asked, "Why in hell am I being tested anyway?"

Craven replied, "President Giovannini himself came in for a voluntary
checkup just last week." As if that were an answer.

Lindsay suppressed a desire to ask if the North American president had
all his marbles. He had an idea any levity he displayed would register
against him. Dr. Craven asked him a number of apparently routine
questions which Lindsay answered via a recorder. How old he was, whether
he liked flowers, how often he had fought with his schoolmates as a boy,
what sort of food he preferred.

"Good," the doctor said, pushing aside the microphone on his desk and
motioning Lindsay to do likewise. He rose, wheeled a device like an
old-fashioned beautician's hair-drier close to the couch, adjusted the
helmet to Lindsay's head. "Now," he added, "I want you to think as
clearly as you can of your mother. Keep your eyes on the screen and give
me as clear a picture as you can."

He pressed a button and the whir of a camera, also focussed on the
screen, sounded from the wall behind Lindsay. When Dr. Craven nodded, he
concentrated and, to his amazement, watched a fuzzy likeness of his
maternal parent take form on the screen.

This was something new, he decided, and said so. Dr. Craven replied,
"Yes--the psychopic is brand new. But concentrate on the picture,
please. You're losing it."

It had faded to almost nothing. Lindsay concentrated again, this time
brought his maternal parent into clear focus. He felt a little like a
man who has never wielded a brush in his life and has suddenly
discovered he could paint a perfect portrait.

Dr. Craven said nothing for a moment. Then, "Will you try to visualize
your mother without the blemish at her temple?"

Lindsay tried, and all but lost the picture entirely. He brought it back
again, blemish and all, felt a sudden tug of nostalgia for the firm
kindly features of the woman who had brought him into the world. A
minute or so later Dr. Craven pressed another button and the screen went
blank. "That will do very nicely," he said. "You may wait for the
psycho-computer verdict outside if you wish."

He found Nina sprawled in an anteroom chair with her long legs stuck out
before her, contemplating a flashing diamond-and-emerald necklace. He
said, before she looked up and saw him, "Business good, Miss Beckwith?"

To his amazement Nina began to snivel. And when he asked her what he had
done to cause it she snapped angrily, "You