"Ah. Good," Dr. O'Connor said equably. "In any case, to continue: this machine interprets those specific feelings as indications that the mind is being--ah--'eavesdropped' upon." You could almost see the quotation marks around what Dr. O'Connor considered slang dropping into place, Malone thought. "I see," Burris said with a disappointed air. "But what do you mean, it won't detect a telepath? Have you ever actually worked with a telepath?" "Certainly we have," Dr. O'Connor said. "If we hadn't, how would we be able to tell that the machine was, in fact, indicating the presence of telepathy? The theoretical state of the art is not, at present, sufficiently developed to enable us to--" "I see," Burris said hurriedly. "Only wait a minute." "Yes?" "You mean you've actually got a real mind-reader? You've found one? One that works?" Dr. O'Connor shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid I should have said, Mr. Burris, that we did once have one," he admitted. "He was, unfortunately, an imbecile, with a mental age between five and six, as nearly as we were ever able to judge." "An imbecile?" Burris said. "But how were you able to--" "He could repeat a person's thoughts word for word," Dr. O'Connor said. "Of course, he was utterly incapable of understanding the meaning behind them. That didn't matter; he simply repeated whatever you were thinking. Rather disconcerting." "I'm sure," Burris said. "But he was really an imbecile? There wasn't any chance of--" "Of curing him?" Dr. O'Connor said. "None, I'm afraid. We did at one time feel that there had been a mental breakdown early in the boy's life, and, indeed, it's perfectly possible that he was normal for the first year or so. The records we did manage to get on that period, however, were very much confused, and there was never any way of telling anything at all, for certain. It's easy to see what caused the confusion, of course: telepathy in an imbecile is rather an oddity-- and any normal adult would probably be rather hesitant about admitting that he was capable of it. That's why we have not found another subject; we must merely sit back and wait for lightning to strike." Burris sighed. "I see your problem," he said. "But what happened to this imbecile boy of yours?" "Very sad," Dr. O'Connor said. "Six months ago, at the age of fifteen, the boy simply died. He simply--gave up, and died." "Gave up?" "That was as good an explanation as our medical department was able to provide, Mr. Burris. There was some malfunction--but--we like to say that he simply gave up. Living became too difficult for him." "All right," Burris said after a pause. "This telepath of yours is dead, and there aren't any more where he came from. Or if there are, you don't know how to look for them. All right. But to get back to this machine of yours: it couldn't detect the boy's ability?"