CARRIER

By Robert Sheckley

EDWARD ECKS awoke, yawned and stretched. He squinted at the sunlight pouring in through the open east wall of his one-room apartment, and ordered his clothes to come to him.
They didn't obey! He wiped sleep from his eyes and ordered again. But the closet door remained stubbornly shut, and not a garment stirred.
Thoroughly alarmed, Ecks swung out of bed and walked over to the closet. He began to phrase the mental command again, but stopped himself. He must not become panicky. If the clothes didn't obey, it was because he was still half asleep.
Deliberately he turned and walked to the east wall. He had rolled it up during the night and now he stood, bare toes gripping the edge, where the floor met the outside wall of the building, looking out at the city.
It was early. The milkmen were out, soaring up to the terraces to deposit their milk. A man in full evening dress passed, flying like a wounded bird. Drunk, Ecks decided, noting how uncertain the man's levitation sense was. The man banked, narrowly missing a building, dodged a milkman, misjudged the ground and fell the last two feet. Miraculously he held his balance, shook his head and continued on foot.
Ecks grinned, watching him weave down the street. That was the safest place for him. No one ever used the streets, except the Normal's, or psi's who wanted to walk, for some reason. But levitating in his condition, he might get clipped by a teleported bale, or break his neck against a building. A newsboy floated past the window, goggles dangling from his hip pocket. The boy caught his breath and shot up, straight and true, to a twentieth floor penthouse.
Ecks craned his neck to watch the boy land his paper on the sunny terrace and sweep on. A penthouse, Ecks thought. That was the life. He lived on the third floor of an ancient building—so old that it still had stairway and elevator. But once he had finished his courses at Mycrowski university—once he had his degree—
There was no time for dreaming. Mr. Ollen didn't like him to be late; and his job at Mr. Ollen's store enabled him to attend the University.
Ecks walked back, opened the closet and dressed. Then, thoroughly calm, he ordered the bed to make itself.
A blanket half-lifted, wavered, and fell back on the bed. He ordered again, angrily. The sheets sluggishly straightened, the blankets slowly crawled into place. The pillow wouldn't move.
On the fifth order the pillow dragged itself to the head of the bed. It had taken him almost five minutes to make the bed—a task he usually finished in seconds. A shocking realization struck him, and his knees buckled; he sat down on the edge of the bed. He wasn't even able to handle simple motor-response teleportation.
And that, he knew, was how people discovered they had The Disease.
But why? How had it begun? He didn't have any unexplained tensions, any vital, unresolved problems. At twenty-six life was just beginning for him. His studies at the University were going well. His general psi rating was in the upper tenth, and his sensitivity rating approached the all-time high set by The Sleeper.
Why should it happen to him? Why should he catch the only disease left on Earth?
"I'll be damned, I don't feel sick," he said out loud, wiping perspiration from his face. Quickly he commanded the wall to close, just to see if it would. And it did! He turned on a faucet by mental command, levitated a glass, filled it and brought it to him, without spilling a drop.
"Temporary blockage," he told himself. "A fluke." Perhaps he had been studying too hard. More social life, that was what he needed.
He sent the glass back to the sink, watching the sunlight glint from it as is swooped through the air.
"I'm as good as I ever was," he said.
The glass dropped to the floor, shattering.
"Just a little shaky," he reassured himself. Of course, he should go to Psi-Health for an examination. If there is any impairment of your psi abilities, don't wait. Don't infect others. Get an examination.
Well, should he? Yes, he probably should.
But the Psi-Health agents were a jumpy bunch. If he showed his face they'd probably isolate him. Give him a few years of solitary rehabilitation, just to play safe.
That would be the end of him. Highly extroverted, Ecks knew himself well enough to realize that he could never stand solitary. His psi abilities would be completely wrecked that way.
Nuts, he said, and walked to the wall. Opening it, he looked out on the three story drop, steeled himself, and jumped.
For a horrible moment, he thought he had forgotten even the basic skill of levitation. Then he caught it, and soared toward Mr. Ollen's store. Weaving slightly, like a wounded bird.

PSI-HEALTH Headquarters on the eighty-second-floor of the Aerinon Building hummed with activity. Messengers levitated in and out the great windows, flying across the room to drop their reports on the Receiving desk. Other reports were teleped in, recorded by Psi-Grade-Three telepathic-sensitive office girls. Samples were teleported through the windows, recorded, and shuttled downstairs by Grade Two Polters. A skinny Grade Four psi girl collected the typed reports and levitated them across the room in a steady stream to the file clerks.
Three messengers swept in through a single window, laughing, barely clearing the jambs, and shot across the room. One, misjudging his arc, intercepted the path of reports.
"Why don't you look where you're going?" the Grade Four girl asked angrily. Her bridge of papers was scattered across the floor. She levitated them again.
"Sorry, honey," the messenger said, grinning and handing his report to the receiving desk. He winked at her, looped over the white stream, and shot out the window.
"Some nerve," the girl murmured, watching him streak into the sky. Without her attention, the papers began to scatter again.
The end-product of all the activity was funneled to the orderly black desk of Senior Health Officer Paul Marrin.
"Anything wrong, chief?" Marrin looked up and nodded to his assistant, Joe Leffert. Silently he handed him five file cards.
They were breakdown reports. Leffert scanned the first one rapidly.
"Jane Martinelli, waitress, Silver Cow, 4543 Broadway. Subject: Loss of psi ability. Observations: Discoordination of psi motor functions. Diagnosis: Acute loss of confidence. Infectious. Recommended: Quarantine, indefinite period."
The other reports were about the same.
"Quite a few," Leffert said, his tone perfectly even.
Another pile of cards was dropped on the black desk. Marrin leafed through them rapidly, his face impassive. The impassivity was mental as well. Not a thought leaked out of his rigidly held mind.
"Six more." He turned to a large map behind his desk and pinpointed the new locations. They formed an irregular pattern across almost a third of New York.
Leffert didn't have to speak. Even undirected, his teleped thought was strong enough, for Marrin to catch.
Epidemic!
"Keep that to yourself," Marrin said in his normal low voice. He walked slowly back to his desk, considering the implications of eleven cases in a single day, when their average was one a week.
"Get me the full reports on these people," Marrin said, handing Leffert the file cards. "I want a list of everyone they've been in contact with over the past two weeks. And keep quiet about it." Leffert hurried away.
Marrin thought for a moment, then teleped Krandall, chief of The Sleeper project. Normally, teleped messages were handled through a series of telepathic-sensitive girls; there were just too many minds for most people to make contact easily, without auxiliary guidance. But Marrin's psi abilities were of unusual strength. Also, he was strongly attuned to Krandall, having worked with him for many years.
"What's up?" Krandall asked, and the accompanying identity-image had the full, indescribable flavor of the man.
Quickly Marrin outlined the situation.
"I want you to find out if it's a random scattering, or if we've got a carrier to deal with," Marrin finished.
"That'll cost you a supper," Krandall teleped. From the peripheral thoughts, Marrin knew that he was sitting on a pier at Sag Harbor, fishing. "A supper at The Eagles."
"Fine. I'll have all the data. Is five-thirty all right?"
"Please, my boy! Make it six-thirty. A man of my—ah—dimensions—shouldn't levitate too rapidly." The accompanying visual was of an overstuffed sausage.
"At six-thirty, then." They broke contact. Marrin sat back and arranged the papers on his desk into still neater piles. At the moment he wished he were a health officer in some earlier age, with a nice fat germ to hunt down.
The source of The Disease was more subtle.
Diagnosis: Acute Loss of Confidence. Try putting that under your microscope.
He thought momentarily about the waitress, the first case on the files. Perhaps she had been stacking plates on a shelf. A doubt planted in her mind hours before, minutes before, blossomed. The plates fell. And a girl was seriously sick, horribly infected with mankind's last disease. Loss of motor-coordination. So she had to go into solitary, in order not to infect anyone else. For how long? A day, a year. A life.
But in the meantime, perhaps some of the customers had caught it from her. And spread it to their wives…
He sat upright and teleped his wife. Her answering thought was quick and warm.
"Hello, Paul!"
He told her he would be working late.
"All right," she said, but her accompanying thoughts were confused with a strong desire to know why, and the knowledge that she couldn't ask.
"Nothing serious," he said in reply to the unspoken question, and regretted it instantly. Lies, untruths, half-truths—even little white lies— didn't telep well. Nevertheless, he didn't retract it.
"All right Paul," his wife said, and they broke contact.

FIVE O'CLOCK, and the office staff put away their papers and headed for the windows flying to their homes in Westchester Long Island and New Jersey.
"Here's the stuff, chief," Leffert said flying up to the desk with a thick briefcase. "Anything else?"
"I'd like you to stand by," Marrin said, taking the briefcase. "Telep a few more agents, also."
"Right. Do you think something might break?"
"I don't know. Better get some supper." Leffert nodded. His eyes grew blank, and Marrin knew he was teleping his wife in Greenwich, telling her he wouldn't be home tonight.
Leffert left, and Marrin was left alone in the room, staring at the sunset. Out of the west window he could see the great red disk of the sun, and flitting across it were the black silhouettes of commuters, levitating home.
Marrin felt very much alone. Just him and a probable epidemic.
At exactly six-twenty, Marrin picked up the briefcase and levitated to The Eagles.
The Eagles restaurant was two thousand feet above New York, suspended on the backs of 200 men. The men were Grade One Psi laborers, government-tested for load capacity. As Marrin approached, he saw them under the base of the building. The restaurant floated above them, easily supported by their enormous combined psi strength.
Marrin landed on the main guest deck, and was greeted by the head waiter.
"How's everything, Mr. Marrin?" the waiter asked, leading him to a terrace.
"Fine," Marrin said, as he always did.
"You should try our other place some time, Mr. Marrin. If you're ever near Miami, there's an Eagles there. Same high-quality food."
And high-quality prices, Marrin thought, ordering a martini. The owner of the Eagles was making a fortune. Air-borne restaurants were common now, but Eagles had been the first, and was still the most popular. The owner didn't even have to pay a New York property tax; when he wasn't open, he parked his restaurant in a pasture in Pennsylvania.
The terraces were starting to fill up when Krandall arrived, out of wind and perspiring.
"My God," he gasped, sitting down. "Why aren't there any more airplanes? Bucked a head wind all the way in. Scotch on the rocks."
The waiter hurried away.
"Why do you have your emergencies on my day off?" Krandall asked, teleping the question. "Long distance flights are for the strong young apes. I am a mental worker. How is your wife?"
"The same," Marrin said. His face, schooled for years into a health officer's blank mask, refused to smile now. He ordered his dinner, and handed Krandall the briefcase.
"Hmmm." Krandall bent over the pages, scanning them rapidly. His broad, good-natured face grew abstracted as he memorized the information.
Marrin looked across the terrace while Krandall absorbed the data. The sun was almost gone, and most of the land was in shadow. Beneath him, the lights of New York were winking on in the shaded areas. Above, the stars snapped on.
Krandall ignored his soup, flipping the pages quickly. Before the soup was cold, he was through.
"That's that," he said. "What shall we talk about?" Krandall was the finest psi calculator in the business. He had to be to head the important Sleeper project. Like all calculators, he let his unconscious do the work. Once the data was committed, he ignored it. Unconsciously, the information was assimilated, examined, compared, synthesized. In a few minutes or hours he would have an answer. Krandall's great talent was compensated for in other ways, though. He couldn't pass a newsboy's test for levitation, and teleportation or telekinetic manifestations were almost out of the question for him.
"Is there anything new with The Sleeper?" Marrin asked.
"Still sleeping. Some of the boys cooked up a subconscious-infiltration technique. They're trying that in a few days."
"Do you think it will work?"
Krandall laughed. "I give them a one-point-one probability. That's high, compared with some of the stuff they've tried."
Krandall's brook trout was served, teleported fresh from the stream. Marrin's steak followed.
"Do you think anything will work?" Marrin asked.
"No." Krandall's face was serious as he looked at the lean, impassive health officer. "I don't believe the Sleeper will ever awaken."
Marrin frowned. The Sleeper was one of Psi's most important projects, and its least successful. It had started about thirty years ago.
Psi had been standard, but still unpredictable. It had come a long way in two hundred years from Rhine's halting experiments in extra-sensory perception, but it still had a long way to go.
Mycrowski took a lot of the wild-talent aspect from psi. Classified as an extreme sensitive with genius-level psi abilities, Mycrowski was the outstanding man of his age.
With men like Krandall, Myers, Blacenck and others, Mycrowski led the telekinesis projects, explored projection techniques, theorized on instantaneous transfer in teleportation and examined the possibilities of new, undiscovered psi abilities.
In his spare time he worked on his own pet ideas, and founded the School for Parapsychological Research, later changed to Mycrowski University.
What really happened to him was argued for years. One day, Krandall and Blacenck found him lying on a couch with a bare whisper of pulse to show that he was alive. They were unable to revive him.
Mycrowski had always believed that the mind was a separate and distinct entity from the body. It was believed that he had discovered a separation-projection technique for the mind.
But the mind never returned.
Others argued that his mind had simply snapped from too much strain, leaving him in a catatonic state. In any case, periodic attempts were made to awaken him, without success. Krandall, Myers and a few others had kept the project alive, but in a few years they had all the help they needed. The rare quality of Mycrowski's genius was recognized.
The tomb where the living body of Mycrowski, The Sleeper, vegetated, became a tourists' shrine.
"Haven't you any idea what he was looking for?" Marrin asked.
"I don't think he did himself," Krandall said, starting his cherry jubilee. "Oddest damned man in the world. Didn't like to talk about anything until he could throw it in your face as done. None of us had any reason to think anything was going to happen. We were sure that the stars were right around the corner and immortality was following that." He shook his head. "Ah, youth, youth."
Over the coffee Krandall looked up, pursed his lips and frowned. The assimilated data had synthesized. His conscious mind had the answer in a manner once called intuitive, until psi research pinned down the hidden factor as subconscious reasoning.
"You know, Marrin, you've definitely got a growing epidemic on your hands. There's no random scattering of cases."
Marrin felt his chest contract. He teleped the question tightly. "Is there a carrier?"
"There is." Mentally, Krandall checked the names on his list. His subconscious had correlated the frequency factors, tabulated probabilities and sent up a "hunch". "His name is Edward Ecks. He is a student, living at 141 Fourth Avenue."
Marrin teleped Leffert immediately and told him to pick up Ecks.
"Hold it," Krandall said. "I don't believe you'll find him there. Here's a probability-course of his movements." He teleped the information to Leffert.
"Try his apartment first," Marrin told Leffert. "If he's not there, try the next probability. I'll meet you downtown, in case we have to hunt him." He broke contact and turned to Krandall. "For the extent of the emergency you'll work with me?" It was hardly a question.
"Of course," Krandall said. "Health has top priority, and The Sleeper isn't going to be doing much moving. But I doubt if you'll have much trouble picking up Ecks. He should be completely crippled by this time."

UPON LANDING, Ecks lost his balance and fell heavily to his knees. He got up at once, brushed himself off and started walking. A sloppy levitation, he told himself. So even that was going!
The crumbling streets of the lower New York slums were scattered with Normals, people who had never mastered the basic psi power. This mass of land-borne people was a sight never seen in the more respectable uptown areas. Ecks moved into the crowd, feeling safer.
He discovered, suddenly, that he was hungry. He went into a luncheonette, sat down at the empty counter and ordered a hamburger. The cook had one all ready. Expertly he teleported it to a plate and, without watching, made the plate loop in the air and drop lightly in front of Ecks.
Ecks cursed the man's casual ability and reached for the ketchup. He expected the bottle to slide toward him, but it didn't. He looked at it for a moment, blankly, then stretched his arm. He'd have to watch his step, making a mistake like that.
Ecks was beginning to discover what it was like to be a cripple.
Finished, he held out his hand, palm up, expecting the change in his pocket to come. But of course, it didn't. He cursed silently. He was so used to it—it didn't seem possible that he could have lost all his faculties at once.
But he had, he knew. His unconscious had decided, and no amount of surface assurance would help.
The cook was looking at him oddly, so he reached quickly in his pocket, found the change and paid. He tried to smile at the cook, then hurried out the door.
"Queer guy," the cook thought. He dismissed it, but down deep in his mind an appraisal was going on. Inability to command a bottle… Inability to command coins…
Ecks walked down the crowded, grimy streets. His legs began to ache. He had never walked so much in his life. Around him were mixed groups of Normals and psi's. The Normals walked naturally, as they had all their lives. The psi's were awkward, unaccustomed to long stretches on foot. With relief they soared into their natural element, the air. People landed and took off, and the air was filled with teleported objects.
Looking back, Ecks saw a well-dressed man drop out of the air and stop one of the walking psi's. He talked to him for a moment, then moved on.
A health-agent! Ecks knew he had been traced.
He twisted around a corner and started to run.
The street lights became fewer as Ecks moved on, pushing his aching legs. He tried to levitate, but couldn't get off the ground.
In panic he tried to telep his friends. Useless. His telepathic sense had no power.
The shock broke over him like an ocean wave, and he stumbled against a lamp post and hung on. The full realization came.
In a world where men flew, he was landbound.
In a world of telepathic contact, he was reduced to clumsy words at face-to-face distance.
In a world where artificial light was unnecessary, he could see only when his eyes were stimulated.
Crippled. Blind, deaf and dumb.
He walked on, into narrower streets, dingy, damp alleys. His numbed mind started working again. He had one advantage. His blunted mind could no longer broadcast a strong identity-pattern. That would make him more difficult to find.
What he needed, he decided, was a sanctuary. Some place where he wouldn't infect anyone, and where the health officers couldn't find him. Perhaps he could find a Normal boarding house. He could stay there and study, find out what was wrong with him; treat himself. And he wouldn't be alone. Normals were better than no people at all.
He came to the end of an alley, where the streets branched off. Automatically he pushed out his location sense, to find out what was ahead.
Useless. It was paralyzed, as dead as the rest of him. But the right-hand turn seemed the safest. He started for it.
"Don't!"
Ecks whirled, alarmed at the spoken word. A girl had come out of a doorway. She ran to him.
"They're waiting for you in there. Don't go!"
"Who's waiting for me?" Ecks asked, his heart pounding like a triphammer.
"The health officers. They figured you'd take the right turn. Something about your right-hand tropism, I couldn't hear it all. Take the street on your left."
Ecks looked at her closely. At first he thought she was about fifteen years old, but he revised his estimate to twenty. She was small, slender with large dark eyes in a bony face.
"Why are you helping me?" he asked.
"My uncle told me to," the girl said. "Hurry!"
There was no time to argue. Ecks walked in the alley, following the girl. She ran ahead, and Ecks had trouble keeping up with her.
She was a Normal, to judge by her sure stride. But how had she overheard the health-officer's conversation? Almost certainly they had teleped on a tight beam.
Her uncle, perhaps?
The alley opened into a courtyard. Ecks raced in, and stopped. From the tops of the buildings men floated down. They dropped quickly, surrounding him.
The health officers!
He looked around, but the girl had darted back into the alley. The way was blocked for him. He backed against a building, wondering how he could have been so stupid. Of course! This was how they liked to take people. Quietly, so no one else would become infected.
That damned girl! He tightened his aching legs, to run for it…

JUST AS Krandall predicted, Marrin thought. "Take his arms and legs." Hovering fifty feet in the air, he supervised the operation.
Without pity he watched. The agents moved in cautiously. They didn't want to use the force of their minds against him if they could help it.
After all, the man was a cripple.
They had almost reached him, when—
Ecks started to fade. Marrin dropped closer, unable to believe his eyes. Ecks was dissolving into the wall, becoming a part of it, disappearing.
Then he was gone.
"Look for a door!" Marrin teleped. "Examine the pavement!"
While his agents were looking, Marrin considered what he had seen. After the initial surprise, he didn't doubt it. The search for a door was an excuse for his agents. If they thought the man had disappeared through a hidden door, good. It wouldn't help their confidence—their sanity—to believe what had actually happened.
The cripple, Ecks, merging with the wall.
Marrin ordered a search of the building. But there wasn't a trace of Ecks' thought pattern. He was gone, as though he had never been.
But how, Marrin asked himself. Did someone help him? Who?
Who would help a carrier?

THE FIRST thing Ecks saw when he returned to consciousness was the cracked, stained plaster wall in front of him. He stared at it for a long time, watching dust motes floating in the sunlight, across the bed's torn brown blanket.
The bed! Ecks sat up and looked around. He was in a dingy little room. Long cracks ran across the ceiling. Aside from the bed, the only other piece of furniture was a plain wooden chair, set near the half-open door.
But what was he doing here? He remembered the events of last night; it must have been last night, he decided. The blank wall, the health officers. He must have been rescued. But how?
"How do you feel?" A girl's voice asked from the door. Ecks turned, and recognized the pale, sensitive face. It was the girl who had warned him last night.
"I feel all right," Ecks said. "How did I get here?"
"My uncle brought you," the girl said, coming into the room. "You must be hungry."
"Not especially," Ecks said.
"You should eat," she told him. "My uncle tells me that dematerialization is quite a strain on the nervous system. That's how he rescued you from the psi's, you know." She paused. "I can give you some very nice broth."
"He dematerialized me?" Ecks asked.
"He can do things like that," the girl said serenely. "The power came to him afterwards." She walked over and opened the window. "Shall I get the broth?"
Ecks frowned at her. The situation was becoming unreal, at a time when he needed his fullest grasp on reality. This girl seemed to consider it perfectly normal to have an uncle with the power of dematerialization—although psi science had never discovered it.
"Shall I get the broth?" she asked again.
"No," Ecks said. He wondered what the repeated emphasis on food might mean. There was nothing in the girl's face to tell him. She was handsome enough, even in a cheap, unbecoming dress. She had unusually dark eyes, and an unusually calm expression. Or lack of expression, really.
He filed his suspicions for the moment, and asked, "Is your uncle a psi?"
"No," the girl said. "My uncle doesn't hold with psi powers. His strength is spiritual."
"I see," Ecks said, and he thought he had the answer. Throughout history, people had preferred to believe that their natural psi gifts were the product of demon intervention. Strange powers were the devil's gift until psi regularized and formularized them. And even in this day there were gullible Normals, people who preferred to believe that their occasional flashes of supernormal power were spirit-guided. Evidently the uncle fell into this category.
"Has your uncle been able to do this sort of thing long?" Ecks asked.
"Only for about five years," she said. "Only since he died."
"Perfectly correct," a voice said. Ecks looked around quickly. The voice seemed to come from behind his shoulder.
"Don't look for me," the voice said. "All that there is of me in this room is a voice. I am the spirit of Cari's Uncle John."
Ecks had a quick moment of panic before he realized the trick. It was a teleped voice, of course; cleverly focused and masked to give the effect of speech. A teleped voice meant only one thing; this was a psi passing himself off as a spirit.
"Mr. Ecks," the voice said, cleverly simulating the effects of spoken words, "I have rescued you by the intervention of my powers. You are a crippled psi, a carrier. Capture and isolation are, I believe, distasteful to you. Is that not true?"
"Perfectly," Ecks said. He probed with his blunted senses for the source of the voice. The imitation was perfect; not a single image leaked, to show the telepathic-human source.
"You feel, perhaps, a certain gratitude toward me?" the voice asked.
Ecks looked at the girl. Her face was still expressionless. "Of course I do," he said.
"I know your desires," Uncle John told him. "You wish sanctuary for a sufficient time to restore your powers. And you shall have it, Edward Ecks. You shall have it."
"I'm very grateful," Ecks said. His mind was working quickly, trying to decide upon a course of action. Was he expected to keep up the pretense of believing in this spirit? Surely the teleping psi knew that no university-trained person was going to accept something like that. On the other hand, he might be dealing with a neurotic, playing spirit for his own reasons. He decided to play along. After all, he wasn't interested in the man's pretensions. What mattered was the sanctuary.
"You would not, I am certain, object to doing me a small favor," Uncle John said.
"What do you want me to do?" Ecks asked, immediately on his guard.
"I sense your thought," the voice said. "You think there may be danger involved. I assure you, such is not the case. Although I am not omnipotent, I have certain powers unknown to you—or to psi science. Accept that fact. Surely your rescue proves it. And accept that I have your best interests at heart."
"When do I find out about this errand?" Ecks asked.
"When the time is right. For now, goodbye, Edward Ecks." The voice was gone.
Ecks sat down in the chair. He had had two possible explanations before; that the "uncle" was a psychotic, or a psi. Now he had another.
What if the uncle was a mutant psi? The next evolution in the procession. What then?
Cari left and returned with a bowl of soup.
"What was your uncle like?" Ecks asked the girl. "What sort of man was he—when he was alive?"
"Oh, he was a very nice man," she said, holding the steaming soup carefully. "He was a shoemaker. He raised me when my father died."
"Did he ever show any signs of psi power? Or supernatural power?"
"No," Cari said. "He led a quiet life. It was only after he died—"
Ecks looked at the girl with pity. She was the saddest part of the whole thing. The psi had undoubtedly read her mind, found the dead uncle—and the gullibility. And used her as his pawn. A cruel game.
"Please eat the soup," she said. He reached for it automatically, glancing at her face. Then he pulled back his hand.
"You eat it," he said. The first tinge of color came into her cheeks.
With an apology, she started on the soup, spilling some in her eagerness.

THE SAILBOAT heeled sharply, and Marrin let out a foot of mainsail to steady it. His wife, seated on the bow, waved to him, enjoying the plunging motion.
Below, he could see a bank of thunderheads, a storm in the making.
"Let's have our picnic on those clouds over there," Myra said, pointing to a wispy cirrus formation, bright and sunny above the thunderheads. Marrin changed course. Myra lay back on the bow, her feet propped against the mast.
Marrin was holding the entire weight of the boat himself, but he scarcely noticed it. The light rig weighed less than two hundred pounds, sail and all. His and Myra's combined weight added about two hundred and sixty pounds more, but Marrin's tested levitation capacity was over two tons.
And the wind did most of the work. All the operator of the boat did was to supply enough power to keep it in the air. The wind drove it, a twisting white feather.
Marrin couldn't get his mind off the carrier. How in hell had Ecks disappeared? Dematerialization—impossible! And yet there it was.
Ecks, into the wall. And gone, without a thought-trace.
"Stop thinking," Myra said. "Your doctor told you not to think about anything but me today." He knew that his thoughts hadn't leaked; nor had his face changed. But Myra was sensitive to his moods. He didn't have to grimace for her to know he was happy, or cry to demonstrate sadness.
Marrin brought the light, flat boat to a stop in the clouds, and, heading into the wind, dropped the sail. They spread their picnic on the bow of the boat. Marrin did most of the leviating, although Myra was trying… gallantly.
As she had been trying for seven years, since her partial infection by a carrier. Although her psi faculties never left her completely, they were spasmodic.
Another reason for hunting down Ecks.
The sandwiches Myra made were very like herself; small and decorative. And tasty, Marrin thought, teleping the thought.
"Beast," Myra said out loud. The warm sun beat down on them, and Marrin felt wonderfully lazy. The two of them stretched out on the deck of the boat, Marrin holding it up by reflex. He was more relaxed than he had been in weeks.
"Marrin!"
Marrin started, awakened out of near-sleep by the teleped voice.
"Look, I'm awfully sorry, boy." It was Krandall, embarrassed and apologetic.
"I hate breaking in on your day, but I've got a lead, and a pretty damned good one. Evidently someone doesn't like our carrier. I've just been told where he'll be in about four hours. Of course, it may be a crank, but I knew you'd want to know—"
"I'm coming," Marrin said. "We can't afford to pass up anything." He broke contact and turned to his wife. "I'm terribly sorry, dear."
She smiled, and her eyes were clear with understanding. She hadn't been included in Krandall's tight-beam message, but she knew what it meant.
"Can you take it down yourself?" Marrin asked.
"Of course. Good hunting." Marrin kissed her and jumped off the boat. He watched for a few seconds, to see that she had it under control; then he teleped the rental service.
"My wife's bringing it in," he told them. "I wish you'd keep an eye on her." They promised. Now, even if she went out of control there'd be no danger.
Marrin hurled himself down. He was so busy calculating the rate of disease increase that he barely saw the dagger in time.
It flashed past him, then turned, twenty feet away, and came again. Marrin reached out for it mentally, but the telekineticized knife broke free. He barely deflected it, grappled, and had it in his hand. Quickly he tried to trace the wielder, but he was gone without a trace.
Not quite without a trace. Marrin was able to catch the tail end of an identity thought, the hardest kind to control. He puzzled over it, trying to place the image. Then he had it.
Ecks!
Ecks, the cripple. Blind Ecks, the carrier, who vanished into walls. And who, evidently, could polter a dagger.
Or had someone do it for him.
Grimly, with the growing awareness that it was turning into a personal affair, Marrin levitated into the Psi-Health Offices.

IN THE darkened room, Edward Ecks lay on the tattered brown blanket. His eyes were lightly closed, his body passive. Little muscles in his legs jumped. He willed them to relax.
"Relaxation is one of the keys to psi power. Complete relaxation calls forth confidence; fears disappear, tensions evaporate. Relaxation is vital to psi." Ecks told himself this, breathing deeply.
Don't think about the disease. There is no disease. There is only rest, and relaxation.
The leg muscles slackened. Ecks concentrated on his heart, ordering it to pump more easily. He sent orders to his lungs, to breathe deeply and slowly.
Uncle John? He hadn't heard from him for almost two days now. But he mustn't think of him. Not now. An unexplained factor, Uncle John would be resolved in time. The awareness of deception, Ecks told himself, is the first step in finding out what the deception is.
And what about the pale, hungry, attractive niece? Don't think about her, either.
The unsettling memories sponged away as his breathing deepened. Next, the eyes. It was hard to relax the eyes. After-images danced across his retina. Sunlight. Darkness, a building, a disappearance.
No. Don't think.
"My eyes are so heavy," he told himself. "My eyes are made of lead. They want to sink—to sink—"
Then his eye-muscles relaxed. His thoughts seemed calm, but just under the surface was a crazy welter of images and impressions.
A cripple, through dim streets. A ghost that wasn't. A hungry niece. Hungry for what? A turmoil of sense-impressions, flashes of red and purple, memories of classes in Mycrowsky University, tele-wrestling at the Palladium, a date at Skytop.
All had to be smoothed down. "Relaxation is the first step toward reintegration." Ecks told himself that everything was blue. All thoughts were swallowed in a vast blue abyss.
Slowly, he succeeded in calming his mind. A deep peace started to seep into him, slowly, soothingly—
"Edward Ecks."
"Yes?" Ecks opened his eyes at once; the relaxation had been that superficial. He looked around and realized that it was the uncle's voice.
"Take this." A small sphere darted into the room, and came to rest in front of Ecks. He picked it up and examined it. The sphere seemed to be made of some shiny, solid plastic.
"What is it?" he asked.
"You will place this sphere inside the Cordeer Building," the voice of Uncle John told him, ignoring the question. "Leave it on a desk, behind a door, in an ashtray, anywhere. Then return directly here."
"What will the sphere do?" Ecks asked.
"That is not your concern," the voice told him. "The sphere is the apex of a psychic triangle of forces which you do not understand. Suffice it to say that it will harm no one and will greatly aid me."
"Every officer in the city is looking for me," Ecks said. "I'll be picked up if I go back to the main part of the city."
"You have forgotten my powers, Ecks. You will be safe, if you keep to the route I map out for you."
Ecks hesitated. He wanted to know more about the uncle, and his game. Above all, why was he masquerading as a spirit?
Or was he?
After all, what would a spirit have to do with Earth? The classic yarns of demons seeking temporal power were just so much muggy anthropomorphizing.
"Will I be left alone after I get back?" Ecks wanted to know.
"You have my word. Do this to my satisfaction and you will receive all the sanctuary you need. Now go. Cari has the route drawn up for you. She is waiting at the door."
The voice was gone. Even with his blunted senses, Ecks could feel the withdrawn contact.
With the sphere in his hand, he walked to the door. Cari was waiting.
"Here are the instructions," she said.
Ecks looked at her sharply. He wished he had some psi-abilities left. He would have given a good deal to know what was going on behind that quiet, pretty face. Psi's never bothered to read faces; the affective aura surrounding every individual was a far better indicator.
If one had normal psi-sensitivity to read it.
"Have you eaten?" he asked.
"Oh, yes," she said, following him outside. The sunlight was momentarily blinding, after two days in the little room. Ecks blinked and looked around automatically. There was no one in sight.
They walked in silence for a while, following Uncle John's instructions. Ecks glanced right and left, pitifully aware of his vulnerability, on the lookout for detection. The instructions laid out a devious, meaningless pattern for Ecks to walk; doubling back on streets, circling others. They approached West Broadway, moving out of the slums into psi territory.
"Has your uncle ever told you what he wishes to do?" Ecks asked.
"No," Cari said. They walked in silence for a while longer. Ecks tried not to look at the sky, out of which he expected the psi officers to fall, like avenging angels.
"Sometimes I'm afraid of Uncle John," Cari volunteered, after a few moments. "He's so strange, sometimes."
Ecks nodded absently. Then he thought about the girl's position. Actually, she was worse off than he was. He knew the score. She was being used for some unknown purpose. She might well be in danger, although he didn't know why that should concern him.
"Look," he said, "if anything happens, do you know the Angler's Bar on Sixth and Bleeker?"
"No, but I could find it."
"Meet me there, if anything goes wrong."
"All right," she said. "Thank you."
Ecks smiled wryly. How idiotic of him to offer her protection! When he couldn't even protect himself. At least, he told himself, it was an understandable urge. Even if he didn't quite understand it himself.
They walked several more blocks. Then the girl looked at Ecks nervously.
"There's one thing I don't understand," she said.
"What's that?"
"Well," she began, "I sometimes can see things that are going to be. I never know when, but just sometimes I have a picture of something. Then in a little while it happens."
"That's interesting," Ecks said. "You're probably an undeveloped clairvoyant. You should go to Mycrowski University. They're always looking for people like you."
"So far, everything I've seen has turned out right," she said.
"That's a nice record," Ecks told her. He wondered what the girl was driving at. Did she want praise? She couldn't be naive enough to believe that she was the only person in the world with latent clairvoyance.
"So far my uncle has been right in everything he's said, too," she told him.
"Very commendable," Ecks said acidly. He was in no mood for a family pangyric. They were approaching Fourteenth Street, and the air was thick with psi's. A few people were walking—but very few.
The Cordeer Building was three blocks ahead.
"What I'm wondering is," she said, "if I see something happening one way, and my uncle sees it happening the other way, which of us will be right?"
"What do you mean?" Ecks said, taking her arm as they crossed a street filled with jagged rocks.
"My uncle said you'd be safe," she said, "and I just don't understand."
"What?" He stopped.
"I think they're going to try to capture you."
"When?"
"Now," she said. Ecks stared at her, then stiffened. He didn't need psi power to know that the trap was sprung.
The health men weren't being gentle this time. Telekinetic force jerked him off his feet. He looked for Cari, but the girl was gone. Then his head was forced painfully down, his hands and feet seized.
Physically, not a hand had touched him yet.
Ecks fought wildly, in blind panic. Capture seemed to touch off some ultimate instability in his personality. He tried desperately to snap the telekinetic bonds.
He almost did. Power came. He freed an arm and managed to throw himself into the air. Frantically he tried for height.
He was smashed to the pavement.
Again he tried, a supreme effort—
And passed out.
His last conscious thought was a realization that he had been tricked. The uncle—he determined to kill him, if the opportunity ever presented itself.
And then there was blackness.

A MEETING of World-Health was called at once. Marrin, in Psi headquarters in New York, opened the special channel. Chiefs in Rio, London, Paris, Canton, came into emergency circuit.
Marrin's tightly organized information was flashed around the world in less than a minute. At once he received a question.
"I would like to know," the Health Chief from Barcelona asked, "how this Ecks person escaped you twice." The thought carried its inevitable identity pattern. The Barcelona chief's face was dimly apparent; long, sad, moustached. Not his true face, of course. Identity patterns were always idealized in the manner the particular mind viewed itself. Actually, the Barcelonan might be short, fat and clean shaven.
"The second escape was in broad daylight, was it not?" the Berlin chief asked, and the other chiefs glimpsed his broad, powerful, idealized face.
"It was," Marrin replied. "I cannot explain it." Marrin was seated at his black desk in Psi-Health. Around him hummed the normal activity of the day. He was unaware of it.
"Here is the complete sequence." It took longer to telep the scene-by-scene breakdown of the attempted rescue.
After the attack by the poltered dagger, Marrin had assembled his men around the point where Krandall's informant said Ecks would appear.
"This informant. Who—"
"Later. Let him complete the sequence."
Fifty agents covered the area. Ecks appeared on time, and in the indicated place. He was restrained with little difficulty, at first. Fighting, he showed a slight surge of latent strength; then he collapsed.
At that moment his energy potential took an explosive, exponential jump. Ecks vanished.
With Marrin's permission, his recollection of the moment was broken down and scrutinized more closely. The picture remained clear. One moment Ecks was there, the next, he was gone.
The images were slowed to one a half second. In this running there was a blur of energy around Ecks just before he vanished. The energy was on so high a band that it was almost indetectable.
There was no known explanation for it.
The impressions of the participating agents, as recorded by Marrin, were combed, with no positive result.
"Would the Health-Chief from New York care to give his theories?"
"Since Ecks is a cripple," Marrin said, "I can only assume that someone is helping him."
"There is another possibility," the Warsaw Chief said. His idealized identity came through with the thought; slim, whitehaired, gay. "Ecks may have stumbled on some undiscovered form of psi power."
"That would appear to be beyond the realm of probability," the sad-eyed Barcelonan teleped.
"Not at all. Consider the emergence of the original psi faculties. They began as wild talents. Couldn't the next mutation begin in a wild talent stage?"
"There are tremendous implications in that," the London Chief said. "But if so, why hasn't Ecks utilized it to greater advantage?"
"He is probably unaware of it. But he has an inherent protection system, perhaps, which shunts him out of danger at stress moments."
"I don't know," Marrin said dubiously. "It is a possibility, of course. We are well aware that there are many untouched secrets of the mind. Still…"
"An argument against your theory," the Warsaw Chief broke in, teleping directly to Marrin, "is the fact that anyone helping Ecks would necessarily have this extra-psi power. They would have to, to affect an almost instantaneous disappearance. If they did have it, wouldn't they have more of a plan—less randomness—"
"Or seeming randomness," the Londoner said. "It could be a test of strength. By dangling Ecks in front of Marrin, such a group could determine a good deal about his capabilities and, by extrapolation, the capabilities of all psi's. The repeated inability to capture Ecks would be meaningful.
"It's a possibility," Marrin said cautiously. Academically, he found the discussion interesting. But it didn't seem to be serving any practical good.
"What about Krandall's informant?" the Barcelonan teleped. "Has he been questioned?"
"He has never been found," Marrin said. "The sender was able to block all identity-thoughts and he left no trace to follow."
"What do you plan to do?"
"First," Marrin said, "to alert you. That is the purpose of the meeting, since the carrier might well get out of New York. Also, the disease rate here has passed the minimum epidemic level. It can be expected to spread, even though I'm closing the city." He paused and wiped his forehead.
"Second, I'm going to trace Ecks myself, working on a new set of probability locations supplied by Krandall. Working alone, I'll be able to avoid all thought haze and deflection. It's just possible one may do what many cannot."

MARRIN DISCUSSED it with them for half an hour longer, then broke contact. He sat for a few moments, moodily sorting papers. Then he shrugged off his mood of despair and went to see Krandall.
Krandall was in his office at the tomb of The Sleeper. He grunted hello when Martin levitated in and motioned him to a chair.
"I'd like to see those probability locations," Marrin said.
"Right," Krandall said. The end-product was quite simple: a list of streets and times. But to get that information, Krandall had correlated the total amount of data available. The locations of Ecks' disappearances, his reappearances, his psychological index, plus the added correlates of suitable hiding spots in the city where a cripple could stay undetected.
"I think you stand a pretty good chance of finding him," Krandall said. "Of course, holding him is something else again."
"I know," Marrin said. "I've come to a decision about that." He looked away from Krandall. "I'm going to have to kill Ecks."
"I know," Krandall said.
"What?"
"You can't risk having him loose any more. Your infection rate is still rising."
"That's right. The policy of the Health Board is to quarantine diseased persons. But this is a matter of public safety."
"You don't have to justify it to me," Krandall said.
"What do you mean?" Marrin got halfway to his feet, then sat down again and shook his head. "You're right. Evidently Ecks can't be captured. We'll see if he can be killed."
"Good hunting," Krandall said. "I hope you have better luck on your project."
"The Sleeper?"
"The latest attempt flopped. Not a stir out of him."
Marrin frowned. That was bad news. If they ever needed Mycrowski's intellect, it was now. Mycrowski was the man to resolve these events into a related whole."
"Would you like to see him?" Krandall asked.
Marrin glanced at the probability list and saw that the first time-street fix was almost an hour off. He nodded, and followed Krandall. They went down a dim corridor to an elevator, and then through another corridor.
"You haven't ever been here, have you?" Krandall asked, at the end of the corridor.
"No. But I helped draw up plans for the remodeling ten years ago."
Krandall unlocked and opened the last door.
In the brightly lighted room The Sleeper rested. Tubes ran into his arms, carrying the nutrient solutions that kept him alive. The bed he lay on slowly massaged The Sleeper's flabby muscles. The Sleeper's face was blank and expressionless, as it had been for thirty years. The face of a dead man, still living.
"That's enough," Marrin said. "I'm depressed enough."
They went back upstairs.
"Those streets I gave you are in the slums," Krandall said. "Watch your step. Asociality is still present in such places."
"I'm feeling pretty asocial myself," Marrin said, and left.
He levitated to the fringe of the slums, and dropped to the street. His sensitive, trained mind was keyed for stimulation. He walked, sorting impressions as he went, searching for the dull, almost obliterated throb of the carrier's mind. Marrin's web extended for blocks, sifting, feeling, sorting.
If Ecks was alive and conscious he would find him.
And kill him.

YOU FOOL! You incompetent! You imbecile!" The disembodied voice roared at Ecks.
Blurrily, Ecks realized that he was back in Cari's house, in the slums.
"I gave you a course to follow," Uncle John screamed, his voice bouncing against the walls. "You took the wrong turn!"
"I did not," Ecks said, getting to his feet. He wondered vaguely how long he had been unconscious.
"Don't contradict me! You did. And you must do it again!"
"Just a minute," Ecks said evenly. "I don't know what your game is, but I followed your instructions to the letter. I turned down every street you wrote down."
"You didn't!"
"Stop this farce!" Ecks shouted back. "Who in hell are you?"
"Get out!" Uncle John roared. "Get out—or I'll kill you."
"Be reasonable," Ecks said. "Just tell me what you want. Tell me what I'm supposed to do. Explain it. I don't work well in a mystery."
"Get out," the voice said ominously.
"I can't," Ecks said in despair. "Why don't you drop this spirit pose and tell me what it is you want? I'm a normal person. Health officers are everywhere. They will kill me too. I must first regain my abilities. But I can't—"
"Are you going?" the voice asked.
Ecks didn't answer.
Invisible hands were at Ecks' throat. He jerked back. The grip tightened. Force battered him against the wall, chopping down at him. Ecks rolled, trying to escape the merciless beating. The air was alive with energy, hurling itself at him, crushing him, smothering him.

MARRIN SENSED the increase in energy output at once. He traced it, got a fix and levitated toward the location, sifting through the energy manifestations for some identity pattern.
Ecks!
Marrin crashed through a flimsy wooden door, and stopped. He saw Ecks' crumpled body.
Berserk force was alive in the room, undirected now. Suddenly, Marrin found himself fighting for his life. Shielding, he smashed against the telekinetic power that surged around him.
A chair was swept up and thrown at him. He deflected it, and was struck from behind by a pitcher. A bed tried to crush him against the wall. Avoiding it, he was struck in the back by a poltered table. A lamp shattered on the wall above his head, spraying him with fragments. A broom caught him behind the knees.
Marrin shielded and located the psi power source.
In the basement of the building.
He sent a tremendous wave rippling across it, poltering chairs and tables with it. The attack stopped abruptly. The place was a shambles of broken furniture.
Marrin looked around. Ecks was gone again. He searched for his identity pattern, but couldn't locate it.
The man in the cellar?
Also gone. But a trace was left behind!
Marrin went through a window, following the trace thought. Trained for this work, he held contact with the attenuated, stifled thought as its owner shot into the city. He followed it through a twisting maze of buildings, and out into open air.
One part of his mind was still able to prob for Ecks. No luck.
But he had Ecks' accomplice, if he could hold him.
He shortened the distance by fractions. Ecks' helper—and attacker—shot out of the city, heading West.
Marrin followed.

A GLASS of beer, please," Ecks said, trying hard to catch his breath. It had been a long run. Luckily, the bartender was a Normal, and a phlegmatic one at that. He moved stolidly to the tap.
Ecks saw Cari at the end of the bar, leaning against the wall. Thank God she had remembered. He paid for his beer and carried it to where she was.
"What happened?" she asked, looking at his bruised face.
"Your nice uncle tried to kill me," Ecks said wryly. "A health-officer came bursting in, and I let them fight it out." Ecks had slipped out the door during the fight. He had counted on the insensitivity of his thought pattern to conceal him. Crippled, he was hardly able to broadcast an identity thought. For once, the loss of telepathic power was an asset.
Cari shook her head sadly. "I just don't understand it," she said. "You may not believe this, but Uncle John was always a good man. He was the most harmless person I ever knew. I just don't understand—"
"Simple," Ecks said. "Try to understand this. That was not Uncle John. Some highly developed psi has been masquerading as him."
"But why?" she asked.
"I don't know," Ecks said. "He saves me, tries to get me captured again, then tries to kill me. It doesn't make sense."
"What now?" she asked.
Ecks finished his beer. "Now, the end," he said.
"Isn't there some place we can go?" she asked. "Some place we can hide?"
"I don't know of any," Ecks said. "You'd better go on your own. I'm a risky person to be with."
"I'd rather not," Cari said.
"Why not?" Ecks wanted to know.
She looked away. "I'd just rather not."
Even without telepathy, Ecks had an intimation of what she meant. Mentally, he cursed. He didn't like the idea of having the responsibility of her. Psi Health must be getting desperate. They wouldn't pull any punches this time, and she might get hurt.
"Go away," he said firmly.
"No!"
"Well, come on," he said. "We'll just have to get by as well as we can. The only thing I can think of is getting out of the city. I should have done that at first, instead of playing spirit." Now it was undoubtedly too late. The psi officers would be checking everyone on foot.
"Can you use that clairvoyance of yours?" he asked. "Is there anything you can see?"
"No," she said sadly. "The future's a blank to me."
That was how Ecks saw it, too.

MARRIN SENSED that he had greater inherent strength than the man he was pursuing. He detected the signs of weakening and pushed harder.
The fugitive was visible now, a mile ahead of him doubling back toward the city. As he got closer, Marrin threw his telekinetic strength, pulling the man down.
He clung doggedly. The man was slowing, fighting spasmodically. Marrin overhauled him, brought him down and pinned him to the ground. Coming down himself, he probed for an identity thought.
And found one.
Krandall!
For a moment all he could do was stare.
"Did you get Ecks?" Krandall teleped. The exertion had drained the big man of everything. He lay, face down fighting for breath.
"No. You were his backer all along. Is that right?"
Krandall's thought was affirmative.
"How could you! What were you thinking of? You know what the disease means!"
"I'll explain later," Krandall panted.
"Now!"
"No time. You have to find Ecks."
"I know that," Marrin said. "But why did you help him?"
"I didn't," the fat man said, "Not really. I tried to kill him. You must kill him." He dragged himself to his feet. "He's a far greater menace than you think. Believe me, Marrin. Ecks must be killed!"
"Why did you rescue him?" Marrin asked.
"In order to put him back into danger," Krandall gasped. "I couldn't let you capture and isolate him. He must be killed."
"Go on," Marrin said.
"Not now," Krandall said. "I poltered the dagger at you, to make you consider Ecks a personal menace. I had to goad you to the point where you would kill him."
"What is he?"
"Not now! Get him!"
"Another thing," Marrin said. "You couldn't handle that amount of telekinetic power. Who was doing it?" .
"The girl," Krandall said, swaying on his feet. "The girl Cari. I was posing as her uncle's spirit. She's in back of it all. You must kill her, too." He wiped his streaming face.
"I'm sorry I had to play it this way, Paul. You'll hear the whole story at the right time. Just take my word for it now."
Krandall tightened his hands into fists and shook them at Marrin.
"You must kill those two! Before they kill everything you stand for!"
The teleped thought had the ring of truth. Marrin took to the air again, contacting his agents. Briefly he gave his instructions.
"Kill both of them," he said. "And pick up Krandall and hold him."

ECKS TURNED down streets at random, hoping the lack of a plan would confuse the psi's. Every shadow seemed to have a meaning of its own. He waited for the mental bolt that would drop him.
Why had the uncle tried to kill him? Impossible to answer. Why was he so seemingly important? Another unanswerable question. And the girl?
Ecks watched her out of the corner of his eye. Cari walked silently beside him. Her face had some color now, and some animation. She seemed almost gay; perhaps freedom from the uncle was the reason for that. What other reason could there be?
Because she was with him?
The air was thick with the usual day's traffic. A load of ore was being brought in, tons of it, expertly shepherded by a dozen workers. Other cargoes were being flown in from Southern ports; fruit and vegetables from Brazil, meat from Argentina.
And psi officers. Ecks wasn't especially surprised. The city was being watched too thoroughly for a fly to escape, much less a crippled man.
The psi officers dropped down, forming a tight mental linkage.
"All right," Ecks called. "The hell with it, I give up." He decided that it was time he bowed to the inevitable. He had the girl to consider also. The psi's were probably tired of playing; this time, if he tried to escape, they might play for keeps.
A bolt of energy sheered him off his feet.
"I said I give up!" he shouted. Beside him, Cari fell also. Energy swept over them, twisting them, across the courtyard, increasing, building.
"Stop it!" Ecks shouted. "You'll hurt—" He had time—an infinitesimal fraction of a second—to realize fully his own feeling about the girl. He couldn't let anything happen to her. Ecks didn't have time to consider how or why; the feeling was there.
A sad, bitter sensation of love.
Ecks tried to get to his feet. The linked mental energy smashed him down again. Stones and rocks were poltered at him.
Ecks realized that he wasn't going to be allowed to surrender. They were going to kill him.
And Cari.
At first, it seemed as though it were a dream. He had become used to the possibility of death in the last few days. He tried to shield, aware of his nakedness, tried to cover Cari. She doubled up as a poltered rock caught her in the stomach. Rocks hummed around them.
Seeing Cari struck, Ecks could have burst with rage. He struggled to his feet and swayed two steps forward, hands outstretched.
He was knocked down again. A section of wall started to collapse, pushed by psi force. He tried to drag Cari out of the way. Too late. The wall fell—
In that moment Ecks bridged the gap. His tortured, overstrained mind performed the energy leap into the new potential. In that instant, contact and comprehension flooded his mind.
The wall thundered down. But Ecks and Cari weren't under it.
"Marrin!"
Dully, the psi chief raised his head. He was back at his desk in Psi-Health. Again it had happened.
"Marrin!"
"Who is it?" the psi thief asked.
"Ecks."
Nothing could surprise him now. That Ecks was capable of tight-beam telepathy just didn't matter.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I want to meet you. Name a place."
"Wherever you wish," Marrin said, with the calmness of despair. Then curiosity overcame him. "How are you able to telep?"
"All psi's can telep," Ecks said mockingly.
"Where did you go?" Marrin asked. He tried to get a location on the message. But Ecks was easily managing the tight beam, allowing only the direct message to go through.
"I want a little quiet," Ecks said. "So I'm in the tomb of The Sleeper. Would you care to meet me there?"
"Coming," Marrin said, and broke contact. "Leffert," he said aloud.
"Yes, Chief?" his assistant said, coming over.
"I want you to take over until I get back. If I get back."
"What is Ecks?" Leffert asked.
"I don't know," Marrin said. "I don't know what powers he has. I don't know why Krandall wanted to kill him, but I concur in the judgement."
"Could we bomb the tomb?" Leffert asked.
"There's nothing faster than thought," Marrin answered. "Ecks has discovered some form of near-instantaneous transportation. He could be away before the bombs were dropped." He paused. "There is a way, but I'm not going to say any more. He might be listening in on this conversation."
"Impossible!" Leffert said. "This is direct-talk. He couldn't—"
"He couldn't escape," Marrin reminded him wearily. "We're through underestimating Mr. Ecks. Hereafter, consider him capable of anything."
"Right," Leffert said dubiously.
"Have you got the latest figures on the contagion rate?" Marrin asked, walking to the window.
"They're way past epidemic. And the disease has jumped as far as the Rockies."
"It can't be checked now," Marrin said. "We've been pushed off the cliff—on the wrong side. In a year we'll be lucky if there are a thousand psi's left in the world." He tightened his hands into fists. "For that alone I could cut Ecks into little pieces."
He levitated out the window.

THE FIRST thing Marrin saw when he entered The Sleeper's chamber was Mycrowski himself, still unconscious. Ecks and the girl were standing beside him.
Marrin walked forward.
"I'd like you to meet Cari," Ecks said, smiling.
Marrin ignored the dazed-looking girl. "I'd like an explanation," he said.
"Of course," Ecks said. "Would you like to know what I am, to begin with?"
"Yes," Marrin said.
"I am the stage after psi. The para-psi."
"I see. And this came—"
"When you tried to kill Cari."
"We'd better start somewhere else," Marrin said. He decided to hear the explanation first before taking the final step. "Why have you removed the nutrient pipes from The Sleeper?"
"Because Mycrowski won't need them any more," Ecks said. He turned to The Sleeper, and the room suddenly hummed with energy.
"Good work, Ecks." For a moment Marrin thought it was the girl who had teleped. Then he realized that it was Mycrowski!
"He won't be fully conscious for a while," Ecks said. "Let me start at the beginning. As you know, thirty years ago Mycrowski was searching for the extra-psi powers. He split mind and body to find them. Then, having the knowledge, he was unable to get back in his body. It required a leap into a higher energy level to do that and, without a nervous system at his command, he couldn't gather that power. No ordinary psi could help him, either. To attain the new level, all normal channels must be blocked and redirected, and a terrific strain is placed on the whole nervous system.
"That is, essentially, the same method by which the first true psi's got their power."
Marrin looked puzzled for a moment, then asked, "Then you're not a mutation?"
"Mutations have nothing to do with this. Let me go on. Mycrowski couldn't bridge the gap unaided. He had to have a para-psi bridge the gap for him. That's where I come in."
"It is also where you come in," Mycrowski, conscious now, teleped to Marrin. "And the girl, and Krandall. I was in telepathic contact with Krandall. Together we chose Ecks for the experiment. It couldn't be Krandall himself, because his nervous system was not suitable. Ecks was picked for his temperament and sensitivity. And, I might add, for his selfishness and suggestibility. Everything was predicted, including Cari's role."
Marrin listened coldly. Let them explain. He had an answer of his own. A final one.
"First, the rechanneling. Ecks' psi senses were blocked. Then he was put in a position of stress; incipient capture and isolation, both repugnent to his nature. When he failed to bridge the gap, Krandall rescued him, with my help. With Krandall posing as Cari's Uncle John we threatened his life, increasing the stress."
"So that's what Krandall meant," Marrin said.
"Yes. Krandall told you that you had to kill Ecks. That was true. You had to try. He told you that the girl was the key to the whole thing. And that was true also. Because when Ecks' life and the girl's were threatened, it was the greatest stress we could bring to bear. He bridged the gap to the higher potential. Comprehension followed immediately."
"And he gave you back your body," Marrin added.
"And he gave me back my body," Mycrowski agreed.
Marrin knew what he had to do, and he thanked God for the foresight of Psi-Health. Nevertheless, he delayed for a moment.
"Then if I understand correctly, all this—the infection of Ecks, his miraculous rescues, all the deviousness you used, was designed to create a force great enough to get you back in your body?"
"That's a part of it," Mycrowski said. "Another part is the creation, in Ecks, of another para-psi."
"Very well," Marrin said. "It will interest you to know that Psi Health has always considered, as one possibility, the return of The Sleeper—insane. Against that eventuality, this room is wired for atomic explosion. All four walls, ceiling and roof are keyed to me. Atomic explosions are not instantaneous, I realize." He smiled humorlessly. "But then, I doubt if para-psi transit is, either.
"My thought-process are as fast as yours. I am going to explode this place."
"You health men are a suspicious lot," Mycrowski said. "But why on earth would you want to do a thing like that?" Marrin noticed that he seemed genuinely surprised.
"Why? Do you realize what you have done? You have regained your body. But the disease is uncontrollable now. Psi science and all it stands for is destroyed, because of your selfishness." Mentally, Marrin reached for the key.
"Wait!" Ecks said. "Evidently you don't understand. There'll be a temporary disturbance, true. But it won't affect everyone at once. Diseased persons can be trained."
"Trained? To what?"
"Para-psi, of course," Ecks said. "A complete rechanneling is necessary to reach the next para-psychological step. The disease is the initial point. The present level of psi is unstable, anyhow. If I didn't set it off, someone else would in a few years."
"It'll be easier when we get a few more people to bridge the gap," Mycrowski said. "As in the first development of psi, the rest is relatively easy after the initial gain has been made."
Marrin shook his head. "How can I believe you?"
"How? Look!"
Telepathy transmits delicate shades of meaning quite lost in spoken language. A 'true' statement, teleped, reveals immediately how 'true' the sender believes it to be. There are an infinite number of gradations to the 'truth.'
As Ecks had, Marrin read Mycrowski's belief in the para-psi—read it clear down to the subconscious level. An unimaginably 'true' truth! There was no possible argument.
Suddenly Cari smiled. She had had one of her flash premonitions—a pleasant one.
"Help me up," Mycrowski said to Marrin. "Let me outline my training program." Marrin walked over to help him.
Then Ecks grinned. He had just read Cari's premonition.
• • • THE END