tion that a year from now King Humphrey should open
parliament on Kandar, if everything is straightened out. The notion
became a precognition. We don't know how it can come about, but it does
seem to imply a change of plans somewhere!"

Bors found himself indomitably skeptical. But he said, "Ah! That's the
precognition you mentioned on Kandar--that the fleet wouldn't be wiped
out and everybody killed."

"No-o-o," said Gwenlyn. "That was another one. I'd rather not tell you
about it. It might be--unpleasant. I'll tell you later."

Bors shrugged.

"All right. You said I'm to be measured for rumors? Bring on your
tape-measures!"

Morgan beamed at him. Gwenlyn went to the door and opened it. An
enormously fat woman came in, moving somehow sinuously in spite of her
bulk. She gave Bors a glance he could not fathom. It was sentimental,
languishing and wholly and utterly approving. He felt a momentary
appalled suspicion which he dismissed in something close to panic. It
couldn't be that he was fated--

Then the arrogant man with rings came in. He'd been identified as the
Talent for Predicting Dirty Tricks. Bors remembered that he had a
paranoid personality, inclined toward infinite suspiciousness, and that
he'd been in jail for predicting crimes that were later committed.

"Gwenlyn says propaganda," said Morgan, "but I prefer to think of these
two Talents as our Department for Disseminating Truthful Seditious
Rumors. You've met Harms." The man waved his hand, his rings glittering.
"But I didn't tell you about Madame Porvis. She has the extraordinary
talent of contagious fantasy. It is remarkably rare. She can daydream,
and others contract her dreamings as if they were spread by germs."

The fat woman bridled. She still regarded Bors with a melting gaze.
Again he felt startled unease.

"It's been a great trial to me," she said in a peculiarly childish
voice. "I had such trouble, before I knew what it was!"

"Er--trial?" asked Bors apprehensively.

"When I was just an overweight adolescent," she told him archly, "I
daydreamed about my school's best athlete. Presently I found that my
shocked fellow-students were gossiping to each other that he'd acted as
I daydreamed. Other girls wouldn't look at him because they said he was
madly in love with me."

The arrogant man with the rings made a scornful sound.

"He hated me," said Madame Porvis, ruefully, "because the gossip made
him ridiculous, and it was only people pic