Dr. Averill N. Charlese

President

Mind Potential Institute Houston, Texas

He had come down to Mexico City, where the America Games were now being held, to prove his theory. Not that it really needed proving, because it was a fact. Fact. People producing Theta waves could perform what appeared to be incredible feats.

Remo suddenly saw a small chart cover his breakfast of white rice and water. There, in blue and red and green and yellow, was an ascending "rainbow!" Yellow, at the top, was the conscious level of the mind, and darkest blue was the deep Theta state.

Remo looked around for a waiter at the El Conquistador, a large modern hotel built like a simulated Aztec temple, with waiters in Aztec-type print smocks, surrounded by very un-Aztec Muzak.

"If I'm bothering you, let me know," said Dr. Charlese, a pudgy man in his mid-thirties, with a crown of brownish gold hair gleaming like a helmet fashioned by hot comb and lacquer.

"You're bothering me," said Remo, who folded the chart and put it in Charlese's gold plaid jacket.

"Good. Honesty is the basis for a good relationship."

Remo chewed a few kernels of rice until they were liquid, then he drank it into his stomach. He eyed a roast beef, sliced thick and fatty and red, being served at a neighboring table. It had been a long time since he had had a piece of meat, and his memory hungered for it. Not his body, which now dictated what he would eat. He remembered that the roast beef used to be good. But that was a long time ago.

"I knew yesterday you were something special," said Dr. Charlese.

Remo tried to remember an incident the day before that might have inflicted this lacquer-headed sparkler of positive thought on him.