ng with the
weights, as well as twice as many who thought they were TK's trying to
get the milligram weights to wiggle. About half of them were clustered
around one table where a member from one of the other chapters was
showing off by heaving at a two hundred and fifty gram weight. He was
seated in the classic position, his elbows on the table, his fingers
supporting his temples, and was concentrating fiercely on the weight.

He wasn't really up to it. I could see sweat starting from his brow as
I watched him over the heads of the others at the table. Suddenly he
dropped back, exhausted.

"Not tonight, Josephine!" he gasped. The man at his right, another
stranger, chuckled, reached over to touch the weight with his finger
tips and then TK'd it cleanly off the Formica. It was nice work, for a
middleweight.

I looked in at a couple other workouts before wandering over to where
Evaleen sat by herself in a corner. She was concentrating on a series
of pith balls the size of peas that weighed from a tenth of a gram up.
She was either so absorbed in what she was doing, or pretended to be,
that she gave no sign of hearing me come up behind her. One of the
balls before her struggled off the table top, and I could hear her
breath hiss with the effort. Cheating a little, I felt for her lifts
and gave her some help. One after another the balls floated up and
sank back. She was utterly charmed--or pretended to be.

"Great going, Evaleen," I said, but she swore at me in Gaelic, an
affectation, because she comes from Minnesota.

"You'd slip up behind me and help, eh?" she said hollowly.

"Get a touch, Evaleen," I suggested. "Have you tried it?"

"No," she said sullenly. She's good at that. Her dark hair is streaked
with gray. She lets it hang down straight and whacks it off with hedge
shears or something when it bothers her. Her face is lined and
wrinkled far ahead of its time, and I swear, from the color of her
teeth, that she chews betel nut. Somehow or other these PC witches
have to act the part.

"Go ahead," I insisted. "Touch the first ball with the tip of your
finger, Evaleen." I showed her what I meant by leaning over her
shoulder. "That's right. _Now_ lift!"

The pith ball rose smoothly several inches, and she held the lift for
ten seconds or so.

"You were helping," she accused me in her best graveyard tones.

"Never," I said, truthfully. "Don't feel that it's cheating to get
tactile help. I just saw a two hund