“Correct,” Malone said.
“Well, then,” Her Majesty said with satisfaction, and beamed at him.
A second passed.
“Well, then, what?” Malone said in confusion.
“Telepathy,” Her Majesty said patiently, “is an extremely complex affair. It involves a sort of meshing with the mind of this other person. It has nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with this simple ‘squirting’ of thoughts across space, as if they were orange pips you were trying to put into a wastebasket. No, Sir Kenneth, I cannot believe in what Mr. Taylor says.”
“But it’s still possible,” Malone said.
“Oh,” Her Majesty said, “it’s certainly possible. But I should think that if any telepaths were around, and if they were changing people’s minds by ‘squirting’ at them, I would know it.”
Malone frowned. “Maybe you would at that,” he said. “I guess you would.”
“Not to mention,” Boyd put in, “that if you were going to control everything we’ve come across like that you’d need an awful lot of telepathic operators.”
“That’s true,” Malone admitted. “And the objections seem to make some sense. But what else is there to go on?”