“Yes, yes,” said Sayona. “But of course, I wasn’t thinking of anything so far-fetched. He looked at Donal’s back with mild annoyance. We know enough about genetics now to realize that we could not have, suddenly, a completely new version of the human being. Any change would have to come in the shape of one new, experimental talent at a time.”

“But what if it were an undiscoverable talent?”

“Undiscoverable?”

“Suppose,” said Donal, “I have the ability to see a strange new color? How would I describe it to you—who cannot see it?”

“Oh, we’d locate it all right,” replied Sayona. “We’d try all possible forms of radiation until we found one you could identify as the color you were seeing.”

“But still you wouldn’t be able to see it, yourselves.”

“Well, no,” said Sayona. “But that would be hardly important, if we knew what it was.”

“Are you sure?” persisted Donal, not turning. “Suppose there was someone with a new way of thinking, someone who in childhood forced himself to do his thinking within the framework of logic—because that was the only way those around him thought. Gradually, however, as he grows older he discovers that there are relationships for him that do not exist for other minds. He knows, for example, that if I cut down that tree just below us out here in my garden, some years in time, and some light-years in distance away, another man’s life will be changed. But in logical terms he cannot explain his knowledge. What good would it do you then, to know what his talent was?”

“No good at all, of course,’’ said Sayona, good-humoredly, “but on the other hand it would do him no good at all, either, since he lives in, and is part of a logical society. In fact, it would do him so little good, he would undoubtedly never discover his talent at all; and the mutation, being a failure, would die aborning.”

“I disagree with you,” said Donal. “Because I, myself, am an intuitional —superman. I have a conscious intuitive process. I use intuition consciously, as you can use logic, to reach a conclusion. I can cross-check, One intuition against the other, to find out which is correct; and I can build an intuitive structure to an intuitive conclusion. This is one, single talent— but it multiplies the meaning and the power of all the old, while adding things of its own.”

Sayona burst out laughing.