in the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic monitors required of all personnel at the farm. they were of a hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"the major problem," lessing said, "has been to shield the children from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose them to. our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. the monitors are quite effective—a simple renwick scrambler screen."
"it blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked melrose.
"as far as we can measure, yes."
"which may not be very far."
jack dorffman burst in: "what dr. lessing is saying is that they seem effective for our purposes."
"but you don't know why," added melrose.
"all right, we don't know why. nobody knows why a renwick screen works—why blame us?" they were walking down the main corridor and out through an open areaway. behind the buildings was a broad playground. a baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in heavy use. the place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a fury of busy activity. occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by; one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
they crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress. "some of our children are here only briefly," lessing explained as they walked along, "and some have been here for years. we maintain a top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by hoffman center funds. other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. sometimes they stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. as far as psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. we are strictly observers. we try to place the youngsters in positions where they can develope what potential they have—without the presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject to. the results have been remarkable."
he led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing a wide grey glass wall. the room fell into darkness, and through the grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing in a large room.
"they're perfectly insulated from us," said lessing. "a variety of recording instruments are working. and before you ask, dr. melrose, they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. we don't know what makes them go, and we don't care—they go. that's all we need. like that one, for instance—"
in the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green fluorescent light. it hung from the wall by two plastic rods which penetrated into the children's room. there was no sign of a switch, nor a power source. as the children moved about, the screen flickered. below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of activity.
"what are they doing?" melrose asked after watching the children a few moments.
"those three seem to work as a team, somehow. each one, individually, had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on the arbitrary scale we find useful here. any two of them scale in at thirty-four to thirty-six. put the three together and they operate somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale." lessing smiled. "this is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for any other three children on the farm. nor did we make any effort to place them together—they drew each other like magnets. one of our workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't right. it wasn't the instruments, of course."
lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at melrose. "now, i want you to watch this very closely."
he opened a door and walked into the room with the children. the fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to lessing. he inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall. the children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he was proposing. he walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in the tower with his thumb.
the tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the tower stood. carefully lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. the children watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out of place....
