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changing—but he would have to be changed completely to come back through the Gate. Grey holes don’t do return tickets. Once through, that’s it: there’s no way back. Except maybe through the other Gate, into an underground river which rises again into the Danube. But this thing has come through into Perchorsk. Also, Harry Keogh is dead; we all saw him die that time sixteen years ago! Or was he simply undead? No, for he was already that before he went through the Gate. So … while my talent tells me it’s Harry, my reasoning tells me it just can’t be. Which means it has to be something like him, something of him.”
    Trask took it up again. “In a minute or two I’ll be talking to Turkur Tzonov, the Opposition’s top man. We know what his talent is: face to face, he reads minds—but very accurately! He’ll want to speak to me on-screen, so I can only tell him the truth. That squares things up, because Turkur knows my talent and that he can’t lie to me either! It’s why the handful of conversations we’ve had in the past have always seemed tentative, lumbering, awkward things. And in all probability, this one, too. Right now: it looks like the Opposition will be asking for our help. Before that I want your ideas, want to know what we’ll be dealing with if we offer our assistance. Lately, we haven’t had too much on our plate. Nothing special, anyway. Well, with the exception of the Nightmare Zone. So maybe we’re all just a wee bit rusty where the really important stuff is concerned. This could be just the opportunity we need to get our various talents out of neutral.”
    He looked at their faces looking back at him:
    Millicent Cleary, who had taken the call from Moscow. Of all E-Branch’s agents, Trask probably related most to Millie; he sympathized with her. Telepathy was her talent, and it was also her curse. She’d stayed single, as had most of the espers; but in any case they were already married—to the Branch. The job was one reason she was still single, anyway, and the other was her mind-reading.
    For as Millie’s telepathy had matured along with her body, so all thoughts of young love, marriage, and children had flown out of the window. What, be a telepath and know your lover’s every thought? Even the bad thoughts, which we all have from time to time? And if kids should come along, perhaps pass the “talent” on to them? No way, for just exactly like Trask himself, Millie had learned that for every basically pure mind out there, there were also the tainted ones, and for far too many of those there were totally corrupt minds, and that at the very limits of the human spectrum there were others so filled with acid that they ate inwards into themselves and outwards into the world in general. She knew what was out there, for it was her job to look into such minds. Sometimes even the worst of them.
    Although she was a woman of thirty-eight now, Trask still thought of her as his kid sister. There’d been a sort of girl-next-door freshness about her, which galvanized his protective urges: a shyness and all-too-rare innocence; which at the same time permitted her to flash her green eyes, wrinkle her pretty nose, toss her head of copper hair and get really mad if necessary. Occasionally it was, and she’d never failed to stand up for her principles. Millie had retained all of these qualities. And somehow, despite the job, she’d managed to hold on to something of her innocence, too.
    “Millie,” Trask said, “did you pick up anything from your conversation with Tzonov?”
    She shook her head. “He sounded cool, superior, almost disdainful. He wasn’t on-screen, just a voice on the line. If I had been able to see him, maybe—and maybe not. There was a lot of static. I mean, mental static.”
    Trask said, “There would be.” He rubbed his chin and scanned the other faces:
    Anna Marie English. At twenty-four she had looked fifty. And amazingly, now that she was forty she still looked fifty!