Nightmare journey

with a single-mindedness that prompted Ober Iswan to comment, in private, that never had the Committee on Leadership exhibited such foresight as in the selection of Merka Shanly. When the holy Iswan made this observation to other members of the committee, they only smiled and nodded polite agreement. Iswan took their taciturn reactions to imply that they were more modest men than he had once thought. He never seemed to notice that his comrades had received special governmental considerations ever since the election of the new General-almost as if they were being repaid for some special service to the enclave.
    In her ninth week, having read preliminary reports from the research committee, Merka Shanly instituted the first working farm within the boundaries of the enclave. Soil tenders were conscripted, crops were planted, and experiments in self-reliance were begun.
    In her tenth week, when she should have been glorious beneath her wreath of accomplishments, Merka Shanly was in the lowest emotional ebb of her entire life. Two things conspired to bring about this gloom: her own developing esp power, which labeled her as an outcast but which she could not accept, being so dedicated to Lady Nature and so certain that her plans would benefit her kind; and her need for a man. The first she had learned to accept, and she had become adept at concealing her telepathic radiations. But the second was a greater problem. She was one of those people who needed physical contact, sexual experience, as much as water and food. Her self-denial, generated by her fear that a lover would learn of her extrasensory perception, had led to a frustration she could not much longer bear.
    In the middle of her eleventh week in the august post of commander in chief of Preakness Bay she convened the Committee on Fruitfulness, of which she was chairwoman. The last meeting had been two months earlier, and much business had accumulated. At the end of the session, as the committee members were rising to leave, she ordered them seated and presented her own petition for a mate. She had one man in mind, Kolpei Zenentha, by whom she had once borne a child and who was the best lover she had ever had. He was currently engaged in attempted offspring generation with a woman named Kyla Daggeron, and the preemption of an already established sexual relationship was unheard of. Merka Shanly suggested that this was another rule that must be changed.
    It was.
    At the end of the eleventh week Kolpei Zenentha, a tall, slim, dark-haired man in his early thirties, moved into the Military Suite.
    That first night Merka Shanly wore him out, then issued him a hypodermic of a virility drug and wore him out again. He slept all through the next day, like a child who had played too hard.
    In her twelfth week of office Merka Shanly created another research committee and assigned it the task of establishing a large library of prewar books and tapes. By radio the committee could learn what titles other enclaves possessed and arrange for the copying of what volumes Preakness Bay lacked. The transportation of these books from one enclave to the other would entail arduous journeys for conscripted soldiers, but the establishment of a good reference library was essential to the rebuilding of a human Golden Age.
    In the thirteenth week she rested.
    In the fourteenth week as she was caught up in orgasmic delight, playing rider to Kolpei Zenentha's mouth, she forgot herself, and let her mind reach out for his. She touched him telepathically, transmitted her joy to him without words…
    And was found out.
    32
    THE five espers stood at the top of the hill, with the cold wind in their faces, and they watched the horses grazing and gamboling below. A good hundred of the dark brown, shaggy beasts stood on the flat plain at the base of the icy hills, as yet not cognizant of the espers. If the wind changed they would know danger was near, and they would run. That was the last thing any of the five on the hill wanted. They had obtained food within the last few days, but this success was offset by the gradual realization- obtained through a close study of Tedesco's third map and a comparison of that paper with the previous maps-of how far they had to travel until they reached the landmark known as Deathpit. This journey was to be three times longer than that from the glass craters to the Glacier of Light; without mounts they could expect to spend six months walking.
    Melopina huddled against