Because he was who he was, he asked for—and they gave him—a private aircraft to take him anywhere in the world, to avoid the curious stares and whispers of other people. But because he was what he was even the faint surprise which showed in the eyes of the aircraft's pilot when they first met hurt, and hurt badly. He bore with it for a little; then he made use of the aircraft less and less.

  Because be was as he was, he liked cither to be alone (and generally they would not allow him to be alone—he waa too valuable) or here at the curative centre in Ulan Bator, where those who knew who he was no longer felt more than a stir of pity at his appearance and those who did not know assumed him to be a patient like themselves.

  He was—what ? A dwarf; a cripple; Gerald Howson, Psi.D., curative trie-path first class. World Health Organisation. He was one of the hundred most important men in the world.

  He remembered sometimes the feeling of expectation he had had when they first discovered his talent. The gift was rare, bat so important that virtually everyone on earth was given tests for it. They had found him at the age of twenty-two; he had actually been telling stories to a deaf-and-dumb girl when they caught up with him. In the stories, she was always very beautiful, instead of coarse-boned and heavy-faced; he himself was usually some cross between Tarzan and Robin Hood.

  She had cried when they explained they were going to take her friend away; and he, when he understood what sort of future lay before hint, had insisted that they take her along as well and see what they could do to cure her. (It was that insistence, to Pandit Singh was later to tell him, which assured the people who took him in hand that he would become not an Industrial disputes arbitrator, not a peacemaker, nor any of the other metiers open to projective telepathists, but a healer of sick minds-)

  He had of course assumed that now he was so important they would cure him, too: add a couple of cubits to his stature as he had been unable to, though he had indeed taken much thought, straighten out his twisted left leg and cleanse his face of its lopsided, slightly idiotic expression.

  They gave the girl a trembler coil inside her skull, and she learned to hear: they gave her bio-activated vocal cords of virtually imperishable plastic, so that she stumbled into possession of a musical, though hesitant, speaking voice. For a long time she paid frequent visits to Gerald How-son, and every time thanked him with tears in her eyes. But in the end the visits grew fewer: finally they stopped, and he heard she had married a man from the same city block on which he and she both had been born, and bad had children.

  Whereas he was a dwarf cripple.

  He remembered Pandit Singh explaining with all the kindness in the world just why this would have to be so. He had recounted how it was a miracle in itself that he had lived until he was discovered—a tingle serious illness or injury would have sent him to his grave. He was a hemophiliac—a bleeder—and a cut even on his finger would ooze for a day before it grudgingly began to heal over. (Well, they could give him prothrombin, and indeed now be always carried a phial of it in his pocket in case he did cut himself; but prothrombin was a crutch.) And all his other recuperative and regenerative powers were, for some reason, equally slow, equally halting.

  So they could not even give him plastic surgery on his face; they demonstrated what they meant with a skin graft, just to convince him, and long before the slow-growing tissues had knit and bloodvessels had twined into the graft, the transplant had gangrened and sloughed off. They could maintain e sort of half-life in the transplant but then the bloodvessels never grew into it at all: it was as if they made up their minds their work was being done for them.

  This slowness extended to such things as his body hair. He had a barber attend him perhaps once in three months: he never shaved more often than that, and his chin was scarcely fuzzy when the razor passed across it.

  Pandit Singh had made h perfectly Clear that without his handicap he would never have become a projective telepathist. The are* of his brain which held the body-image for his metabolism to use in blue-printing tissue regeneration had atrophied under pressure from his organ of Funck. And consequently he had a telepathic voice which could be heard for more than a hundred miles when he cared to use it—but he could not grow a beard.

  Exactly eleven years ago to the day he had had to resign himself to the fact that he would die in the same twisted body. But in eleven years he had never been reconciled to it. Other people in his profession with comparable talents, didn't suffer from such compensating handicaps.

  He was in the ward where they had brought s man called Hugh Choong— in fact, he was standing at the end of Choong's bed, looking down at him. There was a man with powers like his own, but he stood medium tall, and— ’excepting that he was wasted through having eaten nothing in twenty days —he was physically sound.

  The injustice of it weighed heavily on Howson's mind.

  Now Choong stirred and opened his eyes. It was as if a gigantic light had been switched on in the room; everything stood out in bright, three-dimensional forms compared to which previously they had been in grey dusk. That was Choong’s perception waking up. Only another telepathist would have noticed the difference.

  Howson limped around the side of the bed and looked at the patient’s face more closely. Yes, there was a resemblance. He remembered-

  Who are you? Do I know you?

  “Yes, you know me. Gerald How* son. You probably hate me.” Deliberately, Howson used words: he was shutting down every batten he could on his biasing mind.

  Choong closed and then re-opened his eyes, and moved his arm languidly on the coverlet. “I’m glad to meet you. Dr. Howson,” he said. “Did you —uh—handle my case?”

  Howson nodded. He said, “Why did you do it ?“

  “Do what? Oh! Go into fugue, you mean’ Why-"

  This man, Howson reflected bitterly in a fraction of a second, is a psychiatrist, and a very able one; he is also an industrial disputes arbitrator called on to handle the most complex decisions. Twenty days ago, he assembles a group of people he has barely met; he brings them together on benches in the square facing -the hospital, and uses his imagination combined with his telepathic ability to rub them from reality into a world of dreams. I—I—I who am cursed with a wish to do exactly that (only for choice, on my own) have to destroy his illusions, trespassing into his mind and creating superior illusions of my own until his fantasies become unbearable. And he comes back, and asks if I handled his case. What sort of a man is this, in truth?

  “—I felt I needed a holiday,” said Choong with a wry smite.

  “You what’"

  “I needed a holiday. I needed to escape for a little. I made a few inquiries and saw no chance of getting one any other way. I had heard of a few cases of people like us creating a cataleptic group, so I asked half a dozen acquaintances if they liked the idea, and they did, so—so we went ahead.”

  He managed to push himself Into a sitting position; he was obviously recovering fast. “I don’t regret It in tbe slightest It was a welcome change, and then of course I had the opportunity of seeing one of your people work at—at first hand, so to say.”

  Howson almost choked before he could reply; when be did, it was with an anger which blued so fiercely that he used projection instead of words. Essentially, he “said”: How can you be so blatantly saltish? Don’t you know bow much trouble and worry you’ve caused? Don't you cere about the trouble you put toe personally to? How do you think I liked fighting through the ridiculous empty fantasies you created and breaking them down? How do you feel about the time you wasted—time I could have used to help someone who was in real need?

  Choong cried out and put his hand to his head; a nurse came hastening up to demand what the matter was. Choong, recovering, waved her away, but she warned Howson sternly that there must be no repetition of this.

  When the nurse had gone. Choong looked wryly at Howson. “You’ve got some power on you,” he said. “Do you mind sticking to speech? I’ve had a good deal of your shock tactics recently, and my mind feels rather bruised. But to answer you—with a question—why do you feel so guilty about deriving pleasure from your abilities?"

  Howson began to deny it; Choong cut him short. “Damn it, Howson, you wouldn’t blame a man with physical gifts for enjoying himself at sports. Yet you blame me—and in so doing blame yourself—for taking pleasure in the use of a mental talent. I—oh: Howson. Of course. I identify you now. I can recall quite clearly what you did to bring me out of it. Ingenious! But where was I? Ah. I think you should have that cleared up. you know, that sense of guilt. It's not logical. I mean, don't you ever use your telepathy for your own enjoyment? For instance, my wife and I usually link up when we go to bed; I dream much more vividly than she does, and I like her to share my dreams. Don’t you ever do that sort of thing?"

  "I'm not married,” said Howson in a voice like steel, and Choong flashed an impolite glance into his mind. When he spoke again, it was with a change of manner.

  "I'm sorry. That was tactless. But—”

  Howson said unwillingly, “There was once a time when I did. I don't often think about it now." He explained about the deaf-and-dumb girl who had been his companion in the past; he didn't know why he spoke of her to this comparative stranger, except perhaps as compensation for having trespassed in his mind. When he finished. Choong nodded.

  “I imagine—if you'll forgive me saying so—you must enjoy your work, at any rate vicariously. It must —uh—be quite a change to be a tough, resilient individual capable of

great physical effort."

  “I—yes, I do enjoy it. Sometimes, perhaps, I take longer than I need over a curative programme—so that I can escape from my own limitations for a greater length of time."

  “Very natural," nodded Choong with a wise expression. “But regrettable. I think—and this is no more than a guess—I think if you allowed yourself to derive more pleasure from your abilities, you'd feel less tempted to use other people’s fantasies for the same end."

  “How can I?" said Howson bitterly. "Are you suggesting I should do as you've just done—set up a fantasy grouping? How could I tell Pandit Singh that I wanted to run away into the very kind of dreams I spend much of my time bringing other people back from? Although—"

  His voice trailed away.

  "Yea?” prompted Choong encouragingly.

  “Oh, he knows I’m jealous. And yet —well, tell me something. Presumably when you brought your—uh—associates into the square facing tha hospital and sent them off into catalepsy, you. were expecting to be found, expecting to be brought back from your world of dreams?"

  “Of course.” Choong smiled slightly. “I didn’t much want to starve to death—and I was sure I wouldn't want to come back of my own accord.”

  "I couldn't do that,” said Howson. “For one thing, I couldn't put enough trust in the ability of anyone else to bring me back. After all. I suppose I've demolished more fantasy worlds than any other telepathist alive. And for another thing—if someone else did manage to bring me back, it would undermine my confidence in my own ability."

  He glanced round and saw that the ward nurse was standing at his side with a threatening expression.

  vYou wouldn’t want to undo your good work by making Mr. Choong exhausted, would you now. Dr. Howson?" she suggested pointedly. “Could I ask you to finish your conversation?"

  “All right," Howson consented dis-spiritedly. He was turning to limp away when Choong spoke up one final time.

  “Then it’s fairly clear that an escape which suits me or someone else doesn't suit you, Howson. You’re a unique individual. Find your own way, then. There’s bound to be on«.“

  There's bound to be one. Howson wasn’t quite sure whether Choong had physically spoken those last few words, or bad cased them telepathicaly into his mind with the practised skill of a first-class psychiatrist implanting a suggestion in a -patient. In a patient—that was amusing! A few days before Howson had been the doctor, Choong his patient; a moment had seen the roles reversed.

  He bad already ordered his personal attendant to pack him a bag; now, though, as he hesitated outside Pan* dit Singh's office, he was beginning to feel doubts. Suppose he didn't find the solution to his problems? Suppose he couldn't even beg in to think of how to look for a solution? (At the moment, he certainly hadn't begun.)

  Then he steeled himself, and pushed open the door. It was not so difficult as some other doors in the hospital for his spindly arms and short reach; he suspected, without being sure, that Pandit Singh had quietly arranged for it to be kept oiled and free-moving so as not to embarrass Howson.

  The distinguished-looking Indian at the big desk in the office didn't look up: he said merely, "Hullo, Gerry—come in and sit down, won't you? I shan't be a second."

  Once, a long time ago, Howson reflected as he hitched himself up on the slightly-smaller-than-average chair Singh kept specially for him, be had thought that the hospital director must have embryo telepathic faculties himself—be never bothered to look up to identify a visitor. Then lie had realised the Indian merely had a superlative auditory memory for footsteps and voices.

  Now Singh folded a package of case-reports and docketed them for permanent filing; he set down the pen be had been using and gave How-son a faint smile.

  "When did you last take a holiday; Gerry?" he inquired.

  -Why—"

  "All right, I know perfectly welt You haven't taken a holiday in six years. I do manage to persuade you to rest occasionally, but that's not enough. You used to fly off for a week or two at a time when you first came here—now you teem to prefer to take advantage of other people’s fantasies instead. I think I'm probably a lot to blame, of course: it struck me when you admitted you were jealous of Hugh Choong that I've simply got used to making the most of your talents. Comes a difficult case, I relinquish the responsibility I ought to exercise in a sort of sublime and dreamy confidence in your ability to cure it. It won't do. It simply won't do."

  He sat back and crossed his legs, and his smile returned and grew broader.

  Peeling oddly on the defensive, Howson said, "Pan, you know that's not a fair way of looking at it. Though I say it myself, there's no one else who could handle some of the cases we get here, and never haa been, barring Ilse Kronstadt, and she’s dead. Besides, I don’t mind—I can't think of a better use to put my time to than curing our patients, arid I wouldn't be happy doing anything else."

  "Then what’s this I bear about you having your bags packed?" demanded Singh, leaning forward as if scoring a winning point. Over Howson’s stammered reply, be laughed, and went on. "Oh, don't think I mind, Gerry. It's the beet news I’ve heard In months. Because the plain fact is you aren’t happy. It’s no good trying to maintain that you arc. And you don’t have to apologise for doing it without warning, either. You’ll probably say that it means wasting time which could be put to good use curing someone else. Who cares? A month or two’s delay in straightening out a patient in fugue is neither here nor there; after all. there are other people on the staff who can handle the work, even If they aren't up to your standard. But if my prize assistant were to crack up, if you were to dash off into a fantasy world as you threatened to do, that would be a disaster.”

  He waited expectantly for How* ion's reply: It came by fits and start*, because Howson had hardly yet had a chance to verbalise his feelings and intentions.

  "You’re perfectly right. Pan,” he said. "I’m not altogether happy. I'm scared, to be frank. I'm seared of what I might give way to. I'm equally scared of going out into the world at large, because it never treated me very kindly. But there's some kind of difference between the two sorts of fear. I couldn't tell whether I was going to crack up or not because the possibility comes from within myself. But I feel I have at least some chance"' of standing up to the world now. I've got to. What it'll prove to me, I just can't guess. All I do know is that unless I do something I may one day go into some patient's fantasy world and find it so much to my liking that I may never want to come back. I couldn't—I don't think—-escape into a fantasy world of my own. But I might like someone else’s fantasies equally well."

  Pandit Singh picked up a pen from the desk top and tapped with it on the silent surface of a note-block. "I wish sometimes, Gerry, that I could have aa clear an insight into the minds of my staff, particularly of you curative telepathists, as I can obtain into the minds of the patients. It always strikes me that you, all of you and you in particular, arc walking a tight-rope over a volcano in eruption. At any moment, you may slip, or a piece of red-hot scoria may burn the rope through.”

  “Picturesque: but too fancy,” said Howson dryly. "It isn't a volcano— it's a plain old-fashioned hell, with devils complete."

  He briskened slightly. "Well, what I mainly came in here to tell you. Pan, aside from the bare fact of my going, waa that I want to go absolutely alone."

  Singh looked startled. "But—"

  "I think one of the reasons I lost Interest in making the trips I used to do when I first came here was that I couldn't get away. Someone followed me everywhere, in case I stumbled, in case vicious children made mock of me, in case I found myself in trouble of some sort. What the hell good is that to me? Maybe I can't go rock-climbing in the Caucasus; maybe I can’t go surf-riding at Bondi Beach. But damn it. I looked after myself on a tough city block for twenty-two years even before I knew what kind of powers I had. It might do me more good than anything else if I could relearn how to do that."

  Pandit Singh hesitated for a long time. Unwillingly, he nodded. "I suppose you're right, Gerry. I can’t judge you. You're obviously not going to do anything so stupid as to chuck your prothrombin in the waste-bucket, I presume—independence has limits."

 

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