"Good afternoon, Citizen Mother."
He felt her triumph and her pleasure with herself.
His fellow humans often made him gawk in wonder. Some people say we're psychic cripples, he thought. And maybe we are. But we do our work and we enjoy ourselves. And we do dangerous things like putting bases on Venus and falling in love. Surrounded by death and danger, crippled though we are, we go on.
He swelled with feeling. People smiled and glanced at each other or hid shyly from the organ chords of his emotion.
An old man stepped in front of him.
"Monster! Freak!"
He was thin and perfectly dressed. Sordman stopped. God of Infinite Compassion, this is my brother....
"They ought to lock you up," the man said. "They ought to keep you away from decent people. Get out of my head! Leave me alone!"
People stared at them. A small crowd gathered. Lee appeared in the door of the coffee house.
"It's all right," Sordman told the people. "It's all right." He started to go on.