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talents, and it's got computers. It can put the two together to get a rough
forecast of what any person might do to its plans; particularly any person
under captive conditions, the way you all are, out there on theMass. They run
a check automatically on anyone who tries to qualify for work on theMass. "
"Why? What's the Mass to them?" he demanded. "There's no market for illegal
goods and services here, is there?"
"Of course not.But they want the Mass for themselves what did you expect?
They want to be the people, or among the people, who get a chance toemigrate
to a clean world, if the Mass can find one."
"And they think I'm going to stop them? What're they afraid of?" A wild
thought struck him suddenly. "Eileen, do I have some special paranormal talent
I don't know anything about? Or more talent than anyone else somethinglike
that?"
"DearChaz ,"she said, You do have talent; but nothing like that. If my talent
hadn't been greater than yours, for instance, I couldn't have blocked you on
those early tests you took. It isn'tparanormal abilities that makes you
dangerous to them. It's the way the linked events work in a probability
chain the very thing chain-perception discovers. The alternatives anyone
perceives are deter-mined by his own way of looking at the universe his own
attitudes. For some reason, your attitudes are differ-ent from otherpeople's .
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All wrong or all right or something. From the Citadel's standpoint they could
be all wrong; and the Citadel didn't want to take the chance."
"The man you call the Gray Man was my examiner on thePritcher Mass
tests,"Chaz said. "A man named AlexanderWaka . He gave me a special test and
made it pos-sible for me to be here."
There was a second of no response from her.
"Chaz?"she said then."Is that right? It doesn't make sense."
"It's a fact," he said grimly, "square that with the fact that, ac-cording to
you, I've got no unusual talents."
"Oh,Chaz !"There was a little pause, perhaps half a breath of pause. "How can
I get the point over to you? It's you I'm worried about. I want you to take
care of yourself and not let anyone hurt you. You've got to realize how it is.
No, you don't have any unusual talents. If I hadn't if I felt differently
about you, I could have used my ability to make you do what I wanted almost
without thinking about it."
"Thanks," he said.
"But you've got to face the truth! Talents are something else.Chaz , I want
you to live, and the Citadel would just as soon you didn't unless you can
prove useful to them. That's the only reason they're holding off. You just
might turn out to be useful. But the odds are against you. Can you understand
that?"
"That I can believe," he said, deeply, remembering back through the many
schools, the different places, the childhood in his aunt's house even when his
uncle had been alive it had been his aunt's house. "All right, tell me what
can help me, since there's nothing special about me."
"All right," she said. "Chaz, to me you're more special than anyone I've ever
known; but we have to face facts. You're talented, but there are more talented
men and women, particularly on theMass. You're bright, but there are brighter
people. Everything you've got, other people have, and more. There's just one
thing. You're unique. Oh, everybody's unique, but they don't operate on the
basis of their unique-ness. They don't really march to the tune of their own
distant drummer and stand ready to deal with the whole universe
single-handedly if the uni-verse doesn't like it."
"I don't know if I understand you," he said.
"No," she said, `that's because you're on the inside looking out. But it's
what makes you dangerous to the Citadel, as far as the Mass is con-cerned. The
Mass is subjective it can be used by anyone who can work with it; and you see
things differently from anyone else, plus you've got this ter-rible drive to
make things go the way you want."
"Who said I had this terrible drive?"
"I did. Remember I was the one who sat and listened to you for four hours
that night in the game rooms, when you told me everything there was that
mattered to you "
She broke off. Her voice fell silent inside him. The physical sound of a call
buzzer was ringing in hisairsuit helmet the general call signal. An-grily, he
opened the communications channel to his earphones.
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". . .Sant?ChazSant !" It was the voice ofLebdell Marti. "Can you hear me?
Are you all right up there?"
"Fine," saidChaz .
"You were told to keep your phones open on the General Chan-nel, but they [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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