He said things that bared his mind as surely as if we had read him. It wasn't a pretty mind, either. It made us sick physically and the impulses that did come through were deep and angry, giving us a terrific headache and making it hard to concentrate. Later we followed him but still couldn't read him for the anger flashes blotted out his thought stream thoroughly.
To him, what we were doing just couldn't happen in good old 1983. We were dealing in the black arts and he told us as much, refusing to listen to reason in any shape. The fact that everyone has these capabilities latent was altogether lost on him. Our licenses, diplomas and degrees meant less than nothing and the longer he went on the more rabid he got, frothing obscenely about such things as tampering with forces better left alone and man thinking with his brains instead of letting the Prince of Darkness do it for him. Had it not been so serious it would have been almost slapstick. Instead he was tragic.
When he got to the part about us eventually filling the minds of children with our loathsome disease he ran out of expletives and stormed out of the office in a cloud of anger and fright, muttering that we hadn't heard the last of him.
Lucy, of course, was heartsick. We didn't have to tell her what the meeting had meant. Nor did we tell her what else we'd ESPed in Thurlow's wallet. She found that out during the rather abortive lesson we tried to give her for she read as we interrupted it (that shows how much off beam we were because we just don't do that) to take a phone call from Casey down at the sheriff's office. Our visitor, Thurlow, was District Judge Thurlow of District Two, a very high man on the law enforcement pole.
Casey was good. He'd listened in while Thurlow was complaining to the sheriff and apparently heard the sheriff read the judge off politely but nonetheless firmly, telling him first how valuable we were to the force when it came to interrogating hard-to-crack suspects and as long as we hadn't committed murder or rape or passed any bum checks there was nothing to be done. Especially since the judge His Honor was out of his district! Fortunately we were in District One over which our mutual friend, Judge Kimball, presides.
Incidentally, Kimball was still under doctor's care at the time due to his latest heart attack. He was getting along quite well but he was old and his days on the bench were pretty well numbered. Casey thought that District One might conceivably have to appoint a new judge to hold them over until election due to the fall court calendar. As it turned out that didn't happen.
Br-r-r! Princess, don't ever let anyone tell you that swamp water can't get cold in summertime. We've got the shakes pretty bad both from our ordeal and from chill. Getting uncomfortably hungry, too. That's what comes of letting an inferior enemy panic you. We certainly haven't acted as though we had better sense. It's just another of those imponderables to chalk up for study.
After Casey's call the air seemed to be cleared and under that driving compulsion which has never left us we went on about the business of trying to succeed with nature since she had succeeded so well with us. The study of the deep processes of the mind eclipsed the next two days and only the terrible jangle of that outmoded telephone brought us to the surface again. It's too bad that we had to converse orally with the great masses of the untrained. It's so slow and they could learn so easily.
It was Casey again, telling us we were needed down at the station. He was apparently calling us on blind orders, for he couldn't tell us what was up. Figuring that we had another prisoner to crack we closed classes and drove down. The sheriff seemed mystified, too, and just slightly troubled. We could read that much off the surface of his mind, but he was upset enough to make the rest of his thoughts a meaningless jumble of impulses. All he knew was that we were wanted in the judge's chambers.
You guessed it, Honey. It was Judge Thurlow filling in for Kimball on an emergency hearing and he figured it was his duty to mankind to give us a little talking to while he was there. After all, the good of the community was his concern now, and he chose to interpret that as the opportunity to place his narrow little views on record. Trainor, the sheriff's deputy faithful only to the judge, because of a favor granted while he served in Thurlow's district, was very busy signing his name to something when we walked into the chambers. It gave us a peculiar feeling to see Thurlow sitting at Kimball's desk. It bore out our theory about a room taking on the personality of its occupant. This room was no longer warm and friendly.