So he had been running away from a job, had he ? The idea was oddly comforting to Howson. For seconds only, though. Singh raised his head.

“Had he been notified that his services were required ?”

“I don’t know,” Lockspeiser grunted. “I warned his Hong Kong office, naturally. You’re from there, aren’t you?” He glanced at the worried Chinese opposite him, who had been presented to the meeting as Mr Jeremy Ho.

“Yes. Ah—” Ho looked very unhappy. “The answer to Dr. Singh’s question is negative. We hadn’t heard from Dr. Choong in over a week.”

“And it didn’t bother you?” Lockspeiser asked incredulously.

“Put it the other way around: we didn’t — don’t — bother Dr. Choong.” Ho’s tone was mildly reproachful. “We assumed he was making one of his regular study-tours. He goes off to sound out public opinion, gathering background data which may prove useful in the future. Only he can say what’s important to him.”

Singh gave a polite cough. “I don’t think we need pursue this any further. We’ve located Choong; our immediate difficulty is getting to him. We’d better concentrate on that.”

“Agreed.” That was the self-possessed woman with auburn hair, age — probably — thirty-five to forty, in black and green, who sat a little apart from her neighbour Lockspeiser. Her status was so far unknown to Howson, and he was curious about her. He was certain she was a telepathist, but when he had made the automatic polite approach to her he had been met by a well-disciplined mental gesture equivalent to a cool shrug. It was effectively a snub, and it had upset him.

Singh blinked at the woman. “Thank you, Miss Moreno. Now I understand from you that nothing of importance is known about Dr. Choong’s companions. Correct?”

Miss Moreno gave an emphatic nod. “None of them has come to our attention previously,” she confirmed.

“Our attention?” Howson said. All eyes switched to him, and instantly switched away again, except Miss Moreno’s. Her answer was prompt and casual.

“World Intelligence, Dr. Howson.”

Of course. When a man who holds the key to peace over a sixth of the globe defaults, you’d expect them to come running. Embarrassed at his own lack of perspicacity, and more troubled than ever at her refusal to acknowledge him on a telepathic level, Howson mumbled something indistinct.

Singh hurried on. “You’ve all been briefed on what’s happened to Choong, naturally. What we can’t figure out yet is why he’s done it. We’re analysing the confidential psycho-medical reports Mr Ho brought from Hong Kong, but till we’ve done so we can only speculate. Before today I’d have said the reason for setting up a catapathic grouping was the same for which any non-telepathist may go into fugue — to escape an unbearable crisis in real life. All our data, however, point to Choong being excellently adjusted, to his work, his private life, his talent… Yes, Miss Moreno ?”

“Do we really have to prolong this conference?” the woman said brittlely. Howson tensed. For all her careful control, a leakage of indisputable alarm was reaching him. “There’s only one course of action open, and the sooner it’s tackled, the better!”

Lockspeiser slapped the table with his palm. “Great! Will someone tell me what action ? I’d never checked up on this—this catapathic thing before I heard about Choong. Seems to me he’s blocked every way of reaching him — hasn’t he ?”

“What has to be done is this,” Howson said in a voice as shrill and hard as a scream. “Somebody has to follow him into fantasy. Somebody has to risk his own sanity to work out the rules by which his universe operates — to sort out from ten real personalities and God knows how many schizoid secondaries the ego of the telepathist — to make the fantasy so uninhabitable that from sheer disgust he withdraws the links between himself and the others and reverts to normal perception.”

He raised his eyes to meet Miss Moreno’s directly. She gazed steadily back as he finished, “And it’s not easy!”

“Did I say it was?” A hint of a flush deepened the olive tan of her cheeks.

“You said the sooner we tackled Choong the better.” Howson parodied a bow of invitation. “You’re welcome! For one thing, you have to learn your subject by heart first. If you don’t, he can hide from you behind an infinite succession of masks, until you’re too angry to out-think him, or too worn out to care, or — or too fascinated…” He swallowed and licked his lips, still looking towards Miss Moreno but no longer seeing her. “For another thing, while the body retains its energy reserves, an intruder has to slither in or not enter at all. If he’s clumsy and obvious, he meets the combined resources of the participants head-on, and they deny his existence as they’ve denied their own bodies. This time there are ten in the grouping, and you may bet that Choong hasn’t invited nincompoops and milksops to share his dreams! And lastly—” He checked. They waited for him, the pause becoming like the interval between the lightning and the thunder.

“And lastly,” Howson repeated very slowly, “Choong isn’t an inadequate personality on the run.”

Then why? Why? WHY?

He left them to get on with it after that. There were only the peripheral questions to settle, and it didn’t matter who asked which; they were all predictable.

“Can’t their resistance be lowered — by drugs, maybe ?”

“Not by drugs. An electric shock to the organ of Funck is sometimes helpful. But any depressant we used would affect the motor functions — the heart, the breathing reflex — as well as the higher centres involved in imagination. We have nothing Chat selective on the nervous system.”

“Well — prosthetic hearts, lungs?”

“No good until the telepathic linkage is already broken. Prior to that, they’d welcome it. It would mean that much less demand from their bodies, and the natural functions might cease for good.”

“Does physical separation make any difference?”

“They use telepathists to communicate with Mars. I hope that answers your question!” Singh was getting edgy; his mind wasn’t on the questioner, but on the absent Howson, wondering if he were eavesdropping from elsewhere in the building. He was, of course. He couldn’t resist it.

Sensing the growing impatience of the director in chief, the others changed their minds about asking more questions, and Lockspeiser came straight to the point.

“All right, Dr. Singh! All that remains to be settled is this: will Dr. Howson tackle the job, and what are his chances of success in a reasonably short time?”

I wish I knew… But Singh masked that thought skilfully; maybe not even Miss Moreno detected it. He said aloud, “As to tackling the job — I’m sure he will. As to succeeding in a reasonably short time — he has an unbroken record of success in his previous cases, and few of his cures took more than forty-eight hours once they got started. Mark you, the ground has to be prepared, as he pointed out; he has to learn his patient from birth on before he enters the fantasy.”

“Fair enough,” Lockspeiser grunted, and rose to his feet.

But Miss Moreno lingered, catching Singh’s eye, and spoke when the door had closed behind Ho and Lockspeiser.

“I’m going to put that question again, Dr. Singh, if you don’t mind. It’s essential that we don’t gamble in this matter. Are you sure Dr. Howson will get Choong back ?”

Instantly, rage, as much as Pandit Singh ever allowed himself. And, spoken aloud: ” Don’t let yourself say or even think that! Damnation, I’ve worked with Gerry for eleven years. I’ve seen him develop from a frightened, shy, retarded adolescent into a capable — hell, a brilliant! — therapist. His mind’s as keen as a scalpel. I know that — how is it you don’t ? You’re a telepathist yourself, aren’t you ?”