Read Little Fingers! for Free Online Page A

them by being rigorously unreasonable. Are you with them, or are
you against them? Do you dare to be against them?
    I cannot read
their thoughts. I hear silence. I approach a zone of white sound.
Nothing can be heard. The air becomes eerily still, and a little
cold. There is a blank expression to their mind. And then I know
that I have to be watchful, on my guard.
    The good news
is that they do not seem to know who I am, or at least there is no
indication that I have ever detected. There again, as their
thoughts are silent, I would never know. Either way, they do not
glance at me or in any way acknowledge my presence. They pass me
by.
    And how would
you spot them? It is not as easy for you. That is why you do not
recognise them, why you are taken in by them, why you victimise
others before falling victim to them yourself.
    Now let me
tell you the story as it happens.
     
    * *
*
     
    Before I do
that, I must tell you one more thing about myself.
    After I had my
accident, after I was reconstituted by the surgical team, after I
learnt about my new powers, as I began to come to terms with them,
I made a strategic decision.
    There are two
types of Mary Knightlys in the world. There are the minor league
Mary Knightlys, like Mary Knightly herself, and there are the major
league ones, like Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler. They are the same
creatures underneath, living on different scales.
    With my
new-found powers, I could take on either. I could use sympathetic
suggestion to get a personal audience with the appropriate
dictator, I could enter the room, I could shake him by the hand, I
could flatter him and make him laugh. Dictators have no discernible
sense of humour, but they laugh when you flatter them. Then I would
kill him.
    How would I do
that?
    After the
accident, I was visiting South Africa and I went on a three-day
safari. It was magnificent. I saw all the big game in their natural
habitat, and they were magisterial. On the third day, we were
standing next to the jeep, and suddenly a lion leapt out on us.
According to the guide later, this was most unexpected behaviour
from a lion. The lion came at us very quickly. Involuntarily I
stepped in front of it to shield the rest of the group. As it made
ready to spring, I suddenly felt this energy welling up inside me,
my eyes flared like fire, and my brain exploded. The lion was on
its back legs, starting to leap, then it wobbled and it dropped at
my feet, its jaws gently encircling my ankles.
    The group was
flabbergasted. They wanted to thank me out of sheer relief, but it
was not obvious what I had done. Because the situation was
otherwise inexplicable, the guide rapidly explained that this
particular lion was in the process of being monitored because it
had a heart problem. Obviously it had got over-excited at the
prospect of making a kill and had suffered a heart attack. Having
had the situation explained to them, the group came up to me one by
one to congratulate me on my courage in stepping into the path of a
rampaging lion.
    What the guide
said was untrue, because I heard him. He was panicking as to how to
explain this apparently super-human feat, so he made up the story
of the lion's weak heart. He did not want to acknowledge to himself
what had happened as it defied nature, and he wanted to reassure
the others too.
    I knew what
had happened. I had killed the lion with my thoughts.
    So I could
kill a major league dictator too, using the same powers, but only
one of them. I would be arrested and the rest. I would be a bee
that could only sting once, not a wasp that could attack and sting
many a foe.
    And would I
improve the world with that one sting? I am not sure that I would.
My favourite social scientific law is the law of unintended
consequences. For anything that you do, there could be the one
intended consequence (and that is not guaranteed) and the two or
three unintended ones.
    Kill a
dictator, and who comes to the funeral? Maybe worse - does anyone
come to the