Friday, 19 May. Today Lambertson broke down and told me what it was that Aarons had been proposing. It was worse than I thought it would be. The man had hit on the one thing I'd been afraid of for so long.
"He wants you to work against normals," Lambertson said. "He's swallowed the latency hypothesis whole. He thinks that everybody must have a latent psi potential, and that all that is needed to drag it into the open is a powerful stimulus from someone with full-blown psi powers."
"Well?" I said. "Do you think so?"
"Who knows?" Lambertson slammed his pencil down on the desk angrily. "No, I don't think so, but what does that mean? Not a thing. It certainly doesn't mean I'm right. Nobody knows the answer, not me, nor Aarons, nor anybody. And Aarons wants to use you to find out."
I nodded slowly. "I see. So I'm to be used as a sort of refined electrical stimulator," I said. "Well, I guess you know what you can tell Aarons."
He was silent, and I couldn't read him. Then he looked up. "Amy, I'm not sure we can tell him that."
I stared at him. "You mean you think he could force me?"
"He says you're a public charge, that as long as you have to be supported and cared for, they have the right to use your faculties. He's right on the first point. You are a public charge. You have to be sheltered and protected. If you wandered so much as a mile outside these walls you'd never survive, and you know it."
I sat stunned. "But Dr. Custer—"
"Dr. Custer is trying to help. But he hasn't succeeded so far. If he can, then it will be a different story. But I can't stall much longer, Amy. Aarons has a powerful argument. You're psi-high. You're the first full-fledged, wide-open, free-wheeling psi-high that's ever appeared in human history. The first. Others in the past have shown potential, maybe, but nothing they could ever learn to control. You've got control, you're fully developed. You're here, and you're the only one there is."