“Equally important—you can’t lie about a belief to an empathetic. Would you like to see how I feel about this? ‘See’ is a bad word—there is no vocabulary yet for this kind of thing. Better, would you join me in my feelings? Sense my attitudes, memories and emotions just as I do?”

Brion tried to protest, but he was too late. The doors of his senses were pushed wide and he was overwhelmed.

“Dis…” Ihjel said aloud. “Seven million people… hydrogen bombs… Brion Brandd.” These were just key words, landmarks of association. With each one Brion felt the rushing wave of the other man’s emotions.

There could be no lies here—Ihjel was right in that. This was the raw stuff that feelings are made of, the basic reactions to the things and symbols of memory.

DIS… DIS… DIS… it was a word… it was a planet and the word thundered like a drum… a drum the sound of its thunder surrounded and was a wasteland… a planet of death… a planet where living was dying and dying was very better than living… wasteland of sands… dirty beneath… and sands and sands and consideration… sands that burned… planet burned… will burn forever… the people of this planet so crude dirty miserable barbaric sub-human inhuman less-than-human but…

they

were

going to be

DEAD

and DEAD they would be seven million blackened corpses that would blacken your dreams… all dreams forever because those HYDROGEN BOMBS were waiting to kill them unless… unless… unless… you Ihjel stopped it… you Ihjel (DEATH) you (DEATH) you (DEATH) alone couldn’t do it you (DEATH)… must have…

BRION BRANDD… wet-behind-the-ears-raw-untrained-Brion-Brandd-to help-you… he was the only one in the galaxy who could finish the job…