he little things that annoys Normals so much.
Stigma powers seem to go beyond telepathy, clairvoyance and
telekinesis--they extend in some hard to define way into the
aesthetic. A chaste kind of cleanliness is only part of it. _Taste_, I
guess that's the word. Their attire, their homes, everything about
Psis, seems tasteful.

* * * * *

In moments only Keys, the blond Southerner and the still blonder bomb
on the piano bench were left to face me. Keys poked a finger at the
plow-jockey in the T-shirt. "Elmer," he explained.

"Take off yo' hat, Yankee," Elmer grinned. I felt it tipped from my
head by his TK.

I glowered at him. "Kid stuff!" I snorted. "So you can lift four
ounces from six feet away. But you don't have any idea what
incorporeal hereditaments are. Which is better?"

The pink of his face got red. He could have broken me in two.

"Just making a point," I said. "I'm stupid about TK. You're stupid
about the law. I figure that makes us even."

He clamped his mouth shut. I turned back to Keys and the girl I was
sure was Mary Hall. "What I came here for--"

"What we _got_ you here for," Keys interrupted, "was to set you
straight on something." I guess I looked as surprised as I felt. The
impossibly blond girl giggled. "Over the phone, Maragon," Keys went
on, sitting down on the bench beside the girl, "you said there was a
Federal rap hanging over Mary's head on this 99th National Bank
fracas."

I nodded.

"The theory being," he went on, "that the law doesn't let anybody with
the Stigma get away with a thing, right?"

"Right."

"Then relax. Mary hasn't got the Stigma. Have you, Mary?"

"No," she said. I looked her over more carefully. She was closer to
twenty than thirty, round-faced, with blue eyes that were about as
impossibly bright as her hair was impossibly white. It could have been
a corneal tattoo, but somehow I doubted it. Impossibly red lips made
up the patriotic triad of colors--but that was lipstick, pure and
simple.

"No Stigma?" I demanded. "I know Psixieland when I hear it, Miss Hall.
Don't tell me that wasn't telepathic jazz."

She tossed her short hair-do around. "My side-men were TP's," she
conceded. "Why do you think I was playing box chords? They knew what I
was playing--I didn't know what they'd play."

Well, some of it was adding up. Still, I had to be sure. "I see. Tell
me, Mary, where were your parents on the 19th of April in '75?"

She sa