More Than Human

‘Don’t flatter yourself!’ she said acidly, then: ‘I’m sorry, Hip. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded… It was no trouble for him. He swatted you like a beetle. He gave you a push and forgot all about you.’

Hip grunted. ‘Thank you.’

‘He did it again!’ she said furiously. ‘There you were, seven good youthful years shot, your good engineer’s mind gone, with nothing left but a starved, dirty frame and a numb obsession that you were incapable of understanding or relieving. Yet, by heaven, you had enough of- whatever it is that makes you what you are – to drag through those seven years picking up the pieces until you were right at his doorstep. When he saw you coming – it was an accident, he happened to be in town – he knew immediately who you were and what you were after. When you charged him he diverted you into that plate glass window with just a blink of those… rotten… poison… eyes of his…’

‘Hey,’ he said gently. ‘Hey, Janie, take it easy!’

‘Makes me mad,’ she whispered, dashing her hand across her eyes. She tossed her hair back, squared her shoulders. ‘He sent you flying into the window and at the same time gave you that „curl up and die” command. I saw it, I saw him do it… S-so rotten…’

She said, in a more controlled tone, ‘Maybe if it was the only one I could have forgotten it. I never could have approved it but I once had faith in him… you’ve got to understand, we’re a part of something together, Gerry and I and the kids; something real and alive. Hating him is like hating your legs or your lungs.’

‘It says in the Good Book, „If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. If thy right hand – „‘

‘Yes, your eye, your hand!’ she cried. ‘Not your head!’ She went on, ‘But yours wasn’t the only case. Did you ever hear that rumour about the fusion of Element 83?’

‘A fairy tale. Bismuth won’t play those games. I remember vaguely… some crazy guy called Klackenhorst.’

‘A crazy guy called Klackenheimer,’ she corrected.’ Gerry got into one of his bragging phases and let go with a differential he shouldn’t have mentioned. Klack picked it up. He fusioned bismuth all right. And Gerry got worried; a thing like that would make too much of a splash and he was afraid he’d be bothered by a mob of people who might trace him. So he got rid of poor old Klack.’

‘Klackenheimer died of cancer!’ snorted Hip.

She gave him a strange look. ‘I know,’ she said softly.

Hip beat his temples softly with his fists. Janie said, ‘There’ve been more. Not all big things like that. I dared him into wooing a girl once, strictly on his own, without using his talents. He lost out to someone else, an awfully. sweet kid who sold washing machines door-to-door and was doing pretty well. The kid wound up with acne rosacea.’

‘The nose like a beet. I’ve seen it.’

‘Like an extra-boiled, extra-swollen beet,’ she amended. ‘No job.’

‘No girl,’ he guessed.

She smiled and said,’ She stuck by him. They have a little ceramics business now. He stays in the back.’

He had a vague idea of where the business had come from. ‘Janie, I’ll take your word for it. There were lots of ‘em. But – why me? You went all out for me.’

‘Two good reasons. First, I saw him do that to you in town, make you charge his image in the glass, thinking it was him. It was the last piece of casual viciousness I ever wanted to see. Second, it was – well, it was you.’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘Listen,’ she said passionately, ‘we’re not a group of freaks. We’re Homo Gestalt, you understand? We’re a single entity, a new kind of human being. We weren’t invented. We evolved. We’re the next step up. We’re alone; there are no more like us. We don’t live in the kind of world you do, with systems of morals and codes of ethics to guide us. We’re living on a desert island with a herd of goats!’

‘I’m the goat.’

‘Yes, yes, you are, can’t you see? But we were born on this island with no one like us to teach us, tell us how to behave. We can learn from the goats all the things that make a goat a good goat, but that will never change the fact that we’re not a goat! You can’t apply the same set of rules to us as you do to ordinary humans; we’re just not the same thing!’

She waved him down as he was about to speak. ‘But listen, did you ever see one of those museum exhibits of skeletons of, say horses, starting with the little Eohippus and coming right up the line, nineteen or twenty of them, to the skeleton of a Percheron? There’s an awful lot of difference between number one and number nineteen. But what real difference is there between number fifteen and number sixteen? Damn little!’ She stopped and panted.

‘I hear you. But what’s that to do with – ’