Fury and the Power by John Farris

said "An anthropologist friend of Tom's has been studying one of the East African tribes, the Amba, I think, for many years. Wizards are very real to the Amba, although they've never seen one. Have no idea what they look or sound like. A wizard could be someone's brother, or wife. Imagine that degree of paranoia. The Amba are certain only that wizards exist, that they rule every aspect of a man's life; they are the cause of all that's miserable about the human condition."
    "How do they appease these wizards?"
    "They don't. They can't. Wizards exist only to cast evil spells, to deny, torture, destroy. So the Amba live in fear and torment, one village making war on another suspected of harboring a vicious, though invisible, wizard. The social structure of an entire tribe is in chaos because of their unshakable belief. But in chaos—the anthropologist learned—there's also an eerie kind of togetherness. No Amba escapes the doom of his beliefs."
    Her gaze shifted, because his smile seemed forbearing.
    "These beliefs aren't peculiar to the Amba, by the way. Other tribes, the pathological religions, all have their versions. That man in the nice-looking suit and blue-striped shirt over there, the one with the cell phone, he could be a professor at Nairobi University. Educated at Harvard or the Sorbonne. But in the dark of his heart, at crunch time for the spirit—he's still bewitched.
    "I'm not god, devil, shaman, or wizard. But there are many people willing to believe I'm one. Because it's a superstitious world, that wouldn't be good for my health."
    "I was thinking of calling a press conference. But I've been on the cover of People magazine. Come to think of it, so have you."
    "Is a relationship sneaking up on us?"
    "That was yesterday. And here we are. Phase two. I knew who you were right away, of course. So I thought, Get it out of the way first . You didn't walk out. Trust may come, or not, still you're talking to me."
    "Do you find that interesting?" she said. A faint smile.
    "Everything about you interests me. The way your left eye turns in a little. Melancholy. The more you talk, though, the less depressed you seem."
    "I'm not up to a relationship. I had one. He was spying on me, for the FBI. I don't know what happened to him. In the end I may have mattered more to him than they did, so I'm pretty sure he's dead."
    He let that go by with a sympathetic look, and waited. Their salads arrived, chilled glass plates on pewter. She looked at hers without hunger, looked at his face.
    "Sorry," she said.
    "Are you wanted by the FBI?"
    "Probably. I'm not about to call up and ask them. FBI, CIA, MORG, if they still exist—I, I mean we, did them some damage—all government agencies who are in the 'secrets' business"— her mouth twisted wryly—"consider psychics a threat to their existence. It's a tribal thing, as I tried to explain." He nodded. "Although the CIA and the Russians and the Chinese, I was told, have tried for years to cultivate a few of us like a cash crop. But extrasensory perception is and always will be one of the mysteries of time and space." Absorbed now, seeming eager to talk, she began also, mechanically, to eat. "The key word is perception . I'm a prophetic dreamer, nothing unique about that. Happens to all sorts of people, millions of times a night, I'm sure. I receive images cast as dreams that, like all dreams, need interpretation. In my walking-around life I don't creep into people's minds." A quick shake of her head, sunlight on the bridge of her nose, lighting ardent depths in her eyes. "Who would want to? I do have flashes of intuition. I'm able to exchange thoughts with other adepts; I'm learning to do that. And sometimes—when I'm under great stress—I can call on an energy I don't have a name for. Then improbable or miraculous things happen. But it's a faculty I can't control."
    "Flashes of intuition? Anything about me, so far?"
    "You don't have any fear," she declared.
    "What makes you think