orms a different function."

"And my talent," Malone said, "is stupidity. But--"

She lit a cigarette daintily. "Not at all," she said. "You've done a
really tremendous job, Kenneth. I was trained ever since I was a baby
to use my psionic abilities--the PRS has known how to train children
in that line ever since 1970. Only Mike Fueyo developed a system for
instruction independently; the boy was, and is, a genius, as you've
noticed."

"Agreed," Malone said. "But--"

"You, however," Luba said, "have the distinction of being the first
human being who has, as an adult, achieved his full powers without
childhood training. In addition, you're the only human being who has
ever developed to the extent you have--in precognition, too."

She puffed on the cigarette. Malone waited.

"But what you don't have," she said at last, very carefully, "is the
ability to reason out the steps you've taken, after you've reached the
proper conclusion."

"Like the calculus student," Malone said. "I flunk." Something inside
him grated over the marrow in his bones. It was as though someone had
decided that the best cure for worry was coarse emery in the joints,
and he, Kenneth J. Malone, had been picked for the first experiment.

"You're not flunking," Luba said. "You're a very long way from
flunking, Kenneth."

Burris cleared his throat suddenly. Malone turned to him. The Head of
the FBI stuck an unlighted cigar into his mouth, chewed it a little,
and then said: "Malone, we've been keeping tabs on you. Your shield
was unbreakable--but we have been able to reach the minds of people
you've talked to: Mike Sands, Primo Palveri, and so on. And Her
Majesty, of course: you opened up a gap in your shield to talk to her,
and you haven't closed it down. Until you started broadcasting here on
the way up, naturally."

"All right," Malone said, waiting with as much patience as possible
for the point.

"I tried to take you off the case," Burris went on, "because Sir Lewis
and the others felt you were getting too close to the truth. Which you
were, Malone, which you were." He lit his cigar and looked obscurely
pleased. "But they didn't know how you'd take it," he said. "They ...
we ... felt that a man who hadn't been trained since childhood to
accept the extrasensory abilities of the human mind couldn't possibly
learn to accept the reality of the job the PRS has to do."

"I still don't," Malone said. "I'm stupid. I flunk. Remember?"

"Now, now