Although she had never really been close to me--in fact, I had never so much as kissed her--I felt lonelier now, without even the hope of her, than I ever had before. I began to take my long walks in the park again, brooding over the power that might have been mine, if only I hadn't been such a damn fool as to give freely without asking anything in return. During the war, I could have got anything I wanted in exchange for what I'd done, or, rather, for what I could do, but I'd been too busy healing. Now it was too late for asking. Nature, being all I had left, became closer to me than ever before. And one morning, after a violent storm the night before, I mourned over the fallen trees and smashed flowers as I had never mourned over fallen and smashed men--first, because I hadn't cared, and then because I had known I could help. Come to think of it, how did I know it was only people I could help? "Mother," I said eagerly when I came home that evening, "I can heal other things besides people! Trees and shrubs and--" "That's nice, dear. Perhaps we can get you a job with the Park Department if you're tired of sitting home, and in the meantime you'd better comb those leaves out of your hair. Sylvia, did you call that techno?" "Yes, Mother," Sylvia said gloomily. Her guy still hadn't called. Knowing now how she must feel, I could feel sorry for her. "It said it'll be over as soon as it can, but that it might take days." "We'll have to eat synthetics for dinner if that stove isn't fixed soon," my mother said fretfully, and went off into the kitchen to mess around with the machinery and thus make certain the techno had a real hard job on its hands when it finally did show up. Oh, the devil with it, I thought. No use hoping to interest the family in any extension of my gift that had no practical value except for nature lovers. I might as well seize such meager chances as were still open to me. I wasn't going to be an idealistic idiot any longer. "Sylvie," I said to my sister, "I've changed my mind about that testimonial." She looked blankly at me out of her reverie. "What testimonial?" "The--you know, the Panacetic Pills." She laughed and patted me on the shoulder, not unkindly, because she could probably feel a sympathy in me now that she never could before. "Too late for that, honey. Your name wouldn't mean a thing any more." So many of them owed their lives to me--and yet they had forgotten me. Tim looked at me. "Be careful, Kev," he said anxiously. "Careful of what?" "I don't know exactly." He ran his hand through his hair. "But be careful, won't you?" Just at that moment, an easy chair floated in from the next room, banged into me, swerved, and crashed into a table. Danny, who had been thinking of going into interior decoration as a sideline to his business, had been making the furniture leap without looking first. * * * * *