“You break precedents. Luci must be angry to lose you?”
“She took it well. Chang, that’s strange.”
“What?”
“I’m cranched, and I can hear. Your voice sounds all right. How did you learn to talk like—like an ordinary person?”
“I practised with soundtracks. Funny you noticed it. I think I am the only Scanner in or between the Earths who can pass for an Ordinary Man. Mirrors and soundtracks. I found out how to act.”
“But you don’t … ?”
“No. I don’t feel, or taste, or hear, or smell things, any more than you do. Talking doesn’t do me much good. But I notice that it cheers up the people around me.”
“It would make a difference in the life of Luci.”
Chang nodded sagely. “My father insisted on it. He said, ‘You may be proud of being a Scanner. I am sorry you are not a Man. Conceal your defects.’ So I tried. I wanted to tell the old boy about the Up and Out, and what we did there, but it did not matter. He said, ‘Airplanes were good enough for Confucius, and they are for me too.’ The old humbug! He tries so hard to be a Chinese when he can’t even read Old Chinese. But he’s got wonderful good sense, and for somebody going on two hundred he certainly gets around.”
Martel smiled at the thought: “In his airplane?”
Chang smiled back. This discipline of his facial muscles was amazing; a bystander would not think that Chang was a haberman, controlling his eyes, cheeks, and lips by cold intellectual control. The expression had the spontaneity of life. Martel felt a flash of envy for Chang when he looked at the dead cold faces of Parizianski and the others. He knew that he himself looked fine: but why shouldn’t he? he was cranched. Turning to Parizianski he said,
“Did you see what Chang said about his father? The old boy uses an airplane.”
Parizianski made motions with his mouth, but the sounds meant nothing. He took up his tablet and showed it to Martel and Chang.
Bzz bzz. Ha ha. Gd ol’ boy.
At that moment, Martel heard steps out in the corridor. He could not help looking toward the door. Other eyes followed the direction of his glance.
Vomact came in.
The group shuffled to attention in four parallel lines. They scanned one another. Numerous hands reached across to adjust the electrochemical controls on chestboxes which had begun to load up. One Scanner held out a broken finger which his counter-Scanner had discovered, and submitted it for treatment and splinting.
Vomact had taken out his Staff of Office. The cube at the top flashed red light through the room, the lines reformed, and all Scanners gave the sign meaning, Present and ready!
Vomact countered with the stance signifying, I am the Senior and take Command.
Talking fingers rose in the counter-gesture, We concur and commit ourselves.
Vomact raised his right arm, dropped the wrist as though it were broken, in a queer searching gesture, meaning: Any men around? Any habermans not tied? All clear for the Scanners?
Alone of all those present, the cranched Martel heard the queer rustle of feet as they all turned completely around without leaving position, looking sharply at one another and flashing their beltlights into the dark corners of the great room. When again they faced Vomact, he made a further sign:
All clear. Follow my words.
Martel noticed that he alone relaxed. The others could not know the meaning of relaxation with the minds blocked off up there in their skulls, connected only with the eyes, and the rest of the body connected with the mind only by controlling non-sensory nerves and the instrument boxes on their chests. Martel realized that, cranched as he was, he expected to hear Vomact’s voice: the Senior had been talking for some time. No sound escaped his lips. (Vomact never bothered with sound.)
“… and when the first men to go Up and Out went to the Moon, what did they find?”
“Nothing,” responded the silent chorus of lips.
“Therefore they went further, to Mars and to Venus. The ships went out year by year, but they did not come back until the Year One of Space. Then did a ship come back with the First Effect. Scanners, I ask you, what is the First Effect?”
“No one knows. No one knows.”
“No one will ever know. Too many are the variables. By what do we know the First Effect?”
“By the Great Pain of Space,” came the chorus.
“And by what further sign?”
“By the need, oh the need for death.”
Vomact again: “And who stopped the need for death?”
“Henry Haberman conquered the first effect, in the Year 3 of Space.”
“And, Scanners, I ask you, what did he do?”
“He made the habermans.”
“How, O Scanners, are habermans made?”
“They are made with the cuts. The brain is cut from the heart, the lungs. The brain is cut from the ears, the nose. The brain is cut from the mouth, the belly. The brain is cut from desire, and pain. The brain is cut from the world. Save for the eyes. Save for the control of the living flesh.”
“And how, O Scanners, is flesh controlled?”
“By the boxes set in the flesh, the controls set in the chest, the signs made to rule the living body, the signs by which the body lives.”
“How does a haberman live and live?”
“The haberman lives by control of the boxes.”
“Whence come the habermans?”
Martel felt in the coming response a great roar of broken voices echoing through the room as the Scanners, habermans themselves, put sound behind their mouthings:
“Habermans are the scum of Mankind. Habermans are the weak, the cruel, the credulous, and the unfit. Habermans are the sentenced-to-more-than-death. Habermans live in the mind alone. They are killed for Space but they live for Space. They master the ships that connect the earths. They live in the Great Pain while ordinary men sleep in the cold cold sleep of the transit.”
“Brothers and Scanners, I
