Did Sid Mosk actually confess to having killed Luckman?"
"Yes," Mutreaux answered. "Rothman put pressure on him, to take pressure off Pretty Blue Fox; the police out in California were probing a little too deeply, we felt."
"But they'll know after a while that it's spurious," Patricia said. "That vug E. B. Black will get into his mind telepathically."
"It won't matter then," Mutreaux said. "I hope."
Inside the motel office an air-conditioner roared; the room was dark and cool, and seated here and there Pete saw a number of individuals talking together in muted tones. It looked, for an instant, as if he had stumbled onto a Game-playing group here in the middle of the morning, but of course it was not. He had no illusions about that. These were not Bindmen.
He seated himself, warily, wondering what they were saying. Some of them sat utterly silent, staring straight ahead as if preoccupied. Telepaths, perhaps, communicating with one another. They seemed to be in the majority. The others—he could only guess. Pre-cogs, like McClain, psycho-kinesists, like the girl Mary A
deep and intuitive, that Rothman was very much here, and in control.
From a side room, Mary A
"You're not a vug," Pete said to her. "After all."
"No, I'm not. I never said I was; you asked me what I was and I told you, 'you can see,' and you could. It was true. See, Peter Garden, you were an involuntary telepath; you were psychotic, because of those pills and the drinking, and you picked up my marginal thoughts, all my anxieties. What they used to call the subconscious. Didn't my mother ever warn you about that? She ought to know."
"I see," Pete said. Yes, she had.
"And before me you picked up that psychiatrist's subconscious fears, too. We're all afraid of the vugs. It's natural. They're our enemies; we fought a war with them and didn't win and now they're here. See?" She dug him in the ribs with her sharp elbow. "Don't look so stupid; are you listening or not?"
Pete said, "I am."
"Well, you gape like a guppy. I knew last night you were hallucinating like mad along a paranoid line, having to do with hostile, menacing conspiracies of alien creatures. It interfered with your perceptions, but fundamentally you were right. I actually was feeling those fears, thinking those thoughts. Psychotics live in a world like that all the time. Anyhow, your interval of being a telepath was unfortunate because it happened around me and I know about this." She gestured at the group of people in the motel room. "See? So from then on you were dangerous. And you had to go right away and call the police; we got you just in time."
Did he believe her? He studied her thin, heart-shaped
face; he could not tell. If telepathic talent it had been, it certainly had deserted him now.
"See," Mary A
He did not see; he did not want to see.
Petrified, he drew away from her.
"You don't want to know," Mary A
"That's right," he said.
"But you do know," she said. "Already. It's too late not to." She added, in her pitiless tone, "and this time you're not sick and drunk and hallucinating; your perceptions are not distorted. So you have to face it head-on. Poor Peter Garden. Were you happier last night?"
"No," he said.
"You're not going to kill yourself about this, are you? Because that wouldn't help. You see, we're an organization, Pete. And you have to join, even though you're non-P, not a Psi; we'll have to take you in anyway or kill you. Naturally, no one wants to kill you. What would happen to Carol? Would you leave her for Freya to torment?"
"No," he said, "not if I could help it."
"You know, the Rushmore Effect of your car told you I wasn't a vug; I don't understand why you didn't listen to it; they're never wrong." She sighed. "Not if they're working properly, anyhow. Haven't been tampered with. That's how you can always sort out the vugs: ask a Rushmore. See?" Again she smiled at him, cheerfully. "So things aren't really so bad. It's not the end of the world or anything like that; we just have a little problem of knowing who our friends are. They have the same problem, too; they get a little mixed up at times."