More Than Human

Homo sapiens was going to die.

The fear in him was a good fear. Fear is a survival instinct; fear in its way is a comfort for it means that somewhere hope is alive.

He began to think about survival.

Janie wanted Homo Gestalt to acquire a moral system so that such as Hip Barrows would not get crushed. But she wanted her Gestalt to thrive as well; she was a part of it. My hand wants me to survive, my tongue, my belly wants me to survive.

Morals: they’re nothing but a coded survival instinct!

Aren’t they? What about the societies in which it is immoral not to eat human flesh? What kind of survival is that?

Well, but those who adhere to morality survive within the group. If the group eats human flesh, you do too.

There must be a name for the code, the set of rules, by which an individual lives in such a way as to help his species – something over and above morals.

Let’s define that as the ethos.

That’s what Homo Gestalt needs: not morality, but an ethos. And shall I sit here, with my brains bubbling with fear, and devise a set of ethics for a superman?

I’ll try. It’s all I can do.

Define:

Morals: Society’s code for individual survival. (That takes care of our righteous cannibal and the correctness of a naked man in a nudist group.)

Ethics: An individual’s code for society’s survival. (And that’s your ethical reformer: he frees his slaves, he won’t eat humans, he ‘turns the rascals out’.)

Too pat, too slick; but let’s work with ‘em.

As a group, Homo Gestalt can solve his own problems. But as an entity:

He can’t have a morality, because he is alone.

An ethic then. ‘An individual’s code for society’s survival.’ He has no society; yet he has. He has no species; he is his own species.

Could he – should he choose a code which would serve all of humanity?

With the thought, Hip Barrows had a sudden flash of insight, completely intrusive in terms of his immediate problem; yet with it, a load of hostility and blind madness lifted away from him and left him light and confident. It was this:

Who am I to make positive conclusions about morality, and codes to serve all of humanity?

Why – I am the son of a doctor, a man who chose to serve mankind, and who was positive that this was right. And he tried to make me serve in the same way, because it was the only rightness he was sure of. And for this I have hated him all my life… I see now, Dad. I see!

He laughed as the weight of old fury left him forever, laughed in purest pleasure. And it was as if the focus was sharper, the light brighter, in all the world, and as his mind turned back to his immediate problem, his thought seemed to place its fingers better on the rising undersurface, slide upward towards the beginnings of a grip.

The door opened. Janie said, ‘Hip – ‘

He rose slowly. His thought reeled on and on, close to something. If he could get a grip, get his fingers curled over it… ‘Coming.’

He stepped through the door and gasped. It was like a giant greenhouse, fifty yards wide, forty deep; the huge panes overhead curved down and down and met the open lawn – it was more a park – at the side away from the house. After the closeness and darkness of what he had already seen it was shocking but it built in him a great exhilaration. It rose up and up, and up rose his thought with it, pressing its fingertips just a bit higher…

He saw the man coming. He stepped quickly forward, not so much to meet him as to be away from Janie if there should be an explosion. There was going to be an explosion; he knew that.

‘Well, Lieutenant. I’ve been warned, but I can still say – this is a surprise.’

‘Not to me,’ said Hip. He quelled a surprise of a different nature; he had been convinced that his voice would fail him and it had not. ‘I’ve known for seven years that I’d find you.’

‘By God,’ said Thompson in amazement and delight. It was not a good delight. Over Hip’s shoulder he said, ‘I apologize, Janie. I really didn’t believe you until now.’ To Hip he said, ‘You show remarkable powers of recovery.’

‘Homo sap’s a hardy beast,’ said Hip.

Thompson took off his glasses. He had wide round eyes, just the colour and luminescence of a black-and- white television screen. The irises showed the whites all the way around; they were perfectly round and they looked as if they were just about to spin.

Once, someone had said, Keep away from the eyes and you’ll be all right.

Behind him Janie said sharply, ‘Gerry!’

Hip turned. Janie put up her hand and left a small glass cylinder, smaller than a cigarette, hanging between her lips. She said, ‘I warned you, Gerry. You know what this is. Touch him and I bite down on it – and then you can live out the rest of your life with Baby and the twins like a monkey in a cage of squirrels.’

The thought, the thought – ‘I’d like to meet Baby.’

Thompson thawed; he had been standing, absolutely motionless, staring at Janie. Now he swung his glasses around in a single bright circle. ‘You wouldn’t like him.’

‘I want to ask him a question.’

‘Nobody asks him questions but me. I suppose you expect an answer too?’

‘Yes.’

Thompson laughed. ‘Nobody gets answers these days.’

Janie said quietly, ‘This way, Hip.’

Hip turned towards her. He distinctly felt a crawling tension behind him, in the air, close to his flesh. He wondered if the Gorgon’s head had affected men that way, even the ones who did not look at her.

He followed her down to a niche in the house wall, the one which was not curved glass. In it was a crib the size of a bathtub.

He had not known that Baby was so fat. ‘Go ahead,’ said Janie. The cylinder bobbed once for each of her syllables.

‘Yes, go ahead.’ Thompson’s voice was so close behind him that he started. He had not heard the man following him at all and he felt boyish and foolish. He swallowed and said to Janie, ‘What do I do?’

‘Just think your question. He’ll probably catch it. Far as I know he receives everybody.’

Hip leaned over the crib. Eyes gleaming dully like the uppers of dusty black shoes caught and held him. He thought, Once this Gestalt had another head. It can get other telekines, teleports. Baby: Can you be replaced?

‘He says yes,’ said Janie. ‘That nasty little telepath with the corncob – remember?’

Thompson said bitterly, ‘I didn’t think you’d commit such an enormity, Janie. I could kill you for that.’

‘You know how,’ said Janie pleasantly.

Hip turned slowly to Janie. The thought came closer, or he went high and faster than it was going. It was as if his fingers actually rounded a curve, got a barest of purchases.

If Baby, the heart and core, the ego, the repository of all this new being had ever been or done or thought – if Baby could be replaced, then Homo Gestalt was immortal!

And with a rush, he had it. He had it all.

He said evenly, ‘ I asked Baby if he could be replaced; if his memory banks and computing ability could be transferred.’

‘Don’t tell him that!’ Janie screamed.

Thompson had slipped into his complete, unnatural stillness. At last he said, ‘Baby said yes. I already know