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groaned. “D’you know how many hospitals there are in Jerhattan?”
    “Not intimately,” Sascha said with a grin, and pointed an index finger at her. “Think of it as a survey question in your training. Ask for paralytic cases, teen, preteen, insomniacs . . .”
    “Why blame the teens?” Madlyn asked, bridling.
    “They won’t have been scanned for Talent yet. Okay,” Sascha added graciously, “try anyone faced with a sudden lack of mobility. I’ll add the prison systems, too.” He grinned at Madlyn’s groan. “One of the most famous was a guy escaping a sadistic jailor.”
    Madlyn’s eyes widened. “Can the Center get prisoners released?”
    Budworth chortled. “Don’t you remember your Center history? This place was started by rejects from prisons and mental institutions—” He shot a sly look at Sascha. “—and all kinds of otherwise asocial and/or eccentric personalities.”
    “If my brother were here . . .” Sascha waggled an admonitory finger at Budworth.
    “Huh!” Budworth snorted. “I’m not afraid of your brother even if he is the high-and-mighty Law Enforcement and Order commissioner.”
    “I would be,” Sascha replied. “Which reminds me, I’m late for that appointment. Get the program started on checking hospitals and prisons. And buddy boy, you can do the mental institutions. I appreciate the reminder.”
    “Ha!” Madlyn said to Budworth as Sascha left the Control Room.
     
    “How can there be that many illegal children in the Residentials?” Jerhattan City Manager Teresa Aiello demanded of Medical Chief Harv Dunster. “Your people are supposed to tie off after a second pregnancy.”
    Harv’s angular face was grim. “Only if we get to deliver ’em. You know that some ethnic groups still refuse to practice contraception. Until we have the right to use infertility drugs in subsistence-level food, there’ll be unreported births—and continued traffic in preadolescents for sexual perversions, or cheap labor in illegal factories. And the ones with the right blood factors and healthy organs will still be stashed away by the very rich for transplants as needed.” He gestured at the fax sheets on Teresa Aiello’s desk.
    “And ruthless people will still dispose of the used ones,” added Boris Roznine, commissioner of Law Enforcement and Order. “Even illegal kids have rights.” He glanced obliquely at the faxes scattered on the work-top.
    Teresa inadvertently glanced down. She was a tough-minded woman, but she had a ten-year-old daughter, and the fax of the bloated bodies discovered as flotsam off the North Shore of Long Island spared no one’s sensibilities. She averted her eyes. The coroner reported that the oldest had been twelve, the youngest five.
    Boris Roznine had contacted her the moment the appalling discovery had been made. The temper of Jerhattan was always uncertain when faced with such news, and Teresa had called an emergency meeting of her commissioners to prepare for a possible eruption if the news was leaked to the media. Boris’s twin brother, Sascha, was due to arrive with the Parapsychic Center’s suggestions. To insure the tight security around the tragedy, the four were meeting in the shielded privacy of the city manager’s tower office.
    “Ah,” Boris interrupted what Teresa had been about to say, his right hand lightly touching his temple in indication that he was receiving a telepathic message. “Positive ID of one, the Waddell girl who was kidnapped six weeks ago . . .”
    Teresa winced and let out a groan. The Waddells were acquaintances of hers, high-tech executives; the child, bright and extremely pretty, had been a school friend of her daughter. Teresa had put a top priority on the abduction, and had officially requested that Rhyssa Owen assign her best finder to the case.
    “Two others are listed as runaways, reported missing two months ago. Of the others . . .” Roznine shrugged, glancing at the medical officer. “The best