Basil held up his hand. “No, no, the project will bear it, but I tell you what. If we find no signs of telepathic ability, and we won't, you'll owe me one fancy dinner at a restaurant of my choice.”
“Done,” said Nadine, eagerly, “and you can even bring your wife.”
“You'll lose.”
“I don't care. Just so we don't abandon the matter too soon.”
The gardener was by no means enthusiastically cooperative. He viewed the two as government officials and did not approve of them for that reason. When they identified themselves as scientists, that was no better ground for approval. And when they asked after Roland, he neared the point of outright hostility.
“What do you want to know about Roland for? Done anything?”
“No, no,” said Nadine, as winningly as she might. “He might qualify for special schooling, that's all.”
“What kind of schooling? Gardening?”
“We're not sure.”
“Gardening's all he's good for, but he's good at that. Best I've ever had. He doesn't need no schooling in gardening.”
Nadine looked about appreciatively at the greenhouse and at the neat rows of plants outside as well. “He does all that?”
“Have to admit it,” said the gardener. “Never this good without him. But it's all he's good for.”
Basil said, “Why is that all he's good for, sir?”
“He's not very bright. But he's got this talent. He'll make anything grow.”
“Is he odd in any way?”
“What do you mean, odd?”
“Funny? Peculiar? Strange?”
“Being that good a gardener is strange, but I don't complain.”
“Nothing else?”
“No. What are you looking for, mister?”
Basil said, “I really don't know.”
That evening, Nadine said, “We've got to study the boy.”
“Why? What have you heard that gives you any hope?”
“Suppose you're right. Suppose it's all atrophied. Still, we might find a trace of the ability.”
“What would we do with a trace? Small effects would not be convincing. We have had a full century of experience with that, from Rhine onward.”
“Even if we don't get anything that would prove anything to the world, so what? What about ourselves? The important thing is that we'd satisfy ourselves that when Multivac says a particular genetic pattern has the potential for telepathy, it's right. And if it's right, that would mean your theoretical analysis-and my programming, too-was right. Don't you want to put your theories to the test and find confirmatory evidence? Or are you afraid you won't.”
“I'm not afraid of that. I am afraid of wasting time.”
“One test is all I ask. Look, we ought to see his parents anyway, for whatever they can tell us. After all, they knew him when he was a baby and had, in full, whatever telepathic powers he might have had to begin with-and then we'll get permission to have him match random numbers. If he fails that, we go no further. We waste no more time.”
Roland's parents were stolid and totally non-informative. They seemed as slow as Roland was reported to be, and as self-contained.
There had been nothing odd about their son as a baby, they said. They repeated that without guilty over-emphasis. Strong and healthy, they said, and a hard-working boy who earned good money over the summer and went to high-school the rest of the year. Never in any trouble with the law or in any other way.
“Might we test him?” asked Nadine. “A simple test?”
“What for?” asked Washman. “I don't want him bothered.”
“Government survey. We're choosing fifteen-year-old boys here and there so we can study ways to improve methods of schooling.”
Washman shook his head. “I don't want my boy bothered.”
“Well,” said Nadine, “you must understand there's two hundred fifty dollars to the family for each boy tested.” (She carefully avoided looking at Basil, certain that his lips would have tightened in anger.)
“Two hundred fifty dollars?”
“Yes,” said Nadine, trying hard. “After all, the test takes time and it's only fair the government pay for the time and trouble.”
Washman cast a slow glance at his wife and she nodded. He said, “if the boy is willing, I guess it would be okay.”
Roland Washman was tall for his age and well-built, but there seemed no danger in his muscles. He had a gentle way about him, and dark, quiet eyes looked out of his well-browned face.
He said, “What am I supposed to do, mister?”
“It's very easy,” said Basil. “You have a little joy-stick with the numbers 0 to 9 on it. Every time, that little red light goes on, you push one of the numbers.”
“Which one, mister?”
“Whichever one you want. Just one number and the light will go out. Then when it goes on, another number, and so on, until the light stops shining. This lady will do the same thing. You and I will sit opposite each other at this table, and she will sit at this other little table with her back to us. I don't want you to think about what number you're going to push.”
“How can I do it without thinking, mister? You got to think.”
“You may just have a feeling. The light goes on, and it might seem as though you have a feeling to push an 8, or a 6, or whatever. Just do it, then. One time you might push a 2, next time a 3, next time a 9 or maybe another 2. Whatever you want.”
Roland thought about it a bit, then nodded. “I'll try, mister, but I hope it don't take too long, because I don't see the sense of it.”
Basil adjusted the sensor in his left ear-canal unobtrusively and then gazed at Roland as benignly as he could.
The tiny voice in his left ear breathed, “Seven,” and Basil thought: Seven.
And the light flashed on Roland's joystick, and on Nadine's similar joystick and both pushed a number.
It went on and on: 6, 2, 2, 0, 4, 3, 6, 8…
And finally Basil said, “That's enough, Roland.”
They gave Roland's father five fifty-dollar bills, and they left.
In their motel room, Basil leaned back, disappointment fighting with the satisfaction of I-told-you-so.
“Absolutely nothing,” he said. “Zero correlation. The computer generated a series of random numbers and so did Roland, and the two did not match. He picked up absolutely nothing from my thought processes.”
“Suppose,” said Nadine, with a dying hope, “he could read your mind but was deliberately masking that fact.”
Basil said, “You know better than that. If he were trying to be wrong on purpose, he would almost certainly be too wrong. He would match me less often than chance would dictate. Besides, you were generating a series of numbers too, and you couldn't read my thoughts either, and he couldn't read yours. He had two sets of different numbers assailing him each time, and there was zero correlation-neither positive nor negative with either. That can't be faked. We have to accept it, he doesn't have it, now, and we're out of luck. We'll have to keep looking, and the odds of coming across anything like this again-”
He looked hopeless.
Roland was in the front yard, watching after Basil and Nadine, as their car drove off in the bright sunlight.
He had been frightened. First they had talked to his boss, then to his parents, and he thought that they must have found out.
How could they have found out? It was impossible to find out, but why else were they so curious?
He had worried about all that business of picking numbers, even though he didn't see how it could do any harm. Then it came to him that they thought he could hear human voices in his mind. They were trying to think the right numbers at him.