“I’ve got some real gone tricks in that tune,” Duffy said, still playing. “Notice the beat after ‘one’? That’s a semicadence. Then you get another beat after ‘begun.’ That turns the end of the song into a semicadence, too, so you can’t ever end it. The beat keeps you running in circles, like: Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun. RIFF. Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun. RIFF. Tension, appre—”

“You little devil!” Reich started to his feet, pounding his palms on his ears. “I’m accursed. How long is this affliction going to last?”

“Not more than a month.”

“Tension, apprehension, and diss — I’m ruined. Isn’t there any way out?”

“Sure,” Duffy said. “It’s easy. Just ruin me.” She pressed herself against him and planted an earnest young kiss. “Lout,” she murmured. “Pig. Boob. Dolt. When are you going to drag me through the gutter? Clever-up, dog. Why aren’t you as smart as I think you are?”

“I’m smarter,” he said and left.

As Reich had planned, the song established itself firmly in his mind and echoed again and again all the way down to the street. Tenser, said the Tensor. Tenser, said the Tensor. Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun. RIFF. A perfect mind-block for a non-Esper. What peeper could get past that? Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.

“Much smarter,” murmured Reich, and flagged a Jumper to Jerry Church’s pawnshop on the upper west side.

Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.

Despite all rival claims, pawnbroking is still the oldest profession. The business of lending money on portable security is the most ancient of human occupations. It extends from the depths of the past to the uttermost reaches of the future, as unchanging as the pawnbroker’s shop itself. You walked into Jerry Church’s cellar store, crammed and littered with the debris of time, and you were in a museum of eternity. And even Church himself, wizened, peering, his face blackened and bruised by the internal blows of suffering, embodied the ageless money-lender.

Church shuffled out of the shadows and came face to face with Reich, standing starkly illuminated in a patch of sunlight slanting across the counter. He did not start. He did not acknowledge Reich’s identity. Brushing past the man who for ten years had been his mortal enemy, he placed himself behind the counter and said: “Yes, please?”

“Hello, Jerry.”

Without looking up. Church extended his hand across the counter. Reich attempted to clasp it. It was snatched away.

“No,” Church said with a snarl that was half hysterical laugh. “Not that, thank you. Just give me what you want to pawn.”

It was the peeper’s sour little trap, and he had tumbled into it. No matter.

“I haven’t anything to pawn, Jerry.”

“As poor as that? How the mighty have fallen. But we must expect it, eh? We all fall. We all fall.”

Church glanced sidelong at him, trying to peep him. Let him try. Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun. Let him get through the crazy tune rattling in his head.