WIZARD.
By Larry M. Harris
Although the Masquerade itself, as a necessary protection against non-telepaths, was not fully formulated until the late years of the Seventeenth Century, groups of telepaths-in-hiding existed long before that date. Whether such groups were the results of natural mutations, or whether they came into being due to some other cause, has not yet been fully determined, but that a group did exist in the district of Offenburg, in what is now Prussia, we are quite sure. The activities of the group appear to have begun, approximately, in the year 1594, but it was not until eleven years after that date that they achieved a signal triumph, the first and perhaps the last of its kind until the dissolution of the Masquerade in 2103.
—Excerpt from "A Short History of the Masquerade," by A. Milge, Crystal 704-54-368, Produced 2440.
Jonas came over the hill whistling as if he had not a care in the world—which was not even approximately true, he reflected happily. The state of complete and utter quiet was both foreign and slightly repugnant to him; he was never more pleased than when he had a job in hand, a job that involved a slight and unavoidable risk.
This time, of course, the risk was more than slight. Why, he thought happily, it was even possible for him to get killed, and most painfully, too! With a great deal of pleasure, he stood for a second at the crest of the hill, his hands on his hips, looking down at the town of Speyer as it baked in the May afternoon sunlight.
"Behold the Tortoise: He maketh
no progress unless he sticketh out
his neck." But he maketh very
little progress unless he pick the
right time and place to "sticketh
out his neck"—which can
be quite a sticky problem for
a man in a medieval culture!
Illustrated by Schoenherr
Jonas did not, in spite of his pose, look like the typical hero of folk tale or scribe's tome; he was not seven feet tall, for instance, nor did he have a handsome, lovesome face with flashing blue eyes, or a broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted marvel of a figure. He was, instead, somewhat shorter than the average of men in Europe in 1605 and for some time thereafter. He had small, almost hidden eyes that seemed to see a great deal, but failed completely to make a fuss about the fact. And while his figure was just a trifle dumpy, his face completed the rhyme by being extraordinarily lumpy. The nose, as a matter of strict truth, was hard to distinguish from the other contusions, swellings and marks that covered the head.
"True," Jonas said pleasantly. Knupf was sitting behind the table. Jonas had not been asked to sit; he remained standing, and he was reasonably sure that his feet were going to hurt in a minute. He tried not to let the thought disturb him.
The man's mind was like his office in the Town Hall: sparsely furnished, almost austere, but with all the necessaries laid out for easy access. Underneath the strength and iron of the mind Jonas caught the spark glowing, and nearly smiled. In spite of the reports, in spite of logic, there had been a chance the Brotherhood had guessed wrongly about this man.
Now that chance was gone, and the Brotherhood was right again.
"Not many ask to see me," Knupf said in the same voice. He went on looking at his hands. There was bitterness in his mind, bitterness that had changed to hate. "Their pleas tend to be exactly the opposite."
"Yet you seem bored by the matter," Claerten thought, puzzled. "I don't see ... oh. I see the woman in your mind. The daughter. And—"
"Now, stop it," Jonas thought. "Stop it. Cut off. After all," he finished, "there are times when even a hero wants a little privacy."
Postscript:
In 1605-1606 (in Offenburg) there were no executions....
—H. C. Lea, "Materials Toward a History of Witchcraft," Vol. III, p. 1148.
