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 innocent people I've ever known. You helped me purge myself of my shadow-side, as Jung—and Joe Schilling —call it. How is Joe, by the way? I enjoyed seeing him again last night. How'd he feel being awakened at five-thirty in the morning?"

"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 Anne too much for what she said last night, Pete, because most of what you experienced was not Mary's fault; it was in your mind. Hallucinated. Joe Schilling was right in what he told you; the amphetamines were responsible. You had an authentic psychoptic occlusion."

"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 Anne, get out of that pool!"

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 Anne called, laughing. "I thought you couldn't be taken by surprise." She caught hold of the ladder, hoisted herself lithely from the pool. The mid-morning Nevada sun sparkled from her moist, smooth body as she ran and picked up a white terry cloth bath towel. "Hello, Pete Garden," she said, as she ran by him. "Nice to see you again when you're not sick to your stomach; you were actually a dark green color, like

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 connective event that throws someone like me entirely off."

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 Anne. And Rothman, whoever he was. Was Rothman here? He had a feeling,

deep and intuitive, that Rothman was very much here, and in control.

From a side room, Mary Anne appeared, now wearing a T shirt and blue cotton shorts and sandals and no bra; her breasts were high-pointed, small. She seated herself beside Pete, vigorously rubbing her hair with a towel to dry it. "What a bunch of jerks," she said quietly to Pete. "I mean, don't you agree? They—my mother and dad—made me come here." She frowned. "Who's that?" Another man had entered the room and looked around him. "I don't know him. Probably from the East Coast, like that Mutreaux."

"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 Anne said quietly, swiftly, "everyone has the potentiality for Psionic talent. In severe illness and in deep psychic regression—" She broke off. "Anyhow, Peter Garden, you were psychotic and drunk and on amphetamines and hallucinating, hut basically you perceived the reality that confronts us, the situation this group knows about and is trying to deal with. You see?" She smiled at him, her eyes bright. "Now you know."

He did not see; he did not want to see.

Petrified, he drew away from her.

"You don't want to know," Mary Anne said thoughtfully.

"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."