"You've got status," Lee said. "Use it. You're dealing with the kind of people it impresses." * * * * * The hotel stood three hundred stories tall. Surrounded by a five-mile-square park, connected to the major coastal cities by high speed vacuum tubes, the building was a small town. Eighty-five thousand people lived within its walls. Sordman rode an empty elevator. Through the glass sides he studied the deserted halls and shops. They were frightened here. Murder had been done. A Talent had destroyed two men. _Lord, protect us from the malice of a witch._ The eighty-first was a commercial floor. He got off the vator and walked down the main corridor. A man watched him through the door of a bar. A girl in a blue kimono froze behind the counter of a pastry shop. He stopped before the doors of the beer hall. He dropped to his knees and prayed. Once the brave leader walked into a panicky group and it was enough to _look_ calm. Now he had to _be_ calm. It was not enough to square the shoulders, walk erect, speak in a confident tone. Sordman's true emotions radiated from him every moment. Those within range felt them as their own. He drove thoughts like knives into the deepest corners of his mind. He begged release from fear. He prayed his God to grant him love for the frightened men within. He stood erect and squared his shoulders. His bulb-shouldered morning coat was grey as dawn. He thought a well loved formula, a Buddhist prayer from the Book of Universal Worship. _All life is transitory. All people must suffer and die. Let us forgive one another._ He roared his name and titles at the door. "I am Talent Andrew Sordman, Fellow for Life of the Guggenheim Foundation, by Senate Act Protector of the People! By the laws of our country, I ask the right to enter." Silence. "I am Talent Andrew Sordman, Fellow--" "_Go away, witch!_" Without drugs and preparation, Sordman needed visual contact to sense emotions. But he didn't need Talent to sense the hatred in that voice. He pictured a rough block of stone. Using a basic skill, he kept the picture in his mind as he opened the door and planned his words. "I have taken no drugs and made no preparation. You have nothing to fear. I'm your Protector and I've come to talk." * * * * * The beer hall was large and gloomy. The butts and ashes of the night's smoking filled its trays. Fourteen men watched him come. Half a dozen had hunting rifles. Hunched over, weeping, a thin, dark-haired girl sat beneath an unshaded light. A shiver of anger crossed his brain. "Kill the witch!" a young man shouted. _Lord, grant me love...._ His eyes focused on the rifle bearers. One of them half-raised his gun. Then the butt clumped on the floor. "You're bewitched!" the young man said. "I told you not to let him in." "I've come to talk," Sordman said. "Who's the leader of your group?"