“I don’t, either,” said Janie. He was glad she watched his face. Gooble.
Someone stood behind a great twisted oak near the house, peeping at them. “Wait, Hip.” Janie walked quickly to the tree and spoke to someone. He heard her say, “You’ve got to. Do you want me dead?”
That seemed to settle the argument. As Janie returned he peered at the tree, but now there seemed to be no one there.
“It was Beanie,” said Janie. “You’ll meet her later. Come.”
The door was ironbound, of heavy oak planks. It fitted with curious concealed hinges into the massive archway from which it took its shape. The only windows to be seen were high up in the moundlike gables and they were mere barred slits.
By itself—or at least, without a physical touch—the door swung back. It should have creaked, but it did not; it was silent as a cloud. They went in, and when the door closed there was a reverberation deep in the subsonic; he could feel it pounding on his belly.
On the floor was a reiteration of tiles, darkest yellow and a brownish gray, in hypnotic diamond shapes they were repeated in the wainscoting and in the upholstery of furniture either built-in or so heavy it had never been moved. The air was cool but too humid and the ceiling was too close. I am walking, he thought, in a great sick mouth.
From the entrance room they started down a corridor which seemed immensely long and was not at all, for the walls came in and the ceiling drew even lower while the floor rose slightly, giving a completely disturbing false perspective.
“It’s all right,” said Janie softly. He curled his lips at her, meaning to smile but quite unable to, and wiped cold water from his upper lip.
She stopped near the end door and touched the wall. A section of it swung back, revealing an anteroom with one other door in it. “Wait here, will you, Hip?” She was completely composed. He wished there were more light.
He hesitated. He pointed to the door at the end of the hall. “Is he in there?”
“Yes.” She touched his shoulder. It was partly a salutation, partly an urging toward the little room. “I have to see him first,” she said. “Trust me, Hip.”
“I trust you all right. But are you—is he—”
“He won’t do anything to me. Go on, Hip.”
He stepped through. He had no chance to look back, for the door swung swiftly shut. It gave no more sign of its existence on this side than it had on the other. He touched it, pushed it. It might as well have been that great wall outside. There was no knob, no visible hinge or catch. The edges were hidden in the paneling; it simply had ceased to exist as a door.
He had one blinding moment of panic and then it receded. He went and sat down across from the other door which led, apparently, into the same room to which the corridor led.
There was not a sound.
He picked up an ottoman and placed it against the wall. He sat with his back tight against the paneling, watching the door with wide eyes.
Try that door, see if it’s locked too.
He didn’t dare, he realized. Not yet. He sensed vaguely what he would feel if he found it locked; he wanted no more just now than that chilling guess.
“Listen,” he hissed to himself, furiously, “you’d better do something. Build something. Or maybe just think. But don’t sit here like this.”
Think. Think about that mystery in there, the pointed face with its thick lenses, which smiled and said, Go on, die.
Think about something else! Quick!
Janie. By herself, facing the pointed face with the—
Homo Gestalt, a girl, two tongue-tied Negroes, a mongoloid idiot and a man with a pointed face and—
Try that one again. Homo Gestalt, the next step upward. Well, sure, why not a psychic evolution instead of the physical? Homo sapiens stood suddenly naked and unarmed but for the wrinkled jelly in his king-sized skull; he was as different as he could be from the beasts which bore him.
Yet he was the same, the same; to this day he was hungry to breed, hungry to own; he killed without compunction; if he was strong he took, if he was weak he ran; if he was weak and could not run, he died.
Homo sapiens was going to die.
The fear in him was a good fear. Fear is a survival instinct; fear in its way is a comfort for it means that somewhere hope is alive.
He began to think about survival.
Janie wanted Homo Gestalt to acquire a moral system so that such as Hip Barrows would not get crushed. But she wanted her Gestalt to thrive as well; she was a part of it. My hand wants me to survive, my tongue, my belly wants me to survive.
Morals: they’re nothing but a coded survival instinct!
Aren’t they? What about the societies in which it is immoral not to eat human flesh? What kind of survival is that?
Well, but those who adhere to morality survive within the group. If the group eats human flesh, you do too.
There must be a name for the code, the set of rules, by which an individual lives in such a way as to help his species—something over and above morals.
Let’s define that as the ethos.
That’s what Homo Gestalt needs: not morality, but an ethos. And shall I sit here, with my brains bubbling with fear, and devise a set of ethics for a superman?
I’ll try. It’s all I can do.
Define:
Morals: Society’s code for individual survival. (That takes care of our righteous cannibal and the correctness of a naked man in a nudist group.)
Ethics: An individual’s code for society’s survival. (And that’s your ethical reformer: he frees his slaves, he won’t eat humans, he “turns the rascals out.”)
Too pat, too slick; but let’s work with ’em.
As a group, Homo Gestalt can solve his own problems. But as an entity:
He can’t have a morality, because he is alone.
An ethic then. “An individual’s code for society’s survival.” He has no society; yet he has. He has no species; he is his own species.
Could he—should he choose a code which would serve all of humanity?
With the thought, Hip Barrows had a sudden flash of insight, completely intrusive in terms of his immediate problem; yet with it, a load of hostility and blind madness lifted away from him and left him light and confident. It was this:
Who am I to make positive conclusions about morality, and codes to serve all of humanity?
Why—I am the son of a doctor, a man who chose to serve mankind, and who was positive that this was right. And he tried to make me serve in the same way, because it was the only rightness he was sure of. And for this I have hated him all my life . . . I see now, Dad. I see!
He laughed as the weight of old fury left him forever, laughed in purest pleasure. And it was as if the focus was sharper, the light brighter, in all the world, and as his mind turned back to his immediate problem, his thought seemed to place its fingers better on the rising undersurface, slide upward toward the beginnings of a grip.
The door opened. Janie said, “Hip—”
He rose slowly. His thought reeled on and on, close to something. If he could get a grip, get his fingers curled over it . . . “Coming.”
He stepped through the door and gasped. It was like a giant greenhouse, fifty yards wide, forty deep; the huge panes overhead curved down and down and met the open lawn—it was more a park—at the side away from the house. After the closeness and darkness of what he had already seen it was shocking but it built in him a great exhilaration. It rose up and up and up rose his thought with it, pressing its fingertips just a bit higher. . .
He saw the man coming. He stepped quickly forward, not so much to meet him as to be away from Janie if there should be an explosion. There was going to be an explosion; he knew that.
“Well, Lieutenant. I’ve been warned, but I can still say—this is a surprise.”
“Not to me,” said Hip. He quelled a surprise of a different nature; he had been convinced that his voice would fail him and it had not. “I’ve known for sev
en years that I’d find you.”
“By God,” said Thompson in amazement and delight. It was not a good delight. Over Hip’s shoulder he said, “I apologize, Janie. I really didn’t believe you until now.” To Hip he said, “You show remarkable powers of recovery.”
“Homo sap’s a hardy beast,” said Hip.
Thompson took off his glasses. He had wide round eyes, just the color and luminescence of a black-and-white television screen. The irises showed the whites all the way around; they were perfectly round and they looked as if they were just about to spin.
Once, someone had said, Keep away from the eyes and you’ll be all right.
Behind him Janie said sharply, “Gerry!”
Hip turned. Janie put up her hand and left a small glass cylinder, smaller than a cigarette, hanging between her lips. She said, “I warned you, Gerry. You know what this is. Touch him and I bite down on it—and then you can live out the rest of your life with Baby and the twins like a monkey in a cage of squirrels.”
The thought, the thought—“I’d like to meet Baby.”
Thompson thawed; he had been standing, absolutely motionless, staring at Janie. Nov he swung his glasses around in a single bright circle. “You wouldn’t like him.”
“I want to ask him a question.”
“Nobody asks him questions but me. I suppose you expect an answer too?”
“Yes.”
Thompson laughed. “Nobody gets answers these days.”
Janie said quietly, “This way, Hip.”
Hip turned toward her. He distinctly felt a crawling tension behind him, in the air, close to his flesh. He wondered if the Gorgon’s head had affected men that way, even the ones who did not look at her.
He followed her down to a niche in the house wall, the one which was not curved glass. In it was a crib the size of a bathtub.
He had not known that Baby was so fat.
“Go ahead,” said Janie. The cylinder bobbed once for each of her syllables.
“Yes, go ahead.” Thompson’s voice was so close behind him that he started. He had not heard the man following him at all and he felt boyish and foolish. He swallowed and said to Janie, “What do I do?”
“Just think your question. He’ll probably catch it. Far as I know he receives everybody.”
Hip leaned over the crib. Eyes gleaming dully like the uppers of dusty black shoes caught and held him. He thought, Once this Gestalt had another head. It can get other telekines, teleports. Baby: Can you be replaced?
“He says yes,” said Janie. “That nasty little telepath with the corncob—remember?”
Thompson said bitterly, “I didn’t think you’d commit such an enormity, Janie. I could kill you for that.”
“You know how,” said Janie pleasantly.
Hip turned slowly to Janie. The thought came closer, or he went high and faster than it was going. It was as if his fingers actually rounded a curve, got a barest of purchases.
If Baby, the heart and core, the ego, the repository of all this new being had ever been or done or thought—if Baby could be replaced, then Homo Gestalt was immortal !
And with a rush, he had it. He had it all.
He said evenly, “I asked Baby if he could be replaced; if his memory banks and computing ability could be transferred.”
“Don’t tell him that!” Janie screamed.
Thompson had slipped into his complete, unnatural stillness. At last he said, “Baby said yes. I already know that. Janie, you knew that all along, didn’t you?”
She made a sound like a gasp or a small cough.
Thompson said, “And you never told me. But of course, you wouldn’t. Baby can’t talk to me; the next one might. I can get the whole thing from the Lieutenant, right now. So go ahead with the dramatics. I don’t need you, Janie.”
“Hip! Run! Run!”
Thompson’s eyes fixed on Hip’s. “No,” he said mildly. “Don’t run.”
They were going to spin; they were going to spin like wheels, like fans, like . . . like . .
Hip heard Janie scream and scream again and there was a crunching sound. Then the eyes were gone.
He staggered back, his hand over his eyes. There was a gabbling shriek in the room, it went on and on, split and spun around itself. He peeped through his fingers.
Thompson was reeling, his head drawn back and down almost to his shoulderblades. He kicked and elbowed backward. Holding him, her hands over his eyes, her knee in the small of his back, was Bonnie, and it was from her the gabbling came.
Hip came forward running, starting with such a furious leap that his toes barely touched the floor in the first three paces. His fist was clenched until pain ran up his forearm and in his arm and shoulders was the residual fury of seven obsessive years. His fist sank into the taut solar plexus and Thompson went down soundlessly. So did the Negro but she rolled clear and bounced lithely to her feet. She ran to him, grinning like the moon, squeezed his biceps affectionately, patted his cheek and gabbled.
“And I thank you!” he panted. He turned. Another dark girl, just as sinewy and just as naked, supported Janie who was sagging weakly. “Janie!” he roared. “Bonnie, Beanie, whoever you are—did she . . .”
The girl holding her gabbled. Janie raised her eyes. They were deeply puzzled as she watched him come. They strayed from his face to Gerry Thompson’s still figure. And suddenly she smiled.
The girl with her, still gabbling, reached and caught his sleeve. She pointed to the floor. The cylinder lay smashed under their feet. A slight stain of moisture disappeared as he watched. “Did I?” repeated Janie. “I never had a chance, once this butterfly landed on me.” She sobered, stood up, came into his arms. “Gerry . . . is he . . .”
“I don’t think I killed him,” said Hip and added, “yet.”
“I can’t tell you to kill him,” Janie whispered.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I know.”
She said, “It’s the first time the twins ever touched him. It was very brave. He could have burned out their brains in a second.”
“They’re wonderful. Bonnie!”
“Ho.”
“Get me a knife. A sharp one with a blade at least so long. And a strip of black cloth, so-by-so.”
Bonnie looked at Janie. Janie said, “What—”
He put his hand on her mouth. Her mouth was very soft. “Sh.”
Janie said, panicked, “Bonnie, don’t—”
Bonnie disappeared. Hip said, “Leave me alone with him for a while.”
Janie opened her mouth to speak then turned and fled through the door. Beanie vanished.
Hip walked over to the prone figure and stood looking down at it. He did not think. He had his thought; all he had to do was hold it there.
Bonnie came through the door. She held a length of black velvet and a dagger with an eleven-inch blade. Her eyes were very big and her mouth was very small.
“Thanks, Bonnie.” He took them. The knife was beautiful. Finnish, with an edge he could have shaved with, and a point drawn down almost to invisibility. “Beat it, Bonnie!”
She left—blip!—like a squirted appleseed. Hip put the knife and the cloth down on a table and dragged Thompson to a chair. He gazed about him, found a bell-pull and tore it down. He did not mind if a bell rang somewhere; he was rather sure he would not be interrupted. He tied Thompson’s elbows and ankles to the chair, tipped the head back and made the blindfold.
He drew up another chair and sat close. He moved his knife hand gently, not quite tossing it, just feeling the scend of its superb balance in his palm. He waited.
And while he was waiting he took his thought, all of it, and placed it like a patterned drape across the entrance to his mind. He hung it fairly, attended to its folds and saw with meticulous care that it reached quite to the bottom, quite to the top and that there were no gaps at the sides.
The pattern read:
Listen to me, orphan boy, I am a hated boy too. You were persecuted; so was I.
Listen to me, cave boy. You found a place to belong and you learned to be happy in it. So did I.
Listen to me, Miss Kew’s boy. You lost yourself for years until you went back and learned again. So did I.
Listen to me, Gestalt boy. You found power within you beyond your wildest dreams and you used it and loved it. So did I.
Listen to me, Gerry. You discovered that no matter how great your power, nobody wanted it. So did I.
You want to be wanted. You want to be needed. So do I.
Janie says you need morals. Do you know what morals are? Morals are an obedience to rules that people laid down to help you live among them.
You don’t need morals. No set of morals can apply to you. You can obey no rules set down by your kind because there are no more of your kind. And you are not an ordinary man, so the morals of ordinary men would do you no better than the morals of an anthill would do me.
So nobody wants you and you are a monster.
Nobody wanted me when I was a monster.
But Gerry, there is another kind of code for you. It is a code which requires belief rather than obedience. It is called ethos.
The ethos will give you a code for survival too. But it is a greater survival than your own, or my species, or yours. What it is really is a reverence for your sources and your posterity. It is a study of the main current which created you, and in which you will create still a greater thing when the time comes.
Help humanity, Gerry, for it is your mother and your father now; you never had them before. And humanity will help you for it will produce more like you and then you will no longer be alone. Help them as they grow; help them to help humanity and gain still more of your own kind. For you are immortal, Gerry. You are immortal now.
And when there are enough of your kind, your ethics will be their morals. And when their morals no longer suit their species, you or another ethical being will create new ones that vault still farther up the main stream, reverencing you, reverencing those who bore you and the ones who bore them, back and back to the first wild creature who was different because his heart leapt when he saw a star.
American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56 Page 40