"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I--can't get it--off," the boy said.
_The monitor_, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong--could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more--he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog--it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick--
And yet _an animal instinctively seeks its own protection_. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth--peace and security and comfort--swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
* * * * *
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with _anything_ we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory--except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data--"
"Didn't you see his _face_?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
_acted_? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify--to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech--"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly--but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that--" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while--and maybe that way one of the lads who's _really_ sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me--"