Flow my tears, the police man said. (final post)

THE THEORY CHANGES THE REALITY IT DESCRIBES.

He turned, then, to face Jason. "I see something about you that didn't show up in your 4-D photo. It never does, It's always a complete surprise, at least to me. You're a six, aren't you?"
Waking to full alertness, Jason half rose, said, "You're also a six, General?"
Smiling, showing his gold-capped teeth - an expensive anachronism - Felix Buckman held up seven fingers.

In his career as a police official, Felix Buckman had used this shuck each time he had come up against a six. He rlied on it especially when, as with this, the encounter was sudden. There had been four of them. All, eventually, had believed him. This he found amusing. The sixes, eugenic experiments themselves, and secret ones, seemed unusually gullible when confronted with the assertion that there existed an additional project as classified as their own.
Without this shuck he would be, to a six, merely an 'ordinary.' He could not properly handle a six under such a disadvantage. Hence the ploy. Through it his relationship to a six inverted itself. And, under such recreated conditions, he could deal successfully with an otherwise unmanageable human being.
The actual psychological superiority over him which a six possessed was abolished by an unreal fact. He liked this very much.
...
"Why a 'Seven?' Alys had said. "As long as you're shucking them why not say eight or thirty-eight?"
The sin of vainglory. Reaching too far." He had not wanted to make that legendary mistake. "I will tell them, " he had told her grimly, "what I think they'll believe."

Reality denied comes back to haunt.

"There's a cafetaria in the (police) building," (police chief) Buckman said at last, as he drank down a glass of imitation Tang. "But the food there is poisoned. All the help must have relatives in forced-labor camps. They're getting back at us." He laughed. Jason Taverner did not.

I wanna post so much more but I'd spoil the entire thing lol. Check out the earlier posts.