More Than Human

‘That’s right.’ She laughed. ‘There was hell to pay one time. See, he’d go in and lock himself in a booth and call Bonnie or Beanie. He’d tell them where he was stumped and they’d whip home and tell me and I’d get the answer from Baby and they’d flash back with the information, all in a few seconds. So one fine day another, student heard Gerry talking and stood up in the next booth and peeked over. You can imagine! Bonnie and Beanie can’t carry so much as a toothpick with them when they teleport, let alone clothes.’

Hip clapped a hand to his forehead. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh, Gerry caught up with the kid. He’d charged right out of there yelling that there was a naked girl in the john. Half of the student body dove in there; of course she was gone. And when Gerry caught up with the kid, he just naturally forgot all about it and wondered what all the yelling was about. They gave him a pretty bad time over it.

‘Those were good times,’ she sighed. ‘Gerry was so interested in everything. He read all the tune. He was at Baby all the time for information. He was interested in people and books and machines and history and art – everything. I got a lot from it. As I say, all the information cleared through me.

‘But then Gerry began to… I was going to say, get sick, but that’s not the way to say it.’ She bit her lip thoughtfully. ‘I’d say from what I know of people that only two kinds are really progressive – really dig down and learn and then use what they learn. A few are genuinely interested; they’re just built that way. But the great majority want to prove something. They want to be better, richer. They want to be famous or powerful or respected. With Gerry the second operated for a while. He’d never had any real schooling and he’d always been a little afraid to compete. He had it pretty rough when he was a kid; ran away from an orphanage when he was seven and lived like a sewer rat until Lone picked him up. So it felt good to get honours in his classes and make money with a twist of his wrist any time he wanted it. And I think he was genuinely interested in some things for a little while: music and biology and one or two other things.

‘But he soon came to realize that he didn’t need to prove anything to anyone. He was smarter and stronger and more powerful than anybody. Proving it was just dull. He could have anything he wanted.

‘He quit studying. He quit playing the oboe. He gradually quit everything. Finally he slowed down and practically stopped for a year. Who knows what went on in his head? He’d spend weeks lying around, not talking.

‘Our Gestalt, as we call it, was once an idiot, Hip, when it had Lone for a „head”. Well, when Gerry took over it was a new, strong, growing thing. But when this happened to him, it was in retreat like what used to be called a manic-depressive.’

‘Uh!’ Hip grunted. ‘A manic-depressive with enough power to run the world.’

‘He didn’t want to run the world. He knew he could if he wanted to. He didn’t see any reason why he should.

‘Well, just like in his psych texts he retreated and soon he regressed. He got childish. And his kind of childishness was pretty vicious.

‘I started to move around a little; I couldn’t stand it around the house. I used to hunt around for things that might snap him out of it. One night in New York I dated a fellow I know who was one of the officers of the I.R.E.’

‘Institute of Radio Engineers,’ said Hip. ‘Swell outfit. I used to be a member.’

‘I know. This fellow told me about you.’

‘About me?’

‘About what you called a „mathematical recreation”, anyway. An extrapolation of the probable operating laws and attendant phenomena of magnetic flux in a gravity generator.’

‘God!’

She made a short and painful laugh. ‘Yes, Hip. I did it to you. I didn’t know then of course. I just wanted to interest Gerry in something.

‘He was interested all right. He asked Baby about it and got the answer pronto. You see, Lone built that thing before Gerry came to live with us. We’d forgotten about it pretty much.’

‘Forgotten! A thing like that?’

‘Look, we don’t think like other people.’

‘You don’t,’ he said thoughtfully and,’ Why should you?’

‘Lone built it for the old farmer, Prodd. That was just like Lone. A gravity generator, to increase and decrease the weight of Prodd’s old truck so he could use it as a tractor. All because Prodd’s horse died and he couldn’t afford another.’

‘No!’

‘Yes. He was an idiot all right. Well, he asked Baby what effect it would have if this invention got out and Baby said plenty. He said it would turn the whole world upside down, worse than the industrial revolution. Worse than anything that ever happened. He said if things went one way we’d have such a war, you wouldn’t believe it. If they went the other way, science would go too far, too fast. Seems that gravities is the key to everything. It would lead to the addition of one more item to the Unified Field – what we now call psychic energy, or „psionics”.’