It was too good to last. Trainor's turn at afternoon shift came around and lasted the usual month which gave him plenty of opportunity to watch us like a hawk. He did. We were cautious but we couldn't know what he was watching for, because he didn't know either. He found out one afternoon. Visitors just don't come around and merely sit—staring at each other or the walls.
We learned another lesson from that: men with as much training as he had don't always consciously think things out with their surface minds. Their reactions became instinctive and as such, untraceable by the most adept telepath. We knew he was there to spy but that's about all.
The net result was a direct order from Thurlow cutting off not only all visitors, but as Trainor gleefully advised us, cancelling all accrued days off for good behavior. That's five days a month in this state and it was almost unbearable. The thorough injustice of the whole affair was beginning to gall mightily, getting under our rather thin skin in many places.
What seemed the final crushing blow was the news that filtered in to us from Judge Kimball's court reporter. He'd taken word to the sick man about our latest loving treatment by Thurlow and it angered Kimball enough to make him get out of bed—too soon. He died on the floor of his bedroom. So, not only do we lose a dear friend, but also any chance of his assistance. Thurlow would now sit for District One until election time. That put us entirely on our own resources.
After much deliberation, we decided to give in and go back to the university when our sentence was up and take advantage of its sheltering walls for our teaching. We would be absorbed into the faculty and soon all this unpleasantness would pass over.
How we passed the time until our release is unimportant to anyone but us. During the remaining months, we delved farther and farther into the mind and gained a much deeper insight into the workings of these gifts we had. Man could be so powerful and work so much for his own good—if he could only be made to realize the potential in his mind! He could even be happy.
The bright day came at last, and we walked out of our cell free to begin again. It was raining a gray rain outside, but to us the weather had never looked brighter. As we reached for the sheriff's phone to call the university, Trainor sidled up and laid a scrap of paper on the desk. A glance was enough to make us hang up on the uncompleted call.
It was another restraining order.
After that we tried to find work on the outside, but it was a sorry failure. The curse of being different is a mighty one indeed. No one seemed to care that we had feelings the same as others and that we could get just as hungry and thirsty without funds to buy.
Ahh! There it is again. Those words. Hunger and thirst. As if we needed a reminder. Donald is getting weaker in perception. He has always been the first to feel such things and we've never been able to trace the reason. We certainly have no—