Weldon shook his head. "No, it wasn't."
Arlene Rolf laughed shortly. "He's right, Ben." She looked at Weldon. "The hypothetical goal of the project was an instrument which would enable your department telepaths to make positive identification of a hypothetical Public Enemy Number One ... the same being described as a 'rogue telepath' with assorted additional qualifications."
Weldon said, "That's a little different, isn't it? Do you recall the other qualifications?"
"Is that important at the moment?" Miss Rolf asked. "Oh, well ... this man is also a dangerous and improbably gifted hypnotist. Disturb him with an ordinary telepathic probe or get physically within a mile or so of him, and he can turn you mentally upside down, and will do it in a flash if it suits his purpose. He's quite ruthless, is supposed to have committed any number of murders. He might as easily be some unknown as a man constantly in the public eye who is keeping his abilities concealed.... He impersonates people.... He is largely responsible for the fact that in a quarter of a century the interplanetary colonization program literally hasn't got off the ground...."
She added, "That's as much as I remember. There will be further details in the files. Should I dig them out?"
"No," Ferris Weldon said. "You've covered most of it."
Dr. Lowry interrupted irritably, "What's the point of this rigmarole, Weldon? You aren't assuming that either of us has taken your rogue telepath seriously...."
"Why not?"
Lowry shrugged. "Because he is, of course, one of the government's blandly obvious fictions. I've no objection to such fictions when they serve to describe the essential nature of a problem without revealing in so many words what the problem actually is. In this case, the secrecy surrounding the project could have arisen largely from a concern about the reaction in various quarters to an instrument which might be turned into a thought-control device."