"The theory being," he went on, "that the law doesn't let anybody with
the Stigma get away with a thing, right?"
"Right."
"Then relax. Mary hasn't got the Stigma. Have you, Mary?"
"No," she said. I looked her over more carefully. She was closer to
twenty than thirty, round-faced, with blue eyes that were about as
impossibly bright as her hair was impossibly white. It could have been
a corneal tattoo, but somehow I doubted it. Impossibly red lips made
up the patriotic triad of colors--but that was lipstick, pure and
simple.
"No Stigma?" I demanded. "I know Psixieland when I hear it, Miss Hall.
Don't tell me that wasn't telepathic jazz."
She tossed her short hair-do around. "My side-men were TP's," she
conceded. "Why do you think I was playing box chords? They knew what I
was playing--I didn't know what they'd play."
Well, some of it was adding up. Still, I had to be sure. "I see. Tell
me, Mary, where were your parents on the 19th of April in '75?"
She sat up straight beside Keys on the bench, and her fair face
flushed pinkly. "Drop dead!" she told me.