More Than Human

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “You want help,” said Lone, meaning the truck.

  Prodd misunderstood. “Now wouldn’t you know,” he said happily. “Come all the way back to see if you could lend a hand. Oh, I been doing fine by myself, Lone, believe me. Not that I don’t appreciate it. But I feel like it these days. Working, I mean.”

  Lone went and picked up the pick-handle. He prodded at the stones under the wheel. “Drive,” he said.

  “Wait’ll Ma sees you,” said Prodd. “Like old times.” He got in and started the truck. Lone put the small of his back against the rear edge of the truck-bed, clamped his hands on it, and as the clutch engaged, he heaved. The body came up as high as the rear springs would let it, and still higher. He leaned back. The wheel found purchase and the truck jolted up and forward onto firm ground.

  Prodd climbed out and came back to look into the hole, the irresistible and useless act of a man who picks up broken china and puts its edges together. “I used to say, I bet you were a farmer once,” he grinned. “But now I know. You were a hydraulic jack.”

  Lone did not smile. He never smiled. Prodd went to the plow and Lone helped him wrestle the hitch back to the truck. “Horse dropped dead,” Prodd explained. “Truck’s all right but sometimes I wish there was some way to keep this from happening. Spend half my time diggin’ it out. I’d get another horse, but you know—hold everything till after Jack gets here. You’d think that would bother me, losing the horse.” He looked up at the house and smiled. “Nothing bothers me now. Had breakfast?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well come have some more. You know Ma. Wouldn’t forgive either of us if she wasn’t to feed you.”

  They went back to the house, and when Ma saw Lone she hugged him hard. Something stirred uncomfortably in Lone. He wanted an ax. He thought all these other things were settled. “You sit right down there and I’ll get you some breakfast.”

  “Told you,” said Prodd, watching her, smiling. Lone watched her too. She was heavier and happy as a kitten in a cowshed. “What you doing now, Lone?”

  Lone looked into his eyes to find some sort of an answer. “Working,” he said. He moved his hand. “Up there.”

  “In the woods?”

  “Yes.”

  “What you doing?” When Lone waited, Prodd asked, “You hired out? No? Then what—trapping?”

  “Trapping,” said Lone, knowing that this would be sufficient.

  He ate. From where he sat he could see Jack’s room. The bed was gone. There was a new one in there, not much longer than his forearm, all draped with pale-blue cotton and cheesecloth with dozens of little tucks sewn into it.

  When he was finished they all sat around the table and for a time nobody said anything. Lone looked into Prodd’s eyes and found He’s a good boy but not the kind to set around and visit. He couldn’t understand the visit image, a vague and happy blur of conversation-sounds and laughter. He recognized this as one of the many lacks he was aware of in himself—lacks, rather than inadequacies; things he could not do and would never be able to do. So he just asked Prodd for the ax and went out.

  “You don’t s’pose e’s mad at us?” asked Mrs. Prodd, looking anxiously after Lone.

  “Him?” said Prodd. “He wouldn’t have come back here if he was. I was afraid of that myself until today.” He went to the door. “Don’t you lift nothing heavy, hear?”

  Janie read as slowly and carefully as she could. She didn’t have to read aloud, but only carefully enough so the twins could understand. She had reached the part where the woman tied the man to the pillar and then let the other man, the “my rival, her laughing lover” one, out of the closet where he had been hidden and gave him the whip. Janie looked up at that point and found Bonnie gone and Beanie in the cold fireplace, pretending there was a mouse hiding in the ashes. “Oh, you’re not listening,” she said.

  Want the one with the pictures, the silent message came.

  “I’m getting so tired of that one,” said Janie petulantly. But she closed Venus in Furs by von Sacher-Masoch and put it on the table. “This’s anyway got a story to it,” she complained, going to the shelves. She found the wanted volume between My Gun Is Quick and The Illustrated Ivan Block, and hefted it back to the armchair. Bonnie disappeared from the fireplace and reappeared by the chair. Beanie stood on the other side; wherever she had been, she had been aware of what was happening. If anything, she liked this book even better than Bonnie.

  Janie opened the book at random. The twins leaned forward breathless, their eyes bugging.

  Read it.

  “Oh, all right,” said Janie. “‘D34556. Tieback. Double shirred. 90 inches long. Maize, burgundy, hunter green and white. $24.68. D34557. Cottage style. Stuart or Argyll plaid, see illus. $4.92 pair. D34—’”

  And they were happy again.

  They had been happy ever since they got here and much of the hectic time before that. They had learned how to open the back of a trailer-truck and how to lie without moving under hay, and Janie could pull clothespins off a line and the twins could appear inside a room, like a store at night, and unlock the door from the inside when it was fastened with some kind of lock that Janie couldn’t move, the way she could a hook-and-eye or a tower bolt which was shot but not turned. The best thing they had learned, though, was the way the twins could attract attention when somebody was chasing Janie. They’d found out for sure that to have two little girls throwing rocks from second-floor windows and appearing under their feet to trip them and suddenly sitting on their shoulders and wetting into their collars, made it impossible to catch Janie, who was just ordinarily running. Ho-ho.

  And this house was just the happiest thing of all. It was miles and miles away from anything or anybody and no one ever came here. It was a big house on a hill, in forest so thick you hardly knew it was there. It had a big high wall around it on the road side, and a big high fence on the woods side and a brook ran through. Bonnie had found it one day when they had gotten tired and gone to sleep by the road. Bonnie woke up and went exploring by herself and found the fence and went along it until she saw the house. They’d had a terrible time finding some way to get Janie in, though, until Beanie fell into the brook where it went through the fence, and came up on the inside.

  There were zillions of books in the biggest room and plenty of old sheets they could wrap around themselves when it was cold. Down in the cold dark cellar rooms they had found a half-dozen cases of canned vegetables and some bottles of wine, which later they smashed all over because, although it tasted bad, it smelled just wonderful. There was a pool out back to swim in that was more fun than the bathrooms, which had no windows. There were plenty of places for hide-and-seek. There was even a little room with chains on the walls, and bars.

  It went much faster with the ax.

  He never would have found the place at all if he had not hurt himself. In all the years he had wandered the forests, often blindly and uncaring, he had never fallen into such a trap. One moment he was stepping over the crest of an outcropping, and next he was twenty feet down, in a bramble-choked, humus-floored pitfall. He hurt one of his eyes and his left arm hurt unbearably at the elbow.

  Once he had thrashed his way out, he surveyed the place. Perhaps it had once been a pool in the slope, with the lower side thin and erosible. It was gone, however, and what was left was a depression in the hillside, thickly grown inside, ever more thickly screened on both sides and at the front. The rock over which he had stepped rose out of the hill and overhung the depression.

  At one time it had not mattered in the least to Lone whether he was near men or not. Now, he wanted only to be able to be what he knew he was—alone. But eight years at the farm had changed his way of life. He needed shelter. And the more he looked at this hidden place, with its overhanging rock wall-ceiling and the two earthen wings which flanked it, the more shelterlike it seemed.

  At first his work on it was primitive. He cleared out enough brush so that he might he down comfortably and pulled up a bus
h or two so that the brambles would not flay him as he went in and out. Then it rained and he had to channel the inside so that water would not stand inside, and he made a rough thatch at the crest.

  But as time went on he became increasingly absorbed in the place. He pulled up more bush and pounded the earth until he had a level floor. He removed all the rock he could find loose on the rear wall, and discovered that some of the wall had ready-made shelves and nooks for the few things he might want to store. He began raiding the farms that skirted the foot of the mountain, operating at night, taking only a very little at each place, never coming back to any one place if he could help it. He got carrots and potatoes and tenpenny spikes and haywire, a broken hammer and a cast-iron pot. Once he found a side of bacon that had fallen from an abattoir truck. He stored it and when he came back he found that a lynx had been at it. That determined him to make walls, which was why he went back for the ax.

  He felled trees, the biggest he could handle after trimming, and snaked them up to the hillside. He buried the first three so that they bounded the floor, and the side ones butted against the rock. He found a red clay which, when mixed with peat moss, made a mortar that was vermin-proof and would not wash away. He built up his walls and a door. He did not bother with a window, but simply left out a yard of mortar between six of the wall logs, on each side, and trimmed long side-tapered sticks to wedge in them when he wanted them closed.

  His first fireplace was Indian-style, out near the center of the enclosure, with a hole at the top to let the smoke out. High up were hooks embedded in rock fissures, for hanging meat where the smoke could get to it, if he were ever fortunate enough to get some.

  He was out hunting for flagstones for the fireplace when an invisible something began to tug at him. He recoiled as if he had been burned and shrank back against a tree and cast about him like a cornered elk.

  It had been a long time since he had been aware of his inner sensitivity to the useless (to him) communication of infants. He was losing it; he had begun to be insensitive to it when he began to gain speech.

  But someone had called to him this way—someone who “sent” like a child, but who was not a child. And though what he felt now was faint, it was in substance unbearably similar. It was sweet and needful, yes; but it was also the restimulation of a stinging lash and a terror of crushing kicks and obscene shouting, and the greatest loss he had ever known.

  There was nothing to be seen. Slowly he left the tree and went back to the slab of stone he had been pawing at to free it from the earth. For perhaps half an hour he worked doggedly, trying to ignore the call. And he failed.

  He rose, shaken, and began to walk to the call in a world turned dreamlike. The longer he walked, the more irresistible the call became and the deeper his enchantment. He walked for an hour, never going around anything if he could possibly go over it or through it, and by the time he reached the leached clearing he was nearly somnambulant. To permit himself any more consciousness would have been to kindle such an inferno of conflict that he could not have gone on. Stumbling blindly, he walked right up to and into the rusting fence which struck him cruelly over his hurt eye. He clung to it until his vision cleared, looked around to see where he was, and began to tremble.

  He had one moment of clear, conscious determination: to get out of this terrible place and stay out of it. And even as he felt this touch of reason, he heard the brook and was turning toward it.

  Where brook and fence met, he lowered himself in the water and made his way to the foot of the pickets. Yes, the opening was still here.

  He peered in through the fence, but the ancient holly was thicker than ever. There was nothing to be heard, either—aurally. But the call …

  Like the one he had heard before, it was a hunger, an aloneness, a wanting. The difference was in what it wanted. It said without words that it was a little afraid, and burdened, and was solicitous of the burden. It said in effect who will take care of me now?

  Perhaps the cold water helped. Lone’s mind suddenly became as clear as it ever could. He took a deep breath and submerged. Immediately on the other side he stopped and raised his head. He listened carefully, then lay on his stomach with only his nostrils above the water. With exquisite care, he inched forward on his elbows, until his head was inside the arch and he could see through.

  There was a little girl on the bank, dressed in a torn plaid dress. She was about six. Her sharp-planed, unchildlike face was down-drawn and worried. And if he thought his caution was effective, he was quite wrong. She was looking directly at him.

  “Bonnie!” she called sharply.

  Nothing happened.

  He stayed where he was. She continued to watch him, but she continued to worry. He realized two things: that it was this worriment of hers which was the essence of the call; and that although she was on her guard, she did not consider him important enough to divert her from her thoughts.

  For the first time in his life he felt that edged and spicy mixture of anger and amusement called pique. This was followed by a great surge of relief, much like what one would feel on setting down a forty-pound pack after forty years. He had not known … he had not known the size of his burden!

  And away went the restimulation. Back into the past went the whip and the bellowing, the magic and the loss—remembered still, but back where they belonged, with their raw-nerve tendrils severed so that never again could they reach into his present. The call was no maelstrom of blood and emotion, but the aimless chunterings of a hungry brat.

  He sank and shot backward like a great lean crawfish, under the fence. He slogged up out of the brook, turned his back on the call and went back to his work.

  When he got back to his shelter, streaming with perspiration, an eighteen-inch flagstone on his shoulder, he was weary enough to forget his usual caution. He crashed in through the underbrush to the tiny clearing before his door, and stopped dead.

  There was a small naked infant about four years old squatting in front of his door.

  She looked up at him and her eyes—her whole dark face-seemed to twinkle. “He-hee!” she said happily.

  He tipped the stone off his shoulder and let it fall. He loomed over her, shadowed her; sky-high and full of the threats of thunder.

  She seemed completely unafraid. She turned her eyes away from him and busily began nibbling at a carrot, turning it squirrel-wise, around and around as she ate.

  A high movement caught his eye. Another carrot was emerging from the ventilation chinks in the log wall. It fell to the ground and was followed by still another.

  “Ho-ho.” He looked down, and there were two little girls.

  The only advantage which Lone possessed under these circumstances was a valuable one: he had no impulse whatever to question his sanity and start a confusing debate with himself on the matter. He bent down and scooped one of the children up. But when he straightened she wasn’t there any more.

  The other was. She grinned enchantingly and started on one of the new carrots.

  Lone said, “What you doing?” His voice was harsh and ill-toned, like that of a deaf-mute. It startled the child. She stopped eating and looked up at him open-mouthed. The open mouth was filled with carrot chips and gave her rather the appearance of a pot-bellied stove with the door open.

  He sank down on his knees. Her eyes were fixed on his and his were eyes which had once commanded a man to kill himself and which, many times, violated the instincts of others who had not wanted to feed him. Without knowing why he was careful. There was no anger in him or fear; he simply wanted her to stay still.

  When he was done, he reached for her. She exhaled noisily, blowing tiny wet chips of raw carrot into his eyes and nostrils, and vanished.

  He was filled with astonishment—a strange thing in itself, for he had seldom been interested enough in anything to be astonished. Stranger still, it was a respectful astonishment.

  He rose and put his back against the log wall, and looked for them. They stood side
by side, hand in hand, looking up at him out of little wooden wondering faces, waiting for him to do something else.

  Once, years ago, he had run to catch a deer. Once he had reached up from the ground to catch a bird in a treetop. Once he had plunged into a stream after a trout.

  Once.

  Lone was simply not constituted to chase something he knew empirically that he could not catch. He bent and picked up his flagstone, reached up and slid aside the outside bar which fastened his door and shouldered into the house.

  He bedded his flagstone by the fire and swept the guttering embers over part of it. He threw on more wood and blew it up brightly, set up his green-stick crane and swung the iron pot on it. All the while there were two little white-eyed knobs silhouetted in the doorway, watching him. He ignored them.

  The skinned rabbit swung on the high hook by the smoke hole. He got it down, tore off the quarters, broke the back and dropped it all into the pot. From a niche he took potatoes and a few grains of rock salt. The salt went into the pot and so did the potatoes after he had split them in two on his ax-blade. He reached for his carrots. Somebody had been at his carrots.

  He wheeled and frowned at the doorway. The two heads whipped back out of sight. From outdoors came small soprano giggles.

  Lone let the pot boil for an hour while he honed the ax and tied up a witch’s broom like Mrs. Prodd’s. And slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, his visitors edged into the room. Their eyes were fixed on the seething pot. They fairly drooled.

  He went about his business without looking at them. When he came close they retreated and when he crossed the room they entered again—that little fraction more each time. Soon their retreats were smaller and their advances larger until at last Lone had a chance to slam the door shut—which he did.

  In the sudden darkness, the simmer of the pot and the small hiss of the flames sounded very loud. There was no other sound. Lone stood with his back against the door and closed his eyes very tight to adjust them more quickly to the darkness. When he opened them, the bars of waning daylight at the vents and the fireglow were quite sufficient for him to see everything in the room.