r calmed down after a while. "It didn't happen!" she
insisted, clutching at her temples.

"If you won't holler," I said. "I'll do it again. Remember, it's
just a phenomenon, like osmosis."

"It is _not_!" she gasped.

But I did it for her. Ten times in a row. The cards changed under
her fingers without moving.

"So it's not PC," I said.

"Oh, Tex, but what _is_ it?"

"You agree it's real?"

Shari nodded. "It's real. You can do it, whatever it is. What
_is_ it?"

"TK," I told her. "Telekinesis."

"Nonsense," she said. "Are you trying to make me believe I
wouldn't have felt the cards move if you'd snapped them out from
under my fingers? I was pressing hard on them every time."

"I didn't move the cards," I explained.

"But you said it was telekinesis!"

"Sure. I just moved the molecules of pigment in the printing ink
and reassembled them in the opposite cards. You didn't expect to
feel molecular movement, did you?"

"No. Then it really happened?" I nodded. "What an incredible
power!" she said. A glow of satisfaction spread over me. "Can you
really test this molecular hypothesis?" she asked.

* * * * *

I told her of the hours of demonstrations I had made during the
night. "The perception on scanning part of it goes on at some
subconscious level, Shari," I said. "But we had evidence that it
can be made completely conscious."

She shuddered and hugged her arms to herself. "I hate to say this
to you," she said. "But you're a freak."

I took a deep breath and smiled. "Unique is the way the Grand
Master puts it," I said, pleased with myself. "He says it has
terrific possibilities." And then it hit me, that delicious
thought that I was among the elect, that I always had been.

"What possibilities?" Shari demanded, recoiling from me. "Doing
card tricks?"

"To name a few," I said. "They feel sure I can operate directly
on the molecular chain in genes. This means we can alter heredity
to suit ourselves. Next, why not rearrange the DNA molecule in a
cancer? If you can change the genes in one cell, you can change
them in another. Knock out the ability of cancerous cells to
reproduce their own kind and the cancer disappears. A silly one:
Maragon says I can be a one-man catalytic cracking station. Pipe
a liquid through a tube within my TK range and I can make an
equilibrium reaction run uphill as the stuff flows past me. How
about a one-step operation to produce those rare dru