Then His Honor licked his chops and called my name.
He speared me with an icicle-eye and asked sarcastically: "Well, Mr. Cornell, with what form of sophistry are you going to explain your recent violations?"
I blinked.
He aimed a cold glance at the bailiff, who arose and read off the charges against me in a deep, hollow intonation.
"Speak up!" he snapped. "Are you guilty or not guilty?"
"Guilty," I admitted.
He beamed a sort of self-righteous evil. It was easy to see that never in his tenure of office had he ever encountered a criminal as hardened and as vicious as I. Nor one who admitted to his turpitude so blandly. I felt it coming, and it made me itch, and I knew that if I tried to scratch His Honor would take the act as a personal affront. I fought down the crazy desire to scratch everything I could reach and it was hard; about the time His Honor added a charge of endangering human life on the highway to the rest of my assorted crimes, the itch had localized into the ring finger of my left hand. That I could scratch by rubbing it against the seam of my trousers.
Then His Honor went on, delivering Lecture Number Seven on Crime, Delinquency, and Grand Larceny. I was going to be an example, he vowed. I was assumed to be esper since no normal—that's the word he used, which indicated that the old bird was a blank and hated everybody who wasn't—human being would be able to drive as though he had eyes mounted a half mile in front of him. Not that my useless life was in danger, or that I was actually not-in-control of my car, but that my actions made for panic among normal—again he used it!—people who were not blessed with either telepathy or perception by a mere accident of birth. The last one proved it; it was not an accident of birth so much as it was proper training, to my way of thinking. Magistrate Hollister hated psi-trained people and was out to make examples of them.
He polished off his lecture by pronouncing sentence: "—and the Law provides punishment by a fine not to exceed one thousand dollars, or a sentence of ninety days in jail—or both." He rolled the latter off as though he relished the sound of the words.
I waited impatiently. The itch on my finger increased; I flung a fast dig at it but there was nothing there but Sophomore's Syndrome. Good old nervous association. It was the finger that little Snoodles, the three-month baby supergirl had munched to a faretheewell. Darned good thing the kid didn't have teeth! But I was old Steve, the immune, the carrier, the—