Nadine Triomph checked the long list of symbols for -- what was it? -- the tenth time. She did not think she could get anything out of it that Multivac had not, but it was only human to try.
She passed it over to Basil Seversky. "It's completely different, Basil," she said.
"You can see that at a glance," said Basil, gloomily.
"Well, don't drag. That's good. So far the only gene combinations that Multivac has dredged up seem to have been minor variations on a theme. Now this one is different."
Basil put his hands into the pockets of his lab jacket and leaned his chair back against the wall. He felt the line of his hips absently and noted it was gaining a certain softness. He was getting pudgy all over, he thought, and didn't like it.
He said, "Multivac doesn't tell us anything we don't tell it first. We don't really know that the basic requirements for telepathy are valid, do we?"
Nadine felt defensive. It was Basil who had worked out the neurological requirements, but it was she who had prepared the program by which Multivac scanned the potential gene structures to see which might produce those requirements.
She said, "If we have two rather different sets of genetic patterns, as we now have, we can work out -- or try to work out -- the common factors, and this could give us a lead as to the validity."
"In theory -- but we'll be working in theory forever. If Multivac works at its present speed for the remaining lifetime of the sun as a main-sequence star, it will not have gone through a duodecillionth of all the possible structural variations of the genes that might exist, let alone the possible modifications introduced by their order on the chromosomes."
"We might get lucky." They had held the same conversation -- upbeat versus downbeat -- a dozen times, with minor variations in detail.
"Lucky? The word hasn't been invented to describe the kind of impossible luck we would need. And if we do pick out a million different genetic patterns with potential for telepathy, we then have to ask what the odds are that someone now alive will have such a gene pattern, or anything near it."
"We can modify," said Nadine.
"Oh? Have you come across an existing human genetic pattern which can be modified by known procedures into something Multivac says will produce telepathy?"
"The procedures will improve in the future and if we keep Multivac working and keep on registering all human genetic patterns at birth--"
"--And," Basil continued sing-song, "if the Planetary Genetic Council continues to support the program adequately, and if we continue to get the time-sharing we need on Multivac, and if--"
It was at that point that Multivac interrupted with one more item and all a dazed Basil could say afterward was, "I don't believe it."
Copyright © 1983 by Isaac Asimov
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