More Than Human

She looked at him narrowly. ‘Hip – you have. You mentioned him not ten minutes ago.’

‘Did I?’ He thought. He thought hard. Then he opened his eyes wide. ‘By God, I did!’

‘All right. Who is he? What was he to you?’

‘Who?’

‘Hip!’ she said sharply.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I guess I’m a little mixed up.’ He thought again, hard, trying to recall the entire sequence, every word. At last, ‘ B-bromfield,’ he said with difficulty.

‘It will hardly stay with you. Well, it’s a flash from a long way back. It won’t mean anything to you until you go back that far and get it.’

‘Go back? Go back how?’

‘Haven’t you been going back and back – from being sick here to being in jail to getting arrested, and just before that, to your visit to that house? Think about that, Hip. Think about why you went to the house.’

He made an impatient gesture. ‘I don’t need to. Can’t you see? I went to that house because I was searching for something – what was it? Oh, children; some children who could tell me where the half-wit was.’ He leapt up, laughed. ‘You see? The half-wit – I remembered. I’ll remember it all, you’ll see. The half-wit… I’d been looking for him for years, forever. I… forget why, but,’ he said, his voice strengthening, ‘that doesn’t matter any more now. What I’m trying to tell you is that I don’t have to go all the way back; I’ve done all I need to do. I’m back on the path. Tomorrow I’m going to that house and get that address and then I’ll go to wherever that is and finish what I started out to do in the first place when I lost the – ’

He faltered, looked around bemusedly, spied the tubing lying on the chair arm, snatched it up. ‘This,’ he said triumphantly. ‘It’s part of the – the – oh, damn it!’

She waited until he had calmed down enough to hear her. She said, ‘You see?’

‘See what?’ he asked brokenly, uncaring, miserable.

‘If you go out there tomorrow, you’ll walk into a situation you don’t understand, for reasons you can’t remember, asking for someone you can’t place, in order to go find out something you can’t conceive of. But,’ she admitted, ‘you are right, Hip – you can do it.’

‘If I did,’ he said, ‘it would all come back.’

She shook her head. He said harshly, ‘You know everything, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Hip.’

‘Well, I don’t care. I’m going to do it anyway.’

She took one deep breath. ‘You’ll be killed.’

‘What?’

‘If you go out there you will be killed,’ she said distinctly. ‘Oh, Hip, haven’t I been right so far? Haven’t I? Haven’t you gotten back a lot already – really gotten it back, so it doesn’t slip away from you?’

Agonized, he said, ‘You tell me I can walk out of here tomorrow and find whatever it is I’ve been looking – Looking? Living for… and you tell me it’ll kill me if I do. What do you want from me? What are you trying to tell me to do?’ ‘Just keep on,’ she pleaded.

‘Just keep on with what you’ve been doing.’

‘For what?’ he raged. ‘Go back and back, go farther away from the thing I want? What good will – ‘

‘Stop it!’ she said sharply. To his own astonishment he stopped. ‘You’ll be biting holes in the rug in a minute,’ she said gently and with a gleam of amusement. ‘That won’t help.’

He fought against her amusement but it was irresistible. He let it touch him and thrust it away; but it had touched him. He spoke more quietly; ‘You’re telling me I mustn’t ever find the – the half-wit and the… whatever it is?’

‘Oh,’ she said, her whole heart in her inflection, ‘oh, no! Hip, you’ll find it, truly you will. But you have to know what it is; you have to know why.’

‘How long will it take?’

She shook her head soberly. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I can’t wait. Tomorrow – ‘He jabbed a finger at the window. The dark was silvering, the sun was near, pressing it away. ‘Today, you see? Today I could go there… I’ve got to; you understand how much it means, how long I’ve been…’ His voice trailed off; then he whirled on her. ‘ You say I’ll be killed; I’d rather be killed, there with it in my hands; it’s what I’ve been living for anyway!’

She looked up at him tragically. ‘Hip – ‘

‘No!’ he snapped. ‘You can’t talk me out of it.’

She started to speak, stopped, bent her head. Down she bent, to hide her face on the bed.

He strode furiously up and down the room, then stood over her. His face softened. ‘Janie,’ he said, ‘help me…’

She lay very still. He knew she was listening. He said, ‘If there’s danger… if something is going to try to kill me… tell me what. At least let me know what to look for.’

She turned her head, faced the wall, so he could hear her but not see her. In a laboured voice she said, ‘I didn’t say anything will try to kill you. I said you would be killed.’

He stood over her for a long time. Then he growled. ‘All right. I will. Thanks for everything, Janie. You better go home.’

She crawled off the bed slowly, weakly, as if she had been flogged. She turned to him with such a look of pity and sorrow in her face that his heart was squeezed. But he set his jaw, looked towards the door, moved his head towards it.

She went, not looking back, dragging her feet. It was more than he could bear. But he let her go.

The bedspread was lightly rumpled. He crossed the room slowly and looked down at it. He put out his hand, then fell forward and plunged his face into it. It was still warm from her body and for an instant so brief as to be indefinable, he felt a thing about mingled breaths, two spellbound souls turning one to the other and about to be one. But then it was gone, everything was gone and he lay exhausted.

Go on, get sick. Curl up and die. ‘All right,’ he whispered.

Might as well. What’s the difference anyway? Die or get killed, who cares?

Not Janie.

He closed his eyes and saw a mouth. He thought it was Janie’s, but the chin was too pointed. The mouth said, ‘Just lie down and die, that’s all,’ and smiled. The smile made light glance off the thick glasses which must mean he was seeing the whole face. And then there was a pain so sharp and Swift that he threw up his head and grunted. His hand, his hand was cut. He looked down at it, saw the scars which had made the sudden, restimulative pain. ‘Thompson, I’m gonna kill that Thompson.’

Who was Thompson who was Bromfield who was the half-wit in the cave… cave, where is the cave where the children… children… no, it was children’s… where the children’s… clothes, that’s it! Clothes, old, torn, rags; but that’s how he…

Janie… You will be killed. Just lie down and die.

His eyeballs rolled up, his tensions left him in a creeping lethargy. It was not a good thing but it was more welcome than feeling. Someone said, ‘Up forty or better on your right quadrant, corp’r’l, or the pixies’ll degauss your fuses.’ Who said that?

He, Hip Barrows. He said it.

Who’d he say it to?

Janie with her clever hand on the ack-ack prototype.

He snorted faintly. Janie wasn’t a corporal,’ Reality isn’t the most pleasant of atmospheres, Lieutenant. But we like to think we’re engineered for it. It’s a pretty fine piece of engineering, the kind an engineer can respect. Drag in an obsession and reality can’t tolerate it. Something has to give; if reality goes, your fine piece of engineering is left with nothing to operate on. Nothing it was designed to operate on. So it operates badly. So kick the obsession out; start functioning the way you were designed to function.’

Who said that? Oh – Bromfield. The jerk! He should know better than to try to talk engineering to an engineer. ‘Cap’n Bromfield’ (tiredly, the twenty damn thousandth time), ‘if I wasn’t an engineer I wouldn’t’ve found it, I wouldn’t’ve recognized it, and I wouldn’t give a damn now.’ Ah, it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter. Just curl up and as long as Thompson