More Than Human

She squeezed his hands and released them.’ Perhaps you’ll find out. Hip, we’d better go.’

‘All right. Where?’

She stood beside him, tall. ‘Home. My home.’

‘Thompson’s?’

She nodded.

‘Why, Janie?’

‘He’s got to learn something that a computer can’t teach him. He’s got to learn to be ashamed.’

‘Ashamed?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, locking away from him, ‘how moral systems operate. I don’t know how you get one started. All I know about morals is that if they’re violated, you feel ashamed. I’ll start him with that.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Just come,’ she flashed.’ I want him to see you – what you are, the way you think. I want him to remember what you were before, how much brilliance, how much promise you had, so he’ll know how much he has cost you.’

‘Do you think any of that will really make a difference?’

She smiled; one could be afraid of someone who could smile like that. ‘It will,’ she said grimly. ‘He will have to face the fact that he is not omnipotent and that he can’t kill something better than he is just because he’s stronger.’

‘You want him to try to kill me?’

She smiled again and this time it was the smile of deep achievement. ‘He won’t.’ She laughed, then turned to him quickly. ‘Don’t worry about it, Hip. I am his only link with Baby. Do you think he’d perform a prefrontal lobotomy on himself? Do you think he’d risk cutting himself off from his memory? It isn’t the kind of memory a man has, Hip. It’s Homo Gestalt’s. It’s all the information it has ever absorbed, plus the computation of each fact against every other fact in every possible combination. He can get along without Bo

‘I’ll come,’ he said quietly. Then he said, ‘You won’t have to kill yourself.’

They went first to their own house and Janie laughed and opened both locks without touching them. ‘I’ve wanted so to do that but I didn’t dare,’ she laughed. She pirouetted into his room. ‘Look!’ she sang. The lamp on the night table rose, sailed slowly through the air, settled to the floor by the bathroom. Its cord curled like a snake, sank into a baseboard outlet and the switch clicked. It lit. ‘Look!’ she cried. The percolator hopped forward on the dresser-top, stopped. He heard water trickling and slowly condensed moisture formed on the outside as the pot filled up with ice water. ‘Look,’ she called, ‘look, look!’ and the carpet grew a bulge which scuttled across and 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.