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watched his scarlet ears while he picked up the pieces. He left early and never came back.
       Nor, for Janie’s mother, was there safety in numbers. Against the strictest orders, Janie strode into the midst of the fourth round of Gibsons one evening and stood at one end of the living room, flicking an insultingly sober gray-green gaze across the flushed faces. A round yellow-haired man who had his hand on her mother’s neck extended his glass and bellowed, “You’re Wima’s little girl!”
       Every head in the room swung at once like a bank of servo-switches, turning off the noise, and into the silence Janie said, “You’re the one with the—”
       “ Janie! ” her mother shouted. Someone laughed. Janie waited for it to finish. “—big, fat—” she enunciated. The man took his hand off Wima’s neck. Someone whooped, “Big fat what, Janie?”
       Topically, for it was wartime, Janie said, “—meat market.”
       Wima bared her teeth. “Run along back to your room, darling. I’ll come and tuck you in in a minute.” Someone looked straight at the blond man and laughed. Someone said in an echoing whisper, “There goes the Sunday sirloin.” A drawstring could not have pulled the fat man’s mouth so round and tight, and from it his lower lip bloomed like strawberry jam from a squeezed sandwich.
       Janie walked quietly towards the door and stopped as soon as she was out of her mother’s line of sight. A sallow young man with brilliant black eyes leaned forward suddenly. Janie met his gaze. An expression of bewilderment crossed the young man’s face. His hand faltered out and upward and came to rest on his forehead. It slid down and covered the black eyes.
       Janie said, just loud enough for him to hear, “Don’t you ever do that again.” She left the room.
       “Wima,” said the young man hoarsely, “that child is telepathic.”
       “Nonsense,” said Wima absently, concentrating on the fat man’s pout. “She gets her vitamins every single day.”
       The young man started to rise, looking after the child, then sank back again. “God,” he said, and began to brood.
    When Janie was five she began playing with some other little girls. It was quite a while before they were aware of it. They were toddlers, perhaps two and a half years old, and they looked like twins. They conversed, if conversation it was, in high-pitched squeaks, and tumbled about on the concrete courtyard as if it were a haymow. At first Janie hung over her window-sill, four and a half storeys above, and contemplatively squirted saliva in and out between her tongue and her hard palate until she had a satisfactory charge. Then she would crane her neck and, cheeks bulging, let it go. The twins ignored the bombardment when it merely smacked the concrete, but yielded up a most satisfying foofaraw of chitterings and squeals when she scored a hit. They never looked up, but would race around in wild excitement, squealing.
       Then there was another game. On warm days the twins could skin out of their rompers faster than the eye could follow. One moment they were as decent as a deacon and in the next one or both would be fifteen feet away from the little scrap of cloth. They would squeak and scramble claw back into them, casting deliciously frightened glance at the basement door. Janie discovered that with a little concentration she could move the rompers—that is, when they were unoccupied. She practised diligently, lying across the window-sill, her chest and chin on a cushion, her eyes plickered with effort. At first the garment would simply lie there and flutter weakly, as if a small dust-devil had crossed it. But soon she had the rompers scuttling across the concrete like little flat crabs. It was a marvel to watch those two little girls move when that happened, and the noise was a pleasure. They became a little more cautious about