Part 2

"Just before our marriage ended, I found out he was seeing Raven English as much as he could. He didn't break the rules. But when we went to dances he always danced with her once or twice. And she and her husband used to meet us in bars. After the contract expired, he couldn't see her much because she and her husband have another six months to go. But there was a dance last week and I saw the two of them disappear into the park. Raven's husband hunted all over for her. He looked horrible. I pitied him."

"Who's Raven English?"

"She's a sadist. I know she is. She's just the type to do this. She likes to play with men and hurt them. Her poor husband is a nervous wreck. I know she killed Joe, Protector. She hates us!"

He stood up. The girl watched him with big eyes. He put his hand on her head.

"Sleep is a joy," he said.

Unprepared, he couldn't have done that to many people. But she was a woman, which added to his influence, and totally exhausted.

* * * * *

He got off the vator and looked around for the coffee house. Dozens of people wandered the halls and the shops. As he walked down the hall, some of them looked away or got as far from him as they could. Others ignored him or found his presence reassuring or studied him curiously.

A fat woman in a black kimono walked toward him. She had one hand on her hip and her eyes were narrowed and hard. Sordman smiled. He felt her fear and distrust, and her determination not to let such emotions conquer her.

"Good afternoon, Protector."

"Good afternoon, Citizen Mother."

He felt her triumph and her pleasure with herself.

His fellow humans often made him gawk in wonder. Some people say we're psychic cripples, he thought. And maybe we are. But we do our work and we enjoy ourselves. And we do dangerous things like putting bases on Venus and falling in love. Surrounded by death and danger, crippled though we are, we go on.

He swelled with feeling. People smiled and glanced at each other or hid shyly from the organ chords of his emotion.

An old man stepped in front of him.

"Monster! Freak!"

He was thin and perfectly dressed. Sordman stopped. God of Infinite Compassion, this is my brother....

"They ought to lock you up," the man said. "They ought to keep you away from decent people. Get out of my head! Leave me alone!"

People stared at them. A small crowd gathered. Lee appeared in the door of the coffee house.

"It's all right," Sordman told the people. "It's all right." He started to go on.

The man stepped in front of him. "Leave me alone, freak. Let me think my own thoughts!"

"Citizen, I haven't touched your mind."

"I felt it just then!"

"It was no more than I could help. I'm sorry if I've hurt you."

"Go away!"

"I'm trying to."

"Murderer! Mind witch!"

He was faced with a strong mind that valued its independence. Anything he did would be detected and resented.

"Citizens," he said, "this man deserves your respect. No matter what a man does, he's bound to offend someone. This Citizen values his privacy--which is good--and therefore I make him angry. I hope the good my Talent lets me do outweighs the bad. Forgive me, brother."

He stepped to one side. "Leave him alone," someone said. "Let the Protector work."

"Leave him alone, old man."

"_I'm not an old man._"

"No, you're not," Sordman said. "I admire your courage." He walked on. Behind him the old man shouted curses.

"Are you all right?" Lee said.

"Sure. Let's go in and sit down."

There were just a few people in the coffee house. Sordman ordered and told them what he had learned.

"I wish you could probe everyone in the building," George said. "All we get is gossip."

"The husband of this Raven English has a motive," Lee said. "Why don't we visit her?"

"I think we should." Sordman drank his coffee. "Citizen English herself might have killed them."

"I doubt it," George said.

"It all sounds like a lot of talk," Sordman said. "But we have to follow it up. This business is nothing but wearing out your legs running after every lead. If your legs are strong, you can run anybody down."

They finished their coffee and cigarettes and trudged out.

* * * * *

Raven English, one-year wife of Leonard Smith, did not meet them at the door with gracious bows. Instead, a wall panel by the door shot back. They stared at a square of one way glass.

"Who are you?" a girl's voice said.

"I'm Andrew Sordman, your Protector. I come on lawful business. May we enter?"

"No."

"Why not?" Lee asked.

"Because I don't like witches. Keep out."

"We're hunting the killer," Sordman said. "We're on your side. I've taken no drugs and made no preparations. You don't have to be afraid."

"I'm not afraid. I just don't want you in my home."

"You have to let us in," Lee said. "Our warrant gives us entry into every room in this hotel. If we have to break the door down, we can."

"I hope we don't have to break the door down."

"You're getting fat," George said. "You need the exercise."

"You won't break in," the girl said.

Sordman crossed the hall to get a good start. "I'm about to, Mylady." His shoulder filled the doorway behind him. This looks like fun, he thought. He liked to feel his body working.

The door opened. A dark-haired, slender girl stood in the doorway. Her skin was brown and her lips were pink, unpainted flesh. She wore a red kimono.

"All right. Come in."

"Gladly," Sordman said.

It was a three-room apartment, with the kitchen tucked into one wall of the parlor. A painting stood on an easel by the window. The window was a shoulder-high slit and from it, here on the hundred and forty-first floor, he could see across the park to the beach and the rolling Atlantic.

God grant me self-control, he thought. If this is the killer, grant me self-control. He made his savage thoughts lie down and purred at the world.

"I'm sorry we have to force our way in," he said. "And I'm sorry you don't approve of Talent. But please remember two men have died and a little girl may die, too. There are lots of panicky people in the Mark Twain. We've got to find the killer soon and you can help us."

"Why bother me?" the girl said.

"This is awkward," Lee said. She stood erect but looked past the girl. She felt embarrassed. "Someone told us you and Bedler were seeing each other."

"Oh, quit being prudish," George said. "These things happen all the time." He turned to the girl. "We were told you and Joe Bedler were making plans to get married when your present contract ends."

"That's a lie!"

Sordman laughed in his belly. No matter what the rules were, few women publicly admitted they had broken them. By the standards of the period from 1800 to 1990, the whole marriage system of the Twenty-First Century was immoral; but there were still prudes. And women still preserved the conventions.

"Who told you that?" Raven English said. She frowned. "Was it that Jackie Baker?"

"Why her?" George asked.

"Because she's a logical person for you to talk to and because it's the kind of thing she'd say."

"Yes," Sordman said.

"She ought to see a psycher! And that's why you came?"

"We're not accusing you," Sordman said. "But we've got to follow every lead."

* * * * *

The girl swore. "Why would I kill Joe? Why are you all suspicious? That's why I hate Talents! All you've done is make everyone suspicious. Everybody's afraid of everybody else."

"Are you an artist?" Sordman asked.

"What?"

"Are you an artist?"

"What's that got to do with it? No, I'm not. My husband paints."

He felt her stall and evade. She would grab at any subject to distract them. He decided he would let his mind probe at random.

"Is he a professional painter?" Lee asked.

"No, he's an engineer. They wouldn't let him go to art school. He's trying to teach himself." She shrugged and ogled the ceiling.

Her emotions said, Men are like that.

"What does your husband think of Talent?" Sordman asked. "Does he share your prejudice?"

"Didn't you meet Len?"

"Where?" He stroked his beard. "Is he the Len downstairs in the beer hall?"

"Of course!"

"I'm afraid I didn't make the connection."

He felt two other minds run like hounds down the same trail.

Lee studied the painting. "Why does your husband hate Talent?"

"Is this a survey?"

Lee grinned. "I'm the lobbyist for the Guggenheim Foundation. Asking that kind of question is a reflex."

The girl walked around the room. She looked out the window and stretched. Sordman bellowed lust at her flanks and the long curve of her hips.

"Why do men do anything?" Raven yawned. "When he was in Voc school some kid took him in the back room and showed him some tricks. Maybe that did it. Is there a psycher in the house?"

"There is," George said. "Is Citizen Smith an astronautical engineer?"

"You could say so. He works on instruments for space labs."

"That's funny." George stared at the sun flashing on the far-off ocean. "I remember I felt bitter once because I couldn't be a space engineer. I wanted to build rockets and ride to the planets. But the Voc people told me I was too weak in math. So I became a healer of the psyche and I learned my love for rockets was a hunger for power. But still I love the brutes and now I'm an old man I still sometimes wish I'd been an engineer."

"That's too bad," the girl said politely.

"Yes. I suppose your husband feels that way about art?"

"He gets drunk about it sometimes."

"Double motive!" Sordman said.

"One conscious," George said, "plain jealousy. The other half-conscious--resentment. Nobody kills at random. There's always a reason why he took these lives instead of others."

"Plus a lot of self-pity," Lee said, "and I think his wife despises him."

"What are you talking about?" Raven said. "What did you say about me?"

"We think we've got a suspect," Sordman said.

"I didn't do it!"

"I'm going to probe your husband."

"My husband hates Talent."

"We have to hurry," Sordman said. "If your husband's innocent, I'm sorry. We're not saying he's guilty. But I have to examine him."

At the door he paused and thought, God of Infinite Compassion.... The girl sat down and stared at the wall.

* * * * *

Many drugs activate the psi powers. The commonest, available in any drug store, is a pill of codeine and half a dried peyote bean. Leonard Smith had both in his pocket when he ran out the side door of the beer hall.

Sordman swore wildly. The girl screamed. The men, the hunters of witches and killers, either froze or shouted and ran to the door. Only John Dyer and two others ran shouting down the hall.

Sordman ran to the door and saw Smith leap into the elevator. He grabbed a wall phone and dialed the Manager's office.

"We've got the killer," he shouted. "His name's Leonard Smith. He's a young man, dark, wiry, good looking, and he's on the elevator going down."

"We'll get him!"

"Leave him alone! I saw him swallow something as he left. I think he's drugged. Clear the lobby but watch him from hiding. I'll get him before he goes far."

John Dyer trudged back to the beer hall. "Give me your rifle," he told an armed man. Before the man could say anything Dyer snatched the rifle from him.

"All right," Dyer said. "Who's going with me?"

"Hold on," Sordman said. "Where are you going?"

"After Smith."

"I'm going after him. Let him go and I'll have him out cold before an hour's up."

"There isn't anything a rifle can't stop."

Sordman understood. These men were afraid of Talent. But some, like Dyer, had to fight that fear. They had to prove that intelligence and the technical power organized society gives individual men were superior to Talent.

"I can't stop you," Sordman said. "But listen to me. Smith has to be captured alive. The man is insane. He's no more a villain than you or me. He just tampered with a force he couldn't control. You might stop him with a bullet but you'll have to kill him to do it."

"He killed two of us," a man said.

"He's drugged. He can hide and kill you from a distance."

"So can we," Dyer said. "That's what we do with rifles."

Sordman ran his fingers through his hair. "Stay under cover then. And if I get him pacified, let him live."

* * * * *

The wall phone buzzed.

"Sordman."

"This is the Manager. He stole a hatchet in the leisure store. He's out in the park."

"Did anybody try to stop him?"

"I cleared the place out."

"Some of your tenants are going after him. Don't let anybody else join them. I wish myself they wouldn't go."

After he hung up the three of them went up a floor and rang the buzzer of a one-tenant apartment. As politely as they could, Lee and George bundled the occupant out.

"I wish you'd let the state police capture him," George said.

"I've got to get to him before they kill him," Sordman said.

"Andy, there are limits to what you can take! Smith has gone berserk. You connect with an insane man and you may shatter all over the place."

Sordman stroked his beard.

"Let him go," Lee said. "Can't you feel he has to do this?"

"Yes, but I won't admit it. I trained you, Andy. You're my life's work. I don't want you to wreck yourself."

Sordman nodded soberly. "I know, George. I'll take care of myself." He thought tender thoughts and tried to make them feel how much he loved them.

"Let's go," Lee mumbled. "Come on, George."

He closed the door gently. The window of the apartment overlooked the park. He stared at the thick trees and wondered where Smith was running under that green roof. Then he turned to the picture phone and punched out a number.

The screen lit. It was in full color, praise God.

"_Andy!_"

His wife smiled when she saw him. She was a big girl with long breasts and full thighs. She wore a dark kimono.

She bowed. "Good afternoon, Husband."

"Good afternoon, Wife." He pressed his palms together and returned the bow.

"Why are you calling, Andy?"

"Because I love you. And I want to ask you a favor, Tina."

"What, Husband?"

"Will you undress for me now?"

"Andy! My, my, my."

He explained the situation to her. "Be careful," she said. "I love you."

"I'll be careful. But I've got to be aware of myself as a physical being. You understand."

She smiled. "May I take my time?"

"Not too long."

She was an uninhibited girl and took great pleasure in displaying herself. Her skin was pure white and her stomach smooth and softly rounded. He could feel the weight of her breasts on his palm.

"God is good," he said.

"Thank you."

His glands flooded his body. His body ached to stroke, squeeze, kiss, penetrate.

"You'd better go," he said. "Before I break the screen down."

She bowed. "Live with God, Husband."

"Live with God, Wife."

* * * * *

The screen faded. He put on his robe and jabbed the hypodermic into his wrist. Then he knelt to pray.

He did not pray for power. Intelligence and hard work could give him that. He prayed for mercy, compassion, recognition of his own flawed nature. He prayed for courage and the end of fear.

The balls danced between his hands. He sang the Song of Praise, the love song to the world. _Gloria mundi._ Glory in the world, glory in the flesh, glory in the flow of life. Creation is a flow and man a bubble bouncing on the flow. Bubble that will burst but bubble that is. Bubble that feels, strives, blends with other bubbles.

Bubble that can fill Creation!

He roared at the walls of existence. His mind yawned and stretched and came awake. He prowled across the woods and parks. Gigantic, he gazed at the mortals who stumbled through the shaded tunnels of the world. These are such as me. These share my doomed existence.

And that one? That one lying in the brush with an axe? That one, preparing to kill, clawing since he was a baby at a world that torments him?

That also is me.

Smith rose to his knees and swung the axe. John Dyer crumpled with a severed spine. The axe swung twice and two men fell. The hunters dropped to their bellies. Rifles cracked. Bullets sang in the grass.

Now they knew they had to kill Smith or die. Now they felt no mercy.

Sordman hovered over them. What he feels, I will feel. His hate will be my hate. His anger mine. His hate must be absorbed in great compassion, in tenderness and rationality. _Or I will be destroyed with him._

In the room the balls spun and whirled. He lay prostrate on the floor, the yellow bomb-burst on his back. He was afraid. His weakness was naked. He had always known he would someday meet a personality he could not forgive. When that day came he would shatter and flee, like Smith, to any refuge he could make.

"Show your heads! Show your heads and I'll kill you!"

A bullet smashed into Smith's leg. He screamed and flailed the axe. Shouting curses and threats, he crawled through the brush. The hunters crawled after him.

Sordman located Smith. He shuddered as malice bit the edges of his mind. He sang a long note of praise to life.

* * * * *

Then he opened his mind.

Listen, Smith. I'm your friend. I am Sordman, the Protector of all, of the hunters and the hunted. I come in love. I am Sordman, small brother of the Lord, bubble in the Fountain of Creation....

Once men had thought a Talent would fell his opponents with a blast of mental energy. It wasn't that easy. Sordman had to find the cause of Smith's hate. He was no rifleman, hurling a blast of energy, but a surgeon probing for the source of a disease.

Two minds tangled. Sordman bore the light of himself into darkness.

--I'll kill you, too. Get out of me. Get out!

Snarl, growl, slash. Two minds linked as one. Sordman fighting Sordman, Smith fighting Smith.

_Aaaaaaaah!_

He doubled up on the floor and hugged his knees. The Protector wept and sobbed. Hate! How he hated hate. How he wanted to kill the haters. They clawed his brain, they tortured every moment, and yet he had to love them. _Love them!_

God, grant your servant strength. Be merciful....

He had lost his contact but he had to go back. Weak man or not, he had to return or Smith would die.

--I'll kill them all.

He saw the hunters creeping after him. He felt his body's dirty sweat and the blood draining on his leg. Run, said his belly. A hunter fired. He saw a blue morning coat in the bush and felt the gun pointed at his head. Kill!

The axe swung back in his hand. He remembered the swift stroke, the hard resistance of the spine, the joy of having struck and won. I never got to win. They always held me back. My hands wouldn't paint what I told them, my mind wouldn't reach where I wanted to go. When I loved Raven she didn't let me out, she denied me, she made me hold my feelings back. But now I strike! Now I swing an unfettered arm.

Sordman knew what he was joined with now. Smith was what the psycher Talents called an unopened personality. A mind totally absorbed in what things meant to itself. A mind which had not learned to feel the pain and joy of other minds.

Smith's arm had stretched all the way back. He had to act now or someone else would die. He was Sordman the Protector, one of the four best Talents in the world and his powers were running like a river at flood. All he had to do was make the right move.

He linked Smith's mind with the mind of the rifleman.

* * * * *

The man in the blue morning coat was forty-three years old. He worked in New York City, the assistant manager of a transportation line's local office. His second wife had grown pregnant by accident, which under law meant they were automatically married for life. They had been married for fifteen years and still didn't know each other. His two sons thought he was a spineless old fool who slept all the time and couldn't give them what they needed. He didn't like his job but he knew it was all he would ever do, an exact definition of his limits. Alone in his house, imprisoned by his work, he smoked and slept and ate without appetite.

But now he aimed his rifle and thought, I'll kill the witch. That will be something. I'll know I did that.

The two minds were one. Each knew the other's pain, the other's fear. If one died, the other felt his death.

Each recognized the other man's hunger, his frustration, his imprisonment within his body and the limits of his life.

Sordman felt the weight of their lives. He gathered in the strength he called a gift. His voice and mind, his total self, sang the Liturgy of Joy. He gave his feelings and thoughts.

The axe dropped.

The finger squeezed the trigger and the bullet cut the bark from a tree.

His thoughts became a lullaby, a drowsy murmuring of peace and healing sleep.

George and Lee ran from the woods.

"Andy! Don't shoot them. Andy!"

"Where?"

--Here.

He wiggled the leaves and branches of the brush.

--Here!

They stood over the unconscious men. The hunters crept from their hiding spots and joined them.

"We'll bring him in," George said. "A psycher team is on the way."

--Good.

Lee said, "You feel tired, Andy."

--I think they get harder. They take more out of me. Lee?

"What, Andy?"

--It'll never end, will it?

He was a young man speaking to an older person. He had seen much of humanity, but there were things only years could tell.

"Probably not. Is it too much?"

--No.