Vigorish

by John Berryman

dough that way, Rose and Simonetti would have had to sell out.Only the buyer would have been a dummy for Rose and Smythe, using moneySmythe had lifted off the tables.

  "The whole TK business was just a smoke screen to keep mattersconfused," I concluded.

  "How come they dared send for a TK like you? Why weren't they scaredyou'd catch them, just like you did?"

  "It took a little more than TK," I reminded her. "TK is just a power,one more ability in life. It doesn't make you God. Once in a while itgives you a little more vigorish than the other guy has, that's all. Andsometimes it's not enough."

  "But you had enough vigorish to catch them," she pointed out.

  "In a way," I said. "I told them TK wasn't enough--that it would takeprecognition. And I don't have PC. I had to bring a PC with me. You,Pheola. That's why I'm alive. Smythe would have killed me with that dartgun of his. _You_ were my vigorish!"

  We rode the 'copter together to the airport. Old Grand Master Maragonwould sneer out of the other side of his face when I brought Pheola tohim. He couldn't keep _her_ from PC training. She _had_ it.

  "Tell me," I asked her. "Can you always tell what I'm going to do next?"

  "I reckon," she said. "If I think hard about it."

  "But you can't _control_ what I'm going to do next, can you?" I grinned.

  "I wonder," she said. "Never tried, yet."

  "Oh, no!" I groaned.

  She showed me her buck teeth in a smile. "I figger first you'll havethem straighten my teeth," she said. "You'd like a pretty wife."

  "If it's got to be," I said weakly. "That would help. I just wish therewas some way to handle that hysterical sniffle of yours, that's all. ButI guess that's the price you have to pay for that awful load of Psipower you have."

  "Oh, that," she said. "I ought to be over that by tomorrow. I hardlyever get a cold, darlin' Billy, and when I do, I throw it off in a fewdays."

  Well, I guess it's a cinch I'm no PC.

  THE END