“You mean,” Sir Kenneth put in, “that they changed their minds.”
“Correct,” Malone said. “I refer, of course, to the firm of Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch, Spying Done Cheap.”
“Indeed,” Sir Kenneth said. “Then the operators of this force, whatever it may be, have some interest in allowing these spies to confess?”
“Maybe,” Malone said. “Let’s leave that for later. To get back to the beginning of all this: it seems to me to follow that the accidents and errors which have caused all the confusion through the United States and Russia are caused by somebody’s mind being changed at exactly the right moment. A man does something just a little differently than he decided to—or else he forgets to do it at all.”
“Correct,” Sir Kenneth said. “And you feel, Mr. Malone, that a telepathic command is the cause of this confusion?”
“A series of them,” Malone said. “But we also know, from Dr. O’Connor, that it takes a great deal of psychic energy to perform this particular trick—more than a person can normally afford to expend.”
“Marry, now,” Sir Kenneth exclaimed, “such a statement does not seem to have reason in it. Changing the mind of a man seems a small thing in comparison to teleportation, or psychokinesis, or levitation. And yet it takes more power than any of these?”
Malone thought for a second. “Sure it does,” he said. “I’d say it was a matter of resistance. Moving an inanimate object is pretty simple— comparatively, anyhow—because inert matter has no mental resistance.”
“And moving yourself?” Sir Kenneth said.
“There is some resistance there, probably,” Malone said. “But you’ll remember that part of the Fueyo training system for teleportation involved overcoming your own mental resistance to the idea.”