And they all sit there, in front of the very high, blacked, lead-crossed windows, allowing him his folly, the dog people skulking over in one corner, passing notes and leaning to whisper (they plot, they plot, sleeping or afoot they never let up), the Psi Section lot clear over the other side of the room—as if we have a parliament of some kind here… everyone for years has occupied his own unique pew-seat and angle in to the ravings of reddish and liver-spotted Brigadier Pudding—with the other persuasions-in-exile spread between these two wings: the balance of power, if any power existed at “The White Visitation.”

Dr. Rózsavölgyi feels that there well might, if the fellows “play their cards right.” The only issue now is survival—on through the awful interface of V-E Day, on into the bright new Postwar with senses and memories intact. PISCES must not be allowed to go down under the hammer with the rest of the bawling herd. There must arise, and damned soon, able to draw them into a phalanx, a concentrated point of light, some leader or program powerful enough to last them across who knows how many years of Postwar. Dr. Rózsavölgyi tends to favor a powerful program over a powerful leader. Maybe because this is 1945. It was widely believed in those days that behind the War—all the death, savagery, and destruction—lay the Führer-principle. But if personalities could be replaced by abstractions of power, if techniques developed by the corporations could be brought to bear, might not nations live rationally? One of the dearest Postwar hopes: that there should be no room for a terrible disease like charisma… that its rationalization should proceed while we had the time and resources… .

Isn’t that what’s really at stake for Dr. Rózsavölgyi here in this latest scheme, centered on the figure of Lieutenant Slothrop? All the psychological tests in the subject’s dossier, clear back to his college days, indicate a diseased personality. “Rosie” slaps the file with his hand for emphasis. The staff table shudders. “For exam-ple: his Minneso-ta, Mul-tipha-sic Personality Inventory is tremen-dously lopsi-ded, always in fa-vor of, the psycho-pathic, and, the unwhole-some.”

But the Reverend Dr. Paul de la Nuit is not fond of the MMPI. “Rosie, are there scales for measuring interpersonal traits?” Hawk’s nose probing, probing, eyes lowered in politic meekness, “Human values? Trust, honesty, love? Is there—forgive me the special pleading—a religious scale, by any chance?”

No way, padre: the MMPI was developed about 1943. In the very heart of the War. Allport and Vernon’s Study of Values, the Bernreuter Inventory as revised by Flanagan in ’35—tests from before the War—seem to Paul de la Nuit more humane. All the MMPI appears to test for is whether a man will be a good or bad soldier.

“Soldiers are much in demand these days, Reverend Doctor,” murmurs Mr. Pointsman.

“I only hope that we won’t put too much emphasis on his MMPI scores. It seems to me very narrow. It omits large areas of the human personality.”