"To tell the truth, I haven't the faintest idea of Dr. Garnett's whereabouts," Frobisher replied with prim satisfaction. "Things have been popping everywhere since this morning. In every project. We'd have to tour the Foundation to find him in any case."
Opperly flashed Phil a look of humorous resignation. Dion da Silva pressed past Phil, flashing his wide white teeth at everyone and saying, "Is fine, fine." Phil's spirits rose. He felt certain that he was getting nearer to Lucky.
XV
Inside, the Humberford Foundation was a gloomy Edwardian mansion to which had been sketchily grafted a pleasantly disorganized scientific enterprise. Glassed shelves of leatherbound books that hadn't been opened for decades were elbowed by trim microfilm files. Blackened portraits of John Junius Humberford and his ancestors looked down on machines for shuffling the eternal Rhine cards and on fluorescent screens-in-depth that blended a dozen recordings of a brain wave made from different angles into the shadowy semblance of a human thought. Stately drawing rooms that set one thinking of bustles and teacups instead held solemn faced, scantily clad girls with electrodes attached to twenty parts of their bodies. Laboratory technicians in loose smocks caught their heels in stair carpets a hundred years old.
But today there was an excitement that pushed the Edwardian half of the place far into the background and brightened the very grime on the walls. Chancellor Frobisher and his little train of visitors were not even noticed. Girls triumphantly calling Rhine cards stared past them unseeingly. Clairvoyants sketching objects being imagined by someone else three floors away didn't look up from their blackboards. A technician darted out with a large syringe and took air samples under their very noses without seeming to be aware of their presence. Correlating engines hummed and spat cards.
Phil was so busy peering about for his green cat that he heard little of what Frobisher was telling them.
Occasional high-pitched explanatory phrases floated back to Phil: "... her 117,318th run through the cards ... telepathic communion with lower animals ... perhaps some day share the thoughts of an amoeba.... No, I really don't know where Dr. Garnett is, I'm busy with important visitors, Miss Ames ... telekinesis will make handies obsolete...."
Plodding behind da Silva up the stairs to the top floor, Phil started to listen to Frobisher consecutively. The Chancellor of Philosophy was saying, "Now in the room I'm about to show you, an experiment in complete telepathy is underway. When telepathy is perfected, it will be possible for two individuals to lay their minds side by side and compare all their thoughts and feelings in the raw, as it were."
"Is good!" da Silva interjected.