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of the Indian subcontinent, mitigated only by the rapid mobilization of hundreds of kinetics when the precog had come in.
    Kayan, you’ve had far more experience with that sort of thing than anyone needs,
Baden said with unexpected humility.
Advise us and we will comply.
    You always do! We’ll have to strip all nonessential industrial firms and reduce Port Authority staff to a dangerous minimum. But we shall be very short of those we most need.
    Weather permitting!
was Hongkong Jimmy’s droll remark.
When are we going to find a weatherman?
    If we weather this one,
Miklos said,
we can all apply!
    The mindlink was dissolved, and despite the massive task ahead, the Center directors were much heartened by the contact. When Rhyssa informed Gordie Havers of the results, he gave a loud mental cheer for solidarity.
    There’re going to be some mighty unhappy kinetics!
she told him.
Every Center is going to be stripped, and I’m steeling myself to endure the slings and arrows of outraged businesses.
    Machinery predated kinetics, and men used their muscles before that. Let ’em go back to traditional ways. It’ll make ’em appreciate us more than ever.
Gordie imaged an archaic block and tackle to move matériel usually hoisted by a kinetic.
Who’s handling the publicity?
    We’re going to have to be careful about that—don’t want Barchenka to say we’re interfering with her ongoing employment drive.
    The man I have in mind is not a valid Talent, but he’s a brilliant publicist, Rhyssa. Let me get Dave Lehardt to wave the flag for us.
    Dave Lehardt?
    He put our honored president in the White House.
    And he’s
not
Talented? That’s unfair! That campaign was sheer genius!
    We have to allow the Mutes a few prerogatives, you know. Shall I approach him on this delicate matter?
    Please do. I’ll give him all the help I can.
    By the by, did you realize that most of what you do is totally illegal in Scotland, which still has antiwitchcraft laws on the books?
    Spare me!
    I had, and look what it got us. I’d been working up to the Russkis by way of the British Isles and Scandinavia. Sorry about that! You never know where to start in nullifying age-old bigotry, do you!
    When Gordie had broken their mental link, Rhyssa spoke to Sascha.
    You got touched again?
he demanded.
    In the head, but not by my peeper.
She put in his mind all that had happened in the past half hour.
    He whistled in a descending scale.
We’re going to get a lot of flak from Commerce and Industry!
    They can’t have it both ways. They’re the group that gave Barchenka such punitive fines if she doesn’t deliver on time. That clause is just coming home to roost where they didn’t expect it. They’ll have to dust off their machinery and toughen up their muscles. We’ve made it far too easy for them.
    What if they
like
the old-fashioned ways and don’t want to rehire our people?
    Rhyssa snorted derisively.
Just consider how much money kinetics save industry every year in equipment and maintenance costs—the arguments we used to get them to take kinetics in the first place!
    Yeah, but how do we explain it to our kinetics?
    Rhyssa projected an image of her on her knees, tearing her hair out, pleading to amorphous faces, offering jewels and ingots of gold.
Enlistment has always been preferable to conscription. And then we can
insist
on shielding and short shifts. We can’t if she implements that blue law. We’re over a barrel, and every Talent will realize that!
    Vsevolod can’t help us there?
Sascha asked.
    He was appalled, apologetic, and all, but apopleptic that one of his nationals was doing this to us.
    Nothing mentioned about getting the law wiped off the books?
    Gordie’s working on it!
Rhyssa did not bother to lighten the grimness she felt.
     
    Dave Lehardt swung into Rhyssa’s tower office at the Henner estate within an hour of the Talents’ reluctant acceptance of the inevitable.
    “My God, do you have wings?” Rhyssa commented as the