She often found herself wishing that she had paid more attention to her classes in the lower civilizations so she could better understand the things she was seeing. She was in no hurry to bring this adventure to an end, so for several weeks she investigated male after male, looking for one with a high socio-kinetic rating and a low or average techno-kinetic rating.
It was about thirty days later that she made her decision. She had been talking to a young male biped in a bookstore when she realized that he would do at least as well as any she had come across so far. She found that his name was Adam Henessey and she proceeded to sound him out a little further.
"And literature, then," she asked, picking up a book from one of the tables, "wouldn't you say that great literature should be placed above science?"
"Yes," Adam agreed, "the material is emphasized too strongly at present. We must pay more attention to the spiritual." He adjusted his eyelenses. "I believe that that is one of the major troubles of civilization." He tapped the ashes from his cigarette and looked at her for confirmation.
"Hell, yes!" she agreed heartily. "We are concentrating on the means and forgetting the ends."
"We are concentrating on the transient," he echoed, "and forgetting the eternal."
This bit of conversation was enough to convince the somewhat satiated Orena. She cast a web of mental protection over the biped and set her mind to an OEI wavelength.
Obviously Xeluchli had already made his choice and set his mind to the HHW wavelength, for all the bipeds she could see except the protected Adam Henessey immediately fell to the ground and lay still. The effect was odd and uncheerful.
Now came one of the most interesting games she had played in her stay on the planet. She tried to match the biped's state of bewilderment and terror with one of her own and at the same time lead him to the top of the mountain. She could, of course, have transported him, protective web and all, to the mountaintop in a split second, but that would have seemed like cheating at the game. The web protecting Adam Henessey was invisible to his eyes and Orena continued to play the part of a fellow biped.
In his confused state, it was not difficult to lead Adam up the mountain by little suggestions or, often by merely taking the first step. She suggested that from the mountaintop they could see better what had happened and whether anyone else was alive. He even added the idea that they might get out of the area of contamination or whatever it was by climbing. "Heavy gases stay low," he said, assuming, apparently, that another war had been declared.