Time Thieves

made you better than you had been before the accident.”
        
        Pete said, “What about that house where it was necessary for you to put everyone to sleep, where you had to break down two doors?”
        
        “Regrettable. But we simply erased the proper memories from their minds. We had learned enough from you to manage that without complications, though we didn't like tampering more than we had to. The doors, of course, were a different matter altogether. We knew they had to be perfectly rebuilt. It required four times as long as reconstruction of their memories did.”
        
        “And now what?”
        
        “We would like to try another operation on your brain. We have been doing much analysis in the last few days; we feel we know where we went wrong, and we don't think we'll do anything wrong this time.”
        
        “Why operate?”
        
        “That should be obvious.”
        
        “It isn't.”
        
        “But it is. You know what I mean. You are only playing games with me now.”
        
        “Tell me anyway.”
        
        “We will restore you to the human being you were before the accident, without deficiencies.”
        
        “And without psionic abilities, either.”
        
        “Yes.”
        
        “I don't like that idea.”
        
        “You have no choice, after all. There are four of us. We will make the change with or without your cooperation.”
        
        He decided to try a more diplomatic tact. If argument would not get him what he wanted, perhaps begging would. For this prize, he did not mind humbling himself.
        
        “But I can cope with the telepathic talent I have. It will enrich my life. It's no detriment to me or mine. I can't see why I shouldn't be permitted it. You owe me something for all this trouble, you know.”
        
        “We owe you life. And we will give it to you. Beyond that, we cannot be expected to provide anything.”
        
        “Let me see you.”
        
        In the void, the eyeless face appeared.
        
        “A projection? You aren't really here, are you?”
        
        “You are seeing me on a viewscreen. On several view-screens.”
        
        Hands appeared as well, eight-fingered and still.
        
        “Look, what harm will it do to let me keep my abilities?”
        
        “You will become a loner, a man without friends, too knowing and eventually unhappy with your lot.”
        
        “Let me struggle with that,” he said.
        
        “We choose not to.”
        
        “There's more. Tell me.”
        
        “You have the ability to unlock telepathic talents in others of your kind. Eventually, you'll learn how to use it.”
        
        “What's wrong with that? I won't use it against people. You know me well enough to know I won't try to make a fortune or to persuade anyone to do what they don't want to do.”
        
        “You are an honest and gentle member of your species,” the alien acknowledged.
        
        “Well, then?”
        
        “But that isn't what concerns us, Mr. Mullion. If you began to open the minds of others, the process would explode geometrically, each new telepath liberating the minds of friends and acquaintances, each of those friends liberating the minds of their friends.”
        
        “It couldn't hurt our race.”
        
        “No, but maybe it could hurt others. Each race must evolve, slowly, into telepathy. At that point, as all men's minds are opened, the state of society changes. Peace flowers, for war is impossible, subterfuge without hope. The race stops bickering and begins, slowly, to build a racial unity that lets it grow faster than it ever has before. A hundred years after worldwide telepathic liberation, your people would have starships. And, because they haven't developed their telepathic abilities naturally, they would be like barbarians among other civilized creatures who frequent the starways.”
        
        “We're too much like animals to be allowed to play with the big boys,” Pete said.
        
        “We do not wish to insult. We are merely stating a truth.”
        
        “Naturally.”
        
        “Bitterness is unnecessary.”
        
        “Excuse me,” he said, bitterly.
        
        “I am sorry you feel