“Quite all right, sir.”

“It isn’t all right,” Reich charmed him with a smile. “I’m treating you like a relative. I don’t pay enough for the privilege.”

“Oh no, sir.”

“Next time I yell at you, yell right back. Why should I have all the fun?”

“Oh, Mr. Reich…”

“Do that and you get a raise.” The smile again.

“That’s all, Jonas. Thank you.”

“Thank you, sir.” The valet withdrew.

Reich arose from the bed and toweled himself before the cheval mirror, practicing the smile. “Make your enemies by choice,” he muttered, “not by accident.” He stared at the reflection: the heavy shoulders, narrow flanks, long corded legs… the sleek head with wide eyes, chiseled nose, small sensitive mouth scarred by implacability.

“Why?” he asked. “I wouldn’t change looks with the devil. I wouldn’t change places with God. Why the screaming?”

He put on a gown and glanced at the clock, unaware that he was noting the time panorama of the solar system with an unconscious skill that would have baffled his ancestors. The dials read:

Night, noon, summer, winter… without bothering to think, Reich could have rattled off the time and season for any meridian on any body in the solar system. Here in New York it was a bitter morning after a bitter night of dreaming. He would give himself a few minutes of analysis with the Esper psychiatrist he retained. The screaming had to stop.

“E for Esper,” he muttered. “Esper for Extra Sensory Perception… For Telepaths, Mind Readers, Brain Peepers. You’d think a mind-reading doctor could stop the screaming. You’d think an Esper M.D. would earn his money and peep inside your head and stop the screaming. Those damned mindreaders are supposed to be the greatest advance since Homo sapiens evolved. E for Evolution. Bastards! E for Exploitation!”

He yanked open the door, shaking with fury.

“But I’m not afraid!” he shouted. “I’m never afraid.”

He stepped down the corridor, clacking his sandals sharply on the silver floor, ke-tat-ke-tat-ke-tat-ke-tat, indifferent to the slumber of his house staff, unaware that this early morning skeletal clack awakened twelve hearts to hatred and dread. He thrust open the door of his analyst’s suite, entered and at once lay down on the couch.

Carson Breen, Esper Medical Doctor 2, was already awake and ready for him. As Reich’s staff analyst he slept the “nurse’s sleep” in which he remained en rapport with his patient and could only be awakened by his needs. That one scream had been enough for Breen. Now he was seated alongside the couch, elegant in embroidered gown (his job paid twenty thousand credits a year) and sharply alert (his employer was generous but demanding).

“Go ahead, Mr. Reich.”

“The Man With No Face again,” Reich growled.

“Nightmares?”

“You lousy blood-sucker, peep me and find out. No. Sorry. Childish of me. Yes, nightmares again. I was trying to rob a bank. Then I was trying to catch a train. Then someone was singing. Me, I think. I’m trying to give you the pictures best I can. I don’t think I’m leaving anything out…” There was a long pause. Finally Reich blurted: “Well? You peep anything?”