"Look!" Kial cried excitedly. "Lovers! Honeymooners! I've read about such things! Isn't it disgusting?"
"Oh, I don't know," Broyk said, a little wistfully. "I sometimes think it was a mistake for Center to do away with sex. It must have been interesting."
"Atavist!" Kial snapped in horror.
Had his people's emotional make-up provided for blushing, Kial would undoubtedly have turned beet-red. Broyk's words had caused him acute embarrassment.
As he sat reflecting upon his strange companion, he suddenly began to feel a sensation he had often heard about but never before had experienced. Terror and dismay filled him as he sought to throw off the probing finger that was penetrating his mind.
He looked at Broyk. There was the faintest notion of a smile on the other's face as he said: "Yes, Kial—I am a Telepath."
Kial's mind reeled. He felt himself on the brink of some gigantic abyss and then, as suddenly as it had come, the searching sensation faded away.
"Since you are unable to enter my mind," Broyk said calmly, "it's only fair that I tell you about myself. You were right—I'm an atavist. Even in period 8000, such things can happen. Always such creatures are destroyed after their first psychotests, but my case was different. The Controller who bred me was only a dabbler in such things. I was a failure, but he took a fancy to me. I was allowed to mature secretly—few people knew of my existence. When I reached my majority my presence became dangerous and I was sent back into time to try and find the proper place for myself. And I think I've found it—here!"
Kial was a very amazed young man. "But such a barbarous age," he complained. "Sex and atom bombs and everything ..."