More Than Human

‘It is a moral act to kill a monster,’ said Hip. ‘Tell me something, Gerry. Is it true you can snatch out the whole of a man’s thought just by meeting his eyes?’

‘Let me go. Let me go,’ Gerry whispered.

With the knife at the monster’s throat, with this great house which could be his, with a girl waiting, a girl whose anguish for him he could breathe like ozoned air, Hip Barrows prepared his ethical act.

When the blindfold fell away there was amazement in the strange round eyes, enough and more than enough to drive away hate. Hip dangled the knife. He arranged his thought, side to side, top to bottom. He threw the knife behind him. It clattered on the tiles. The startled eyes followed it, whipped back. The irises were about to spin…

Hip bent close. ‘Go ahead,’ he said softly.

After a long time, Gerry raised his head and met Hip’s eyes again.

Hip said, ‘Hi.’

Gerry looked at him weakly. ‘Get the hell out of here,’ he croaked.

Hip sat still.

‘I could’ve killed you,’ said Gerry. He opened his eyes a little wider. ‘I still could.’

‘You won’t though.’ Hip rose, walked to the knife and picked it up. He returned to Gerry and deftly sliced the knots of the cord which bound him. He sat down again.

Gerry said, ‘No one ever… I never…’ He shook himself and drew a deep breath. ‘I feel ashamed,’ he whispered. ‘No one ever made me feel ashamed.’ He looked at Hip, and the amazement was back again. ‘I know a lot. I can find out anything about anything. But I never… how did you ever find out all that?’

‘Fell into it,’ said Hip. ‘An ethic isn’t a fact you can look up. It’s a way of thinking.’

‘God,’ said Gerry into his hands. ‘What I’ve done… the things I could have…’

‘The things you can do,’ Hip reminded him gently. ‘You’ve paid quite a price for the things you’ve done.’

Gerry looked around at the huge glass room and everything in it that was massive, expensive, rich. ‘I have?’

Hip said, from the scarred depths of memory, ‘ People all around you, you by yourself.’ He made a wry smile. ‘Does a superman have super-hunger, Gerry? Super-loneliness?’

Gerry nodded, slowly. ‘I did better when I was a kid.’ He shuddered. ‘Cold…’

Hip did not know what kind of cold he meant, and did not ask. He rose. ‘I’d better go see Janie. She thinks maybe I killed you.’

Gerry sat silently until Hip reached the door. Then he said. ‘Maybe you did.’

Hip went out.

Janie was in the little ante-room with the twins. When Hip entered, Janie moved her head slightly and the twins disappeared.

Hip said, ‘I could tell them too.’

‘Tell me,’ Janie said. ‘They’ll know.’

He sat down next to her. She said, ‘You didn’t kill him.’

‘No.’

She nodded slowly, ‘I wonder what it would be like if he died. I – don’t want to find out.’

‘He’ll be all right now,’ Hip said. He met her eyes. ‘He was ashamed.’

She huddled, cloaking herself, her thoughts. It was a waiting, but a different one from that he had known, for she was watching herself in her waiting, not him.

‘That’s all I can do. I’ll clear out.’ He breathed once, deeply. ‘Lots to do. Track down my pension cheques. Get a job.’

‘Hip – ‘

Only in so small a room, in such quiet, could he have heard her. ‘Yes, Janie.’

‘Don’t go away.’

‘I can’t stay.’

‘Why?’

He took his time and thought it out, and then he said, ‘You’re a part of something. I wouldn’t want to be part of someone who was… part of something.’

She raised her face to him and he saw that she was smiling. He could not believe this, so he stared at her until he had to believe it.

She said, ‘The Gestalt has a head and hands, organs and a mind. But the most human thing about anyone is a thing he learns and… and earns. It’s a thing he can’t have when he’s very young; if he gets it at all, he gets it after a long search and a deep conviction. After that it’s truly part of him as long as he lives.’

‘I don’t know what you mean. I – you mean I’m… I could be part of the… No, Janie, no.’ He could not escape from that sure smile. ‘What part?’ he demanded.

‘The prissy one who can’t forget the rules. The one with the insight called ethics who can change it to the habit called morals.’

‘The still small voice!’ He snorted. ‘I’ll be damned!’

She touched him. ‘I don’t think so.’

He looked at the closed door to the great glass room. Then he sat down beside her. They waited.

It was quiet in the glass room.

For a long time the only sound was Gerry’s difficult breathing. Suddenly even this stopped, as something happened, something – spoke.

It came again.

Welcome.

The voice was a silent one. And here, another, silent too, but another for all that. It’s the new one. Welcome, child!

Still another: Well, well, well! We thought you’d never make it.

He had to. There hasn’t been a new one for so long…

Gerry clapped his hands to his mouth. His eyes bulged. Through his mind came a hush of welcoming music. There was warmth and laughter and wisdom. There were introductions; for each voice there was a discrete personality, a comprehensible sense of something like stature or rank, and an accurate locus, a sense of physical position. Yet, in terms of amplitude, there was no difference in the voices. They were all here, or, at least, all equally near.

There was happy and fearless communion, fearlessly shared with Gerry – cross-currents of humour, of pleasure, of reciprocal thought and mutual achievement. And through and through, welcome, welcome.

They were young, they were new, all of them, though not as new and as young as Gerry. Their youth was in the drive and resilience of their thinking. Although some gave memories old in human terms, each entity had lived briefly in terms of immortality and they were all immortal.

Here was one who had whistled a phrase to Papa Haydn, and here one who had introduced William Morris to the Rossettis. Almost as if it were his own memory, Gerry saw Fermi being shown the streak of fission on a sensitive plate, a child Landowska listening to a harpsichord, a drowsy Ford with his mind suddenly lit by the picture of a line of men facing a line of machines.

To form a question was to have an answer.

Who are you?

Homo Gestalt.

I’m one; part of; belonging…

Welcome.

Why didn’t you tell me?

You weren’t ready. You weren’t finished.