ern ought to
be more similar. As for your other question, you do have much
potential; it remains to be seen if you can develop it. Your mind
shield can be made stronger with practice, and there is unusually
powerful darlas latent. I sensed no traces of the other usual
Talents."

She paused, then continued, puzzled. "There is also something else,
but I cannot be sure what it is. I have never before sensed such an
aspect of Talent. Even describing it vaguely is difficult." She
paused again, laying her ears back in a frown. "The closest I can come
would be to call it a sort of darlas in reverse, but that is almost
pathetically inadequate."

Medart could feel her puzzlement changing to amusement, echoed it with
some of his own when she sent, *And Thark believes humans are
unTalented! Undeveloped and untrained, most certainly, but hardly
unTalented. You have not bred for it, even as indirectly as we have,
so the percentage of Talented humans is probably much lower than it is
for Irschchans, but--*

*--we're hardly the total incompetents he thinks we are,* Medart
finished.

"True. However, he does not know that and would not be convinced
merely by being told, even if we knew his location and were able to
communicate with him; his beliefs, once established, require
overwhelming proof to be changed." Her ears twitched. "I have thought
about contacting him telepathically, but even if he were to accept my
mind-touch, which I am certain he would not, he no longer trusts me
enough to believe my unsupported word."

"I'm afraid you're right," Medart agreed. "There's not going to be any
easy way to end this Crusade of his. I'm just hoping the information
you've already given us, and the help you're still going to give, will
let us stop it without too much bloodshed."

"I hope so, as well," Corina said, her tone as serious as his.
"Irschchan culture was quite chaotic and warlike at one time, but the
Order was a civilizing influence, and the idea of unnecessary bloodshed
has become quite unpleasant."

"Civilizing influence? I suppose so," Medart said with less than total
agreement. "It did cut down on warfare, which is a major benefit--but
I still say it caused stagnation, too. Your progress slowed from
faster than ours to almost nothing after the Order took over, in the
name of stability. Even slower than the Traiti, and for them gradual
progress is the norm. It took you fifteen hundred years to go from a
cr