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Mario Gonzalo, the artist member of the Black Widowers, seemed oddly disheveled as he said vehemently, "I cannot teach what I do because I don&039;t knohat I do, but that doesn&039;t mean I can&039;t do it"

And E to shoot sparks out of each gray bristle, bent his eyes, h the thick lenses before them, at Gonzalo and said, "If you don&039;t knohat you&039;re doing, you&039;re a paint dauber and not an artist"

"You&039;re a elo could teach you to be Michelangelo, but the fact is that Michelangelo couldn&039;t teach anyone to be Michelangelo For that elo either He was born Michelangelo"

"Youdoesn&039;t necessarily iive the kind of instruction froht profit If he couldn&039;t create equals, he could create somewhat lesseven if he could only pound a limited amount into the heads of leefully, "Mere enius And ere the coelo hi over his scotch and soda, and apparently irritated at being excluded from a conversation that the loud voices of Gonzalo and Rubin had elo is dead and can&039;t be consulted on the subject, why don&039;t we drop this foolish argument?"

"No," said Gonzalo passionately, "I appeal from the sublime to the ridiculous and ask Manny You&039;re a writer, Manny - after a fashion Can you teach what you do?"

"I not only can," said Rubin, "I have I&039;ve written articles for The Writer and I&039;ve lectured at writers&039; conferences"

"And you&039;ve told the, I suppose Do you tell them how you knohere you start your story, just which incident you put after which, how you break up your dialog, how youit away?"

"I could do that"

"Then do it right now Explain it toto the roots of his receding line of hair, said, in his soft voice, "Don&039;t do it, Manny We&039;ll be sitting here all night and none of us is interested Not even Mario"

"I won&039;t - but I can"

"You can&039;t," said Gonzalo, "because you can&039;t describe the intuition involved Enough intuition is talent, and a hell of a lot of it is genius, and intuition can&039;t be taught"

Geoffrey Avalon, standing tall, said in his solemn baritone, "You stand with the Greeks, Mario They were quite certain that any outstanding ability was the result of divine inspiration, the working of a god who possessed the person The word &039;enthusiasod within&039; in Greek Naturally, one can&039;t explain the workings of a god to a mere mortal, and that, I take it, is your position, Mario"

"Bull!" said Rubin "Bull to you, Geoff, and to Mario and to the Greeks There is nothing mysterious about intuition at all"

"If you can understand it," said Mario, "explain it"

"I will," said Rubin "All ainnate except a few biological instincts - certainly nothing cultural It may be that with experience - with experience, damn you, Mario - a person learns to interpret, very rapidly, what he observes, or to draw inferences, or to do so based on deduction or induction from those observations and his past experience He does it so rapidly that he generally doesn&039;t bother to isolate the step in the procedure or even to be aware they exist, so he calls it intuition Yes, Henry?"

Henry, the perennial waiter at the Black Widowers&039; s, his bland and uncreased sixtyish face displaying no eently, "Dinner is served, Mr Rubin It you will sit down, I am sure the rest will follow"

Rubin said, "I suppose I am the natural leader"

"No," said Jaarette, "as host today, I&039;m the leader However, the rest of us are naturally afraid you&039;ll eat everything in sight if we don&039;t all sit down to protect our rights"

"That depends," said Rubin, "on e are having today Henry?"

Henry said, "The chef is in an Old English , preceded by a seafood quiche"

"That&039;s not Old English," said Rubin

"The chef is rarely entirely consistent," said Henry, "and I&039;ely intuitive"

"And largely right, too," said Gonzalo, approving "Whatever you say intuition is, Manny, some people have more of it than others, and why is that?"

"Some people have more talent than"

"Aha!" said Gonzalo

Rubin looked haughty and said with stiff politeness, "If I ao on to explain that talent is the capacity for such fast thought, plus, perhaps, y of the brain and on nothing more mysterious than that"

"That&039;s h," said Drake

"Mysterious now, but not necessarily forever," said Rubin, "and e learn enough about the brain, talent and genius will be as nonmysterious as eye color"

"That&039;s just your intuitive guess," shot back Gonzalo

Rubin&039;s reply was lost in quiche, and the dinner conversation grew uest of the evening had maintained a steady and clearly amused silence Quietly, he listened and as quietly, he sipped at his martini

His name was Simon Alexander His black hair and black ive hi that, a Levantine one, were his most prominent features The small and persistent smile on his face seemed to accentuate the Satanism

When the coffee was served, however, and Drake tapped his spoon against the water glass, Alexander, as though in anticipation, grew serious

Drake said, "Gentleuest, and Manny, since you&039;ve been clattering away more insupportably even than usual, suppose you supervise the grilling"

Rubin said, "I&039;m sorry you find mental stimulation insupportable, Jim, but I&039;naled Henry for a bit of a freshener, then said,

"Well, Mr Alexander, or, if you prefer, Simon, how do you justify your existence?"

Alexander&039;s s to it that the Aal taxes in full and on time"

There was a stir about the table, and even Henry was betrayed into pausing in the precise perforlance at the guest

True, "Are you in the employ of the IRS?"

"I am," said Alexander "I&039;m in the Division of Fraud"

"Good God," said Trumbull, "and you offer that as justification for your existence? Horse - whipping with barbed wire is what it justifies" He cast a lowering glance at Drake

Drake said, "Give him a chance, Tom It takes all kinds to make a world and, aside from his profession, Simon is one of Nature&039;s noblemen"

Alexander waved his hand "It&039;s all right, Jim Tax collectors have always been the favorite villains of humanity from the moment they first appeared on scene in ancient Su in order to keep score Besides, I think Mr Tru himself colorfully and didn&039;t really mean it"

"The hell I didn&039;t," muttered Trumbull

Rubin, who had held his peace in a rievedtoday,quiet, Tom?"

Trumbull said, "Circumstances moved me"

Rubin waited for silence and said, "Mr Alexander - I withdraw the Sih the common law of humanity, you can have no friends here, or possibly anywhere - how can your role in tax collection be taken as justifying your existence?"

Alexander said, "I think it is not difficult to see that the IRS represents the single essential arovernment Presidents can die and be replaced at once, with but a slight and perfunctory hiccup of e, and we can lose ground diplomatically, economically even militarily, yet perhaps make it all up afterward Natural disasters are local, temporary, and pass by

"However, let the tax structure of the nation falter and the govern paralysis far wider and longer and deeper than anything that can possibly occur short of a thermonuclear war"

Rubin said, "But the tax structure is not likely to falter, is it?"

"Not in the sense that the physical machinery is likely to break apart or that the co No, the weak link is the taxpayer hiet now approaches half a trillion dollars annually, and the largest part of this is collected out of the unwilling wallets of Americans everywhere"

"Sorry, Manny," said Truot to interrupt What the hell has &039;unwilling&039; got to do with it? You enforce your own interpretation of the rules, act as prosecuting attorney and judge, hound us relentlessly, treat us as guilty till we prove ourselves innocent, and are perfectly ready to jail us if you can What do you care if we&039;re unwilling?"

"In the first place," said Alexander, "our judgments can be appealed to the courts We are not the last word Second, it would be muchwe do, we cannot audit everyone, we cannot check into everything If we tried, the cost would far outweigh what additional money we could collect No, we are forced to depend on the average A out a reasonably honest return and we can count on this only as long as that average American is convinced of the essential honesty of the system Within the bounds of the law - and the law is not completely equitable, but that&039;s not our fault - we must show neither favor nor mercy or the structure will break down

"Thus, although Al Capone could corand scale and could rabbed on inco ironical in this Inco that Nixon and Agnew did prior to their forced resignations was asout of dubious inco to shake the faith of the American people in the honesty of the tax structure was of all their ivable"

Rubin said, "You&039;re serious about this now? You&039;re not pulling our legs?"

"Dead serious"

"Good God, Jination You&039;ve brought in a guy who&039;s going to e in a little bit of honest expense - padding next time around"

Avalon cleared his throat "I don&039;t consciously pad, but I ree on just what constitutes a deductible expense in the first place"

"Then you deduct it till we tell you otherwise," said Alexander, agreeably "That&039;s the tax uilty - but none of this is what I came here prepared to talk about"

"Oh," said Rubin, "what are you prepared for?"

"Jim told me," said Alexander, "that the Black Widowers like to hear some tale that involves a bit of a puzzle, and I happen to have one"

"Ji to tell you that," said Avalon, austerely "Weconversation, and a puzzle is not necessary; however -"

Alexander smiled "In that connection, I was amused by the preprandial quarrel over the nature of intuition, since it is with a matter of intuition that my story is concerned"

"Telepathy!" said Gonzalo at once

"No, I think not," said Alexander &039;The whole conversation illustrated Mr Rubin&039;s thesis, actually I agree with him that intuition is undetected observation and deduction, and I would like to point out that what is often considered telepathy is the same Thus, when Jim introduced me, he said - and I think these are his exact words - &039;This is Siood one He can actually sense criic, I think&039; Isn&039;t that what you said, Jim?"

"I think so," said Drake

"I notice you said, &039;an investigator of sorts,&039;" growled Trumbull "You didn&039;t say he was fro to make the point that the introduction took place when the drinks were being passed around - as the brandy is now, I see Henry, do we have any curacao?"

"I believe so, sir"

"I&039;ll have so on alcohol, I don&039;t think anyone heard the introduction Does anyone recall having heard it?"

There were no bites on that one, and Alexander ser and accepted the se - colored content from Henry

"But it Rubin and Gonzalo did not consciously hear it," he said, "they nevertheless heard it, I&039; criument on intuition Of course, I don&039;t use soic, I use reason, and I a Except once" He looked thoughtful

Drake lit a cigarette fro stub of hid old one and said, &039;Tell us, Simon"

"I intend to," said Alexander, "but it has a certain personal confidentiality about it I have been given to understand that everything that goes on here is confidential"