Chapter 2

II

The rain was still coming down in wind-whipped torrents that slatted along the avenue in drenching sheets. Huddled in the scant cover of the apartment door was a girl of about eighteen. The raincoat she wore was no protection; the wind drove the rain up under it. Womanlike, she was struggling with the ruins of a fashionable little umbrella instead of abandoning it for the tangled mess that it was.

She looked at me as I opened the door. She was without guile. She was wet and miserable and determined to take whatever help was proffered, and hope afterward that no unfair advantage would be taken of the situation.

I showed her my I.D. card and she read: "Howard Schnell, Captain, Special Detail." Her face changed from cautious immobility to a sort of wet animation, and she added as if it were important under the circumstances to be completely open, "I'm Florence Wood."

I took the ruined umbrella from her unresisting hand and stood it in the foyer for the janitor to dispose of, and pointed out across the rain-ponded sidewalk to the police car. It was almost high noon, but the rain was so heavy that the identity of the car was by no means conspicuous from the apartment door. Florence Wood nodded as she caught sight of it.

I said, "Now, I'll make a run for it and open the door, and get in first so that I'll be on the driver's side. As soon as I'm out of your way, just dive in and don't worry about closing the door until you're out of this rain. Catch?"

She nodded.

"I'd play Sir Galahad and give you my foul-weather gear to wear," I said, "but you're already so wet that it wouldn't do more than keep the water in."

She smiled at me understandingly.

Then she looked at me with curiosity because I was standing there waiting instead of making my dash immediately. I thought of how my Psi-man could have floated the loot out of an open window and kept the rain from soaking the floor at the same time.

So, to make conversation, I said, "I'm waiting until my will power builds up enough to overcome the forces of gravity, barometric pressure, and the rest of whatever goes into the making of a howling downpour like this. Considering that nature is dissipating energy equal to a couple of hundred atom bombs per second, it takes a bit of time to collect the necessary amount of mental power."

Florence Wood laughed. In mere instants she'd changed from weather-drenched misery to a cheerful sort of discomfort no worse than many a human has endured for hours at a football game. She said with amusement, "Captain Schnell, why don't you start the car and drive it over here? Seems to me it would take less power than stopping this storm."

"The law says that it is considered unlawful to operate a motor vehicle from any position other than the driver's seat," I replied.

When the slack in the storm I'd been anticipating finally arrived, I took advantage of it to make my run across the sidewalk. Miss Wood followed: her timing was perfect. Everything happened in a continuous sequence without a stoppage at any point. The door opened and I went in, landing hard and bouncing deliberately on the seat springs to hunch myself over; Miss Wood landed and whirled in a flurry of wet skirt and clammy raincoat, hauling one rain-booted ankle out of the way as the door swung closed with a solid and satisfying thunk.

I started the car and let the engine idle to warm it up and dry it off. Then I said, "Part of my duty to the citizen includes protection of his health and comfort as well as protection from unlawful behavior. So, where do you wish to be taken?"

She regarded me out of clear gray eyes. "Don't you know?" she asked with a quirk at the corner of her mouth.

"Do I look like a mind reader?"

"Well, you did slow down the storm."

I laughed. "Miss Wood, King Canute would have been a hero instead of a bum if he'd waited until high water before he told the tide to stop. Now, what gave you any reason to suppose that I am endowed with special talents?"

"Well," she said, fumbling through her handbag for the comb, which naturally was at the bottom, "you did come along when I needed help, and you did identify yourself when I so much wanted to know—"

"And since I also remembered that storms as violent as this always have lulls, you put two and two together? Well, it doesn't require telepathy to conclude that you are soaked to the skin, that you need and want help, and that you'd prefer to know just whom you are driving off in a car with. Any other ideas about my talents?"

"Well, I should think—"

"Address first, Miss Wood."

She gave me an address in a residential district that was the maximum distance one could get from City Hall and still enjoy the privilege of paying city taxes. I started the car and headed in that direction. Then I said, "Now, Miss Wood, let's go on with your little fancy."

"Fancy?"

"You've been moonbeaming about a little courtroom drama where twelve good telepaths and true are reading the mental testimony of a witness who had located some vital bit of evidence by perception and brought it to light by kinematic power."

"Well, it does seem that any truly gifted person would work for the good of humanity."

"I doubt that being gifted with a sense of perception would automatically endow a man with a sense of honor."

"But doesn't it seem just awful to think of anything as miraculous as telepathy being used for—for—"

She was trying to avoid the word "immoral" because she was of an age and experience that felt sensitive about its use. Unfortunately the only substitute was the word "sin."

I came to her rescue. "It's deplorable but true that nothing was ever developed for the benefit of mankind without a few sharpshooters quickly figuring out some way to make it pay them a dishonest buck."

"But it would be frightfully hard to bamboozle a telepathic policeman, wouldn't it?" she asked hopefully.

I thought of my PSI-man, whose only mistake in the sealed room murder of Gordon Andrews had been in being so good that he'd actually disclosed the existence of a criminal who employed Psi faculties.

"Wouldn't that depend upon whether the policeman or the criminal was the more talented?" I parried. "But that supposes that the police force would have a corps of Psi policemen."

"Wouldn't they?"

"Honey-chile," I said, "at the first thin hint that the Commissioner was even interested in the possibility of hiring someone who knew what the term 'parapsychic phenomena' really meant, there would be a universal howl against 'Thought Police' so loud that it would shatter the polar icecaps."

"But why?" she asked, bewildered.

"They'd start screaming about 'invasion of privacy,' and cite the Bill of Rights, and that would be that."

"You mean that the law has laws against telepathy?"

"No, it doesn't say anything about telepathy," I admitted, knowing what was to come next.

"Well, then?"

"Don't sound so superior, Miss Wood. At the first attempt, the law would discover that it had a hell of a lot to say about telepathy and perception, since they'd definitely affect the interpretation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments."

"I know the Fifth," she said, "but how about the Fourth?"

"Unreasonable and unwarranted search," I told her.

"But isn't a man guilty when he's guilty?"

"I wish it were as simple as that."

"But why isn't it?"

"Little Miss Wood, you are now asking me to solve an ethical question that's been unanswered for more than ten thousand years." I smiled wistfully. "I am not—repeat not—big enough to answer the following question: 'Shall a killer in the confessional, who has been given absolution by his God, subsequently be punished by his fellow man?'"

"But what has that to do with it?"

"Let's have you answer one: 'Could you truly bare your secret soul to God if you suspected that some prying human being was taking it all down on a tape recorder?'"

"No, I suppose not."

"Then our 'Thought Police' would be standing as a human barrier between any man and his God."

"I suppose so—but couldn't I tell?"

"Tell?"

"Tell whether someone was listening to my thoughts?"

That was another stumper. Does the sign wear out any faster if it's read? Can the radio transmitter be measured to tell whether the broadcast has any audience? Does the tree that falls in the forest barren of animal life generate the same wave-motion as it would if all the leaves were replaced by active eardrums? There are lots of analogs, but are any of them valid?

I said, "If I cry out, how can I know whether I am being heard?"

And in my mind I made my own reply. I thought in deep concentration: "How do you read me, Psi-man?"

The response was zero-zero. And it meant—nothing. My Psi-man could have been following my every thought from the moment that my ringing telephone summoned me to Gordon Andrews' apartment to the present instant, so far as I could tell. There was no feeling of intrusion, no feeling of presence.