"Right." He nodded. "We can short-cut your training because you are his twin. Ordinarily we take a couple of weeks fitting each communications worker to his or her post—finding in just which their telepathic sensitivity will work the best. But since, in a way, we know about you through Revere, we can save time."
"Revere," she said, "what about him? Is he very sick?"
Tony Willis shrugged. "It's periodic," he told her. "This whole business is so new and so sudden it hit most of them without warning. Since you know the score you ought to be able to fight it."
"But mightn't I have my brother's weaknesses?" Lynne asked.
"We're hoping not," was the reply. "In most cases women resist better than men. The suggestions these creatures make are so swackably lewd they clash with the feminine propriety-barrier."
"While men, being Casanovas, give in," she said, thinking again of Rolf and his thousand-and-two women.
"Something like that," he replied, went on to tell her how telepathic messages were keyed and directed and addressed to reach the proper destinations. "You'll be here"—tapping a spot on the globe, a third of a world away from New Samarkand—"at Barkutburg, within mentarange of Zuleika, New Walla Walla and Cathayville. So here will be the code-keys for you to remember...."
The final briefing took sixteen hours. If Lynne, through her years of coaching for and year of work on the integration-team, had not been trained to complete concentration over long periods, she would never have been able to absorb all the new knowledge Tony Willis and other communications experts pumped into her.
At the end of that time he looked at her with red-rimmed but admiring eyes, shook his head and said, "My hat is off to you, Lynne. You're the quickest study I've ever met."
"Thanks—most of it's a matter of training," she replied modestly. She was glad he was not telepathic or he would have read the bright glow of far-from-modest pride that ran through her. Wait till Rolf hears about it, she thought. Maybe he won't think I'm such a marlet after all. With this went added pride in that she was obviously less exhausted than her mentor.