The Lost Perception by Daniel F. Galouye Page B

stumpy and coarse-faced, with a commensurate voice. Even in her thick-carpeted office she was reluctant to part with a brace of slender furs, wrapped several times around her neck and ludicrously accenting her stoutness. Her breath was acrid with stale gin whose stimulating effects had established her rigid grin as a permanent fixture.
    “Back for your money, eh?” she chuckled, glancing at Wellford.
    “I don’t appear to be screaming, do IT”
    “You will be when you read your receipt, dearie. Says ‘on the predicted date, give or take three days.’” She laughed raucously.
    Wellford was amused. “You don’t often miscalculate, do you?”
    “Oh, I’ve been known to miss before, I ’ave.”
    “You weren’t perhaps a Screamer yourself at one time?”
    “Me—a Screamer?” She snickered. “H’aint never screamed in my life, ducky. ’Less you’d count that night in Chelsea with that nice, dear boy with the wavy ’air. Only, ’e wasn’t no gentleman.”
    Then her face relaxed from its almost changeless grin. “All right, bunny. I was a Screamer. But I don’t talk about it. See?”
    She loosed a halting, snorting laugh, then stared soberly at Gregson. “Want a reading, pet? ’Ave one on the ’ouse: Let’s say if I was you I wouldn’t go counting on no turkey dinner. And on a farm with a blind bloke h’ain’t no place to be when the Screamie package is finally delivered.”
    Gregson started. Then he glanced suspiciously at Wellford. The gag, though evidently painstakingly prepared, had been a crude one. But he laughed it off. They’d pulled even cruder ones on each other before.
*  *  *
    Monday morning’s Security Bureau briefing was apparently destined to get off to a late start. Gregson and Wellford found seats in the third row and watched scores of special agents from most of the world’s civilized nations file into the auditorium.
    A few minutes later Radcliff strode onstage, supervised a pair of attendants as they positioned the recording cameras, then glanced at his watch. Staring at the audience, his eyes fell on Gregson. He waved, then returned to the wings.
    “Quite an imposing figure, that Radcliff,” Wellford offered.
    “Has a pair of shoulders like a stripling,” Gregson agreed.
    “If I should ever go Screamie, as Lady Sheffington predicts, I could only hope that I come out of it half as well as our director.”
    “Radcliff—an ex-Screamer?” Gregson said dubiously.
    “Of, but of course. Didn’t you know? One of the earlier barrier hurdlers. Class of ’86, as I understand it.”
    “I didn’t know that.” But at least it did explain why Radcliff had been a dedicated, compelling force in the movement that had enormously expanded the Security Bureau’s isolation institute network. He had undoubtedly been motivated by compassion for those who would otherwise have to fight the Screamies alone and unattended.
    The Englishman laughed. “You appear as surprised to learn our director was a Screamer as I was to find out the governor of New York had gone through the isolation routine. Perhaps we ought to get together sometimes and compare notes further.”
    “Yes, we’ll have to,” Gregson said indifferently, hoping to discourage the subject.
    “The President of Italy, too, belonged to the club at one time.”
    Gregson had already been aware of that. And, even though Wellford seemed to be moving persistently toward a point, he didn’t appreciate the other’s harping on the matter of plague victims.
    “All right,” he said impatiently, “so a lot of former Screamers are prominent people today. We’ve already agreed that those who pass the barrier successfully are best qualified to assume responsibility.”
    “True…” the other admitted tentatively.
    Gregson remembered that Governor Armister, in his campaign, had made a forceful case for ex-Screamer leadership when he had said: “Conditions are in a frightful mess. People who’ve developed immunity to the plague