Each sat in turn inside a closed transparent cubicle and answered questions from Burton or Nur. The field generated inside the cubicle showed the wathan floating just above the head of the questionee and attached to it by a thread of bright scarlet light. The wathan was a sphere that swelled and shrank, whirled or seemed to whirl, and flashed a spectrum of glowing colors. This was the invisible thing that accompanied every person from the moment of conception and did not leave him or her until that person was dead. It contained all that was a person, duplicating the contents of the mind and nervous system and also giving him or her self-consciousness.
Burton had taken the first test, and Nur had asked him several questions to which he had to give an answer he believed to be true.
“Were you born in Torquay, England, on March 19, 1821?”
“Yes,” Burton said, and the Computer photographed his wathan at that second.
“When and where did you die the first time?”
“On Sunday, October 19, 1890, in my house in Trieste, that part of Italy then belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.”
The Computer took another photograph and compared the two. It then compared these two to others that had been taken many years ago when Burton had been questioned by the Council of Twelve.
Nur looked at the flashing display on a screen and said, “The truth. As you know it.”
That was one of the deficiencies of the test. If a person believed that he was telling the truth, the wathan indicated that he was.
“That is the truth,” Frigate said. “I read those dates many times when I was on Earth.”
“Have you ever lied?” Nur said.
Burton, grinning, said, “No.”
A narrow black zigzag shot over the surface of the wathan.
“The subject lies,” Nur told the Computer.
On the screen appeared: previously verified.
“Have you ever lied?” Nur said again.
“Yes.”
The black lightning streak disappeared.
“Did you make Loga vanish?”
“No.”
“Were you implicated with anyone tion?”
“Not that I know of.”
“That’s the truth, as far as you know it,” Nur said after glancing at the screen. “Do you have any knowledge about anyone who might have made Loga vanish?”
“No.”
“Are you glad that Loga did vanish?”
Burton said, “What the hell?”
He could see the image of his wathan on a screen. It was glowing with orange overlaying the other shifting colors.
“You shouldn’t have asked that!” Aphra Behn said.
“Yes, you devil, you had no right!” Burton said. “Nur, you’re a scoundrel, like all Sufis!”
“You were glad,” Nur said calmly. “I suspected so. I also suspect that most of us were. I was not, but I will allow the same question to be put to me. It may be that I, too, was glad, though deep in my animal mind.”
“The subconscious,” Frigate murmured.
“Whatever it is called, it is the same. The animal mind.”
“Why should anyone be glad?” Alice said.
“Don’t you really know?” Burton shouted.
Alice recoiled at the violence.
Having been cleared, for the moment, anyway, Burton left the cubicle and interrogated Nur. When the Moor appeared to be innocent, Alice seated herself. Burton forebore asking her if Loga’s death had given her any joy. He doubted that it had. But when she had time to consider what she might do with the powers here, she might understand why some of the others had felt, to their shame, elated.
One by one, the others showed their innocence.
“But Loga could have passed the test while lying like a diplomat,” Nur said. “It is possible that one of us has had access to his wathan distorter.”
“I don’t think so,” Turpin said. “Ain’t none of us got the smarts to operate one of those. We ain’t smart enough to override Loga’s commands either. I think we’re wasting time, besides insulting all of us.”
“If I interpret you correctly,” Nur said, “you’re saying that we’re not intelligent enough. That’s not true. We are. But we don’t have the knowledge we need.”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant. We just don’t know enough.”
“Three weeks is long enough for a diligent person to get the knowledge from the Computer,” Burton said.
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