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?"

Dr. O'Connor shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not. We've worked hard on
that problem at Westinghouse, Mr. Burris, but we haven't yet been able
to find a method of actually detecting telepaths."

"But you can detect--"

"That's right," Dr. O'Connor said. "We can detect the fact that a
man's mind is being read." He stopped, and his face became suddenly
morose. When he spoke again, he sounded guilty, as if he were making
an admission that pained him. "Of course, Mr. Burris, there's nothing
we can do ab