Brain Twister | Page 6

interprets those specific feelings as indications that the mind is
being--ah--'eavesdropped' upon."
You could almost see the quotation marks around what Dr. O'Connor
considered slang dropping into place, Malone thought.
"I see," Burris said with a disappointed air. "But what do you mean, it
won't detect a telepath? Have you ever actually worked with a
telepath?"
"Certainly we have," Dr. O'Connor said. "If we hadn't, how would we
be able to tell that the machine was, in fact, indicating the presence of
telepathy? The theoretical state of the art is not, at present, sufficiently
developed to enable us to--"
"I see," Burris said hurriedly. "Only wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"You mean you've actually got a real mind-reader? You've found one?
One that works?"
Dr. O'Connor shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid I should have said, Mr.
Burris, that we did once have one," he admitted. "He was, unfortunately,
an imbecile, with a mental age between five and six, as nearly as we
were ever able to judge."
"An imbecile?" Burris said. "But how were you able to--"
"He could repeat a person's thoughts word for word," Dr. O'Connor
said. "Of course, he was utterly incapable of understanding the meaning

behind them. That didn't matter; he simply repeated whatever you were
thinking. Rather disconcerting."
"I'm sure," Burris said. "But he was really an imbecile? There wasn't
any chance of--"
"Of curing him?" Dr. O'Connor said. "None, I'm afraid. We did at one
time feel that there had been a mental breakdown early in the boy's life,
and, indeed, it's perfectly possible that he was normal for the first year
or so. The records we did manage to get on that period, however, were
very much confused, and there was never any way of telling anything at
all, for certain. It's easy to see what caused the confusion, of course:
telepathy in an imbecile is rather an oddity-- and any normal adult
would probably be rather hesitant about admitting that he was capable
of it. That's why we have not found another subject; we must merely sit
back and wait for lightning to strike."
Burris sighed. "I see your problem," he said. "But what happened to
this imbecile boy of yours?"
"Very sad," Dr. O'Connor said. "Six months ago, at the age of fifteen,
the boy simply died. He simply--gave up, and died."
"Gave up?"
"That was as good an explanation as our medical department was able
to provide, Mr. Burris. There was some malfunction--but--we like to
say that he simply gave up. Living became too difficult for him."
"All right," Burris said after a pause. "This telepath of yours is dead,
and there aren't any more where he came from. Or if there are, you
don't know how to look for them. All right. But to get back to this
machine of yours: it couldn't detect the boy's ability?"
Dr. O'Connor shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not. We've worked hard
on that problem at Westinghouse, Mr. Burris, but we haven't yet been
able to find a method of actually detecting telepaths."

"But you can detect--"
"That's right," Dr. O'Connor said. "We can detect the fact that a man's
mind is being read." He stopped, and his face became suddenly morose.
When he spoke again, he sounded guilty, as if he were making an
admission that pained him. "Of course, Mr. Burris, there's nothing we
can do about a man's mind being read. Nothing whatever." He essayed
a grin that didn't look very healthy. "But at least," he said, "you know
you're being spied on."
Burris grimaced. There was a little silence while Dr. O'Connor stroked
the metal box meditatively, as if it were the head of his beloved.
At last, Burris said: "Dr. O'Connor, how sure can you be of all this?"
The look he received made all the previous conversation seem as warm
and friendly as a Christmas party by comparison. It was a look that
froze the air of the room into a solid chunk, Malone thought, a chunk
you could have chipped pieces from, for souvenirs, later, when Dr.
O'Connor had gone and you could get into the room without any danger
of being quick-frozen by the man's unfriendly eye.
"Mr. Burris," Dr. O'Connor said in a voice that matched the
temperature of his gaze, "please. Remember our slogan."
* * * * *
Malone sighed. He fished in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, found
one, and extracted a single cigarette. He stuck it in his mouth and
started fishing in various pockets for his lighter.
He sighed again. Perfectly honestly, he preferred cigars, a habit he'd
acquired from the days when he'd filched them from his father's cigar-
case. But his mental picture of a fearless and alert young FBI agent
didn't include a cigar. Somehow,