Nicholas Kane was sitting at his desk when he heard the voices. This was a departure from the usual, and he heard them only once--but that one time turned out to be once too often for Kane. When he was fifteen he sat one evening over his homework studiously ignoring it for the moment. With his pencil he drummed a hollow-sounding descending and ascending scale on his cheek by opening and closing his mouth. His elbow, which was resting on the table, suddenly slid. The point of the pencil drove into the center of his left palm and broke off. He pressed a finger on the gash to stem the flow of blood and ran to the bathroom to mercurochrome and bandage the wound. He didn’t think to pry out the p…
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