ut her.
And--outside of that one case--there hasn't been a repeat."

"Some of the clients have died," Mr. Fredericksohn said.

Mr. Gerne waited a second. Then he said: "A little higher percentage
than normal. So?"

"I mean, that's a reason for some of the non-repeats."

"And the others?" Mr. Gerne paused a minute and then went on. "You can't
discount the girl's record like that."

"I wasn't trying to," Mr. Fredericksohn said mildly. "I was only
pointing out--"

"Let those go," Mr. Gerne said. "Obviously she had no control over that
sort of thing. Unless you think she went out and killed them?"

"Of course not." Mr. Fredericksohn said.

"And outside of that, then--no repeats. The girl's a wonder."

"Certainly," Mr. Fredericksohn said. "Let's see how long it keeps up,
that's all."

Mr. Gerne said: "Pessimist. All right, we'll drop the subject for now.
Anyway, I did want to talk to you about the progress reports we've been
getting from Frazier's office. It seems to me--"

Gloria broke the connection. Frazier, a supervisor for another office,
didn't interest her; she only wanted to hear what the conversation about
herself would be like. Well, now she knew.

And, thankfully, no one suspected a thing. Why, the subject had been
brought up, right in the open, and dropped without a word or a thought.

"Unless you think she went out and killed them."

Gloria didn't smile. The idea was not funny. Sometimes you had to do
something like that--but the necessity didn't make it pleasant.

The trouble was that you couldn't always cure something by a simple
projection into the mind. Sometimes you ran into a compulsion that was
really deeply buried.

If the compulsion was a big one, and went back far into childhood,
Gloria couldn't do anything directly about it. Sometimes it was possible
to work around, and, of course, you did that when you could. The
important thing was society, but you salvaged the individual wherever
possible.

Where it wasn't possible--

Well, here's a man who has a compulsion to get drunk. And, when drunk,
he's got to pick fights. Maybe he hasn't killed anybody in a fight
yet--but some day he will. He's got the strength and, under the
influence of sufficient alcohol, he's got no inhibitions about using it.

None.

You can let the man live, and by doing that kill an unknown number of
other people. At the least, keeping your hands and your mind off the
compulsive drinker-fighter will serve to