"They suspected nothing."
The voices were closer now, but I was alone on the street except for
a couple ambling along the shadowed sidewalk a block away. And why
would they have to communicate with their minds when they walked arm in
arm? I didn't question the actual existence of the voices in my mind.
At that moment I believed in them as naturally and unquestioningly
as I accepted vocal speech. They were there. I heard them. Even the
meaningless question about a "new body" did not make me wonder if the
voices were hallucinatory. To talk of bodies as if they could be shed
like garments and new ones tried for fit and comfort was nonsense, but
I had no thought of making sense of the words I had heard. I wanted
only to find their source.
And suddenly I was standing in front of the Dugout staring through the
steam-clouded windows. The place was almost empty.
"What is it that you wish me to do?" The young one, calm,
matter-of-fact in its subservience. It? He or she? I had no way of
telling.
"You have a job--an important one."
There was no doubting the fact that they were inside the Dugout. The
sense of mental presence was overpowering, as if one were in a corner
of a dark closet listening to two strangers who had huddled in the tiny
space and closed the door to whisper confidentially.
"Have you heard--"
I opened the door. Four students in a booth against the wall turned to
stare at me. There was a sudden, total silence.
Instinct made me walk casually to the counter, where I slipped onto a
stool so placed that I would be able to see the booths along the right
wall without deliberately or obviously turning my head. Lois, the
waitress who was on night duty at the Dugout, sauntered toward me along
the narrow aisle behind the counter.
"What'll you have, Mr. Cameron?"
"Coffee, Lois."
"Coming right up!"
It never occurred to me to consider Lois as a possible agent of
the thoughts I had heard. She was a student who had been working a
part-time evening shift in the Dugout for almost two full semesters.
She was more notable for the ripeness of breast and hip than for any
indication of unusual mental capacities. I was surprised that she was
still in school and not already married to one of the students who were
always flirting with her across the counter. Her blonde, buxom beauty
and open friendliness went better with children and home cooking than
books and short order food.
The place was unusually quiet. At first I saw no one but Lois and
the four students together in a front booth. Two of them I had
recognized--Mike Boyle, who had been an All-Coast tackle the previous
season and might make All-American this year, and Laurie Hendricks,
a disturbing redhead who sat in the front row of my eleven o'clock
sophomore English class. The other boy's blond crewcut and immature
good looks seemed faintly familiar, probably because they were typical
of so many students. The second girl, who sat next to Mike Boyle, was
small and pretty and brunette. I had never seen her before.
All four looked much too normal, as they returned to their animated
talk, to be part of the weird experience which had brought me there.
They had given me only a casual glance. They seemed to be genuinely
ignoring me as I sipped my coffee, trying to study the group without
seeming to.
The next thought came without warning from the back of the room. "Have
you heard anything else of the listener?"
I swallowed a deep hot draught of coffee, scalding my throat. Bending
low over the counter, I struggled to keep from choking and coughing.
The cup rattled in the saucer as I set it down.