“Not necessarily. There’s never anything much going on in your mind, so why should I notice?”
“But it stands to reason-”
“What’s the natural log of two?”
“‘Point six nine three one’ is what you said, though I’ve got very little use for four-place tables. What’s that got to do with it?”
“I used four-place because she gave it to me that way. Do you remember what she said just before I gave you that number?”
“Huh? Who?”
“Mabel. Dr. Mabel Lichtenstein. What did she say?”
“Nobody said anything.”
“Tom, my senile symbiote, she told me what to do, to wit, read the numbers to you. She told me this in a clear, penetrating soprano. You didn’t hear her?”
“No.”
“Then you weren’t in the same room. You weren’t within earshot, even though I was prepared to swear that they had shoved you in right by me. I knew you were there. But you weren’t. So it was telepathy.”
I was confused. I didn’t feel telepathic; I merely felt hungry.
“Me, too, on both counts,” Pat agreed. “So let’s stop at Berkeley Station end get a sandwich.”
I followed him off the strips, feeling not quite as hungry and even more confused. Pat had answered a remark I had not made.
III PROJECT LEBENSRAUM
Even though I was told to take my time and tell everything, it can’t be done. I haven’t had time to add to this for days, but even if I didn’t have to work I still could not “tell all,” because it takes more than a day to write down what happens in one day. The harder you try the farther behind you get. So I’m going to quit trying and just hit the high spots.
Anyhow everybody knows the general outline of Project Lebensraum.
We did not say anything to Mum and Dad about that first day. You can’t expose parents to that sort of thing; they get jittery and start issuing edicts. We just told them the tests would run a second day and that nobody had told us what the results were.
Dr. Arnault seemed unsurprised when we told her we knew the score, even when I blurted out that we thought we had been faking but apparently weren’t. She just nodded and said that it had been necessary to encourage us to think that everything was commonplace, even if there had to be a little fibbing on both sides. “I had the advantage of having your personality analyses to guide me,” she added. “Sometimes in psychology you have to go roundabout to arrive at the truth.
“We’ll try a more direct way today,” she went on. “We’ll put you two back to back but close enough together that you unquestionably can hear each other. But I am going to use a sound screen to cut you off partly or completely from time to time without your knowing it.”
It was a lot harder the second time. Naturally we tried and naturally we flubbed. But Dr. Arnault was patient and so was Dr. Lichtenstein-Pat’s “Dr. Mabel.” She preferred to be called Dr. Mabel; she was short and pudgy and younger than Dr. Arnault and about as cute as a female can be and still look like a sofa pillow. It wasn’t until later that we found out she was boss of the research team and world famous. “Giggly little fat girl” was an act she used to put ordinary people, meaning Pat and myself, at their ease.
I guess this proves you should ignore the package and read the fine print.
So she giggled and Dr. Arnault looked serious and we could not tell whether we were reading minds or not. I could hear Tom’s whispers-they told us to go ahead and whisper-and he could hear mine and sometimes they would fade. I was sure we weren’t getting anything, not telepathy I mean, for it was just the way Pat and I used to whisper answers back and forth in school without getting caught.
Finally Dr. Mabel giggled sheepishly and said, “I guess that’s enough for today. Don’t you think so, Doctor?”
Dr. Arnault agreed and Pat and I sat up and faced each other. I said, “I suppose yesterday was a fluke. I guess we disappointed you.”