More Than Human (14 page)

I tried, for days I tried, but I couldn’t find what he wanted. I found a magazine which stated that the next important evolutionary step in man would be in a psychic rather than a physical direction, but it said nothing about a—shall I call it a
gestalt
organism? There was something about slime moulds, but they seem to be more a hive activity of amoebae than even a symbiosis.
       To my own unscientific, personally uninterested mind, there was nothing like what he wanted except possibly a band marching together, everyone playing different instruments with different techniques and different notes, to make a single thing move along together. But he hadn’t meant anything like that.
       So I went back to him in the cool of an early fall evening, and he took what little I had in my eyes, and turned from me angrily with a gross word I shall not permit myself to remember.
       “You can’t find it,” he told me. “Don’t come back.”
       He got up and went to a tattered birch and leaned against it, looking out and down into the wind-tossed crackling shadows. I think he had forgotten me already. I know he leaped like a frightened animal when I spoke to him from so near. He must have been completely immersed in whatever strange thoughts he was having, for I’m sure he didn’t hear me coming.
       I said, “Lone, don’t blame me for not finding it. I tried.”
       He controlled his startlement and brought those eyes down to me. “Blame? Who’s blamin’ anybody?”
       “I failed you,” I told him, “and you’re angry.”
       He looked at me so long I became uncomfortable.
       “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” he said.
       I wouldn’t let him turn away from me. He would have. He would have left me forever with not another thought; he didn’t
care!
It wasn’t cruelty or thoughtlessness as I have been taught to know those things. He was as uncaring as a cat is of the bursting of a tulip bud.
       I took him by the upper arms and shook him, it was like trying to shake the front of my house. “You
can
know!” I screamed at him. “You know what I read. You must know what I think!”
       He shook his head.
       “I’m a person, a woman,” I raved at him. “You’ve used me and used me and you’ve given me nothing. You’ve made me break a lifetime of habits—reading until all hours, coming to you in the rain and on Sunday—you don’t talk to me, you don’t look at me, you don’t know anything about me and you don’t care. You put some sort of a spell on me that I couldn’t break. And when you’re finished, you say, ‘Don’t come back.’ ”
       “Do I have to give something back because I took something?”
       “People do.”
       He gave that short, interested hum. “What do you want me to give you? I ain’t got anything.”
       I moved away from him. I felt... I don’t know what I felt. After a time I said, “I don’t know.”
       He shrugged and turned. I fairly leaped at him, dragging him back. “I want you to—”
       “Well, damn it, what?”
       I couldn’t look at him; I could hardly speak. “I don’t know. There’s something, but I don’t know what it is. It’s something that—I couldn’t say if I knew it.” When he began to shake his head, I took his arms again. “You’ve read the books out of me; can’t you read the... the
me
out of me?”
       “I ain’t never tried.” He held my face up and stepped close. “Here,” he said.
       His eyes projected their strange probe at me and I screamed. I tried to twist away. I hadn’t wanted this, I was sure I hadn’t. I struggled terribly. I think he lifted me right off the ground with his big hands. He held me until he was finished, and then let me drop. I huddled to the ground, sobbing. He sat down beside me. He didn’t try to touch me. He didn’t try to go away. I quieted at last and crouched there, waiting.
       He said, “I ain’t going to do much of that no more.”
       I sat up and tucked my skirt close around me and laid my cheek on my updrawn knees so I could see his face. “What happened?”
       He cursed. “Damn mishmash inside you. Thirty-three years old—what you want to live like that for?”
       “I live very comfortably,” I said with some pique.
       “Yeah,” he said. “All by yourself for ten years now ’cept for someone to do your work. Nobody else.”
       “Men are animals, and women...”
       “You really hate women. They all know something you don’t.”
       “I don’t want to know. I’m quite happy the way I am.”
       “Hell you are.”
       I said nothing to that. I despise that kind of language.
       “Two things you want from me. Neither makes no sense.” He looked at me with the first real expression I have ever seen in his face: a profound wonderment. “You want to know all about me, where I came from, how I got to be what I am.”
       “Yes, I do want that. What’s the other thing I want that you know and I don’t?”
       “I was born some place and growed like a weed somehow,” he said, ignoring me. “Folks who didn’t give even enough of a damn to try the orphanage routine. So I just ran loose, sort of in training to be the village idiot. I’da. made it, but I took to the woods instead.”
       “Why?”
       He wondered why, and finally said, “I guess because the way people lived didn’t make no sense to me. Out here I can grow like I want.”
       “How is that?” I asked over one of those vast distances that built and receded between him and me so constantly.
       “What I wanted to get from your books.”
       “You never told me.”
       For the second time he said, “You learn, but you don’t think. There’s a kind of—well,
person
. It’s all made of separate parts, but it’s all one person. It has like hands, it has like legs, it has like a talking mouth, and it has like a brain. That’s me, a brain for that person. Damn feeble, too, but the best I know of.”
       “You’re mad.”
       “No, I ain’t,” he said, unoffended and completely certain. “I already got the part that’s like hands. I can move ’em anywhere and they do what I want, though they’re too young yet to do much good. I got the part that talks. That one’s real good.”
       “I don’t think you talk very well at all,” I said. I cannot stand incorrect English.
       He was surprised. “I’m not talking about me! She’s back yonder with the others.”
       “She?”
       “The one that talks. Now I need one that thinks, one that can take anything and add it to anything else and come up with a right answer. And once they’re all together, and all the parts get used together often enough, I’ll be that new kind of thing I told you about. See? Only—I wish it had a better head on it than me.”
       My own head was swimming. “What made you start doing this?”
       He considered me gravely. “What made you start growing hair in your armpits?” he asked me. “You don’t figure a thing like that. It just happens.”
       “What is that... that thing you do when you look in my eyes?”
       “You want a name for it? I ain’t got one. I don’t know how I do it. I know I can get anyone I want to do anything. Like you’re going to forget about me.”
       I said in a choked voice, “I don’t want to forget about you.”
       “You will.” I didn’t know then whether he meant I’d forget, or I’d
want
to forget. “You’ll hate me, and then after a long time you’ll be grateful. Maybe you’ll be able to do something for me some time. You’ll be that grateful that you’ll be glad to do it. But you’ll forget, all right, everything but a sort of... feeling. And my name, maybe.”
       I don’t know what moved me to ask him, but I did, forlornly. “And no one will ever know about you and me?”
       “Can’t,” he said. “Unless... well, unless it was the head of the animal, like me, or a better one.” He heaved himself up.
       “Oh, wait, wait!” I cried. He mustn’t go yet, he mustn’t. He was a tall, dirty beast of a man, yet he had enthralled me in some dreadful way. “You haven’t given me the other... whatever it was.”
       “Oh,” he said. “Yeah, that.”
       He moved like a flash. There was a pressure, a stretching apart, and a... a breakage. And with a tearing agony and a burst of triumph that drowned the pain, it was done.

I came up out of it, through two distinct levels:
       I am eleven, breathless from shock from a transferred agony of that incredible entrance into the ego of another. And:
       I am fifteen, lying on the couch while Stern drones on, “...quietly, quietly limp, your ankles and legs as limp as your toes, your belly goes soft, the back of your neck is as limp as your belly, it’s quiet and easy and all gone soft and limper than limp...”
       I sat up and swung my legs to the floor. “Okay,” I said.
       Stern looked a little annoyed. “This is going to work,” he said, “but it can only work if you cooperate. Just lie—”
       “It did work,” I said.
       “What?”
       “The whole thing. A to Z.” I snapped my fingers. “Like that.”
       He looked at me piercingly. “What do you mean?”
       “It was right there, where you said. In the library. When I was eleven. When she said, ‘Baby is three.’ It knocked loose something that had been boiling around in her for three years, and it all came blasting out. I got it, full force; just a kid, no warning, no defenses. It had such a—a pain in it, like I never knew could be.”
       “Go on,” said Stern.
       “That’s really all. I mean that’s not what was in it; it’s what it did to me. What it was, a sort of hunk of her own self. A whole lot of things that happened over about four months, every bit of it. She knew Lone.”
       “You mean a whole
series
of episodes?”
       “That’s it.”
       “You got a series all at once? In a split second?”
       “That’s right. Look, for that split second I
was
her, don’t you see? I was her, everything she’d ever done, everything she’d ever thought and heard and felt. Everything, everything, all in the right order if I wanted to bring it out like that. Any part of it if I wanted it by itself. If I’m going to tell you about what I had for lunch, do I have to tell you everything else I’ve ever done since I was born? No. I tell you I
was
her, and then and forever after I can remember anything she could remember up to that point. In just that one flash.”
       “A
gestalt
,” he murmured.
       “Aha!” I said, and thought about that. I thought about a whole lot of things. I put them aside for a moment and said, “Why didn’t I know all this before?”
       “You had a powerful block against recalling it.”
       I got up excitedly. “I don’t see why. I don’t see that at all.”
       “Just natural revulsion,” he guessed. “How about this? You had a distaste for assuming a female ego, even for a second.”
       “You told me yourself, right at the beginning, that I didn’t have that kind of a problem.”
       “Well, how does this sound to you? You say you felt pain in that episode. So—you wouldn’t go back into it for fear of re-experiencing the pain.”
       “Let me think, let me think. Yeah, yeah, that’s part of it—that thing of going into someone’s mind. She opened up to me because I reminded her of Lone. I went in. I wasn’t ready; I’d never done it before, except maybe a little, against resistance. I went all the way in and it was too much; it frightened me away from trying it for years. And there it lay, wrapped up, locked away. But as I grew older, the power to do that with my mind got stronger and stronger, and still I was afraid to use it. And the more I grew, the more I felt, down deep, that Miss Kew had to be killed before she killed the... what I am. My God!” I shouted. “Do you know what I am?”
       “No,” he said. “Like to tell me about it?”
       “I’d like to,” I said. “Oh, yes, I’d like that.”
       He had that professional open-minded expression on his face, not believing or disbelieving, just taking it all in. I had to tell him, and I suddenly realized that I didn’t have enough words. I knew the things, but not the names for them.
      
Lone took the meanings and threw the words away
.
       Further back: “
You read books. Read books for me
.”
       The look of his eyes. That—“opening up” thing.
       I went over to Stern. He looked up at me, I bent close. First he was startled, then he controlled it, then he came even closer to me.
       “My God,” he murmured. “I didn’t look at those eyes before. I could have sworn those irises spun like wheels...”

Stern read books. He’d read more books than I ever imagined had been written. I slipped in there, looking for what I wanted.
       I can’t say exactly what it was like. It was like walking in a tunnel, and in this tunnel, all over the roof and walls, wooden arms stuck out at you, like the thing at the carnival, the merry-go-round, the thing you snatch the brass rings from. There’s a brass ring on the end of each of these arms, and you can take anyone of them you want to.
       Now imagine you make up your mind which rings you want, and the arms hold only those. Now picture yourself with a thousand hands to grab the rings off with. Now just suppose the tunnel is a zillion miles long, and you can go from one end of it to the other, grabbing rings, in just the time it takes you to blink once. Well, it was like that, only easier.
       It was easier for me to do than it had been for Lone.

Straightening up, I got away from Stern. He looked sick and frightened.
       “It’s all right,” I said.
       “What did you do to me?”
       “I needed some words. Come on, come on. Get professional.”
       I had to admire him. He put his pipe in his pocket and gouged the tips of his fingers hard against his forehead and cheeks. Then he sat up and he was okay again.
       “I know,” I said. “That’s how Miss Kew felt when Lone did it to her.”
       “What
are
you?”
       “I’ll tell you. I’m the central ganglion of a complex organism which is composed of Baby, a computer; Bonnie and Beanie, teleports; Janie, telekineticist; and myself, telepath and central control. There isn’t a single thing about any of us that hasn’t been documented: the teleportation of the Yogi, the telekinetics of some gamblers, the idiot savant mathematicians, and most of all, the so-called poltergeist, the moving about of household goods through the instrumentation of a young girl. Only in this case every one of my parts delivers at peak performance.
       “Lone organized it, or it formed around him; it doesn’t matter which. I replaced Lone, but I was too underdeveloped when he died, and on top of that I got an occlusion from that blast, from Miss Kew. To that extent you were right when you said the blast made me subconsciously afraid to discover what was in it. But there was another good reason for my not being able to get in under that ‘Baby is three’ barrier.
       “We ran into the problem of what it was I valued more than the security Miss Kew gave us. Can’t you see now what it was? My
gestalt
organism was at the point of death from that security. I figured she had to be killed or it—
I
—would be. Oh, the parts would live on: two little colored girls with a speech impediment, one introspective girl with an artistic bent, one mongoloid idiot, and me—ninety per cent short-circuited potentials and ten per cent juvenile delinquent.” I laughed. “Sure, she had to be killed. It was self-preservation for the
gestalt
.”
       Stern bobbled around with his mouth and finally got out: “I don’t—”
       “You don’t need to,” I laughed. “This is wonderful. You’re good—real good. Now I want to tell you this, because you can appreciate a fine point in your specialty. You talk about occlusions! I couldn’t get past the ‘Baby is three’ thing because in it lay the clues to what I really am. I couldn’t find that out because I was afraid to remember that I was two things—Miss Kew’s little boy, and something a hell of a lot bigger. I couldn’t be both, and I wouldn’t release either one.”
       He said, with his eyes on his pipe, “Now you can?”
       “I have.”
       “And what now?”
       “What do you mean?”
       Stern leaned back against the corner of his desk. “Did it occur to you that maybe this—
gestalt
organism of yours is already dead?”
       “It isn’t.”
       “How do you know?”
       “How does your head know your arm works?”
       He touched his face. “So... now what?”
       I shrugged. “Did the Pekin man look at Homo Sap walking erect and say, ‘Now what?’ We’ll live, that’s all, like a man, like a tree, like anything else that lives. We’ll feed and grow and experiment and breed. We’ll defend ourselves.” I spread my hands. “We’ll just do what comes naturally.”
       “But what can you do?”
       “What can an electric motor do? It depends on where we apply ourselves.”
       Stern was very pale. “Just what do you—
want
to do?”
       I thought about that. He waited until I was quite finished thinking and didn’t say anything. “Know what?” I said at last. “Ever since I was born, people been kicking me around, right up until Miss Kew took over. And what happened with her? She damn near killed me.”
       I thought some more, and said, “Everybody’s had fun but me. The kind of fun everybody has is kicking someone around, someone small who can’t fight back. Or they do you favors until they own you, or kill you.” I looked at him and grinned. “I’m just going to have fun, that’s all.”
       He turned his back. I think he was going to pace the floor, but right away he turned again. I knew then he would keep an eye on me. He said, “You’ve come a long way since you walked in here.”
       I nodded. “You’re a
good
head-shrinker.”
       “Thanks,” he said bitterly. “And you figure you’re all cured now, all adjusted and ready to roll.”
       “Well sure. Don’t you?”
       He shook his head. “All you’ve found out is what you are. You have a lot more to learn.”
       I was willing to be patient. “Like?”
       “Like finding out what happens to people who have to live with guilt like yours. You’re different, Gerry, but you’re not that different.”
       “I should feel guilty about saving my life?”
       He ignored that. “One other thing: You said a while back that you’d been mad at everybody all your life—that’s the way you lived. Have you ever wondered why?”
       “Can’t say I have.”
       “One reason is that you were so alone. That’s why being with the other kids, and then with Miss Kew, came to mean so much.”
       “So? I’ve still got the kids.”
       He shook his head slowly. “You
and
the kids are a single creature. Unique. Unprecedented.” He pointed the pipestem at me. “
Alone
.”
       The blood started to pound in my ears.
       “Shut up,” I said.
       “Just think about it,” he said softly. “You can do practically anything. You can have practically everything. And none of it will keep you from being alone.”
       “Shut up, shut up... Everybody’s alone.”
       He nodded. “But some people learn how to live with it.”
       “How?”
       He said, after a time, “Because of something you don’t know anything about. It wouldn’t mean anything to you if I told you.”
       “Tell me and see.”
       He gave me the strangest look. “It’s sometimes called morality.”
       “I guess you’re right. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I pulled myself together. I didn’t have to listen to this. “You’re afraid,” I said. “You’re afraid of
Homo Gestalt
.”
       He made a wonderful effort and smiled. “That’s bastard terminology.”
       “We’re a bastard breed,” I said. I pointed. “Sit down over there.”
       He crossed the quiet room and sat at the desk. I leaned close to him and he went to sleep with his eyes open. I straightened up and looked around the room. Then I got the thermos flask and filled it and put it on the desk. I fixed the corner of the rug and put a clean towel at the head of the couch. I went to the side of the desk and opened it and looked at the tape recorder.
       Like reaching out a hand, I got Beanie. She stood by the desk, wide-eyed.
       “Look here,” I told her. “Look good, now. What I want to do is erase all this tape. Go ask Baby how.”
       She blinked at me and sort of shook herself, and then leaned over the recorder. She was there—and gone—and back, just like that. She pushed past me and turned two knobs, moved a pointer until it clicked twice. The tape raced backward past the head swiftly, whining.
       “All right,” I said, “beat it.”
       She vanished.
       I got my jacket and went to the door. Stern was still sitting at the desk, staring.
       “A
good
head-shrinker,” I murmured. I felt fine.
       Outside I waited, then turned and went back in again.
       Stern looked up at me. “Sit over there, Sonny.”
       “Gee,” I said. “Sorry, sir. I got in the wrong office.”
       “That’s all right,” he said.
       I went out and closed the door. All the way down to the police station I grinned. They’d take my report on Miss Kew and like it. And sometimes I laughed, thinking about this Stern, how he’d figure the loss of an afternoon and the gain of a thousand bucks. Much funnier than thinking about him being dead.
       What the hell
is
morality, anyway?