thought things over.

Hell, maybe she was immortal. Stranger things had happened, hadn't
they?

He looked over at Dr. Harman. "How about that?" he said. "Could she be
immortal?"

The psychiatrist shook his head decisively. "She's been here for over
forty years, Mr. Malone, ever since her late teens. Her records show
all that, and her birth certificate is in perfect order. Not a
chance."

Malone sighed and turned back to the phone. "Of course she isn't
immortal, Chief," he said. "She couldn't be. Nobody is. Just a nut."

"I was afraid of that," Burris said. "Afraid?" Malone said.

Burris nodded. "We've got another one, or anyhow we think we have," he
said. "If he checks out, that is. Right here in Washington."

"Not at--Rice Pavilion?" Malone asked.

"No," Burris said absently. "St. Elizabeths."

Malone sighed. "Another nut?"

"Strait-jacket case," Burris said. "Delusions of persecution, they
tell me, and paranoia, and a whole lot of other things that sound
nasty as hell. I can't pronounce any of them, and that's always a bad
sign."

"Can he talk?" Malone said.

"Who knows?" Burris told him, and shrugged. "I'm sending him on out to
Yucca Flats anyhow, under guard. You might find a use for him."

"Oh, sure," Malone said. "We can use him as a horrible example.
Suppose he can't talk, or do anything? Suppose he turns violent?
Suppose--"

"We can't afford to overlook a thing," Burris said, looking stern.

Once again, Malone sighed deeply. "I know," he said. "But all the
same--"

"Don't worry about a thing, Malone," Burris said with a palpably false
air of confidence. "Everything is going to be perfectly all right." He
looked like a man trying very hard to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to a
born New Yorker. "You get this Queen Elizabeth of yours out of there
and take her to Yucca Flats, too," he added.

Malone considered the possibilities that were opening up. Maybe, after
all, they were going to find more telepaths. And maybe all the
telepaths would be nuts. When he thought about it, that didn't seem at
all unlikely. He imagined himself with a talent nobody would believe
he had.

A thing like that, he told himself glumly, could drive you buggy in
short order--and then where were you?

In a loony bin, that's where you were.

Or, possibly, in Yucca Flats. Malone pictured the scene: there they
would be, just one big happy family. Kenneth J. Malone, and a
convention of bats straight out of the nation's fore