Part 2

"I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day--just as these people _do_. They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them--they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare."

"Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?"

"They don't want the world to know _why_ they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the _granite_! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation _and_ affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility."

"How do you know this?"

"We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else _could_ it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected."

"Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible--like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain."

Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine.

"Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me."

I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.

* * * * *

It was the time when you could argue about whether it was twilight or night. In the deep dusk, the Rolls looked to be a horror-flicker giant bug. I fumbled for the keys. Then the old man made me break stride by digging narrow fingers into my bicep.

Marshal Thompson and the bulky quarry foreman, Kelvin, stepped out of the shadow of the car.

"First, throw away that gun of yours, Mr. Madison," the marshal said.

I looked at his old pistol that must have used old powder cartridges, instead of liquid propellants, and forked out my Smith & Wesson with two fingers, letting it plop at my feet.

"I'm afraid we can't let you spread the professor's lies, Mr. Madison," Thompson said.

"You planning on killing me?" I asked with admirable restraint.

"I hope not. You can have the run of the town, like the professor. I'll tell your company you are making a _thorough_ investigation. Then maybe in a few weeks or months I can arrange so it looks like you were killed--someplace outside."

"We don't aim to let any crazy fanatic like Parnell ruin our business, our whole town," Kelvin interjected bitterly.

I took a pause to make abstractions on the situation. I glanced at the little man at my right. "Parnell, my car is our only chance of getting out of here. If they stop us from getting in that car, we'll be bums here on town charity for the rest of our lives."

"_No!_" Parnell gave a terrier yell and charged the gun in the old marshal's hand.

It seemed as if it would take me too long to recover my gun from the dirt, but almost instinctively I felt the rock in the pocket of my pants.

I scooped out the sample of granite and heaved it at the head of the old cop. But my control seemed completely shot. It missed the old man's head with an appalling gap and hit the roof of the Rolls.

Fortunately, the granite radiations didn't influence non-human-oriented factors of chance. The stone bounced off the car and struck the marshal's gun hand.

Thompson dropped his gun and I reached for mine in the dust, vaguely aware of Kelvin pumping toward me.

I straightened up. He led with his right, of all damn things. I blocked it with my gun hand and let him have my left in the midst of his solar plexus. He crumpled prettier than a paper doll.

When the dust cleared, Professor Parnell was sitting on Thompson's chest.

"Hooray," I said, "for our side."

* * * * *

The people had made one mistake. They thought people would believe us.

Parnell and I broke the story to some newspaper friends of mine. They gave it a play in the mistaken belief the professor and I were starting our own cult, and the equal-time law is firm. But nobody paid any more attention to us than to the Hedonists, the Klan, the Soft-shelled Baptists or the Reformed Agnostics.

I tried to get Thad McCain to realize all the money this cursed granite was costing us in accident claims, but it wasn't easy. Manhattan-Universal owned stock in Granite City Products, Inc. And we had spent a quarter of a megabuck modernizing our offices with granite only months before.

"McCain," I said earnestly, "will you just let me feed the new data we've got from Parnell into the Actuarvac? It's infallible. See what it says."

"Very well," McCain said with a sigh. He let me feed the big brain the hypothesis I had got from Parnell. It chattered to itself for some minutes and at last flipped a card into the slot.

I dug the pasteboard out and read it. It said:

No such place as Granite City exists.

"The rock has got to the machine," I screamed. "Chief, this brain is stoned. It's made a _mistake_. We _know_ there is such a place."

"Nonsense, my boy," McCain said in a fatherly way. "The Actuarvac merely means that no such place as you erroneously described could possibly exist. Why don't you try one of our Hedonist revival meetings tonight?"

* * * * *

Things have got steadily worse since then.

So far nobody has made the big mistake of dropping an H-bomb on anyone, but that's probably because all the governments made so many smaller mistakes the people made the mistake (or was it?) of kicking them out for almost absolute anarchy. But the individuals are doing worse than the governments...if that's possible.

People have given up going anywhere except by foot, for the most part.

Granite City granite is still as widely disbursed and almost as highly prized as South African diamonds.

I hope we will find some way out of our current world crisis, although I can't imagine what it will be.

Meanwhile, I hope you will excuse any typographical errors. It seems as if I just can't seem to hit the right keys on my typewriter any more, as my--and all of our--psionic sterility increases.

I ask hugh--wear wall it owl end?