Ihjel smiled. “Just guessing. But I won the Twenties too, remember, also without knowing a thing about empathy at the time. On top of our normal training, it’s a wonderful trait to have. Which brings me to the proof we mentioned a minute ago. When you said you would be convinced if I could prove you were the only person who could help me. I believe you are—and that is one thing I cannot lie about. It’s possible to lie about a belief verbally, to have a falsely based belief, or to change a belief. But you can’t lie about it to yourself.

“Equally important—you can’t lie about a belief to an empathetic. Would you like to see how I feel about this? ‘See’ is a bad word—there is no vocabulary yet for this kind of thing. Better, would you join me in my feelings? Sense my attitudes, memories and emotions just as I do?”

Brion tried to protest, but he was too late. The doors of his senses were pushed wide and he was overwhelmed.

“Dis …” Ihjel said aloud. “Seven million people … hydrogen bombs … Brion Brandd.” These were just key words, landmarks of association. With each one Brion felt the rushing wave of the other man’s emotions.

There could be no lies here—Ihjel was right in that. This was the raw stuff that feelings are made of, the basic reactions to the things and symbols of memory.

DIS … DIS … DIS … it was a word it was a planet and the word thundered

like a drum a drum the sound
of its thunder surrounded and
was a wasteland a planet
of death a planet where
living was dying and
dying was very
better than
living

crude barbaric hot burning scorching
backward miserable wasteland of sands
dirty beneath DIS and sands and sands and
consideration sands that burned had
planet burned will burn forever

the people of this planet so
crude dirty miserable
barbaric
sub-human in-human
less-than-human

but

they

were

going

to

be

DEAD

and DEAD they would be seven million blackened corpses
that would blacken your dreams all dreams dreams
forever because those
HYDROGEN BOMBS
were waiting
to kill

them unless .. unless .. unless ..

you Ihjel stopped it you Ihjel (DEATH) you (DEATH)
you (DEATH) alone couldn’t do it you (DEATH)

must have

BRION BRANDD wet-behind-the-ears-raw-untrained-Brion-Brandd-to-help-you he was the only one in the galaxy who could finish the job…………………………….

As the flow of sensation died away, Brion realized he was sprawled back weakly on his pillows, soaked with sweat, washed with the memory of the raw emotion. Across from him Ihjel sat with his face bowed in his hands. When he lifted his head Brion saw within his eyes a shadow of the blackness he had just experienced.

“Death,” Brion said. “That terrible feeling of death. It wasn’t just the people of Dis who would die. It was something more personal.”