“Make me understand.”

“Those ousted peepers you mention… like Jerry Church. They weren’t so smart. It’s like this…” West considered. “Before surgery really got started, there used to be a handicapped group called deaf-mutes.”

“No-hear no-talk?”

“That’s it. They communicated by a manual sign language. That meant they couldn’t communicate with anybody but deaf-mutes. Understand? They had to live in their own community or they couldn’t live at all. A man goes crazy if he can’t talk to friends.”

“So?”

“Some of them started a racket. They’d tax the more successful deaf-mutes for weekly hand-outs. If the victim refused to pay, they’d ostracize him. The victim always paid. It was a choice of paying or living in solitary until he went mad.”

“You mean you peepers are like deaf-mutes?”

“No, Ben. You normals are the deaf-mutes. If we had to live with you alone, we’d go mad. So leave me alone. If you’re nursing something dirty, I don’t want to know.”

West cut off the phone in Reich’s face. With a roar of rage, Reich snatched up a gold paper-weight and hurled it into the crystal screen. Before the shattered fragments finished flying, he was in the corridor and on his way out of the building.

His peeper secretary knew where he was going. His peeper chauffeur knew where he wanted to go. Reich arrived in his apartment and was met by his peeper house-supervisor who at once announced early luncheon and dialed the meal to Reich’s unspoken demands. Feeling slightly less violent, Reich stalked into his study and turned to his safe, a shimmer of light in the corner.

It was simply a honey-comb paper rack turned out of temporal phrase with a single-cycle beat. Each second when the safe phase and the temporal phase coincided, the rack pulsed with a brilliant glow. The safe could only be opened by the pore-pattern of Reich’s left index finger which was irreproducible.

Reich placed the tip of his finger in the center of the glow. It faded and the honey-comb rack appeared. Holding his finger in place, he reached up and took down a small black notebook and a large red envelope. He removed his index finger and the safe pulsed out of phase again.

Reich flipped through the pages of the notebook… ABDUCTION… ANARCHISTS… ARSONISTS… BRIBERY (PROVEN)… BRIBERY (POTENTIAL)… Under (POTENTIAL) he found the names of fifty-seven prominent people. One of them was Augustus Tate, Esper Medical Doctor 1. He nodded with satisfaction.

He tore open the red envelope and examined its contents. It contained five sheets of closely written pages in a handwriting that was centuries old. It was a message from the founder of Monarch Utilities and the Reich clan. Four of the pages were lettered: PLAN A, PLAN B, PLAN C, PLAN D. The fifth was headed INTRODUCTION. Reich read the ancient spidery cursive slowly:

To those who come after me: The test of intellect is the refusal to belabor the obvious. If you have opened this letter we understand one another. I have prepared four general murder plans which may help you. I bequeath them to you as part of your Reich inheritance. They are outlines. The details must be filled in by yourself as your time, your environment, and necessity require.