"'If there is reason to suspect you are lying, you will be put to the torture. And one of our Sensitives will then get at the truth.'
"So they had Sensitives, too. Telepaths who could tell whether a being was lying when pain had sufficiently disorganized his mind were as bad as the Empire's hypnoprobes.
"'I'll tell the truth, sir,' he said."
-Poul Anderson, "Tiger by the Tail" IN Anderson, Agent Of The Terran Empire (London, 1977), pp. 7-37 AT p. 16.
The revised version:
"'Beware of falsification. I have traveled and lived in the Empire, remember. I will have a sense for errors and omissions. If ever I begin to doubt you, you will be subjected to hypnoprobing.'
"Flandry felt an inward shiver. The instrument was bad enough when lightly employed by skilled men. In the hands of aliens, who had no proper understanding of the human psyche and would, moreover, dig deep, he'd soon have no mind left.
"'I'll cooperate, sir,' he promised."
-Poul Anderson, "Tiger by the Tail" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 241-302 AT p. 250.
Larry Niven's kzinti interrogate prisoners with telepaths. So did the original version of Anderson's Scothans. However, unlike the kzinti telepaths or the single surviving Chereionite, who serves Merseia, or the Ryellians, who serve Terra, the Scothan Sensitives cannot read thoughts. They can tell when a mentally disorganized being is lying. But, in the revised text, the Sensitives do not exist and the Scothans have acquired hypnoprobes.
Ryellians need time to learn and interpret the distinctive pattern of each individual brain whereas a Chereionite - impossibly - immediately detects and understands the surface thoughts of any being of any species, even a hydrogen-breathing gas giant dweller or a member of a species that he has never encountered before.
7 comments:
A genuine means of detecting falsehood alters almost everything about interrogation, and is a major plot buster, as I've found out myself.
What's more, something of the sort seems to be at least theoretically possible. IIRC, it's been found that there's a localized center of activity in the brain which lights up when there's an "intention to deceive".
H. Beam Piper has a scene in his "Space Viking" where a subject is under a "verdicator", which lights up red when there's a falsehood; the interrogator says that every time that happens, he's going to hammer the subject's teeth in with a pistol-butt.
Kaor, Paul!
Another reason for reading again the original version of "Tiger By The Tail," to note where it differs from the revision. Also, the revised text shows Cerdic as being more sophisticated than he was in the original. And the Ryellians were more plausible telepaths than the "universal" telepathy of Aycharaych.
Sean
I suspect the Chaerionites underwent a very long process of "artificial selection" through genetic manipulation; probably inevitable given the length of their history.
In other words, Aycharaych's telepathy is not a natural evolutionary product; probably his species were originally more like the Ryellians and then improved themselves.
It would be very convenient once they began exploring other planets, which given the "Ancient ruins" they apparently did extensively.
Mr Stirling,
And, as Ydwyr put it, the Ancient Chereionites tapped into "pandemic mind." Thus, some way of resonating with other brains existed long before Aycharaych. Thus, his universal telepathy is not quite so inexplicable.
Paul.
Gentlmen,
I like these points you made, they make sense of how the Chereionite could have become universal telepaths. Esp. if you think in terms of tens of thousands of years. Or even longer.
Sean
The "veridicator" shows up in the stories set earlier in Piper's future history. IIRC there is a scene in court in "Little Fuzzy" where all the witnesses testify under the veridicator.
Other 'plot busters':
Writing Star Trek episodes in way that wasn't wrecked by the 'transporter beam' was apparently rather difficult.
I recall a video "Romeo and Juliet with Cellphones". A much shorter story with fewer deaths. ;)
Another short video "Breaking Bad in a country with Universal Health Care". The protagonist gets his cancer diagnosis and a shortly thereafter treatment for it, without financially ruinous expense, so he never has to go into making and selling illegal drugs.
Kaor, Jim!
The trouble with using telepathy or any kind of lie detecting machine in trials is how they would up against the Constitutional prohibitions on anyone being forced to testify against himself. See esp. the V Amendment to the US Constitution.
The idea is that the prosecutor should make the case against the defendant in a criminal trial.
Ad astra! Sean
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