They'd Rather Be Right Read Free Page B

Tell me about it?”
    “I don’t know what you mean, Dr. Martin,” Joey lied. Perhaps if he didn’t admit anything “In trying to avoid a pattern, Joey, you made one. Just as soon as I realized you were setting up an unusual pattern, you immediately changed it. Every time. But that, too, is a pattern.” And then he asked, quite dryly, “Or am I talking over your head?”
    “Yes, sir,” Joey said. “I guess you are.” But he had learned. The whole concept of patterned response as against random response leaped from Martin’s mind into his. “Maybe if I tried it again?” he asked hopefully. At all costs he must get the idea out of Martin’s mind that there was anything exceptional about him. This time, and forever afterwards, he knew he could avoid any kind of a pattern.
    Just one more chance.
    “I don’t blame you, Joey,” Martin answered sadly. “If you’ve looked into my mind, well, I don’t blame you. Here we are. You’re a telepath and afraid to reveal it. I’m a psychologist, supposed to be, and I’m afraid to investigate it. A couple of fellows who caught the tiger by the tail, aren’t we, Joey?
    Looks as if we’d better kind of protect one another, doesn’t it?”
    “Yes, sir,” Joey answered and tried to hold back the tears of relief. “You won’t even tell my mother?
    What about my father?” He already knew that Martin didn’t dare tell Ames.
    “I won’t tell anybody, Joey,” Martin answered sadly. “I’ve got to hang onto my job. And in this wise and mighty institution we believe only in orthodox psychology. What you have, Joey, simply doesn’t ex-ist. Dr. Ames says so, and Dr. Ames is always right. No, Joey,” he sighed, “I’m not likely to tell anybody.”
    “Maybe he’ll trick me like you did,” Joey said doubtfully, but without resentment. “Maybe with that ink-blot thing, or that ‘yes’ and ‘no’ pile of little cards.”
    Martin glanced at him quickly.
    “You’re quite perfect at it, aren’t you?” He framed it a question and made it a statement. “You go beyond the words to the actual thought image itself. No, Joey, in that case I don’t think he will. I think you can keep ahead of him.”
    “I don’t know,” Joey said doubtfully. “It’s all so new. So many new things to think about all at once.”
    “I’ll try to be in the room with you and him,”
    Martin promised. “I’ll think of the normal answer each time. He won’t look very deep. He never does. He already knows all the answers.”
    “Thank you, sir.” Joey said, and then, “I won’t tell on you, either.”
    “O.K., Joey. We’d better be finishing the IQ test when he comes in. He’s about due now. I suppose you’d better grade around a hundred. And you’d better miss random questions, so as not to show any definite pattern, for him to grab onto. All right, here goes. Tell me what is wrong with this statement—”
     
    The tests were over. Joey sat quietly in his chair watching Dr. Martin grade papers at his desk, watching him trying not to think about Joey. He watched his mother in the waiting room, still sitting on the edge of her chair, where she had been for the last two hours, without moving, her eyes closed, her lips still drawn tight. He watched Dr. Ames, sitting in his own office, absently shuffling papers around, comparing the values of the notes he had taken on Joey’s reaction.
    But the nearer turmoil in Dr. Martin’s mind all but drowned out the fear of his mother, the growing disgust of Dr. Ames.
    “It’s a choice between Joey and holding my job. No matter how secretly I worked, Ames would find out. Once you’re fired from a school, it’s almost impossible to get a comparable job. All this subversive business, this fear of investigating anything outside the physical sciences that isn’t strictly orthodox. No matter what explanation was given out, they’d suspect me of subversion. Oh Marion, Marion! Why can’t I count on you to stand beside me? Or am I just