Tomorrow's ghost

grossly distorted, more accurately ... by reason in the first place - the Darwinian essential of instinct is independence from reason - and by emotion in the second. In the male of the species reason is the main problem, and in the female it is emotion - generally speaking, of course.'

Chauvinist! thought Frances.

'Is that so?' she said coldly.

'Now in your case, Frances, reason and emotion are probably both problems.

Whereas in Paul's case reason is undoubtedly by far the larger problem - '

They had probably been unable to find any emotions at all in Paul, except possibly anger and pride, decided Frances.

' - so much so that he'll probably have to make do without instinct altogether, and manage with experience and knowledge. But then fortunately he has an exceptional memory, and very considerable powers of observation ... But that's beside the point. In your case, Frances, it's almost as though reason and emotion sometimes cancel each other out, and you are left ... as it were ... with pure instinct.'

'Sometimes?'

'Yes. In the controlled tests we gave you a few years ago - and as confirmed by subsequent field observations - we gave you a score of four out of ten on a notional scale.'

'Four?' Frances felt deflated. If she was a pre-prehistoric female animal under the skin, she wasn't a very efficient one, clearly. 'Four?'

'Four out of ten.'

'So I can't rely on my instinct, then.'

'You certainly cannot. If you could you'd be an animal, my dear - you wouldn't be talking to me here in the dark, you'd be hunting me for supper. There's a million years of evolution, not to mention a few thousand years of civilisation, between nine-point-nine out of ten and four out of ten.'

She stared at him. Four-out-of-ten lacked night-vision too. And four-out-of-ten was cold and confused.

'Then ... if my score is so low ... why -'

'Low? My dear Frances, it isn't low. The consistent mark for instinct - among experienced officers - is two. And anything near three is exceptional.'

The chilly fingers between her shoulder blades were not those of the night. 'And four?'

'Four is phenomenal. Literally ... because we've never had a four. Which means sometimes - no, I'm not going into the details. One day I'll arrange a meeting between you and our psychological people. Only you'll have to be careful with them - four years ago they wanted to keep you and take you to pieces to see how you worked. Huh!'

Frances frowned into the darkness between them. Four years before there had been a lot of tests - everything from conventional I.Q. papers and ink blots to weird guessing games and an elaborate version of hunt-the-thimble. They had seemed to go on for an unconscionable time; in fact, hers had gone on longer than anyone else's, which she had assumed was either because she was a woman or because she was a borderline candidate. But she had nevertheless taken them all for granted.

Well, her phenomenal four-out-of-ten instinct hadn't worked then, that was for sure!

she decided grimly.

'The fact was - and is - that you are more valuable to us, my dear,' concluded Sir Frederick. 'But let's go inside - you must be perished with cold. It was altogether thoughtless of me to keep you out here in the dark, beautiful though it is, your night sky.'

In the dark, thought Frances. She had been in the dark and she was still in the dark.

'No - wait. You said there were two reasons. Sir Frederick.' In the light she would be over-awed by him: out here the odds were evened up.

'So I did. Very well ... you had never served under Butler before. If we'd told you to go and observe him then I believe your instinct would have been distorted. You would never have had that one clear vision you had today. And that was what I wanted you to have, Frances. It was the first thing you had to have.'

The first thing?

'But I was wrong. It wasn't a clear vision.'

'Have I said that?'

'You've implied it. Sir Frederick.'

'I've implied no such thing. You've doubted your instinct, and that's good. You must never rate it higher than a suspicion - but that's a very different thing.'

'Are you telling me I'm right about Colonel Butler?'

'No, Frances. I'm telling you I think you're right.

I think - and I rate two-point-five - I think that in a few minutes ... a few of your out-of-time minutes, Frances ... in a few minutes you came up with an instinctive certainty which our top personnel selection experts couldn't give me in a year. Because they'd be afraid to - they don't have the equipment to do it, the equipment doesn't exist - so I couldn't require them to do so. Do you understand now?'

Top personnel selection experts.

Personnel selection.

Selection.

They had been watching Colonel Butler.