little talent; Dad and I were the ones who were really adept. Anyway, we stayed on the small farm we owned until last spring. Then Mom married again, and I was free to leave. I think her new husband was sorry to see me go, because it meant a lot of manual work for him that I had been doing an easier way. I decided to see if I couldn't find any others like myself, so I left and started across the country."

"Do you have any other powers, or can you just control things?" Marty asked.

He grinned. "If you mean, am I an all-around superman, no. Dad wasn't either. I do have a scattering of other psi talents, though, but nothing as well-developed as my telekinesis. I'm still working on them."

Tommy came in from school just then. "Could you teach him how to use his mind that way, or do you have to be born with it?" I said.

He smiled again. "No, you don't have to be born with it. Everyone could do it if they started training themselves young enough to use their minds to the fullest extent. All through history certain people have had strange powers. The trouble was, they were thought to be freaks instead of the better developed humans they actually were. Even now, we're only on the threshold of learning the full power of the mind." He turned to Tommy. "Would you like to learn how to do things, Tommy?"

"Sure. Like what?"

He glanced at Marty and me. "Like making the world a better place to live."

Two weeks later, at a meeting of the town council, I wasn't too worried about getting the proposal accepted. We might have some trouble with Atherson, but I figured between the two of us we could handle him. When the new business came up, I stood up and led Tommy to the front of the hall. There were a few whispers as we went, as children under fifteen aren't allowed in the hall during a council meeting.

"Tommy has something to say to you which, I think, will interest everyone here. Go on, son."

Seconds afterwards, we all heard, a clear "Hello," but not with our ears; the word came from inside our heads.

Someone said: "The kid's a telepath," and the silence was broken.

Everybody was talking at the same time.

"I suppose you think it's an honor to have one of them damn things for your son," Atherson yelled. "I'm glad you're the one who got stuck, and not me."

"Tommy was not born a telepath, John," I told him. "He has been deliberately trained to make use of the latent power in his brain. And I don't think I'm 'stuck' either. We all know we've been slowly slipping into retrogression ever since '63. None of us like it, but there isn't anything we can do to halt it—yet. We don't want our children, or their children, to keep slipping backwards. If we don't stop it in our lifetime, we may not be able to stop it at all.

"As I see it, the best chance we have to at least achieve a status quo is to accept the aid those among us with psi talents are willing to give. After all, it's their world, too. With their help, we may be able to build a better civilization, one without the socio-political diseases that led to the war.

"The young man who has been staying at my house for the past three weeks taught Tommy to do what he just did. He says he thinks he can do it with any child under ten years old, and is even willing to try it with some teen-agers. Of course, Tommy's training has just begun. He will keep on learning for years.

"Here's my idea. If some of the children get a grounding in how to develop their dormant brain power, by the time they're twenty, they'll be able to mold a new society, one geared to the present culture instead of the past traditions. How about it?"

I waited. For a minute there was silence. Finally one of the older men stood up. "Is he sure he can do it?"

"All we know is it worked with Tommy," I replied.

"I don't like it; it's unnatural," Atherson said.

"No one asked you to like it," someone said.

Another called: "Do you think three world wars in fifty years is