Pete said, "I've thought over and over again for years what I'd do if I were wiped out at the table. I'd become a farmer."

Guffawing, Joe said, "Indeed. Now you say, 'I was never so serious in all my life.' "

Pete said, "I was never so serious in all my life."

"Where?"

"In the Sacramento Valley. I'd raise grapes for wine. I've already looked into it." He had, in fact, discussed it with the vug Commissioner, U. S. Cummings; the vug authority would undoubtedly support him with farm equipment and cuttings. It was the type of project which they approved of in principle.

"By God," Schilling said, "I think you do mean it."

"I'd charge you extra," Pete said, "because you're so rich from gouging record buyers all these years."

"Ich bin ein armer Mensch," Schilling protested. "I'm poor." - "Well, possibly we could trade. Wine for rare records."

"Seriously," Joe Schilling said, "if Luckman enters your group and you have to play against him, I'll come into The Game as your partner." He slapped Pete on the shoulder, encouragingly. "So don't worry. Between the two of us we can take him. Of course, I'd expect you not to drink while you're playing." He eyed Pete keenly. "I heard about that; you were bagged when you put up Berkeley and lost it. You could hardly reel out of the con-apt to your car when it was over."

With dignity, Pete started, "I drank after I lost. For consolation."

"However it may have been, my ukase still stands. No drinking on your part, if we become partners; you have to swear off, and that includes any pills. I don't want your wits dulled by tranquilizers, especially the phenothiazine class... I particularly distrust them, and I know you take them regularly."

Pete said nothing; it was so. He shrugged, wandered about the store, poking at a stack of records here and there. He felt discouraged.

"And I'll practice," Joe Schilling said. "I'll train, sincerely put myself in top shape." He poured himself a fresh cup of ooh long tea.

"Maybe I'm going to wind up a lush," Pete said. And, with a possible life-span of two hundred and some years ... it could be pretty dreadful.

"I don't think so," Joe Schilling said. "You're too morose to become an alcoholic. I'm more afraid of—" He hesitated.

"Suicide."

Pete slid an ancient HMV record from a stack and examined the label. He did not look directly at Schilling; he avoided meeting the man's wise, blunt gaze.

"Would you be better off back with Freya?" Schilling inquired.

"Naw." Pete gestured. "I can't explain it, because on a rational basis we made a good pair. But something intangible didn't work. In my opinion, that's why she and I lost at the table; somehow we never could really pull together as a couple." He recalled his wife before Freya, Janice Marks, now Janice Remington. They had cooperated successfully; at least it had seemed so to him. But of course they had not had any luck.

As a matter of fact, Pete Garden had never had any luck; in all the world he had no progeny. The goddam Red Chinese, he said to himself ... he wrote it off with the customary envenomed phrase. And yet—

"Schilling," he said, "do you have any issue?"

"Yes," Schilling said. "I thought everyone knew. A boy,

eleven years old, in Florida. His mother was my—" He counted for a time. "My sixteenth wife. I only had two more wives before Luckman wiped me out."

"How much issue has Luckman exactly? I've heard it placed at nine or ten."

"About eleven, by now."

"Christ!" Pete said.

"We should face the fact," Joe Schilling said, "that Luck-man, in many ways, is the finest, most valuable human being alive today. The most direct issue, the greatest success in Bluff; his amelioration of the status of the non-Bs in his area."

"All right," Pete said irritably. "Let's drop it."

"And," Schilling continued, unperturbed, "the vugs like him." He added, "As a matter of fact virtually everyone likes him. You've never met him, have you?"

"No."

"You'll see what I mean," Joe Schilling said, "when he gets out to the West Coast and joins Pretty Blue Fox.

To the pre-cog Dave Mutreaux, Luckman said expansively, "I'm glad to see you got here." It pleased him because it demonstrated the reality of the man's talent. It was, so to speak, a de facto case for using Mutreaux.

The lanky, well-dressed, middle-aged Psi-man—he was in fact a minor Bindman in his own right, possessing the title to a meager county in Western Kansas—seated himself sprawlingly in the deep chair facing Luckman's desk and drawled, "We've got to be careful, Mr. Luckman. Extremely careful. I've been severely limiting myself, trying to keep my talent out of sight. I can preview what you want me to do; fact is, I previewed it coming over here by auto-auto. Frankly I'm surprised that a man of your luck and stature would want to employ me." A slow, insulting grin crossed the pre-cog's features.

Luckman said, "I'm afraid when the players out on the Coast see me sitting in they won't want to play. They'll band together against me and conspire to keep their really valuable deeds in their safety deposit boxes instead of putting them out on the table. You see, David, they may not

know it's me who obtained the Berkeley deed, because I-"

"They know," Mutreaux said, still grinning lazily.

"Oh."

"The rumor's already going around ... I heard it on that crooner's TV show, that Nats Katz. It's big news, Luck-man, that you've managed to buy into the West Coast. Real big news. 'Watch Lucky Luckman's smoke,' Nats said; I recall his words."

"Hmm," Luckman said, disconcerted.

"I'll tell you something else," the pre-cog said. He crossed his long legs, slouched down in the chair, his arms folded. "I can preview a spread of possible this-evenings, some of them with me out there in Carmel, California, sitting in at The Game with the Pretty Blue Fox folks, and some with you." He chuckled. "And in a couple of the possible this-evenings, those folks are sending out for an EEG machine. Don't ask me why. They don't normally keep one handy, so it must be a hunch."

"Bad luck," Luckman said, grumblingly.

"If I go there and they give me an EEG," Mutreaux said, "and find out I'm Psionic, you know what that means? I lose all the deeds I hold. See what I'm getting at, Luckman? Are you prepared to reimburse me, if that occurs?"

"Sure," Luckman said. But he was thinking of something else; if an EEG was run on Mutreaux, the Berkeley deed would be forfeited, and who would make that up? Maybe I better go myself and not use Mutreaux, he said to himself. But some primal instinct, some near-Psionic hunch inside his mind, told him not to go. Stay away from the West Coast it said. Stay here!

Why should he feel such a powerful, acute aversion to venturing forth from New York City? Was it merely the old superstition that a Bindman stayed in his own bind... or was it something more?

"I'm going to send you anyhow, Dave," Luckman said. "And risk the EEG."

Mutreaux drawled, "However, Mr. Luckman, I decline to go; I don't care to take the risk myself." Unwinding his limbs he rose awkwardly to his feet. "I guess you'll just

have to go yourself," he said with a smile bordering on an outright smirk.

Damn it, Luckman said to himself. These little two-bit Bindmen are haughty; you can't get to them.

"What have you got to lose by going?" Mutreaux asked. "As far as I can preview, Pretty Blue Fox plays with you, and it appears, from here, that your luck holds out; I see you winning a second California deed the first night you play." He added, "This forecast I give you free. No obligation." He touched his forehead in a mock salute.

"Thanks," Luckman snapped. Thanks for nothing, he thought. Because the biting, weak fright was still there in him, the pre-rational aversion to the trip. Gawd, he thought, I'm hooked; I paid plenty for Berkeley. I've got to go! Anyhow, it's unreasonable, this fear.