“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.
They couldn't do that. How could he know what they were thinking? He couldn't ever tell what people were thinking. He knew that for certain. Couldn't ever!
He laughed a little to himself, very quietly. People always thought it was only people that counted.
And then came the little voice in his mind, very thin and very shrill.
“When-When-When-?”
Roland turned his head. He knew it was a bee winging toward him. He wasn't hearing the bee, but the whole mind of the whole hive.
All his life he had heard the bees thinking, and they could hear him. It was wonderful. They pollinated his plants and they avoided eating them, so that everything he touched grew beautifully.
The only thing was they wanted more. They wanted a leader; someone to tell them how to beat back the push of humanity. Roland wondered how that could be done. The bees weren't enough but suppose he had all the animals. Suppose he learned how to blend minds with all of them. Could he?
The bees were easy, and the ants. Their minds built up in large crowds. And he could hear the crows now. He didn't used to. And he was beginning to make out something with the cattle, though they weren't worth listening to, hardly.
Cats? Dogs? All the bugs and birds?
What could be done? How far could he go?
A teacher had once said to him that he didn't live up to his potential.
“When-When-When-?” thought the bee.
“Not yet-Not yet-Not yet-” thought Roland.
First, he had to reach his potential.