Simple psiman

Rains let him talk. This was something on which he had to reassure himself. And there was only one way to do it. The fellow was in a service department, somewhere in the distance. But Rains was certain he could reach him.

"I spy," said the pin, triggered by telepathy. "I spy."

The second trip to the disposer had damaged the crystals grievously. It had a vocabulary of two words and they never changed--but now they had. An outsider would get the wrong impression if he heard the distorted message. Rains clamped his fingers tighter on the emblem. But even that relatively slight pressure forced the speech crystals closer. "I spy," cried the pin. It seemed thunderous.

It took prolonged mental effort for Rains to remember that what he had to do was stop probing. The voice of the insignia was obligingly silent when he disengaged his mind.

The eye glared at him suspiciously. "You say something?"

"Not a thing."

"Didn't think so, unless you can talk without moving your lips." The eye disappeared and was followed on the screen by an unidentified lump of flesh, possibly a nose. Then the eye reappeared. Perhaps it was the other eye. "May have been tourist kids outside my window playing your favorite American game."

Rains nodded in relief. The voice had seemed loud to him but not to the other. His hands had smothered the reverberation. His nerves were merely on edge. "They love baseball," he said politely.

"Not baseball," said the eye. "I believe it had another name once, Hide and Seek. Now it's called I Spy." The eye blinked rapidly. "Well, so long."

When he was alone, Rains thought swiftly. His brief mental contact with the eye's mind convinced him he hadn't been observed in any suspicious act. That went to the credit side.

He felt the emblem. It was definitely not an asset. He thrust it determinedly into his pocket. He couldn't endanger his chances of finding the one man in India who meant so much to civilization and astronomy.

He rode down and went out of the hotel and onto the street. Momentarily, he wished he could go back. But the pin drove him past the long AFUA line.

In 1976 India was contradictory. In the last few decades it had achieved industrialization not much below Western standards. But it was densely populated and living patterns were not always equal to those of Europe and America. Rapid technical advances created new jobs and wiped them out again over night. A highly trained craftsman in the morning was often an unemployed vagabond by noon. Until he was taught new skills and could be reabsorbed back into the labor force he was an Applicant For Unofficial Aid. His dignity was such that he was never a beggar. Anyway, begging was forbidden by law.

Rains had no way of turning off his hearing. The best he could do was to walk swiftly and try to ignore the pleas. A few left their position in the AFUA line and trailed after him, but eventually they gave up and returned to the hotel to await other tourists.

It wasn't difficult for Rains to adopt the mannerisms of a sightseer. This was the vast motherland from which European languages and nations themselves had come in the remote past; complex, bewildering, containing the old while striving for the new. Cows in the streets imperiled jet cars and pedestrians. On the pinnacles of skyscrapers, holy men lay down on beds of nails while television cameras carried the picture to faithful followers in remote villages. Beside hydroponic gardens, fakirs mystified the curious with the ancient rope trick.

If his mission hadn't interfered, Rains would have liked to study these mentalists for his own satisfaction. He was a psiman himself, a powerful one, though of an elementary variety. He was a telepath, a man of one talent with no other ability--a simple psiman.

The emblem weighed as heavily in his pocket as it did in his mind. So far he hadn't found a quiet street on which to drop it. With so many people thronging the city, every city in India, it wasn't going to be easy. Nevertheless he wandered on, turning and twisting through boulevards and alleys until he came to the ideal place.

He slipped his hand in his pocket, jingling coins, and came out with the little talisman. He angled toward the curb and let it fall from his fingers. He relaxed mentally as soon as he was rid of it. Sweepers would brush it up and though it might attract another telepath's attention it couldn't be traced back to him.

He swerved to miss a cow that ambled down the street and smiled amiably. India was a romantic place, but it didn't conform to the highest standards of civilization.

A hand plucked at his elbow. "Pardon."

Rains turned. He recognized one of the men from the AFUA line. He'd been wrong; not all of them had become discouraged and gone back. Rains appraised him quickly, a squat fellow, not very tall, but he made up in width what he lacked in height. He wore a loin or ghandi cloth and a remarkably ugly turban. It was the usual attire for this part of India. His limbs, though not long, were of enormous muscular girth.