Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside. "What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring something."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know why your instruments measure whatever they're measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at all. It's not inconceivable that the children might be measuring the instruments, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. &q............