me, what am I going todo tomorrow morning?"
She got up and started to pace the room, sniffling. "Why would you dothat?" she said at length. "You are going to the bank, first thing.You've got all that money. It's thousand dollar bills! And you'rewriting on them." She frowned at me, sniffling again. "Do I _really_ seeit?" she asked. "Is that right?"
"I'll make it right," I said. "Come on," I told her. "If we're going tostay up all night, we need fuel. How long since you've tackled atwenty-ounce sirloin?"
* * * * *
The Lodge has unmentioned influence. No, Psi powers aren't a secretgovernment. But what high official can afford to be at odds with us?They know where the Lodge stands. A little while on the visor as theeast pinked up got me what I wanted. Because of the three-hour timedifference, the Washington brass got me _carte blanche_ before bankinghours at the Tahoe bank that supplied the Sky Hi Club with its cash.
Working with the cashier, who hadn't even taken time to shave aftergetting his orders from the Federal Reserve Bank, I went over theirstock of thousand dollar bills, as Pheola had PC'd I would, and markeddown the edges of the stacks with grease pencil. Mostly I did it to makemy grip firmer. When the time came, I could make that money jump.
Pheola let me get her a cocktail dress in one of the women's shops. Theright dress helped, but more steaks would have helped even more. I'llbet I put five pounds on her that day. She was one hungry 'cropper.Hungry and sniffly.
We idled away the afternoon and waited until nearly midnight to go backto the Sky Hi Club. Action is about at its peak then, and if thecross-roader had been tipping dice again, as they suspected, they wouldhave had time to notice which table wasn't making its vigorish.
Plain enough where they were having trouble. Fowler Smythe was scowlingthrough his glasses behind a table with Barney, the dealer I'd hit withthe Blackout. Their faces were sweating in the dry desert air. The tablewas being taken.
"Now watch it, Pheola," I said, as we squeezed into the crowd, oppositethe dealers. "Almost anything can happen. I want to know the instant youget a feeling. You understand?" She nodded and wiped at her drippy nosewith a clean handkerchief. I'd gotten her a dozen.
There was the same old racket. The burnt out voice of a chanteuse,coming over the PA system from the dining room, tried to remember thesultry insouciance with which it had sung "Eadie was a Lady" in itsyouth. Waiters in dude-ranch getups swivel-hipped from table to tablelike wraithes through the mob of gamblers, trays of free drinks in theirhands. This time Pheola didn't have the same greedy grab for the _horsd'oeuvres_. She'd wrapped herself around a couple pounds ofhigh-quality protein before we had come to the casino.
The gamblers were urging the dice with the same old calls, and thestick-men were chanting: "Coming out!" "Five's the point!" "And _seven_!The dice pass!" and all the rest. The ivories had a way to go beforethey reached us. I gave Pheola a stack of ten-buck chips and let herbet, without making any effort to tip the dice. She still had it. Shemoved the chips back and forth from "Pass" to "Don't Pass" and won atevery roll. I could see Fowler Smythe begin to scowl as she let herwinnings ride, building up a real stack.
* * * * *
Without warning she dragged down her winnings and leaned close to me,sniffling. "You'll get all wet!"
I looked around, seeing a waiter near me. He had just served drinks tothe rear, half of the table, to the gamblers nearest the dealers. Histray was still half-full. This was the moment. It was a generalized sortof lift, the kind of thing that qualifies a TK for the Thirty-thirddegree. I heaved at the thousand-dollar bills I had had marked in themorning, without the faintest idea of where they were. The tray lurchedin the waiter's hand, throwing glasses to the floor. Most of themshattered when they struck the real wood planks, splashing whisky andmix on our legs.
I looked across the table and grinned at Fowler Smythe. His scowl had anawful lot of forehead to work on. "What the devil!" I could read hislips say over the racket. But Barney, the stick-man who'd felt myBlackout, caught on a lot quicker.
I was about to freeze him with a clamp on his thyroid. It's just aseffective as wrapping your fingers around the throat. But Pheola upsetthe apple cart.
She grabbed my right arm, so newly powerful. "No, Billy Joe!" she cried."I _don't_ want to die!"
"Who's dying?" I snapped.
"He's shooting me!" she gasped.
Shoot? With what? I had one terrified moment--what to lift? What wasaimed at her? At the last possible moment I saw it. His crap-stick was ahollow tube, and he was raising it toward _me_, not toward Pheola. I'dheard of things like that--a gas-powered dart gun. Silent, and shootinga tiny needle with a nerve poison in grooves cut in its tip.
I lifted, but half in panic. Fowler Smythe squeezed his trigger and thetiny dart leaped unseen across the crap layout. My lift had been wayoff--it should have thrown the stick toward the ceiling, where no onewould have been hurt. Instead it merely twitched the crap-stick, and thedart struck Pheola in the left hand. She screeched a little and grabbedat the needle-prick with her fingernails.
You never know how much power there is in Psi until you use it withoutrestraint. I threw the crowd back away from us with a lift that nearlyblacked me out, and had Pheola on the wet boards of the floor beforeshe could blink. She had only seconds to live unless I blocked allcirculation to and from her arm. I found the spots in her armpit andlifted the veins and arteries into a complete block.
A whiff of garlic told me that Simonetti had reached the table. He'dbeen watching on the TV monitor, of course. He knelt down beside us.
"A doctor, quick," I said. "She's been pinked with nerve poison."
"She's gone, then," he said huskily. "Who done it?"
"Fowler Smythe," I said bitterly. "A snake within the Lodge. You mighttry to stop him. But your partner, Rose, is the real crook. Get the doc,then tie up Rose."
"She's gone," he insisted. "Nerve poison kills right now."
"He's right, Billy Joe," Pheola said softly. "I'm going numb all over."
"What did I tell you?" Simonetti husked at me. I had enough left to hithim sharply over the temples with a lift. "A doctor. With antidote," Isnapped. He trotted away.
"Darlin' Billy!" she said, and her heart stopped. She was dead. I pickedher up in my arms and carried her to the same sawdust-strewn privatedining room where I'd given Barney the Blackout.
I had to split the lift. The tourniquet was an absolute necessity, ormore of the nerve poison would enter her system. But her heart_couldn't_ stop. The brain can only stand a few seconds of that. Ihadn't let it miss three beats. Even as I carried her from the casino, Ilifted the main coronary muscle and started a ragged pumping, maybeforty beats a minute. Once in the smaller room I began artificialrespiration with my mouth.
The sawbones was there in three minutes. I guided the tip of hishypodermic into a vein in her right arm, the one that still had bloodcoursing through it. He depressed the piston, pumping the antidote intoher bloodstream. Little by little I let up on the clamp on her woundedleft arm, dribbling the poisoned blood into her system, so that theantidote could react with it gradually. She stayed unconscious.
Then I felt it. Her heart muscle tugged back at my lift. It wasstruggling to beat on its own. I matched my lifts to its raggedimpulses, feeling it steady to a normal seventy-two as the antidote tookeffect.
Her eyes opened at last, and we stopped respiration. "Billy Joe!" shesmiled. She was back from the dead.
* * * * *
In an hour we had returned to the motel. She was as good as new, butbadly shaken.
"I still don't know what happened," she said.
I shrugged. "Smoke screen, Pheola. Every time there's a run of luck on acrap table, somebody yells 'TK!' And I suppose there's a number of TK'swho aren't in the Lodge, and who figure to make a killing here and akilling there by tipping the dice. But any decent TK, even a FowlerSmythe, can spot them.
"There was T
K in this, but not tipping dice. Smythe is a skunk. He's noTwenty-fifth, or he wouldn't have any need to go crooked. He saw achance to make a killing. He suggested it to Rose, who fell for it andwent along. Rose decided to steal Simonetti's half of the business fromhis partner with Smythe's help. It was no more complicated thansmuggling thousand dollar bills off the table in false bottoms of traysthat drinks were being served on. Smythe was using TK to lift the billsinto those false bottoms, well screened by the trays from the TVmonitors. Barney was in on it, of course. And after the joint had lostenough
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