walked up the front steps and through the lobby as brazen
as a man could be. But even that had been planned for,
and a watch had been kept from one of the apparently
empty howlers parked before the Tombs entrance. They
had watched me go in, had identified me, had let me get
the girl, had let me bring her out, and then had nailed us.
Perhaps Morsfagen let it go on that long so that he could
level charges of jailbreak against both of us on top of
what the government already had drummed up. But I half
thought that he wanted to humiliate me as much as
anything. And he had.
They put us in a howler, took us through snowy streets
to the AC complex. They took Melinda away to a sepa-
rate preventive detention apartment and placed me in an-
other, where there were no sharp instruments or windows.
“General Morsfagen will see you tomorrow,” the guard
told me as he left.
“Can’t wait,” I said.
The door closed, the lock snapped, and quiet de-
scended.
I flopped onto the bed and listened to the springs
whine, and I thought about what a stupid, fumbling idiot I
had been, even with Child’s intellect integrated with my
own. I had gone back to the house to pack, even when I
should have realized that they would be coming for me.
That had ended in the deaths of an entire howler crew,
smashed and burning on my beach. Then I had gone to
the prison after Melinda, with my brilliant plan of bold-
ness, though I should have known that they would have
been expecting the unexpected. Perhaps part of the plan
was based on Child’s cleverness—but another part was
based on my own impetuousness, and Morsfagen knew my
personality like the back of his hand—or better.
Look at yourself, Kelly, I yammered inside my head.
The only esper in the world, amplified by a partial ab-
sorption of the psychic energies of the most complete
genius—and still a failure. Still charging around with delu-
sions that invariably trip you up.
Before my meeting with Child and my therapy in the
mechanical psychiatrist, I had been going on the assump-
tion that I was some holy character, some bright and
shining product of godly grace, the Second Coming. Basi-
cally, I had been nothing more than a man, and I had only
suffered by my refusal to understand that. I blundered into
things acting like a god, and when I got hurt or fright-
ened, I couldn’t cope. I had never prepared myself against
hurt and fear, for I could not see where either commodity
would impinge upon a god.
Now, with Child, I had unconsciously begun to accept
the god role again. Smug in the knowledge that I was
esper with a genius inside me, I slipped back into the habit
of looking on lesser mortals with contempt. And in my
self-assurance, I had failed to use all my talents and
intellect, had underestimated my enemy as the first Cro-
Magnons underestimated the Neanderthals for a while.
For a while …
I stood up, suddenly less angry than I had been, and
more determined. Okay, so I was not a god. I was not
omniscient and omnipotent and superior to the military. I
could not excuse past stupidity, but I could improve
my outlook until I was able to be something which they
could not cope with. The reason Morsfagen and other
men could trip me up was simple to see: they were less
powerful men, but they were fully developed, capable, and
sure and confident. And I was fractured and unsteady and
filled with doubts beneath the sheen of smugness. It was
time to get to know myself, understand what I was and
what I could expect to accomplish. After countless circuits
of the main room of the apartment, I sat down on the bed
again and relaxed. And that night, I came to know myself
better than I ever had in my life.
I turned esp fingers back among the streaming thoughts
of my own conscious mind. It was something I had never
attempted before, though it now seemed the most natural