"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.