Martin Black was tired. His consciousness had almost drifted off to home again, back to that old mansion on the Hudson River which Standskill had sold as directed under Black's mother's will. The old house in which he was born, where he had first found that he could sit in his room and send his consciousness questing down the hall to meet his father when he came home, pry into what his father had brought for him and surprise his parents later by invariably guessing correctly.
Sometimes now he wished that he hadn't "guessed" correctly so often in those days. Then his uncle Ralph wouldn't have mentioned his unusual ability to the Business Ethics Bureau and the psis wouldn't have investigated him. Once they found that he had such mental qualifications he had been sent to the Service Psi School, a virtual prison despite his family's social status.
Anger suddenly choked him at the thought of what his uncle Ralph had brought upon him. The psi training had been so rigid, so harsh at times.
Well, of course they have to be sure that psis develop into useful members of society. But couldn't they treat you more normally, more humanly?
Now, perhaps he'd show them, repay them for the cruel years of a lonely, bitter youth. He hadn't taken the Oath yet, and if he were clever enough he'd never have to! The real estate lawyer in Los Angeles with whom Lawrence was making a deal had evaded service somehow, apparently. So it was possible.
He had learned long ago that money wouldn't buy him out of service. He'd tried also to purchase certain liberties at school. Some of the less scrupulous teachers had taken his allowance, but only one of them had ever given him anything in return. And of course he couldn't protest when he had violated Ethics to give the bribes. In any event, no one would take the word of an untrained psi over the word of a stable, normal human being.
During the stabilization course one professor had permitted him to skip some classes. Now he wished that he hadn't missed them; he probably wouldn't have this semantic instability to contend with now. Oh, well....
He was tired. He'd spent the previous night, or most of it, worrying about the miserable state of his finances. He needed money, a lot of money. But he wouldn't, of course, admit that to Lawrence.
Lawrence would have understood why he needed money—even more than the hundred thousand he had offered. But then Lawrence might mistrust his motives in accepting the proposal so readily if he knew.
A year before Black had invested too much of his own money in a "sure thing" upon the advice of a fellow psi trainee who, he subsequently and sadly found out, had economic instability. Semantic instability was bad enough!