ere had been no interruption. "I still say Dr.
Newbridge is a great man. He dropped out of the System of his own free
will and that certainly took courage!"

"He willingly gave up his advantages and privileges?"

"Yes. And he's explained why to me. He felt it was destroying every
Subscriber's ability to think and that it could not last. Some day we
would be without anything to do our thinking and he wanted out."

Connor sat down and stared thoughtfully out the window. Max had just
lumbered into the garden and, having unscrewed one hand to replace it
with a flexible spade, was starting on the evening schedule for turning
over the soil at the base of the plants. He would go methodically down
one flower bed, then up the next one, until all had been worked over,
then would start all over again unless ordered to stop. "Are we to end
up the same way?" Connor shuddered. He slapped his knee. "All right,
I'll go with you tomorrow. I've got to see what he's like--a man who'd
voluntarily surrender ninety percent of his powers!"

* * * * *

The next morning they rode into the city together and went to the Harker
Building. It was in an area dense with non-telepaths each one showing
that telltale cleft of anxiety in his forehead but briskly going about
his business as if anxiety were actually a liveable quality. Newbridge
had the same look but there was a nonetheless reassuring ease to the way
he greeted them. He was tall and white-haired and his face frequently
assumed an abstracted look as if his mind were reaching far away.

"You've come here," he said, "for two reasons. The first is
dissatisfaction with your life. More precisely, you're dissatisfied with
your attitude toward life but you wouldn't be willing to put it that
way, not yet. Secondly, you want to know why anyone would willingly
leave the System."

Connor leaned back in his chair. "That'll do for a starter."

"Right. Well, there aren't many anomalies like me but we do exist. Most
people outside the System are there because they've been Suspended for
supposed infractions, or they've been put out through guilt by
association, or because they were born into a family already in that
condition. Nothing like that happened to me. From early childhood I was
trained by parents and teachers to discipline the projective potential
of my mind into the System. Like every other paraNormal, I received my
education by tapping Central for contact wi