Malone breathed a sigh of relief. "Good," he said. "That's what I wanted to know." He leaned forward. "And if they all do have names," he went on, "what is it called, when a large group of people are forced to act in a certain manner?"
O'Connor shrugged. "Forced?" he said.
"Forced by mental power," Malone said.
There was a second of silence.
"At first," O'Connor said, "I might think of various examples: the actions of a mob, for example, or the demonstrations of the Indian Rope Trick, or perhaps the sale of a useless product through television or through other advertising." Again his face moved, ever so slightly, in what he obviously believed to be a smile. "The usual name for such a phenomenon is 'mass hypnotism,' Mr. Malone," he said. "But that is not, strictly speaking, a psi phenomenon at all. Studies in that area belong to the field of mob psychology; they are not properly in my scope." He looked vastly superior to anything and everything that was outside his scope. Malone concentrated on looking receptive and understanding.
"Yes?" he said.
O'Connor gave him a look that made Malone feel he'd been caught cribbing during an exam, but the scientist said nothing to back up the look. Instead, he went on: "I will grant that there may be an amplification of the telepathic faculty in the normal individual in such cases."
"Good," Malone said doubtfully.
"Such an amplification," O'Connor went on, as if he hadn't heard, "would account for the apparent ... ah ... mental linkage that makes a mob appear to act as a single organism during certain periods of ... ah ... stress." He looked judicious for a second, and then nodded. "However," he said, "other than that, I would doubt that there is any psionic force involved."
Malone spent a second or two digesting O'Connor's reply. "Well," he said at last, "I'm not sure that's what I meant. I mean, I'm not sure I meant to ask that question." He took a breath and decided to start all over. "It's not like a mob," he said, "with everybody all doing the same thing at the same time. It's more like a group of men, all separated, without any apparent connections between any of the men. And they're all working toward a common goal. All doing different things, but all with the same objective. See?"