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tracked the cause back to this place and this point in time.”
    “Is that possible?”
    “Entirely possible. The entropic shockpoints of a cause or an effect expand like bubbles in the ether. But only two related events have exactly coincident axes. If you start with a cause, you can usually locate its effect, and the converse is also true. In this case it’s a reasonable guess that our deliberations today are destined to have a measurable effect upon the future. In fact, so worried do our opponents seem about what will result that they seem to have produced a panic reaction. In terms of entropy, this is a relatively small disaster.”
    “Does this mean that we’re now all candidates for the Chaos Weapon’s attention?”
    “I think not. It’s more likely to be only one of us. Multiple Chaos patterns become too diffuse to follow. Both Hover and I were present at the Edel catastrophe and nothing was directed against us there, so I thinkwe’re both in the clear. The new factor today, Marshal Wildheit’s involvement with ChaosCenter, is a coincidence that can’t be overlooked. Marshal Wildheit, how does it feel to be looking down the wrong end of the Chaos Weapon? I wonder what you’re going to do to justify such powerful attention, Jym?”
    “It’s an attention I could afford to do without,” said Wildheit ruefully. “But in any case, they missed.”
    “Certainly they missed. But that was because you had the benefit of advance-scan Chaos information. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in our computer room, you’re unlikely to have sufficient warning the next time they make a try against you. Unless …”
    “Unless what?” Delfan asked.
    “It’s a crazy idea, but one that might be worth considering. During the Great Exodus, many minority groups on Terra left to establish colony worlds of their own. One of them, a way-out cult, was dedicated to reestablishing human senses they believed had been allowed to atrophy in the human animal.”
    “The Sensitives?” asked Tun Tse, who had been following the conversation carefully.
    “Exactly! On Mayo they interbred and multiplied, and by a rigid application of their philosophy they have produced some individuals with talents remarkable by anyone’s standards. But even the Sensitives had no idea of the extent of the sensory fields they were developing. Talents began showing up to deal with situations they didn’t even know existed. If my information’s correct they even have developed a Chaos Seer, one who seems to be able to read the patterns of Chaos directly.”
    “How probable is that?” Delfan asked.
    “It’s certainly not impossible. The human organism is sensitive to heat, light, and sound waves. I see no good reason why it should not also be sensitive to entropic waves.”
    “Surely the human being has skin, eyes, and ears asreceptors for heat, light, and sound—and there is an evolutionary advantage in using them. But I don’t see any such justification for the reception of Chaos.”
    “No?” asked Saraya, and there was a light of faint amusement in his eyes. “Did you never get a feeling of foreboding? Did you never get a hunch about the outcome of something? And how about a leap of intuition? I think that everyone can read Chaos to a limited extent, but we never bother to develop the ability. But just suppose this Chaos Seer does exist and can be persuaded to work with Wildheit, then we might begin to get some of the answers we’re seeking.”
    “I really don’t see how a seer would help.”
    “Imagine the advantages of having real-time Chaos sensing and interpretation combined in something as small and mobile as a man—and working in cooperation with a prime target for the Chaos Weapon. First off, the enemy wouldn’t be able to get at Wildheit without his having advance warning. Secondly, we’d have someone who could stare back up the barrel, so to speak, with a strong probability of eventually being able to locate the