Modus Vivendi Part 7

"No!" Mary shrieked.

"Not him!" Elmer said.

I stood up to face them. "Yes," I said. "I _do_ have the Stigma. The only lie was that I was the Lodge's counsel. I'm not."

"What then?" Keys demanded.

"I'm Grand Master of the Manhattan Chapter," I told him. "And you, like every Psi who is made aware of the existence of the Lodge, are now subject to my orders."

"Not me," Elmer said. "You ain't got the Stigma."

I fired a lift at an ashtray on the table beside him, and it sailed in an arc toward the kitchen and crashed against the wall. My TK was certainly a lot better than it had been in the morning. Well, I'd spent an hour or so warming up before they had come in.

"_Who_ hasn't got the Stigma?" I said.

He looked at Keys. "You didn't do that," he said. "You _couldn't_!"

Keys was openmouthed. "What a bruiser!" he marveled.

"So I've got the Stigma, Elmer," I said quietly. "Now why won't you do what I tell you?"

"Ah don't do what _anybody_ tells me!"

"What do you hate and fear the most?" I asked him.

"Snakes, ah reckon," he decided.

"Show him a snake, Mary," I said. Her face twisted in indecision. I rammed a lift in under her heart--I know it hurt her. "Show him!" I snapped.

Elmer didn't jump more than three feet. Mary gave all of us the same hallucination. Her first try was a pretty sad kind of a snake, but it was bigger than the nine-by-twelve rug it squirmed on, and was making right for Elmer's legs, hissing in a horrible fas.h.i.+on.

"Enough," I said. "That's how, Elmer. And if that doesn't trouble you, how about this?" I gave him a sample of what TK means when it's clamped on the mitral valve. A heart attack is no joking matter, and just before he hit the deck I eased off.

"Now," I said, "will you do what I tell you, or do I have to kill you outright?"

He sank down to his knees, resting his palms on the carpet so recently vacant of illusory snake. "Yo' got me convinced, suh," he admitted.

"No mo', you hear?"

"Any more protests?" I said. I got none. "Here's what we have to do,"

I went on, and spelled it out for them. At last they were ready to go, three shaken young people. "I repeat--absolute secrecy--none of you is a telepath, so only your lips can give you away if you keep your thoughts screened around TP's. Later that may change--the Lodge is preparing to come a little more into the open with Psis."

My whole members.h.i.+p nodded and left me. I was shaking from head to foot.

We had things to do in the forenoon, and I didn't try to see His Honor Judge Vito Pa.s.sarelli until after lunch. But the docket was crowded, and there was no chance until after court had adjourned, which was well on toward four o'clock. His Honor was hanging his robes on a clothes-tree as I came into his Chambers, and he nodded me politely to a chair, just as if our last words hadn't been pretty heated.

"Mary Hall?" he asked, fumbling around to find his in-Chambers gla.s.ses. He's too vain to wear them on the bench.

I nodded an answer to his question as he came back to take a creaky horse-hair swivel, relic of more judges and years than I like to think about. "I'm here as her counsel," I said.

"What else?" he asked mildly, taking the lid off a big humidor on his desk and starting to fill a pipe.

"We'd like you to know that Mary has joined an organization that should do for her all that the social workers would like to see done for her. She's no longer a behavior problem for Normal society."

"Quite some organization," he said, showing interest. "What one?"

"It has no formal name," I said. "Being a secret organization. In point of fact, it's an organization of Psis that is revealing itself for the first time."

"Odd that I never heard of it," Pa.s.sarelli said, looking at his fingernails. He puffed smoke around the stem of his pipe. His coolness bothered me. He should have been much more excited about what I was saying. I threw my high hard one.

"This organization exercises a formidable discipline over its members," I went on. "One of its firm rules is that no Psi may use his powers to the detriment of a Normal."

He chuckled softly. "You're taking advantage of what I told you yesterday, Maragon," he said calmly. "You know, and I know, that Psis have never done any such thing. And if they had, why would they pick you to run their errands? What Psi would ever trust a Normal?"

It was getting sticky. I was skating perilously close to the brink--once I revealed to a Normal that I had the Stigma, my days as an attorney were done. "This organization--I'll call it the Lodge, if I may--has to have an attorney to represent it in Court. And you know as well as I do they can't hire a Psi attorney--the Bar a.s.sociation has taken care of that. They came to me because...."

"Yes, yes," he interrupted, taking his eyes off his nails, and showing some real interest at last. "If you only knew how much I want to believe you, Maragon. But I will never believe that Psis would permit themselves to be represented by a Normal. Too bad, but the social workers, and not your mythical Lodge, will get Mary Hall. That or a Federal Grand Jury."

Well, this was the fork in the road, I had been kidding myself, and now I knew it. Persist in my masquerade as a Normal, and I'd never get Mary off the hook. But reveal myself as a Psi, and I was through as an attorney. It really wasn't much of a decision--I had made it when I revealed myself to Keys, Mary and Elmer.

I looked at the humidor of tobacco on his desk. Without changing expression, I aimed a lift at it. The container came up smoothly from the polished walnut and hovered in the air before us.

Pa.s.sarelli looked at it blandly. I don't think anything in my life has ever been a greater shock than his unconcern. He should have dropped his teeth. Slowly I let the lift break, and lowered the humidor to his desk.

"Fairly good TK, if that's all you're capable of," Pa.s.sarelli said.

"Or can you do better, Maragon?"

"You slimy Normal!" I exploded. "You _tricked_ me into exposing myself!"

"What am I, an idiot?" he snapped. "I had to know."

I stood up. "Until now, I never really hated Normals," I began.

"Oh, sit down, for Heaven's sake," he said testily. "Now don't get emotional and lose all your perspective. Doesn't it occur to you that there's been just too much coincidence in this whole thing?"

I think the word for it is "collapsed." I fell back into my chair.

"You'll have to spell it out," I said.

Pa.s.sarelli leaned forward, his face concentrated, almost angry. "You have the Stigma, you admit it?"

"Of course I admit it."

"You think any other attorney is a Psi?"

"No. I certainly do not. It's only a miracle that I ever got through the screening and made it."