More Than Human

became nothing at the other side, the knives and forks and his razor and toothbrush and two neckties and a belt came showering around and down and lay on the floor in the shape of a heart with an arrow through it. He shouted with laughter and hugged her and spun her around. He said, ‘Why haven’t I ever kissed you, Janie?’

Her face and body went quite still and in her eyes was an indescribable expression-tenderness, amusement, and something else. She said, ‘I’m not going to tell you because you’re wonderful and brave and clever and strong, but you’re also just a little bit prissy.’ She spun away from him and the air was full of knives and forks and neckties, the lamp and the coffeepot, all going back to their places. At the door she said, ‘Hurry,’ and was gone.

He plunged after her and caught her in the hall. She was laughing.

He said, ‘I know why I never kissed you.’

She kept her eyes down, but could not do the same with the corners of her mouth. ‘You do?’

‘You can add water to a closed container. Or take it away.’ It was not a question.

‘I can?’

‘When we poor males start pawing the ground and horning the low branches off trees, it might be spring and it might be concreted idealism and it might be love. But it’s always triggered by hydrostatic pressures in a little tiny series of reservoirs smaller than my little fingernail.’

‘It is?’

‘So when the moisture content of these reservoirs is suddenly lowered, I – we – uh -… well, breathing becomes easier and the moon has no significance.’

‘It hasn’t?’

‘And that’s what you’ve been doing to me.’

‘I have?’

She pulled away from him, gave him her eyes and a swift, rich arpeggio of laughter. ‘You can’t say it was an immoral thing to do,’ she said.

He gave her laughter back to her; ‘No nice girl would do a thing like that.’

She wrinkled her nose at him and slipped into her room. He looked at her closed door and probably through it, and then turned away.

Smiling and shaking his head in delight and wonderment, encasing a small cold ball of terror inside him with a new kind of calm he had found; puzzled, enchanted, terrified, and thoughtful, he turned the shower on and began to undress.

They stood in the road until after the taxi had gone and then Janie led the way into the woods. If they had ever been cut, one could not know it now. The path was faint and wandering but easy to follow, for the growth overhead was so thick that there was little underbrush.

They made their way towards a mossy cliff; and then Hip saw that it was not a cliff but a wall, stretching perhaps a hundred yards in each direction. In it was a massive iron door. It clicked as they approached and something heavy slid. He looked at Janie and knew that she was doing it.

The gate opened and closed behind them. Here the woods were just the same, the trees as large and as thick, but the path was of brick and took only two turns. The first made the wall invisible and the second, a quarter of a mile farther, revealed the house.

It was too low and much too wide. Its roof was mounded rather than peaked or gabled. When they drew closer to it, he could see at each flank the heavy, grey-green wall, and he knew that this whole area was in prison.

‘I don’t, either,’ said Janie. He was glad she watched his face.

Gooble.

Someone stood behind a great twisted oak near the house, peeping at them. ‘Wait, Hip.’ Janie walked quickly to the tree and spoke to someone. He heard her say, ‘You’ve got to. Do you want me dead?’

That seemed to settle the argument. As Janie returned he peered at the tree, but now there seemed to be no one there.

‘It was Beanie,’ said Janie. ‘You’ll meet her later. Come.’

The door was ironbound, of heavy oak planks. It fitted with curious concealed hinges into the massive archway from which it took its shape. The only windows to be seen were high up in the moundlike gables and they were mere barred slits.

By itself – or at least, without a physical touch – the door swung back. It should have creaked, but it did not; it was silent as a cloud. They went in, and when the door closed there was a reverberation deep in the subsonic; he could feel it pounding on his belly.

On the floor was a reiteration of tiles, darkest yellow and a brownish grey, in hypnotic diamond shapes they were repeated in the wainscoting and in the upholstery of furniture either built-in or so heavy it had never been moved. The air was cool but too humid and the ceiling was too close. I am walking, he thought, in a great sick mouth.

From the entrance room they started down a corridor which seemed immensely long and was not at all, for the walls came in and the ceiling drew even lower while the floor rose slightly, giving a completely disturbing false perspective.

‘It’s all right,’ said Janie softly. He curled his lips at her, meaning to smile but quite unable to, and wiped cold water from his upper lip.

She stopped near the end door and touched the wall. A section of it swung back, revealing an ante-room with one other door in it. ‘Wait here, will you, Hip?’ She was completely composed. He wished there were more light.

He hesitated. He pointed to the door at the end of the hall. ‘Is he in there?’

‘Yes.’ She touched his shoulder. It was partly a salutation, partly an urging towards the little room.’ I have to see him first,’ she said. ‘Trust me, Hip.’

‘I trust you all right. But are you – is he – ‘

‘He won’t do anything to me. Go on, Hip.’

He stepped through. He had no chance to look back, for the door swung swiftly shut. It gave no more sign of its existence on this side than it had on the other. He touched it, pushed it. It might as well have been that great wall outside. There was no knob, no visible hinge or catch. The edges were hidden in the panelling; it simply had ceased to exist as a door.

He had one blinding moment of panic and then it receded. He went and sat down across from the other door which led, apparently, into the same room to which the corridor led.

There was not a sound.

He picked up an ottoman and placed it against the wall. He sat with his back tight against the panelling, watching the door with wide eyes.

Try that door, see if it’s locked too.

He didn’t dare, he realized. Not yet. He sensed vaguely what he would feel if he found it locked; he wanted no more just now than that chilling guess.

‘Listen,’ he hissed to himself, furiously, ‘you’d better do something. Build something. Or maybe just think. But don’t sit here like this.’

Think. Think about that mystery in there, the pointed face with its thick lenses, which smiled and said, Go on, die.

Think about something else! Quick!

Janie. By herself, facing the pointed face with the -

Homo Gestalt, a girl, two tongue-tied Negroes, a mongoloid idiot, and a man with a pointed face and -

Try that one again. Homo Gestalt, the next step upward. Well, sure, why not a psychic evolution instead of the physical? Homo sapiens stood suddenly naked and unarmed but for the wrinkled jelly in his king-sized skull; he was as different as he could be from the beasts which bore him.

Yet he was the same, the same; to this day he was hungry to breed, hungry to own; he killed without compunction; if he was strong he took, if he was weak he ran; if he was weak and could not run, he died.