"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator. You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off, away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has been going on for three weeks?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with. I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be sure of it. If Tommy's in the trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book, and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled. Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the International Psionics Conference: