"What do you want me to do?" Lemuel asked.

"I'm going to ask you a few questions, and give you a few objects to play with. I'll watch your reactions, note down a few things. How's that sound?"

Lemuel hesitated. He needed a friend so badly -- but he was afraid.

Dr. North put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "You can trust me. I'm not like those kids that beat you up, that morning."

Lemuel glanced up gratefully. "You know about that? I discovered the rules of their game were purely arbitrary. Therefore I naturally oriented myself to the basic reality of the situation, and when I came up at bat I hit the pitcher and the catcher over the head. Later I discovered that all human ethics and morals are exactly the same sort of --" He broke off, suddenly afraid. "Maybe I --"

Dr. North sat down behind his desk and began shuffling the Rhine ESP deck. "Don't worry, Lem," he said softly. "Everything will be all right. I understand."

After the tests, the two of them sat in silence. It was six o'clock, and the sun was beginning to set outside. At last Dr. North spoke.

"Incredible. I can scarcely believe it, myself. You're utterly logical. You've completely cast off all thalamic emotion. Your mind is totally free of moral and cultural bias. You're a perfect paranoid, without any empathic ability what­ever. You're utterly incapable of feeling sorrow or pity or compassion, or any of the normal human emotions."

Lemuel nodded. "True."

Dr. North leaned back, dazed. "It's hard even for me to grasp this. It's overwhelming. You possess super-logic, completely free of value-orientation bias. And you conceive of the entire world as organized against you."

"Yes."

"Of course. You've analyzed the structure of human activity and seen that as soon as they find out, they'll pounce on you and try to destroy you."

"Because I'm different."

North was overcome. "They've always classed paranoia as a mental ill­ness. But it isn't! There's no lack of contact with reality -- on the contrary, the paranoid is directly related to reality. He's a perfect empiricist. Not cluttered with ethical and moral-cultural inhibitions. The paranoid sees things as they really are; he's actually the only sane man."

"I've been reading Mein Kampf," Lemuel said. "It shows me I'm not alone." And in his mind he breathed the silent prayer of thanks: Not alone. Us. There are more of us.

Dr. North caught his expression. "The wave of the future," he said. "I'm not a part of it, but I can try to understand. I can appreciate I'm just a human being, limited by my thalamic emotional and cultural bias. I can't be one of you, but I can sympathize..." He looked up, face alight with enthusiasm. "And I can help!"

The next few days were filled with excitement for Lemuel. Dr. North arranged for custody of him, and the boy took up residence at the doctor's uptown apartment. Here, he was no longer under pressure from his family; he could do as he pleased. Dr. North began at once to aid Lemuel in locating other mutant paranoids.

One evening after dinner, Dr. North asked, "Lemuel, do you think you could explain your theory of Null-O to me? It's hard to grasp the principle of non-object orientation."

Lemuel indicated the apartment with a wave of his hand. "All these apparent objects -- each has a name. Book, chair, couch, rug, lamp, drapes, window, door, wall, and so on. But this division into objects is purely artifi­cial. Based on an antiquated system of thought. In reality there are no objects. The universe is actually a unity. We have been taught to think in terms of objects. This thing, that thing. When Null-O is realized, this purely verbal division will cease. It has long since outlived its usefulness."

"Can you give me an example, a demonstration?"

Lemuel hesitated. "It's hard to do alone. Later on, when we've contacted others... I can do it crudely, on a small scale."

As Dr. North watched intently, Lemuel rushed about the apartment gath­ering everything together in a heap. Then, when all the books, pictures, rugs, drapes, furniture and bric-a-brac had been collected, he systematically smashed everything into a shapeless mass.

"You see," he said, exhausted and pale from the violent effort, "the dis­tinction into arbitrary objects is now gone. This unification of things into their basic homogeneity can be applied to the universe as a whole. The uni­verse is a gestalt, a unified substance, without division into living and non-liv­ing, being and non-being. A vast vortex of energy, not discrete particles! Underlying the purely artificial appearance of material objects lies the world of reality: a vast undifferentiated realm of pure energy. Remember: the object is not the reality. First law of Null-O thought!"

Dr. North was solemn, deeply impressed. He kicked at a bit of broken chair, part of the shapeless heap of wood and cloth and paper and shattered glass. "Do you think this restoration to reality can be accomplished?"

"I don't know," Lemuel said simply. "There will be opposition, of course. Human beings will fight us; they're incapable of rising above their monkey-like preoccupation with things -- bright objects they can touch and possess. It will all depend on how well we can coordinate with each other."

Dr. North unfolded a slip of paper from his pocket. "I have a lead," he said quietly. "The name of a man I think is one of you. We'll visit him tomorrow -- then we'll see."

Dr. Jacob Weller greeted them with brisk efficiency at the entrance of his well-guarded lab overlooking Palo Alto. Rows of uniformed government guards protected the vital work he was doing, the immense system of labs and research offices. Men and women in white robes were working day and night.

"My work," he explained, as he signaled for the heavy-duty entrance locks to be closed behind them, "was basic in the development of the C-bomb, the cobalt case for the H-bomb. You will find that many top nuclear physicists are Null-O."

Lemuel's breath caught. "Then --"

"Of course." Weller wasted no words. "We've been working for years. Rockets at Peenemunde, the A-bomb at Los Alamos, the hydrogen bomb, and now this, the C-bomb. There are, of course, many scientists who are not Null-O, regular human beings with thalamic bias. Einstein, for example. But we're well on the way; unless too much opposition is encountered we'll be able to go into action very shortly."

The rear door of the laboratory slid aside, and a group of white-clad men and women filed solemnly in. Lemuel's heart gave a jump. Here they were, full-fledged adult Null-O's! Men and women both, and they had been working for years! He recognized them easily; all had the elongated and mobile ears, by which the mutant Null-O picked up minute air vibrations over great dis­tances. It enabled them to communicate, wherever they were, throughout the world.

"Explain our program," Weller said to a small blond man who stood beside him, calm and collected, face stern with the importance of the moment.

"The C-bomb is almost ready," the man said quietly, with a slight German accent. "But it is not the final step in our plans. There is also the E-bomb, which is the ultimate of this initial phase. We have never made the E-bomb public. If human beings should find out about it, we should have to cope with serious emotional opposition."

"What is the E-bomb?" Lemuel asked, glowing with excitement.

"The phrase, 'the E-bomb,' " said the small blond man, "describes the process by which the Earth itself becomes a pile, is brought up to critical mass, and then allowed to detonate."

Lemuel was overcome. "I had no idea you had developed the plan this far!"