Brion stood over her and drew a shuddering breath. Was he wrong? He didn’t dare think about that. He had to go on. Looking down at the thinness of her bent back, with the tiny projections of her spine showing through the thin cloth, he felt an immense pity—a pity he couldn’t surrender to. This thin, helpless, frightened woman was his only resource. She had to work. He had to make her work.

Ihjel had done it—used projective empathy to impress his emotions upon Brion. Now Brion must do it with Lea. He had had some sessions in the art, but not nearly enough to make him proficient. Nevertheless he had to try.

Strength was what Lea needed. Aloud he said simply, “You can do it. You have the will and the strength to finish.” And silently his mind cried out the order to obey, to share his power now that hers was drained and finished.

Only when she lifted her face and he saw the dried tears did he realize that he had succeeded. “You will go on?” he asked quietly.

Lea merely nodded and rose to her feet. She shuffled like a sleepwalker jerked along by invisible strings. Her strength wasn’t her own, and the situation reminded him unhappily of that last event of the Twenties when he had experienced the same kind of draining activity. She wiped her hands roughly on her clothes and opened the microscope case.

“The slides are all broken,” she said.

“This will do,” Brion told her, crashing his heel through the glass partition. Shards tinkled and crashed to the floor. He took some of the bigger pieces and broke them to rough squares that would fit under the clips on the stage. Lea accepted them without a word. Putting a drop of the magter’s blood on the slide, she bent over the eyepiece.

Her hands shook when she tried to adjust the focusing. Using low power, she examined the specimen, squinting through the angled tube. Once she turned the sub-stage mirror a bit to catch the light streaming in the window. Brion stood behind her, fists clenched, forcibly controlling his anxiety. “What do you see?” he finally blurted out.

“Phagocytes, platelets … leucocytes … everything seems normal.” Her voice was dull, exhausted, her eyes blinking with fatigue as she stared into the tube.

Anger at defeat burned through Brion. Even faced with failure, he refused to accept it. He reached over her shoulder and savagely twisted the turret of microscope until the longest lens was in position. “If you can’t see anything—try the high power! It’s there—I know it’s there! I’ll get you a tissue specimen.” He turned back to the disemboweled cadaver.