I looked at the snake. "No," I agreed. "He looks like they roped him somewhere in West Virginia a few months ago, put shoes on him, and brought him to town." "Right," Fred snapped. "Let the mob get a look at him. The contrast of you dragging him along by the ear and him stumbling along behind you is the sort of thing the public laps up. It'll put you right in the driver's seat." "I thought Congress had already done that," I reminded him coldly. No bureaucrat could want powers more absolute than mine. "Unfortunately," I growled at him. "I gave orders that no snakes were to be brought into this building without my prior consent. This ineffective-looking hill-billy has possibly read a thousand minds since you dragged him in here. How much of what he has picked up around here this morning will be peeped by some Russian telepath before you get him out of town?" "Relax," Fred scoffed. "He's a short-range punk." That was too much. "I'll do my own thinking, Fred," I said. "From now on, you follow orders." * * * * * I turned on the telepath. "Before I sentence you," I said. "What have you got to say?" "I never hurt nothin'," he grumbled. They're all alike, so help me. "You are a telepath?" I asked him. "Shoah." "Prove it," I demanded, opening a chink in my mind. His long red face twisted in a crooked grin, showing poorly-cared-for teeth scattered here and there in his gums. "Yo' think I never had no orthodonture, whatever _thet_ is," he said. I shut my mind like a clam. If there's anything I detest, it's the ghastly creeping of a telepath into my own thoughts. "Hello, Pete!" he exclaimed. "Yo' done shet yo' mind!" He shook his head. "Ain't never seen a body could do _thet_!" I'll bet he hadn't. There are only a few of us who can keep telepaths out of our thoughts. It takes a world of practice. Well, I'd had that. "Can you do that?" I asked the snake. He shook his head. "No, suh," he admitted. "So here you are," I said, more heatedly. "Wandering around in a town full of _secrets_--Washington, the capital of your country, where the military, the diplomatic people, the security people, all of them have locked in their heads the things that keep us one step ahead of the Russians. Isn't that true?" "I reckon. But--" "But nothing," I snapped, getting sore about it for the thousandth time. "And you, you miserable snake, you _can't_ keep your thoughts from being read by another telepath. No telepath can. Your mind is open _two_ ways--to let thoughts in but, damn it, equally to leak out anything you know." I smiled coldly at him. "Can you get my thoughts now?" The telepath shook his head. "Still got yo' mind closed," he said. He sounded bitter about it.