The Hole Truth

Illustration by Arthur George

Dean Connor’s office was like another world, and seemed awkwardly out of place with the rest of the campus. It was ornate, and pretentious, and it smelled musty, as though it meant to emulate the precincts of some enormously more prestigious Ivy League university.

Dr. Bryant, having been summarily summoned, entered it with enormous trepidation, with a feeling of foreboding, a portent of impending doom.

“Sit down,” Connor muttered, barely looking up from a crisp, new Wall Street Journal. From his right hand a felt marker dangled, and on a pad next to the phone Bryant noted what he took to be a broker’s number and a list of stock market symbols.

Some time passed, during which Bryant’s nerves continued to rasp away, but finally Connor put the paper down, capped the marker, and pushed both it and the pad to the side of his otherwise totally uncluttered desk.

“I think it’s time for you to tell me all about this test, Bryant.”

Bryant’s first impulse was to gasp, though he fortunately had retained the control needed to mask that. “How did you know about that?”

“I’ve gotten several complaints about it, Bryant. That’s how. Believe me, I don’t appreciate criticism from the parents of our students, especially when they’re on the alumni advisory board. You’ve been violating the first rule of academia, Bryant, I thought you had better sense.”

Bryant was completely baffled. “Complaints from parents—about a simple intelligence test? I don’t understand. It isn’t even a part of the curriculum, I’ve been developing it with my grant.”

“And using your students as guinea pigs. Just where do you think you are, Bryant? This isn’t Harvard, or some other school people are scared of getting thrown out of, this is Weybellowe College, the bottom of the barrel, the pits, the last resort of desperate wealthy parents and poor kids who can’t afford to go anyplace else.” He glared at Bryant, temper slowly building up in pitch and intensity.

Bryant was familiar with the process. So was everybody else on the faculty. With the advent of every crisis there were betting pools whose objective was to predict the exact time that Connor would stroke out.

Bryant reluctantly launched his defense. “I asked for volunteers to try it out,” he said. “It was a blind study of the comparative accuracy of my test and the old standbys. The results were strictly confidential—”

“—You weren’t quite careful enough then, Bryant, because you had a leak.”

“Who?”

“How should I know? The point is that because of your bungling I had to spend an hour on the phone apologizing to that insufferable oaf, Frederick Van Vogt.”

“I see. Well, his son was one of the volunteers, and he did miserably on all the tests, but—”

“—And his father endowed this college handsomely just so he could get in. Bryant, this family is important to Weybellowe—Vogt has three more sons, all of them as dumb as or dumber than this one. If you don’t care about anything else you should at least be cognizant of where the money comes from that pays your salary.”

Bryant was tempted—but only just—to tell Connor just how pitiful that salary was. Bryant wasn’t knocking down anywhere near what Connor got. Like most of the professors here, he used his credentials at Weybellowe to get at grant money, which was what he really lived on.

Bryant’s defensive posture stiffened at that thought, he was good at getting grants, and he had earned a solid reputation for delivering positive and useful results from his sideline research, so that with every successfully completed project he became a better risk and his personal academic stature grew in spite of his humble surroundings. That, he knew, was why Connor had called him in for this relatively cordial chat instead of just kicking him out.

“I don’t intend to let this institution slide back into its mediocre past,” Connor continued. “I’ve built it up to what it is today. Twenty years ago, when 1 came here all it was a normal school, cranking out elementary school teachers with no more imagination than sheep. Today we’re a four year institution, with chairs in all the liberal arts, and some of the sciences. That’s no small feat, Bryant, and I don’t mind telling you that I look on anything and anybody who impugns it with a very jaundiced eye.”

Now, Bryant was getting a little angry himself. “I didn’t do anything to the Vogt kid. He volunteered, and he took the tests like all the other volunteers. He was in the active group and he scored on the low end of the bell—”

“—In your new test?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“And did very much better in the others?”

“Again, yes, he did. But—the other tests are old tests, which have been around for generations. Most students take them several times before they even reach college, and do better every time they repeat. In fact, that’s the trouble with these old-fashioned tests, they don’t test elemental intelligence except maybe on the first try, after that, they’re basically memory tests. Besides, I know Vogt cheated.”

“What?!”

“He wasn’t the only one. Over half of each group cheated on the standard tests.”

“You allowed this?!”

“Of course. I couldn’t ask for a better control. Knowing this gave me a statistical spread, a small one, certainly, but its existence provided the equivalent of a third control group, because it’s impossible to cheat on my test.” Having established culpability on the part of the complaining student Bryant felt a little more secure.

“There’s still the matter of the leak.”

“Bradford and I graded the tests personally,” Bryant countered. “No scores were disclosed except to the student himself. The records were then encoded blind as a part of the project data. Even if somebody got into the data file there wouldn’t be any way for him to tell who scored what. No, Dean, the leak, if there was one, was a cooperative thing. The students must have compared their grades. I’d be interested to see who else you got complaints from. I’ll bet it’ll match my list of those who cheated.”

“I thought you said there weren’t any identifiers, Bryant.”

“I’m speaking of my recollections. My memory is pretty reliable.”

Connor produced a list from his desk drawer.

Bryant perused it, nodded, and replied, “Yes, I thought so.” He replaced the list on Connor’s desk.

“You can see these are all children of people important to this institution, Bryant. The loss of their financial support could seriously imperil its future, as well as yours.” He stared blankly at Bryant.

Bryant stared calmly back.

“You’re going to have to change those scores, Bryant.”

“You know I can’t do that, Dean. If I did a thing like that and anybody found out I’d never get another grant. And—would you want anybody on the faculty who would do that?” Connor was caught in his bluff. Now he had to squirm out of it. “Uh—what I meant, Bryant, was that since you know they cheated you also know your data is faulty. I’d think you’d want to retest all these people and set the record straight.”

“I see,” Bryant replied, now convinced the suggestion had been a trap for him. Just as he was determined not to fudge his results he was equally set against retesting, which would cast similar aspersions on it. And, there was no need to. “The trouble with that idea is that it won’t work, Dean. I know exactly what would happen, the scores on the old tests would improve by a predictable increment because of the past experience and the results of my test wouldn’t change one iota. As I said, it’s impossible to cheat on my test.”

“That’s a smug answer, Bryant.” Connor was getting steamed again, he didn’t like being told he couldn’t have what he wanted.

“You say that because you don’t know anything about the test, Dean. I meant it in the same sense that it’s impossible to cheat in an open textbook exam. If you can legitimately go to the book and get the right answer it’s not cheating.

“Of course, if you aren’t smart enough to learn how to use the index, or you’re too dumb to learn to read, then the open book won’t help much. In my test all the subject has to be able to do is ask a computer the right questions. If he does that the computer will give him the data he needs to solve the problem within some finite quantity of time. His intrinsic intelligence is measured, not rote knowledge, and it’s the time he takes, not the fact of solution, that provides the yardstick.”

“Yes,” Connor boomed, “but he has to know how to use the computer. Lots of people can’t do that. I can’t.”

Bryant carefully refrained from patronizing, although the opportunity was almost irresistible. “It must have been a while since you tried it, then. Modern computers are incredibly user friendly, especially since they became independent of keyboards. Now, with a stylus or with vocal commands even a quadriplegic or a blind person can use them efficiently. It’s like Bradford says, ‘There’s no excuse for computer illiteracy these days.’” There, he’d scored with a dig despite his good intentions.

Connor merely stewed and glared.

Bryant knew it was probably useless but he went on with his explanation anyway. “Bradford wrote a program that’s entirely menu driven, and we’ve been running it on the best equipment we could get our hands on. The heart of it is a ROM disk with an entire encyclopedia on it. The program uses this in conjunction with what Bradford complains is a miserably small RAM, only 100 megabytes. Most of this is tied up in visual effects, and these are spectacular. This enabled us to construct the test as a series of physical problems for the subject to solve. One of my favorites is the manhunt.”

“The what?”

“You almost feel like it’s real, Dean, like if the lion or the tiger or the bear that’s after you would really kill you if you got caught. Of course, there are many other versions of this—there’s the burning building, the time bomb, the tidal wave, the collapsing bridge— this is what makes the test both tamperproof and accurate. Not only that, it yields a bonus, in that it’s fairly easy to identify particular aptitudes among the test subjects. This is why we call it the life test, the only right answer is survival.”

Connor’s face, heretofore immobile, and resembling nothing so much as a pinkish stone, suddenly cracked into a smile. This soon infected his entire body as he threw his head back and exploded in a frank guffaw.

Bryant watched in fascination, wondering who the lucky person was who had this moment in the pool. He believed at the time that Connor was in fact, stroking out.

But, this lasted only an instant. Suddenly, the tables turned. “You charlatan,” Connor blurted, when he could find the breath. “You’ve found yourself a niche, haven’t you? You’ve invented the perfect con. Not bad, not bad at all.”

Before Bryant could respond, the dean’s mood darkened, and from his almost elfin image he was transmogrified, back into the ogre he always had been.

“Well, Bryant, you can do stuff like that on your own time, but not on the college’s time. Weybellowe pays you to teach psychology. Hereafter, any grant you get had better be compatible with that.”

Bryant started to protest. “Dean, I don’t think you understand—”

“Oh yes I do, Bryant. And now that I do I think these parents will too—after 1 explain to them that what you’re really doing is developing computer games perhaps they’ll take you a little less seriously. 1 know I do.”

“But that’s—”

“Run along now, Bryant, and don’t make any more trouble. If you do, you’re out on your neck. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what happens to college professors who get themselves fired or that mopes like you are a glut on the market.” Connor’s glance was caustic.

Bryant did in fact know what happened to college professors who got fired. Unless they were absolute geniuses, and could prove it, they never worked in the educational field again. He didn’t think Connor could justify what he seemed to be threatening to do, but that wasn’t the point; Connor wouldn’t have to, he would simply accuse, and Bryant would then have the laboring oar. Bryant rose, turned, and left Connor’s office without another word.

Bradford’s ancient Fiat clattered down the road, struggling to keep up with the rest of the traffic on the airport ramp to the freeway. For its passengers, the mood was glum.

“It’s plainly no use, Chuck, Connor must have put the word out anyway. I put three weeks on the road and not only is nobody interested, I wasn’t even able to get the grant renewed. Nobody is going to take anything we do seriously anymore.”

“They can’t all be as stupid as Connor is, Dr. Bryant. We’ve got something that’s invaluable. It’s only a question of time—”

“I don’t know about that, Chuck. I have to admit this is a problem I never would have anticipated, I never dreamed anything so useful would be a hard sell. But, when you stop to think about it, there is precedent—it isn’t the first idea ahead of its time. Many great developments have been publicly ridiculed, everything from the voyages of Columbus to the steam engine and the telephone.”

Bradford brazenly cut in front of a tour bus whose driver was less than alert, and thus managed to reach the lane for the overpass despite the shortcomings of his laboring engine. “Those things,” he remarked, “all collided head on with vested interests. This doesn’t. Everybody concedes the old tests are little better than guesswork, and that not a one of them comes anywhere near ours when it comes to reliability and accuracy.”

“I’m counting on that part of it to sell the military, Chuck,” Bryant replied. “If there’s one place where identifying aptitudes is important it’s there.”

“I hope they like it. If they do we can kiss Weybellowe off, designing and installing all this stuff would be a real career opportunity for us, a project of our own.”

“That idea had also crossed my mind, Chuck. Believe me, I’ve never been too comfortable with my security dependent on a nitwit like Connor and I think it’s only a question of time until he finds a way to get rid of us. I suspect he’d like it better if we moved on by ourselves but he’ll step in if we hesitate.”

Bradford muttered his agreement.

“They turned it down?!”

“I’m not over the shock yet, myself, Chuck. I guess I should have taken you along, maybe between the two of us…”

“Don’t blame yourself, Doc. It wouldn’t have made any difference. DOD’s experts certainly understand the technicalities, and you were there to explain the theory. I’d have been in the way.”

“They said their own tests were adequate, that they’d functioned satisfactorily for fifty years and everybody understood how they worked. I pointed out that these were all on paper but all that got me was a blank stare. They wouldn’t even provide me with test subjects, and when I said I would provide the volunteers I was told that anybody I selected could hardly be impartial. Clearly, they didn’t want to look at this.”

“There’s precedent, Doc. Ever hear of Billy Mitchell, the guy who sank battleships with airplanes? The military response to his achievement was to convene a court martial and get rid of a nut, and so when the Japanese attacked us twenty years later we had battleships by the bushel but only four carriers in the Pacific. They gave Mitchell a medal, posthumously, of course. That was supposed to fix things.”

“These are modern times, Chuck, we should be able to do better than that.”

“Everybody lives in modern times, Doc, including you and me. The difference between them and us is that we’re on the outside and they’re on the inside. They like things just as they are because they understand them, and they don’t understand what we’re doing. We make them uncomfortable.”

“Is that it? They’re afraid of change?”

“It’s a big part, Doc, but not all of it. I run into this far more than you do because computers have come so far in such a short time. The general public is intrigued but baffled. They like to play with computers but they really don’t like having to trust them. The average person endures this because he hasn’t got any choice, but if he had his way he’d stay where he’s comfortable and count on his fingers.”

“It’s human nature to fear the unknown, Chuck.”

“And, anybody who dabbles in the unknown. Doc, I think that pretty well defines the problem. It may well be that it isn’t the unknown they really fear, but the people whom they think understand what they don’t. That is very hard on the ego.”

“I’ve been teasing up a theory of my own about that, Chuck. Tell me, why is it you’ve never taken the test yourself?”

“Me? Why, no particular reason, I suppose, except that I wrote the software, and—”

“Are you saying that would make the result invalid in your case?”

“No, nothing of the sort. The program should function the same for me as for anybody. Uh, how come you never took it?”

“I suspect it’s the same reason why you didn’t, Chuck, I’m afraid I might find out I’m not as smart as I thought I was. With the old tests there was always room for argument, the possibility of error was conceded, but now we’re dealing in absolutes, absolutes with the finality of natural laws. We can no more alter our own innate intelligence than we can defy the force of gravity.”

Bradford winced at the sound of that forbidden word. Frustration could do strange things, even to dedicated scientists. But he let it pass without comment. “We’re better off not knowing, huh, Doc?”

“Hardly. In fact we’re worse off. We’re like the people who wouldn’t take the AIDS test, the result might make us uncomfortable and we don’t like that. We’ve been hypocritical, Chuck. Worse, we’ve been cowards. We won’t do what we’ve been asking others to do, we aren’t as brave as the student volunteers.”

“Then, we’ve both got to take it, Doc. Somehow, I think that’s essential to the solution. I don’t think we have any chance of exploiting this thing until we do that.”

“How are you going to feel if it turns out you’re below normal intelligence? Can you handle that?”

“I don’t know. Doc. How about you? What if you take the test and somebody you don’t like tests out smarter? What if it’s somebody like Connor? It’s easy to be contemptuous of enemies when you can denigrate them, but what if the test shows they’re markedly more intelligent than you are, what then?”

“Chuck, you’re starting to scare me.”

“How about we get on with it, Doc.? I think I might just be in the mood now. After awhile, who knows? Let’s not give ourselves time to find excuses, let’s do it now.”

“Why not?” Bryant answered with a sigh of resignation.

“All right, Chuck, you’re five points up scale from me, the test proves you’re more intelligent than I am. Why don’t I resent it?”

“I don’t know, Doc. Maybe it’s got something to do with the norm. Granted, I check out a little bit higher, but we’re still so close to the right slope of the bell the difference is almost nothing compared to the gap between us and the left side. But, that’s not entirely unexpected, is it? We wouldn’t have gotten where we are if we were stupid. It’s always possible that you are too intelligent to let this bother you.”

“Possible,” Bryant conceded thoughtfully. “Still, psychology is my field of expertise and I know reason counts for precious little when it comes to human behavior. No, Chuck, I think there’s more to it than that. I think what we have here is a breakthrough, all right, but I don’t think we have the complete answer. I suspect that we’ve really measured only one facet of intelligence.”

“Now you’re rationalizing, Doc, and that’s a cop-out.”

“I should resent that remark, Chuck. Somehow, I don’t, because I know it isn’t true.”

“I’m sorry, Doc.”

“I do resent your apparent need to apologize. I wasn’t looking for pity, I….”

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“But, you look funny.”

“Yeah!”

“Well?”

“That’s because I think maybe Connor actually may have finally said something intelligent. It sure would be fun to test him.”

“What did he say?”

“He accused me of developing computer games on school time. I was highly insulted, but you know, he could be right? After all, such games do test aptitudes. Some people are better at them than other people.”

“Sure, Doc, but not the way we’re better than the people at the low end on our tests. The average computer game tests motor skills, the ability to concentrate and the ability to plan ahead, and this is why practice makes the player better. No amount of practice can pump up a player’s smarts.”

“That is an interesting revelation, Chuck. However, we also test these same abilities. We have our own built-in errors. We have to eliminate them too, or we will continue to get invalid results, just as we have been doing.”

“You mean, you think our data’s bad?”

“Not necessarily bad, but it’s imperfect. We—”

“—Perfection is unattainable, Doc. Nobody should know that better than you. We can only strive for it, but we’ll never achieve it.”

“We can do better than we have done.”

“We can’t do anything without money, and with Connor on our backs we’ll have to find our volunteers elsewhere, and pay them ourselves, which means we won’t eat very well. And, consider the alternative: if we don’t continue the studies we’ll lose this grant and it might not be so easy to get more.”

“You’ve missed the point, Chuck. I said ‘Connor had an intelligent idea,’ and he did. You must know something about computer games. Tell me, how difficult is it to make and market one?”

“Idiots do it, which means we’re in business,” Bradford grinned. “But, what would a tiling like that do to our credibility? We have to consider that?”

“I am considering it, Chuck. I think that may depend more on our choice of markets than anything else, I think we have to cater to a particular segment.”

“Who?”

“I can show you better than I can tell you. Let’s take a drive downtown.”

“Where downtown?”

“The State Unemployment Office.”

“I get it. Connor’s going to fire us and we have to sign up for compensation?”

“Something like that.”

“All right,” Connor glared, “this is it. It was bad enough when you were just screwing up on campus, now you’re running a gambling operation all over town. I think this pretty well ends both your academic careers.”

“It’s not gambling. Moreover, we don’t run it. All we do is supply software, and we do that through a private corporation that doesn’t even mention our names, much less this school’s.”

“Doesn’t matter, people important to the school know of your connection. They don’t like it. They don’t like it, I don’t like it. The reason I know that is I’ve already talked to enough of them to make sure that when your contracts come up for renewal two weeks from now that won’t happen.”

He paused, letting it sink in. “I said it before, I’ll say it again—people who get themselves in your situation and are involuntarily terminated don’t get hired elsewhere. You can keep that off your records by submitting your resignations right now, gathering up your garbage and getting it and yourselves off Waybellowe property. Don’t worry about your students. Others are waiting to take your places. Waybellowe will get along just fine.”

Connor didn’t expect to get rid of the two of them without some sort of resistance, in fact, he was hoping for that, which is why he called them in to give them the axe in person. But they weren’t cooperating. They just turned and looked at one another, smiled briefly, and then broke out into uncontrollable bursts of laughter.

Connor couldn’t stand it. He too, underwent change. His face flushed and his blood pressure began to climb. He clenched his fists in anger, and without thinking, slammed the right one down on the glass-topped desk as hard as he could. The glass shattered, and some of the shards displaced, a few into the soft flesh of the heel of that hand.

He rose to his feet, the anger soaring to new heights. When his blood pressure followed it up the strain was too much for his mistreated circulatory system. Suddenly, with a wince of pain and a feeble squeal, his tantrum ceased involuntarily.

Connor sank back into his chair, right arm dangling limply alongside. A thin trickle of saliva flowed from the same side of his slack mouth. He muttered only gibberish from then on.

Bryant and Bradford stopped laughing as suddenly as Connor stopped talking, and stared dumbly at each other for a moment. The silence was broken when Bradford facetiously asked, “Who do you suppose won the pool?”

The business meeting of the board of directors of Gleaners, Inc. was, as always, informal. It took place in the back room of Morrie’s, a less than elite bistro and eatery on the wrong side of the tracks, frequented mostly by impecunious college students and transients. The fare was tolerable, and reasonable, but not fancy.

Bryant, as chairman of the board, opened the meeting with a toast. “To Lefty Connor, without whose cooperation this entire operation would have flopped.”

Down the hatch went five mugs of Dad’s Root Beer, each fortified by a shot of scotch. This combination, which sounded revolting, was uncommonly palatable, though it didn’t work with just any old root beer. Just about any kind of scotch would do but the root beer had to be the real stuff.

“Now, then,” Bryant continued, grabbing a slice of the pizza the waiter had just delivered, “what’s the score, Donohoo?”

Bill Donohoo was the company treasurer. Also, he managed the local office of the State Unemployment Commission. “We made $8,700.00 off the machines last month,” he announced, “all of which was used to expand to new locations, including six other cities throughout this state. Fees for testing brought in another $23,000.00, all of which will be distributed to the stockholders and board members as salaries and to reimburse for expenses.”

“Good for you, Bill,” Bradford shouted, a little louder than he intended, being on his second round of scotch and root beer. “Eating is the hardest habit I ever tried to break.”

“Stay sober, Chuck, you have to give the progress report. I’m through, so you’re next.”

“It’s a formal occasion,” Bradford replied, “so I’ll stand, if I can.” He struggled to his feet, grabbed himself a slice of the rapidly disappearing pizza, and announced, “We placed 113 people in more or less responsible jobs last month. I’m particularly pleased to announce that eight of these were scientific positions filled by people without degrees in the discipline for which they were hired, and that five of these competed successfully against people who did have such degrees.”

There was a round of applause. Bradford used the interval to wolf down his pizza and reach for more. “Our star testee was Junius Brown, a transient originally from Bone Gap, Illinois. Junius is now third shift engineer at the Bolton Textile plant here in Waybellowe. I have to say I never expected to see a perfect score on spatial relationship comprehension but Junius came within a hair, all with only six years of schooling—”

“—And the plant manager tells me they haven’t had fifteen minutes downtime on the line since he took over third shift,” Donohoo interrupted.

“I was just gonna say that,” Bradford added glumly. “Uh, that’s all.” He quickly sat down, just as the waiter entered with a fresh pizza.

“I’d ask the secretary to read the minutes of the last meeting, only I happen to know she didn’t take any.”

“I’m not going to take any this time, either, Don,” the secretary replied.

Judy Ivnik really was a secretary, Bryant’s old secretary from when he was a professor at the college. “I’m waiting for you to finish the old business so we can take up some new things.”

“As far as I can tell, we are finished, thanks to your negligence. OK, how about it? Is there any new business? I’d like to stop talking and start eating, too, you know.”

“I’ll make my motion,” Judy announced. “The motion is that we double the prize for high scores and make it a dollar, and that we also cut the fee for playing from a dime to a nickel.”

She turned to face blank stares from Bryant and Bradford, the only two of the five of them presently unemployed.

Anticipating their probable comments she continued, “Believe it or not, there will be substantially more people playing if we do this. To some it might even make the difference. I figured it out, and it’s clear that increasing the volume will substantially increase the number who play, but it won’t even come close to doubling the number of winners. Therefore, we’ll save a little bit there, and in time, we’ll be even again on our own revenue.”

“You’ve got figures?”

“Well, they’re in my head, Chuck, but—”

“—OK, then I’ll accept them, and I second your motion. But, let me add a thought; at the moment, we’re taking hits on rewards because we let the smart people play over and over again. Now, there’s nothing basically wrong with that except that it’s redundant for us and it defeats our basic purpose. For them, all it proves is that in that one category they can win over and over again.

“So. what I propose is to amend the motion, to change the rules so that if a winner plays again he has to take a different test. That way, he gets another chance at a prize and we get new data. With this new data we’ll be able to tell just how broad a person’s genius really is.”

“I can buy that, Chuck,” Bryant added. “How about you, Bill? Would it screw up your operation any?”

“Probably not,” Donohoo answered. “If anything, it would make it easier for my people to evaluate the applicant. We’d have a better idea who to send him to. And since our system is already trunked into Gleaners’s there wouldn’t be any additional load. For Gleaners there’d be more records, of course. I think, to be fair to the winners, we ought to be able to tell them why they’re barred from competition.”

“The employers are already doing that, Bill. It’s part of the hiring process. Some of these guys have been so browbeaten by society they’re convinced they’re inferior. It’s a real boost to self-esteem to know they’re not.”

“And that worries me, too,” Donohoo replied, almost defensively. “What are we going to do when word finally leaks out, when some of these formerly ‘elite’ people have to face the truth that it’s they who are inferior? That’s going to hurt, Don, that’s the bunch in power.”

“I won’t argue with you there, Bill. I’ve put considerable time into the problem myself. They best I can say is that they have it coming. And they do. As long as man has been man, raw ability has never been allowed to be the regulating mechanism it should have been. There have always been ways for the inferior or mediocre to cheat. The weak have always combined to pull down the mighty.

“A human being can be an idiot in all other respects but still be clever enough to deceive gullible people into thinking he is something more, just because his ancestors were achievers. The feudal system, which dominated Europe for a thousand years, was built on that proposition, and every modern society is still controlled by a dynasty of some kind.

“What’s generally overlooked is that there are categories of stupidity just as there are of genius. Stupidity is no more universal than genius is. This is why Albert Einstein, who sometimes got lost on the way to his office, was still capable of working out mathematical problems nobody else could. Nobody’s good at everything and nobody’s bad at everything.

“We haven’t by any means developed the ultimate intelligence test. We’ve only just started, barely scratched the surface. And you know what I think? I think it’ll probably work out much different than we thought, for the very reasons I just mentioned. What we really have here, I suspect, is not so much an intelligence test, per se, but a practical way of putting all our round, square, triangular, trapezoidal and other shaped pegs into the proper holes.”

“Sounds like maybe at last we’ve got the hole truth,” Bradford replied, a noticeable slur in his voice. He wolfed down another slice of pizza and chased it with another mug of the high octane root beer.

Bryant winced when he saw that his next challenge was under construction; they’d come in Bradford’s car. Bradford stood six-four and weighed 260 pounds. Taking his keys away from him was going to be a chore unless.… It works in politics, he mused, then smiled broadly and said “You’re dry, Chuck, let me pour you another drink.”

Bradford held out his mug, and reaching for more food, failed to note that this one was more than half scotch.

You re a little bit brighter than me, Chuck, he said to himself, but until you develop a test for sneakiness you’re still gonna keep on losing. Suddenly, Bryant realized that here was man’s real need. Until a human being appeared who could indeed find a way to produce the truth, each time, every time for everybody, all other research into man’s behavior was a waste of time.

I’ll get him started on it the instant he sobers up, Bryant resolved.