low us, the shapes of 'copters silhouetted
beneath us against the lambent glow of the city's well-lit streets,
all wove into a numbing pattern.

[Illustration]

"Here's the _Fig_, Mac," the hacker said as we grounded. I stuck my
credit card in the meter and hopped out, not fast enough to duck the
fan-driven pin-pricks of sand as he pulled away.

Crescas appeared as if by magic--Psis act like that--and had me by the
arm. "Quick!" he said, pushing me back into the spot he had appeared
from. It was a doorway beside the Moldy Fig, opening on a flight of
steps running to an apartment above the bar. As we climbed the clean
and well-lit stairs, I reminded myself that I was probably entering a
den of Psis--and clamped down tight on my thoughts. There was plenty
they had better not peep.

Keys didn't have to knock on the door--there's always a telepath
hanging around these Stigma hideouts who knows who's coming. A husky
young man, quite blond and pink of face, opened the door. A soft
rustle of music spilled out around his big shoulders. He wore a
T-shirt, and his powerful forearms were bare.

"Hey!" he said to Keys, spotting himself as a Southerner as surely as
if he'd had the Stars and Bars tattooed on his forehead. We followed
him down a short hall into a room furnished, with a couple of couches,
an easy-chair, several small but delightful tables, and a piano. Here
was the music. A blond bombshell was drumming box chords on the
ivories, and grouped around her on side chairs were four young men,
playing with her. It was jazz, if that's what you call the quiet
racket that comes out of a wooden recorder, a very large pottery
ocharina that hooted like a gallon jug, a steel guitar and a pair of
bongo drums played discreetly with the fingertips.

My appearance stopped them right in the middle of a chorus of "Muskrat
Ramble." I'd have liked to hear more--it was Dixieland times two--what
the Psis call Psixieland. That's jazz played by a gang of telepaths.
Each one knows what the others are about to play. The result is
extemporaneous counterpoint, but without the clinkers we associate
with jazz. Almost too perfect, yet untrammeled.

My eyes ran around the room as the four men who had been playing with
the girl got up and prepared to leave. The place was spotless. Oh, the
furnishings weren't costly, but they were chosen with that sense of
fitness, of refinement of color and decor that is curiously Psi. I
suppose that's one of t