"We have to try," I protested.

"Perhaps if you'd accepted the invitation of the entity and changed some more, you'd be able to handle it." The look Andrew gave me brimmed with sheer 107

disgust. "Since you didn't, whatever happens to these poor people will be your responsibility."

"Hold on!" Donna pointed a finger at Andrew. "Lee didn't ask these people to go through a gate and end up in stasis, and he didn't ask for the res ponsibility of dealing with this either."

"Peace!" I held up both hands. "Let's drop the accusations and concentrate on helping these people." I glared at Andrew. "If you think a superhuman can help them, be my guest."

"I'm not afraid. There isn't enough time for me to make that many trips through the gates, though."

"Too bad for you," I said, in a tone that let him know the discuss ion was over.Russell cleared his throat and resumed speaking. "We will be grouping those who were too old to make it through when they entered the sex gates with those who were too sick physically. And those who simply went through once too oft en. We expect their problems will be similar."

I pitied the 'innocents' if Andrew was going to help them. On the other hand, I.

expected them to be easier to handle than the criminals. Our main concern was their physical condition. The group would also include otherwise normal people who went through the gate once too often. Gangs on Earth used to amuse themselves by tossing victims through a gate, for instance. It was a good way to get rid of the evidence.

I'd expected Andrew to go for the minor criminals-they seemed more his type-to each his or her own. Maybe Derrie was influencing him. Or may be-I stiffened as a sense of foreboding washed over me like a great wave. I c ouldn't pin it down, not certainly. Russell's hand on my breast tightened in an unco nsciously protective gesture as he caught the wisps of my thought. He still retain ed a good bit of the Southern male over-protectiveness he was brought up with. So did I, for that matter.

Russell's touch distracted me for a second and then Randy spoke up, volunteering for one of the criminal worlds. I thought Randy and Terri were good choices for the world of minor criminals. As lawyers, they had the mental toughness 108

necessary. On the negative side, they had spent their long lives before entering the gates as an extremely wealthy couple, and their experience was with corporate law, not criminal. I didn't want to see them in over their heads. Minor criminals seemed about right for them.

Donna was out, of course, being pregnant. Russell and I could have partnered up, but we agreed Russell needed to stay loose and monitor the overall situation. That left me without an immediate partner, but that was how I wanted it. I had already told Russ where I intended to go. Now I told the rest of the m.

"We'll have one world for psychopathic criminals-they're the worst of a bad lot. I'll take charge of that world. And I don't want a partner."

I noticed that quite a few of the scientists looked relieved. They were generally a mild mannered lot. On the other hand, I was the most advanced Seconder, other than Russ. It made sense for me to take on the risk of dealing withthe most dangerous of our proposed worlds.

Andrew shot me a quick look. Some emotion flickered across his face. I tried to nail down his thought, but it slipped away.

"I suppose you'll be a male for the big event. Looking forward to going man- to-man with the psychos? Or is it that you want those women without any morals for yourself."

I stared at him in astonishment. Did he imagine for a moment that I wanted the psychos?

"Let's face it, none of these assignments is going to be any pleasure trip,"

Russell said, in his best no-nonsense voice. "Even with the help of the computers on some of the Nexus worlds, it's going to be tricky and you'll have to do a lot of thinking on your feet. Remember, you can always come back for help if yo u need it."

"How about the religious nuts? What world do they go on?"

I sighed. "You shouldn't call them nuts. Please."

Unfortunately, we were expecting a large group of those people. The gates were originally programmed by the masters, who had a logical society-or so we assumed since their whole culture was built around the scientific method .

Accordingly, the gates had apparently interpreted any excessive zeal for religion as 109

a mental illness, and whisked the zealot off to stasis.

Donna smiled her sweet smile. "Try to think of them as very sincere a nd well- intentioned people, even if some of them are mistaken."

Mistaken. I stifled a laugh. That was a mild word for jokers who advocat ed state religions, a society that banned abortion even to save the life of a mother, not to mention other Luddite ideas like banning cloning of any sort, and goi ng back to 'natural' farming. With ideas straight out of the dark ages like those, they would quickly starve half the world, but they never seemed to worry about predictable disaster so long as their religious dogma was followed.

I had other thoughts, too, but kept them to myself. Donna meant well. She wanted to encourage tolerance, and I didn't want to undercut her. Bes ides, there was no sense getting into philosophical arguments when we were going to become very busy, very soon. Instead, I pasted a sweet smile on my face, too, a nd nodded as if I agreed with Donna one hundred percent.

Donna beamed me a mental thank you-she knew how I really thought. We'

d been friends for too long for her not to know. Across from me, Andrew fr owned and folded his arms across his chest. He threw me a disgusted look and I caught his exasperation, as if he had primed himself for a good argument, but was left without an opponent when I refused to get involved. I grinned, feeling even bet ter about staying quiet. Sometimes silence is the best medicine for know-it-alls.

"We'll go to the religious world."

Todd Henderson raised his hand. He and his wife, Sophie, were the only married couple in our group. They were both Protestants, though not proselytizers, and very nice people. Both were dark haired and brown-skinned. They look ed like that mixture of many ancestors which you see often in Hawaii and Polynesian states.

I hadn't had a lot to do with them, but in the few encounters we had shared I found their minds and personalities to be more or less reflective of middle-class America.

As I stared into Todd's dark eyes, I had a fleeting sense that he would encounter difficulties. By now my sense of foreboding was so pervasive that I simply laughed it off. We all were going to encounter difficulties. How could Todd and Sop hie have an easy time working with people from dozens of different fanatical religions?

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We assigned some of the other worlds and came at last to the final choice- the world where Russell and I had decided to put the sexual deviants. Th ere was some overlap between these in other criminals, but we had decided to focus on those people who used sex for power over their victims and nothing else. These were the pedophiles, sadists and masochists, and those others with their sexual identity so fouled up that they never let their neighbors know what they were up to.

This group included many elite members of society, as well as the dregs, and various classes in between. Most of them were not physically violent; they were just sadly sick so far as normal sex went.

Rita and I had discussed this class of people in other, better times whe n we were sitting around our house relaxing. As a psychologist, she liked to theorize about how criminals and others might eventually emerge if the gates ever released them. Ever the optimist, Rita believed that a change of sex might cure most of them.

I thought not. For one thing, if a simple sex change would have been eno ugh to jolt them out of their pathology, the gates would have let them go right though. We had no way to know anything about an individual's previous life before they entered stasis. All we could do was note the problems that had caused them to fail tomake it through a gate the first time. But when it came to sexual offenders, I believed their behavior patterns were pretty well fixed. I doubted a gender change woul d help much.

Jenny Roberts and Harry Jones volunteered for this last group. They seem ed like a logical choice, as well. Jenny was a psychiatrist and Harry had a PhD in psychology. Personally, I don't have much use for either field-as you can imagine, that attitude of mine had provoked a lot of arguments with Rita. I knew Rita wanted to help people, and had a heart of gold. I was even willing to grant that most psychologists and psychiatrists had similar hearts of gold. But that did n't change the fact that their so-called science was bunk.

A lot of things bothered me about their profession. For one thing, they changed their theories about as often as women change clothing styles, and they never admitted how wrong they were before-or what damage their oddball treatments might have done either through commission or omission. In my time, I've 111

seen everything from Primal Scream therapy, to Rebirth treatments, to Touch Therapy. Touch therapy was an especial favorite of mine. Thousands of do ctors and practitioners swore it worked until an eight-year-old girl proved it wrong in a science project.

I could go on and on, but personally, if I ever think I need counseling, I'll talk to a computer; it's more likely to help than some of the weird stuff dreamed up by that science-if you want to call it a science. It's about as accur ate as economic theory to my mind, which ought to tell you something. Once again I kept my opinions to myself. Jenny and Harry were welcome to their challenge. I had my own .

Russell squeezed my hand, and I smiled. The worlds were chosen and the groups selected. We had done what we could to prepare. I set down my dri nk and rose to my feet.

"Going somewhere?" Andrew asked.

He flashed me a friendly smile, but I wasn't fooled. I considered taking a deeper look into his mind, but I was in a hurry.

"We have at least seventy-two hours," I said. "Since there's nothing more I can do here, I'm going to take a quick trip back to Earth and visit R ita while I have a chance."

"Oh, Li!" Donna jumped up, and hugged me. "Give her a big kiss for me.""I will."

Suddenly I wanted to be out of the Nexus and its problems. I waved goodbye to the group and headed through the tower to the control room where the sex gate waited. I disposed of my clothes along the way, though why I did that, I have no idea. They wouldn't have come with me anyway.

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CHAPTER NINE.

I knew leaving the Nexus at this critical juncture wasn't a good idea, but a desperate need to see Rita gripped my soul. I hurried to the control roo m, my mind occupied with thoughts of her, of her gentle heart and her unswerving love. I can't deny that I thought about her body, too-she had a regal Spanish beauty with her dark eyes, dark hair, and her coffee-and-cream complexion. But I craved her mind and her love as much as if not more than her body. We had grown so close over the last few years. I trusted her as I trusted no one else. I hoped that seeing her would help me straighten out my thoughts, and put a face on that sense of impending doom-no, not doom, but a dark presence looming in the foreground, some warning that eluded me. Rita had a way of calming me down and keeping me grounde d.

Maybe, I thought the two of us could figure out what was going to happen if events unfolded as planned.

The journey through the gate only took an instant of time. I emerged on Earth, inside a barn, of all things. Back when the gates first appeared, this particular gate materialized on Messler's country retreat in the Ozark Mountains. With his usual quick thinking, he'd thrown up a barn around it, thus concealing it from the rest of the world and preserving it as his own private gate.

After Messler's disappearance through the gate (before I found him again in the Nexus) I had inherited control of his property, including that same country retreat. The persecution of Seconders by the public at large was rapidly increasing at the time. Seeking safety, I had gathered a group of us together on the estate. Our secret purpose was to develop our mental powers and learn to control the gates.

The Church of the Gates found out about us, and fearing their own lost of control, decided to attack us.

With the Gaters closing in on us I was forced to bargain with Stephen He ss, a government agent, for help. Desperate, I told him we Seconders could stop the disappearance of the gates. At the time, gates were randomly disappearing invarious countries. I had no idea why, or how to stop it. I was bluffing.

In the midst of the attack I journeyed to the Nexus for the first time.

There I 113

found Messler, and learned that he was behind the disappearing gates. Now able to control the appearance or disappearance of the gates in truth, I returned to Earth and forced Hess to agree to my demands for the protection of the Seconde rs. In return, I agreed to leave the gates on Earth. I'd left for the Nexus confident the situation was under control.

The interior of the barn was dim and quiet, lit only by the green glow of the gate. I spotted a coat rack standing against one wall, with a set of my clothes hanging there, ready for my return. I recognized thoughtfulness at work. I dressed quickly, humming to myself. Putting on clothes qualified as a wasted effort when I'd only want to take them off again the moment I found Rita.

It seemed as if ages had passed since we had been together. In reality, I had been in the Nexus for quite a few weeks. If I had judged the passage rig ht on my return, our separation wouldn't be nearly that long for her. I had tr ied my best to manipulate the flux so I would emerge from the gate soon after I had left. I couldn't bear to think of Rita facing her pregnancy without me at her side as much as possible.

I patted my clothes into place and opened the door to an underground tun nel between the barn and the main house. A security guard stood on the other side.

Hearing me, he whirled around, startled, and started to draw his weapon.

"Hold it! I'm Lee Stuart."

He scrutinized me, with his hand hovering inside his jacket. "I'll never get used to you people going back and forth through these damn things like a revolving door."

"Take it easy with that gun; you could hurt someone," I told him.

I didn't recognize the man, but assumed from his uniform that he was a member of the military assigned by Hess to guard the gate.

"Are you the Lee Stuart, the leader of this group of Seconders?" He narrowed his eyes at me.

"That's me, back from the Nexus." The thought of seeing Rita again was making me cheerful.

"Mr. Hess will want to see you at once."

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"I'm sure he does, but I have someone more important that I want to see first."

I moved to step around him.

"Hold it!" In one quick motion, the guard drew his gun.

I didn't need my pattern sense to tell me something was wrong. I stop ped, and stared the guard straight in the eye. "You don't want to detain me, soldier," I said, making it a command.

At the same time, I reached out and touched his chest. That one touch wa s all I needed. Normally, he would never have let me near him, but he knew I'

d come through a gate and was unarmed. He made the mistake of thinking I wasn't dangerous. As I touched him, he toppled over. I'd sent pure energy through that touch, overloading his body's system. He'd be unconscious for a wh ile.

Leaving him behind me on the floor, I hurried on down the connecting passage toward the main building. This whole estate was originally one o f Messler's many 'safe houses', places he kept as secret retreats. He owned them through so many dummies that they could never be traced back to him. That might sou nd paranoid, but the truth was, over a hundred years of living had left him with a lot of people who really were out to get him, even before he started that Church of the Gates business.

Well, the secret was out. Both the government and the Gaters knew that I had brought a group of Seconders here. I'd wanted to create a research center where Seconders would gather to explore our new powers. But once you drag the government into something, it's almost impossible to get it out again. I'd brought them in to protect us-from the reaction of the guard a moment ago, I knew that somehow the tables had turned.

I opened the tunnel door on the other end of the passage and stepped out into a hallway inside the house. A few steps took me into the central gathering room on the main floor. It was a beautiful room, with 30-foot high ceilings, a balcony running around the second level, and a huge stone fireplace on the far wall.

Comfortable couches and chairs were grouped in front of the fireplace.

I stopped in the wide, arched doorway and looked around. The room was quiet. No one seemed to be about. Then I corrected my first impression.

A slim foot 115

dangled over the edge of one couch, although the rest of the body was hidden bythe tall back. Relief surged through me as I reached out and touched a m ind that I knew as well as my own.