"Not so little," Her Majesty said with some return of her old humor, "and not green, either. As a matter of fact, you are, Sir Kenneth."
Malone opened his mouth, shut it again and finally managed to say: "Me?" in a batlike squeal of surprise.
"I don't know how, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty went on, "but you are. It's ... rather frightening to me, as a matter of fact; I've never seen such a thing before. I've never even considered it before."
"You?" Malone said. "How about me?" It was like suddenly discovering that you'd been lifting two-hundred-pound barbells and not knowing it. "How could I be doing anything like that without knowing anything about it?"
Her Majesty shook her head. "I haven't the faintest idea," she said.
But Malone, very suddenly, did. He remembered deciding to keep a close check on his mental processes to make sure those bursts of energy didn't do anything to him. Subconsciously, he knew, he was still keeping that watch.
And maybe the watch itself caused the complete blanking of his telepathic faculties. It was worth a test, at least, he decided. And it was an easy test to make.
"Listen," he said. He told himself that he would now allow communication between himself and Her Majesty—and only between those two. Maybe it wasn't possible to let down the barrier in a selective way, but he gave it all he had. A long second passed.
"My goodness!" Her Majesty said in pleased surprise. "There you are again!"
"You can read me?" Malone asked.