know you wouldn't," Malone said, "because I don't."
Sir Lewis cleared his throat "My dear boy," he said, "you represent a breakthrough. You are an adult."
"That," Malone said testily, "is not news."
"But you are a telepathic adult," Sir Lewis said. "Many of them are capable of developing it into a useful ability. Children who have the talent may accidentally develop the ability to use it, but that almost invariably results in insanity. Without proper guidance, a child is no more capable of handling the variety of impressions it receives from adult minds than it is capable of understanding a complex piece of modern music. The effort to make a coherent whole out of the impression overstrains the mind, so to speak, and the damage is permanent."
"So here I am," Malone said, "and I'm not nuts. At least I don't think I'm nuts."
"Because you are an adult," Sir Lewis went on. "Telepathy seems to be almost impossible to develop in an adult, even difficult to test for it. A child may be tested comparatively simply; an adult, seldom or never."
He paused to relight his pipe.
"However," he went on, "the Psychical Research Society's executive board discovered a method of bringing out the ability in a talented child as far back as 1931. All of us who are sane telepaths today owe our ability to that process, which was applied to us, in each case, before the age of sixteen."
"How about me?" Malone said.
"You," Sir Lewis said, "are the first adult ever to learn the use of psionic powers from scratch."
"Oh," Malone said. "And that's why Mike Fueyo, for instance, could learn to teleport, though his older sister couldn't."
"Mike was an experiment," Sir Lewis said. "We decided to teach him teleportation without teaching him telepathy. You saw what happened."
"Sure I did," Malone said. "I had to stop it."
"We were forced to make you stop him," Sir Lewis said. "But we also let him teach you his abilities."
"So I'm an experiment," Malone said.
"A successful experiment," Sir Lewis added.
"Well," Malone said dully, "bully for me."
"Don't feel that way," Sir Lewis said. "We have--"
He stopped suddenly, and glanced at the others. Burris and Lou stood up, and Sir Lewis followed them.
"Sorry," Sir Lewis said in a different tone. "There's something important that we must take care of. Something quite urgent, I'm afraid."
"You can go on home, Malone," Burris said. "We'll talk later, but right now there's a crisis coming and we've got to help. Leave the car. I'll take care of it."
"Sure," Malone said, without moving.
Lou said, "Ken--" and stopped. Then the three of them turned and started up the long, curving staircase that led to the upstairs rooms.
Malone sat in the Morris chair for several long minutes, wishing that he were dead. Nobody made a sound. He rubbed his hands over the soft leather and tried to tell himself that he was lucky, and talented, and successful.
But he didn't care.
He closed his eyes at last, and took a deep breath.
Then he vanished.
Chapter 16
Two hours passed, somehow. Bourbon and soda helped them pass, Malone discovered; he drank two highballs slowly, trying not to think about anything, and kept staring around at the walls of his apartment without really seeing anything. He felt terrible.
He made himself a third bourbon and soda and started in on it. Maybe this one would make him feel better. Maybe, he thought, he ought to break out the cigars and celebrate.
But there didn't seem to be very much to celebrate, somehow.
He felt like a guinea pig being congratulated on having successfully resisted a germ during an experiment.
He drank some more of the bourbon and soda. Guinea pigs didn't drink bourbon and soda, he told himself. He was better off than a guinea pig. He was happier than a guinea pig. But he couldn't imagine any guinea pig in the world, no matter how heartbroken, feeling any worse than Kenneth J. Malone.
He looked up. There was another guinea pig in the room.
Then he frowned. She wasn't a guinea pig. She was one off the experimenters. She was the one the guinea pig was supposed to fall in love with, so the guinea pig could be nice and telepathic and all the other experimenters could congratulate themselves. But whoever heard of a scientist falling in love with a guinea pig? It was fate. And fate was awful. Malone had often suspected it, but now he was sure. Now he saw things from the guinea pig's side, and fate was terrible.
"But Ken," the experimenter said. "It isn't like that at all."
"It is, too," Malone said. "It's even worse, but that'll have to wait. When I have some more to drink it will get worse. Watch and see."
"But Ken--" Lou hesitated, and then went on. "Don't feel sad about being an experiment. We're all experiments."
"I'm the guinea pig," Malone said. "I'm the only guinea pig. You said so."
"No, Ken," she said. "Remember, all of us in the PRS got early training when it was new and untried. Some of those methods weren't as good as we now have them; that's why a man like your boss sometimes tends to have a little trouble."
"Sure," Malone said. "But I'm your guinea pig. You made me dance through hoops and do tricks and everything just for an experiment. That's what." He took another swallow of his drink. "See?" he said. "It's getting worse already."
"No, it's not," Lou said. "It's getting better, if you'll only listen. I wasn't given this job, Ken. I volunteered for it."
"That isn't any better," Malone said morosely.
"I volunteered because I--because I liked you," Lou said. "Because I wanted to work with you, wanted to be with you."
"It's more experimenting," Malone said flatly. "More guinea-pigging around."
"It isn't, Ken," Lou said. "Believe me. Look into my mind. Believe me."
Malone tried. A second passed...
And then a long time passed, without any words at all.
"Well, well," Malone said at last. "If this is the life of a guinea pig, I'm all for it."
"I'm all for guinea pigs' rights," Lou said. "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Me."
"Agreed," Malone said. "How about that crisis, by the way? Are you going to have to leave suddenly again?"
Lou stretched lazily on the couch.
