He laughed. “Run along, children! I wonder if you see what I’m driving at. I’m not sure myself, really. It’s too vague. My mind’s human, so it’s limited. I’m set in patterns of anthropomorphic thinking, and my habit-patterns handicap me. We have to feel important. That’s a psychological truism. That’s why Mephistopheles was always supposed to be interested in buying human souls. He wouldn’t have wanted them, really—impalpable, intangibles, no use at all to a demon with a demon’s powers.”
“Where do the demons come in?”
“Nowhere. I’m just talking. Homo superior would be another race without any human touching points at all—as adults.
Demons, in literature, were given human emotions and traits.
Why? Muddy thinking. They wouldn’t have them, any more than a superman would. Tools!” Dyke said significantly, and sat staring at nothing.
“Tools?”
“This . . . this world.” He gestured. “What the devil do we know about it? We’ve made atom-smashers and, microscopes. And other things. Kid stuff, toys. My boy can use a microscope and see bugs in creek water. A doctor can take the same microscope, use stains, isolate a germ and do something about it That’s maturity. All this world, all this—matter around us, might be simply tools that we’re using like kids. A super race—”
“By definition, wouldn’t it be too super to understand?”
“In tote. A child can’t completely comprehend an adult.
But a child can more or less understand another child—which is reduced to the same equation as his own, or at least the same common denominator. A superman would have to grow. He wouldn’t start out mature. Say the adult human is expressed by x. The adult superman is xy. A superchild—undeveloped, immature—is. Or in other words, the equivalent of a mature specimen of homo sapiens. Sapiens reaches senility and dies. Superior goes on to maturity, the true superman. And that maturity—”
They were silent for awhile.
“They might impinge on us a little, while taking care of their own young,” Dyke went on presently. “They might impose amnesia on anyone who came too close, as you did—might have done. Remember Charles Fort? Mysterious disappearances, balls of light, spaceships, Jersey devils. That’s a side issue. The point is, a superchild could live with us, right here and now, unsuspected. It would appear to be an ordinary adult human. Or if not quite ordinary—certain precautions might be taken.” Again he fell silent, twirling a pencil on the desk.
“Of course, it’s inconceivable,” he went on at last. “All pure theory. I’ve got a much more plausible explanation, though as I warned you, you won’t like it.”
Lessing smiled faintly. “What is it?”
“Remember Clarissa’s fever?”
“Of course. Things were different after that—much more in the open. I thought—maybe she saw things in the delirium for the first time that she couldn’t be allowed to see head-on, in normal life. The fever seemed to be a necessity. But of course—”
“Wait. Just possibly, you know, you may have the whole thing by the wrong end. Look back, now. You two were caught in a rainstorm, and Clarissa came out of it with a delirium, right? And after that, things got stranger and stranger. Leasing, did it ever occur to you that you were both caught in that storm? Are you perfectly sure that it wasn’t yourself who had the delirium?”
Lessing sat quite still, meeting the narrowed gaze. After a long moment he shook himself slightly.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure.”
Dyke. smiled. “All right. Just thought I’d ask. It’s one possibility, of course.” He waited.
Presently Leasing looked up.
“Maybe I did have a fever,” he admitted. “Maybe I imagined it all. That still doesn’t explain the forgetfulness, but skip that. I know one way to settle at least part of the question,”
Dyke nodded. “I wondered if you’d want to do that I mean, right away.”
“Why not? I know the way back I’d know it blindfolded.
Why, she. may have been waiting for me all this time!
There’s nothing to prevent me going back tomorrow.”
“There’s a little matter of a pass,” Dyke said. “I believe I can fix that up. But do you think you want to go so soon, Leasing? Without thinking things over? You know, it’s going to be an awful shock if you find no apartment and no Clarissa. And I’ll admit I won’t be surprised if that’s just what you do find. I think this whole thing’s an allegory we haven’t fathomed yet. We may never fathom it. But—”
“I’ll have to go,” Leasing told him. “Don’t you see that? We’ll never prove anything until we at least rule out the most obvious possibility. After all, I might be telling the simple truth!”
Dyke laughed and then shrugged faintly.
Leasing stood before the familiar door, his finger hesitating on the bell. So far, his memory had served him with perfect faith. Here was the corridor he knew well. Here was the door. Inside, he was quite sure, lay the arrangement of walls and rooms, where once Clarissa moved. She might not be there any more, of course. He must not be disappointed if a strange face answered the bell. It would disprove nothing.
After all, two years had passed.
And Clarissa had been changing rather alarmingly when he saw her last. The fever had seemed to speed things up.
Well, suppose it were all true. Suppose she belonged to the superrace. Suppose she impinged upon Leasing’s world with only one facet of her four-dimensional self. With that one facet she had loved him—they had that much of a meeting ground. Let her have a deeper self, then, than he could ever comprehend; still she could not yet be fully developed into her world of solid geometry, and while one facet remained restricted into the planar world which was all he knew, she might, he thought, still love him. He hoped she could. He remembered her tears. He heard again the sweet, shy, ardent voice saying, “I’ll always love you—”
Firmly he pressed the bell.
The room was changed. Mirrors still lined it, but not—not as he remembered. They were more than mirrors now.
He had no time to analyze the change, for a motion stirred before him.
“Clarissa—” he said. And then, in the one brief instant of awareness that remained to him, he knew at last how wrong he had been.
He had forgotten that four dimensions are not the outermost limits of conceivable scope. Cabell bad unwittingly led him astray~ there are dimensions in which a cube may have many more than six sides. Clarissa’s dimension—
Extensions are possible in dimensions not entirely connected with space—or rather, space is merely a medium through which these extensions may be made. And because humans live upon a three-dimensional planet, and because all planets in this continuum are three-dimensional, no psychic tesseract is possible—except by extensions.
That is, a collection of chromosomes and genes, arranged on earth and here conceived, cannot in themselves form the matrix for a superman. Nor can a battery give more than its destined voltage. But if there are three, six, a dozen batteries of similar size, and if they are connected in series—
Until they are connected, until the linkage is complete, each is an individual. Each has its limitations. There are gropings, guided fumblings through the dark, while those in charge seek to help the scattered organism in fulfilling itself. And therefore the human mind can comprehend the existence of a superbeing up to the point that the connection is made and the batteries become one unit, of enormous potential power.
On earth there was Clarissa and her nominal aunt—who could not be comprehended at all.
On a remote planet in Cygnae Taurus, there was a Clarissa too, but her name there was something like Ezandora, and her mentor was a remote and cryptic being who was accepted by the populace as a godling.
On Seven Million Folk Twenty Eight of Center Galaxy there was Jándav, who cared with her a small crystal through which her guidance came.
In atmospheres of oxygen and halogen, in lands ringed with the shaking
blaze of. crusted stars beyond the power of our telescopes—beneath water, and in places of cold and darkness and void, the matrix repeated itself, and by the psychic and utterly unimaginable power and science of homo superior, the biological cycle of a race more than human ran and completed itself and began again. Not entirely spontaneously, at the same time, in many worlds, the pattern that was Clarissa was conceived and grew. The batteries strengthened.
Or to use Cabell’s allegory, the Clarissa Pattern impinged one facet upon earth, but it was not one facet out of a possible six—but one out of a possible infinity of facets. Upon each face of that unimaginable geometric shape, a form of Clarissa moved and had independent being, and gradually developed. Learned and was taught. Reached out toward the center of the geometric shape that was—or one day would be—the complete Clarissa. One day, when the last mirror-facet sent inward to the center its matured reflection of the whole, when the many Clarissas, so to speak, clasped hands with themselves and fused into perfection.
Thus far we can follow. But not after the separate units become the complete and tremendous being toward which the immaturity of Clarissa on so many worlds was growing. After that, the destiny of homo superior has no common touching point with the understanding of homo sapiens. We knew them as children. And they passed. They put away childish things.
“Clarissa—” he said.
Then he paused—standing motionless in silence, looking across that dark threshold into that mirrory dimness, seeing—what he saw. It was dark on the landing. The staircases went up and down, shadowy and still. There was stasis here, and no movement anywhere in the quiet air. This was power beyond the need for expression of power.
He turned and went slowly down the stairs. The fear and pain and gnawing uneasiness that had troubled him for so long were gone now. Outside, on the curb, he lit a cigarette, hailed a taxi, and considered his next movements.
A cab swung in. Further along the street, the liquid, shining blackness of the East River glissaded smoothly down to the Sound. The rumble of an El train came from the other direction.
“Where to, sergeant?” the driver asked.
“Downtown,” Lessing said. “Where’s a good floorshow?”
He relaxed pleasantly on the cushions, his mind quite free from strain or worry now.
This time the memory block was complete. He would go on living out his cycle, complacent and happy as any human ever is, enjoying life to his capacity for enjoyment, using the toys of earth with profound satisfaction.
“Nightclub?” the driver said. “The new Cabana’s good—” Lessing nodded. “O.K. The Cabana.” He leaned back, luxuriously inhaling smoke. It was the children’s hour.
Copyright 1944 by Street & Smith Publications.
Reprinted from Astounding Science Fiction
by permission of Harold Matson Company
GOMEZ
by C.M. Kornbluth
NOW THAT I’M CRANKY, constipated old man I can afford to say that the younger generation of scientists makes me sick to my stomach. Short order fry-cooks of destruction, they hear through the little •window the dim order: “Atom bomb rare, with cobalt 60!” and sing it back and rattle their stinking skillets and sling the deadly hash—just what the customer ordered, with never a notion invading their smug, too-heated havens that there’s a small matter of right and wrong that takes precedence even over their haute cuisine.
There used to be a slew of them who yelled to high heaven about it. Weiner, Urey, Szilard, Morrison—dead now, and worse. Unfashionable. The greatest of them you have never heard of. Admiral MacDonald never did clear the story. He was Julio Gomez, and his story was cleared yesterday by a fellow my Jewish friends call Malach Hamovis, the Hovering Angel of Death. A black-bordered letter from Rosa advised me that Malach Hamovis had come in on runway six with his flaps down and picked up Julio at the age of thirty-nine. Pneumonia.
It started twenty-two years ago with a routine assignment on a crisp October morning. I had an appointment with Dr. Sugarman, the head of the physics department at the University. It was the umpth anniversary of something or other—first atomic pile, the test A-bomb, Nagasaki—I don’t remember what, and the Sunday editor was putting together a page on it. My job was to interview the three or four University people who were Manhattan District grads.
I found Sugarman in his office at the top of the modest physics building’s square gothic tower, brooding through a pointed-arch window at the bright autumn sky. He was a tubby, jowly little fellow. I’d been seeing him around for a couple of years at testimonial banquets and press conferences, but I didn’t expect him to remember me. He did, though, and even got the name right.
“Mr. Vilchek?” he beamed. “From the Tribune?”
“That’s right, Dr. Sugarman. How are you?”
“Fine, fine. Sit down, please. Well, what shall we talk about?”
“Well, Dr. Sugarman, I’d like to have your ideas on the really fundamental issues of atomic energy, A-bomb control and so on. What in your opinion is the single most important factor in these problems?” His eyes twinkled; he was going to surprise me. “Education!” he said, and leaned back waiting for me to register shock.
I registered. “That’s certainly a different approach, doctor. How do you mean that, exactly?”
He said impressively: “Education—technical education—is the key to the underlying issues of our time. I am deeply concerned over the unawareness of the general public to the meaning and accomplishments of science. People underrate me—underrate science, that is— because they do not understand science. Let me show you something.” He rummaged for a moment through papers on his desk and handed me a sheet of lined tablet paper covered with chicken-track handwriting. “A letter I got,” he said. I squinted at the pencilled scrawl and read:
October 12.
Esteemed Sir:
Beg to introduce self to you the atomic Scientist as a youth 17 working with diligence to perfect self in Mathematical Physics. The knowledge of English is imperfect since am in New-York. 1 year only from Puerto Rico and due to Father and Mother poverty must wash the dishes in the restaurant. So esteemed sir excuse imperfect English which will better.
I hesitate intruding your valuable Scientist time but hope you sometime spare minutes for diligents such as I. My difficulty is with neutron cross-section absorption of boron steel in Reactor which theory I am working out. Breeder reactors demand
u =
for boron steel, compared with neutron cross-section absorption of
v =
for any Concrete with which I familiarize myself. Whence arises relationship
u =
indicating only a fourfold breeder gain. Intuitively I dissatisfy with this gain and beg to intrude your time to ask wherein I neglect. With the most sincere thanks.
J. Gomez
% do Porto Bello Lunchroom
124th St. & St. Nicholas Ave.
New-York, New-York
I laughed and told Dr. Sugarman appreciatively: “That’s a good one. I wish our cranks kept in touch with us by mail, but they don’t. In the newspaper business they come in and demand to see the editor. Could I use it, by the way? The readers ought to get a boot out of it.” He hesitated and said: “All right—if you don’t use my name. Just say ‘a prominent physicist.’ I didn’t think it was too funny myself though, but I see your point, of course. The boy may be feebleminded—and he probably is—but he believes, like too many people, that science is just a bag of tricks which any ordinary person can acquire—”
And so on and so on.
I went back to the office and wrote the interview in twenty minutes. It took me longer than that to talk the Sunday editor into running the Gomez letter in a box on the atom-anniversary page, but he finally saw it my way. I’ had to retype it. If I’d just sent the letter down to the composing room as was, we would have had a strike on our hands.
On Sunday morning, at a quarter past six, I woke up to the tune of fists thundering
on my hotel-room door. I found my slippers and bathrobe and lurched blearily across the room. They didn’t wait for me to unlatch. The door opened. I saw one of the hotel clerks, the
Sunday editor, a frosty-faced old man and three hard-faced, hardeyed young men. The hotel clerk mumbled and retreated and the others moved in. “Chief,” I asked the Sunday editor hazily, “what’s going—? ”
A hard-faced young man was standing with his back to the door; another was standing with his back to the window and the third was blocking the bathroom door. The icy old man interrupted me with a crisp authoritative question snapped at the editor. “You identify this man as Vilchek?”
The editor nodded.
“Search him,” snapped the old man. The fellow standing guard at the window slipped up and frisked me for weapons while I sputtered incoherently and the Sunday editor avoided my eye.
When the search was over the frosty-faced, old boy said to me: “I am Rear Admiral MacDonald, Mr. Vilchek. I’m here in my capacity as deputy director of the Office of Security and Intelligence, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Did you write this?” He thrust a newspaper clipping at my face.
I read, blearily:
WHAT’S SO TOUGH ABOUT A-SCIENCE?
TEENAGE POT-WASHER DOESN’T KNOW
A letter received recently by a prominent local atomic scientist points up Dr. Sugarman’s complaint (see adjoining column) that the public does not appreciate how hard a physicist works. The text, complete with “mathematics ” follows:
Esteemed Sir:
Beg to introduce self to you the Atomic Scientist as youth 17 working—
“Yes,” I told the admiral. “I wrote it, except for the headline. What about it?”
He snapped: “The letter is purportedly from a New York youth seeking information, yet there is no address for him given. Why is that?”
I said patiently: “I left it off when I copied it for the composing room. That’s Trib style on readers’ letters. What is all this about?” He ignored the question and asked: “Where is the purported original of the letter?”
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