Yet now he felt unreasoned terror. It seemed to him that he was darting about like a frightened rabbit, with a sword in his hand, looking for his enemies, hysterically defying them to come into the open. Out from the marble hall, out under the blue arch of the sky where he would roar defiance to the gods themselves if need be!

He threw back his head, filled his lungs, and could not speak. To his terror-stricken gaze it appeared that the sky rolled back, like a slashed tent, and the gods were manifest.

He wanted to fall on his face, bury his head in dirt, deny this as he had denied — what ? Something terrible but not as fearful as this! He was paralysed. Whimpering, he had to look, and what he saw seemed to him to be the majesty of Zeus the Thundered, who raised his bolt of lightning and cast it down on the mortal who had presumed to usurp the divine right.

Pericles the Great became Pericles Phranakis. Pericles Phranakis woke like a child screaming from nightmares, and those who watched over his body pounced to stop him going back.

And Zeus the Thunderer, drained of all energy in a single terrific blast of mental mastery, fell headlong fainting to the floor.

“Do we know how he did it?” muttered Danny Waldemar, looking down with incredulous awe at the limp little body in the hospital bed.

The watchdog was too overcome to follow it exactly,” Singh answered. He ached for Howson to recover consciousness; he knew he could never express his gratitude for sparing Ilse the humiliation of death in defeat, but he wanted the cripple to see it in his mind, at least. “We got a little of it. It was the sheer power that worked in the end, naturally — he was able to take anything Phranakis offered and turn it into some hostile, hateful image. I think he was babbling about the Greek gods when he woke up — perhaps he saw them when Howson broke into his fantasy… Never mind; we’ll know soon.”

“What I don’t understand is what persuaded him to help,”

Waldemar said. “I haven’t contacted Ilse, of course — she’s still so weak… Do you know ?”

“Yes, she was awake long enough to tell me while they were detaching the prosthetics.” Singh paused and wiped his face.

“It seems that Howson’s father was Gerald Pond. Mean anything to you?”

“The — the terrorist? That one? Why, Ilse had to go and clear up after him while she was working for UN Pacification!”

“Exactly. And while she was probing wounded survivors for aggression data in a hospital there, she met Howson’s mother. He’d just been born a few hours earlier.

“He’s never been loved — do you know that ? His mother had him to try and blackmail Pond into marrying her, and never cared much about him otherwise. And people have always seen his face first, and been — disturbed. So he’s never been loved except once.”

“Ilse?”

“Yes. She never saw him with her own eyes, which is why she didn’t place him when he turned up here twenty-odd years later. But she saw him through his mother’s mind a short time after his birth, and ever since then he’s been a kind of symbol to her, summing up all the frustration she feels because she loves people she can’t all help. And she thought of him at what she expected to be the last moment.”

“He was watching,” Waldemar said. “We all were. When a telepathic force like Ilse’s is fully extended, you can’t avoid it. But I couldn’t follow her down towards the dark. So I missed that. I was so — miserable I had to take my mind away, in case I weakened her.”

“He not only stayed. He saved her.”

“Will she be able to work again ?”

“No. But she’s going to live for a while. I’m sure of that. She’s going to live long enough to teach Howson everything she knows.”

“It’s better than children,” Waldemar said. “For us, I mean.” He glanced at Singh.” Do you know that we envy you ?”

“Yes,” Singh murmured. “And we you.”

“Including Howson ?”

“No,” Singh said. “He’s never going to have it easy. He may find compensation in developing his talent, now he’s exploiting it in a way that’ll satisfy him. But he’ll always have to fight his resentment of people who can walk down the street without limping and look others straight in the face.”

Waldemar stared. Then he gave a chuckle. “I was going to tell you that,” he said. “But if you’ve worked it out already—well,—with you and Ilse to guide him, he’ll survive.”

“He’ll do much more than just survive,” answered Singh.

Part Three: Mens

14

Because he was who he was, he had once asked for — and they had given him — a private aircraft to travel anywhere in the world, thinking to escape the dismayed stares and the whispering of ordinary people. But because he was what he was, even the faint shock which the pilot betrayed on meeting him hurt, and hurt badly. He bore with it for a little; then he cut short the trip and never asked for the plane again.

Because he was as he was, he could scarcely be alone. The next best thing was to be here at the therapy centre in Ulan Bator, where those who knew him had outgrown their first instinctive reactions, and those who did not know him could assume he was a patient like themselves.

There had been certain changes in eleven years, but he was the same, even though he wore a different label now. He was Gerald Howson, Psi.D., curative telepathist first class, World Health Organization. He was one of the hundred least replaceable persons on Earth. It was good. It helped — a little. But he was still a runt, and his short leg still dragged as he limped through the corridors, and the same ugly face greeted him each morning in the mirror.

He had clung long to hope. He had remembered the deaf-and-dumb girl, given speech and hearing, and the way she came to thank him — him, Gerald Howson — with tears in her eyes. But that hadn’t lasted. The visits grew fewer; finally they stopped, and he heard she had married a man from the city where he and she both had been born, and had children.

Whereas he was a hideous cripple.

There had been half-promises — new techniques, new surgical processes. Once they had got as far as attempting a skin-graft on him. But long before the slow-growing tissues had knit, before blood-vessels could twine into the graft, it had gangrened and sloughed off. He was dully resigned by then. No matter how much thought he took, he could not add the wanted cubit to his stature; he was better employed any other way than pitying himself.

When the guards of consciousness were lowered by sleep, though, there was no escape if the lurking sorrows of the past chose to return.

Out of a dismal dream he snapped awake. That wasn’t the usual imagery of his nightmares! He had them frequently enough to recognize their roots in real life, and nothing in what had startled him corresponded to direct experience.

He did not open his eyes. There was no point — the room was in darkness, and anyway the source of the signal which had stabbed into his brain was some distance away, partly masked by the “noise” of people dreaming. The message had loomed up suddenly like a shout from a quiet conversation. And it was a shout of terror.

Breathing evenly, forcing himself to remain relaxed, he sought identifying images in the mental flow. High mountains capped with snow, caravans winding through valleys, and the cadences of a language he did not understand…

Got it — I think.

There was that Nepalese girl in Ward Four, the novice telepathist they had found too late, after her ignorant and terrified kinsfolk had stoned her for a vessel of evil. She must be having a bad dream of her own.

Well, if that was the case, he could right matters without even leaving his bed. He made as though to contact her openly and soothe away her shapeless fear. One instant before revealing himself, he checked, and felt a frown draw down his eyebrows.