The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wizard, by
Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Wizard

Author: Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)

Release Date: January 21, 2008 [EBook #24375]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WIZARD ***

Produced by Greg Weeks, Greg Bergquist, Bruce Albrecht and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction May 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor typographical
errors have been corrected without note.]

WIZARD.

By Larry M. Harris

_Although the Masquerade itself, as a necessary protection against
non-telepaths, was not fully formulated until the late years of the
Seventeenth Century, groups of telepaths-in-hiding existed long
before that date. Whether such groups were the results of natural
mutations, or whether they came into being due to some other cause,
has not yet been fully determined, but that a group did exist in
the district of Offenburg, in what is now Prussia, we are quite
sure. The activities of the group appear to have begun,
approximately, in the year 1594, but it was not until eleven years
after that date that they achieved a signal triumph, the first and
perhaps the last of its kind until the dissolution of the
Masquerade in 2103._

--Excerpt from "A Short History of the Masquerade," by A. Milge, Crystal
704-54-368, Produced 2440.

Jonas came over the hill whistling as if he had not a care in the
world--which was not even approximately true, he reflected happily. The
state of complete and utter quiet was both foreign and slightly
repugnant to him; he was never more pleased than when he had a job in
hand, a job that involved a slight and unavoidable risk.

This time, of course, the risk was more than slight. Why, he thought
happily, it was even possible for him to get killed, and most painfully,
too! With a great deal of pleasure, he stood for a second at the cr