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his apt.” Her tone, neutral but devastating, rebounded in his ears; he felt himself stiffen, wince and violently flush.
    “This is a bad spot right now,” he said. “I’ll be back on my feet financially any day now. I can get a loan. From the firm, if necessary.” He rose unsteadily, got two cups and two saucers, poured coffee from the coffeepot. “Sugar?” he said. “Cream?”
    “Cream,” Pat said, still standing barefoot, without her blouse.
    He fumbled for the doorhandle of the refrigerator, to get out a carton of milk.
    “Ten cents, please,” the refrigerator said. “Five cents for opening my door; five cents for the cream.”
    “It isn’t cream,” he said. “It’s plain milk.” He continued to pluck—futilely—at the refrigerator door. “Just this one time,” he said to it. “I swear to god I’ll pay you back. Tonight.”
    “Here,” Pat said; she slid a dime across the table toward him. “She should have money,” she said as she watched him put the dime in the slot of the refrigerator. “Your mistress. You really have failed, haven’t you? I knew it when Mr. Ashwood—”
    “It isn’t,” he grated, “always like this.”
    “Do you want me to bail you out of your problems, Mr. Chip?” Hands in the pockets of her jeans, she regarded him expressionlessly, no emotion clouding her face. Only alertness. “You know I can. Sit down and write out your evaluation report on me. Forget the tests. My talent is unique anyway; you can’t measure the field I produce—it’s in the past and you’re testing me in the present, which simply takes place as an automatic consequence. Do you agree?”
    He said, “Let me see that evaluation sheet you have in your blouse. I want to look at it one more time. Before I decide.”
    From her blouse she once more brought forth the folded-up yellow sheet of paper; she calmly passed it across the table to him and he reread it. My writing, he said to himself; yes, it’s true. He returned it to her and, from the collection of testing items, took a fresh, clean sheet of the same familiar yellow paper.
    On it he wrote her name, then spurious, extraordinarily high test results, and then at last his conclusions. His new conclusions. “Has unbelievable power. Anti-psi field unique in scope. Can probably negate any assembly of precogs imaginable.” After that he scratched a symbol: this time two crosses, both underlined. Pat, standing behind him, watched him write; he felt her breath on his neck.
    “What do the two underlined crosses mean?” she asked.
    “ ‘Hire her,’ ” Joe said. “ ‘At whatever cost required.’ ”
    “Thank you.” She dug into her purse, brought out a handful of poscred bills, selected one and presented it to him. A big one. “This will help you with expenses. I couldn’t give it to you earlier, before you made your official evaluation of me. You would have canceled very nearly everything and you would have gone to your grave thinking I had bribed you. Ultimately you would have even decided that I had no counter-talent.” She then unzipped her jeans and resumed her quick, furtive undressing.
    Joe Chip examined what he had written, not watching her. The underlined crosses did not symbolize what he had told her. They meant: Watch this person. She is a hazard to the firm. She is dangerous.
    He signed the test paper, folded it and passed it to her. She at once put it away in her purse.
    “When can I move my things in here?” she asked as she padded toward the bathroom. “I consider it mine as of now, since I’ve already paid you what must be virtually the entire month’s rent.”
    “Anytime,” he said.
    The bathroom said, “Fifty cents, please. Before turning on the water.”
    Pat padded back into the kitchen to reach into her purse.

FOUR
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