"Bleak." He began collecting the scattered chessmen. "You know, it doesn't seem fair."

"What?" Tossing her coat onto the sofa, she pulled off her muddy boots, and curled up against the pillows with her feet tucked snugly beneath the silver fox fur.

"Earl gets to snatch Bormann out of Italy and save Gandhi from a Hindu fanatic, and you get to sit in a sleazy motel and attend a rocketry conference."

"They also serve who only sit and talk. As you should well know. Besides, you've gotten your fair share of the glory. What about Argentina?"

"That was more than a year ago, and all I did was talk to the Peronists while Earl and jack intimidated the jackboots in the street. Now, who do you think the press noticed? Us? Not likely. You've got to have flash to get noticed in this business."

"And just what is this business?" interjected Tachyon, pressing a mug of steaming tea into Blythe's hands.

David hunched forward, his head thrusting out from his stooped shoulders like an inquisitive bird. "Salvaging something out of the disaster. Using these gifts to improve the human condition."

"That's how it starts, but will it end there? My experience with super-races-being a member of one myself-is that we take what we want, and the devil take anyone else. When a tiny minority of people on Takis began to develop mental powers, they quickly began interbreeding to make certain no one else would get a chance at the powers. It gave us a planet to rule, and we're only eight percent of the population."

"We'll be different." Harstein's wry laugh made a mockery of the statement.

"I hope so. But I'm more comforted by the knowledge that there are only a few dozen of you aces, and that Archibald hasn't welded all of you into this great force for Democracy." His thin lips twisted a bit on the final words.

Blythe reached out, and pushed his bangs off his forehead. "You disapprove?"

"I worry."

"Why?"

"I think you and David should be grateful that you're out of the public eye. The rage of the have-nots against the haves is never pretty, and your race has a tradition of suspicion and hostility toward the stranger. You aces are surpassing strange. What is it one of your holy books says? Suffer not the witch?"

"But we're just people," Blythe objected.

"No, you're not… not anymore, and the others won't forget it. I know of thirty-seven of you, there may be more, and you're undetectable-not like the jokers. National hysteria is a particularly virulent and fast-growing weed. People are seeing Communists everywhere, and it probably wouldn't take much to transfer that distrust to some other terrifying minority-like an unseen, secret, awesomely powered group of people."

"I think you're overreacting."

"Am I? Take these HUAC hearings." He gestured toward a pile of newspapers. "And two days ago a federal jury indicted Alger Hiss for perjury. These are not the actions of a sane and stable nation. And this during your month of joy and rebirth."

"No, that's Easter. This is the first birth." David's weak joke sank into the heavy silence that washed through the room, broken only by the hiss of wind driven snow against the windows.

Harstein sighed and stretched. "What a gloomy bunch we are. What say we get some dinner, and find a concert? Satchmo is playing uptown.

"

Tach shook his head. "I have to go back to the hospital."

"Now?" wailed Blythe.

"My darling, I must."

"Then I'll go with you."

"No, that's silly. Let David take you to dinner."

"No." Her lips had tightened into a mulish line. "If you won't let me help, I can at least keep you company."

He sighed and rolled his eyes as she pulled on her boots. "Stubborn lady," David remarked from beneath the coffee table, where he was scrabbling after the scattered chess pieces. "We've all discovered that it does no good to argue with her."

"You should try living with her."

The delicate pillbox hat warped beneath the sudden tightening of her fingers. "Believe me, we can solve that problem."

"Don't start," Tach said warningly.

"And don't take that disapproving-father tone with me! I'm not a child, nor one of your secluded Takisian ladies."

"If you were, you'd behave better; and as for being a child, you're certainly acting like one-and a spoiled one at that. We've had this discussion before, and I'm not going to do what you want."

"We have not had a discussion. You have constantly closed me off, changed the subject, refused to discuss the matter-"

"I'm due at the hospital." He started for the door. "You see?" she shot at the uncomfortable Harstein. "Has he cut me off, or has he cut me off?"

The young man shrugged, and crammed the chess set into the pocket of his shapeless corduroy jacket. For once, he seemed at a loss for words.

"David, kindly take my genamiri to dinner, and try to return her to me in a somewhat better frame of mind." Blythe cast Harstein a pleading look, while Tachyon stared with regal disdain at the far wall.

"Hey, folks. I think you ought to take a nice romantic walk in the snow, talk things over, have a late supper, make love and quit bickering. Whatever it is, it can't be that big of a problem."

"You're right," murmured Blythe, the rigidity passing from her body under the relaxing wash of pheromones. David placed a hand in Tach's back, and urged him out the door. Lifting Blythe's hand, he placed it firmly in Tachyon's, and made a vague gesture of benediction over their heads. "Now go, my children, and sin no more." He followed them down the stairs and into the streets, then bolted for the subway before the pacifying effects of his power could wear off.

"Now do you see why I don't want you working with me?" The moon had managed to slip beneath the skirt of the clouds, and the pale silver light streaming across the snow made the city look almost clean. They stood on the edge of Central Park, breath mingling in soft white puffs as she stared seriously up into his face.

"I see that you're trying to protect and shelter me, but I don't think it's necessary and after watching you tonight…" She hesitated, searching for a way to soften her next words. "I think I can deal with it better than you can. You care for your patients, Tach, but their deformities and insanities.. well, they disgust you too."

He flinched. "Blythe, I'm so ashamed. Do you think they know, can they sense?"

"No, no, love." Her hand stroked his hair, soothing him as she would one of her young children. "I see it only because I'm so close to you. They see only the compassion."

"The Ideal knows I've tried to suppress it, but I've never seen such horrors." He jerked away from her comforting arms, and paced the sidewalk. "We don't tolerate deformity. Among the great houses such creatures are destroyed." There was a faint noise, and he turned back to face her. One gloved hand was pressed to her mouth, and her eyes were wide, glittering pits in the glow from a nearby streetlight. "And now you know I'm a monster."

"I think your culture is monstrous. Every child is precious no matter what its disabilities."

"So my sister thought, and our monstrous culture destroyed her too."

"Tell me."

He began drawing random patterns on a snow-covered park bench. "She was the eldest, some thirty years my senior, but we were very close. She was married outside the house during one of those rare family truces. Her first child was defective and put down, and Jadlan never recovered. She killed herself several months later." His hand swept across the bench, obliterating the drawings. Blythe lifted his hand, and chafed the chilled fingers between her gloved hands. "It started me thinking about the whole structure of my society. Then came the decision to field-test the virus on earth, and that was the end. I couldn't sit by any longer."