Beyond This Horizon by Robert A. Heinlein
“What,” said Felix, “has that child been reading now?” Mordan said nothing, but he cocked a brow at Felix.
“I think I recognize it,” Phyllis said in an aside to Felix. Then, turning back to the child, she added, “Where did you find it? Tell Phyllis.”
No answer.
“Was it in Phyllis’s desk?” She knew that it had been; there was secreted in there a bundle of stats, mementos of the days before she and Felix had worked out their differences. She had the habit of rereading them privately and secretly. “Tell Phyllis.”
“Yes.”
“That’s out of bounds, you know.”
“You didn’t see me,” he stated triumphantly.
“No, that is true.” She thought rapidly. She wished to encourage his truthfulness, but to place a deterrent on disobedience. To be sure, disobedience was more often a virtue than a sin, but—Oh, well! She tabled the matter.
Felix muttered, “That child seems to have no moral sense whatsoever.”
“Have you?” she asked him, and turned back to Theobald.
“There was lots more, Mama. Want to hear it?”
“Not just now. Let’s answer your two questions first.”
“But Phyllis,” Felix interrupted.
“Wait, Felix. I’ve got to answer his questions.”
“Suppose you and I step out into the garden for a smoke,” Mordan suggested. “Phyllis is going to be fairly busy for a while.”
Quite busy. “Infatuated” was, in itself, quite a hurdle, but how to explain to a child in his forty-second month the allegorical use of symbols? She was not entirely successful; Theobald referred to Mordan indiscriminately thereafter as “Uncle Claude” or “Old Goat.”
Eidetic memory is a Mendelian recessive. Both Phyllis and Felix had the gene group for it from one ancestor; Theobald had it from both his parents, by selection. The potentiality, masked as recessive in each of his parents, was therefore effective in him. Both “recessive” and “dominant” are relative terms; dominants do not cancel recessives like symbols in an equation. Both Phyllis and Felix had excellent, unusual memories. Theobald’s memory was well nigh perfect.
Recessive Mendelian characteristics are usually undesirable ones. The reason is simple—dominant characteristics get picked over by natural selection every generation. Natural selection—the dying out of the poorly equipped—goes on day in and day out, inexorable and automatic. It is as tireless, as inescapable, as entropy. A really bad dominant will weed itself out of the race in a few generations. The worst dominants appear only as original mutations, since they either kill their bearers, or preclude reproduction. Embryo cancer is such a one—complete sterility is another. But a recessive may be passed on from generation to generation, masked and not subjected to natural selection. In time a generation may arrive in which a child receives the recessive from both parents—up it pops, strong as ever. That is why the earlier geneticists found it so hard to eliminate such recessives as hemophilia and deaf-mutism; it was impossible, until the genes in question were charted by extremely difficult indirect and inferential means, to tell whether or not an adult, himself in perfect health, was actually “clean.” He might pass on something grisly to his children. Nobody knew.
Felix demanded of Mordan why, in view of the bad reputation of recessives, eidetic memory should happen to be recessive rather than dominant.
“I’ll answer that twice,” said Mordan. “In the first place the specialists are still arguing as to why some things are recessives, and others dominants. In the second place, why call eidetic memory a desirable trait?”
“But—for Egg’s sake! You selected for it for Baldy!”
“To be sure we did—for Theobald. ‘Desirable’ is a relative term. Desirable for whom? Complete memory is an asset only if you have the mind to handle it; otherwise it’s a curse. One used to find such cases occasionally, before your time and mine—poor simple souls who were bogged down in the complexities of their own experience; they knew every tree but could not find the forest. Besides that, forgetting is an anodyne and a blessing to most people. They don’t need to remember much and they don’t. It’s different with Theobald.”
They had been talking in Mordan’s office. He took from his desk a file of memoranda, arranged systematically on perhaps a thousand small punched cards. “See this? I haven’t looked it over yet—it’s data the technicians supply me with. Its arrangement is quite as significant as its content—more so, perhaps.” He took the file and dumped the cards out onto the floor. “The data are still all there, but what use is it now?” He pressed a stud on his desk; his new file secretary entered. “Albert, will you please have these fed into the sorter again? I’m afraid I’ve randomed them.”
Albert looked surprised, but said, “Sure, chief,” and took the pied cards away.
“Theobald has the brain power, to speak loosely, to arrange his data, to be able to find it when he wants it, and to use it. He will be able to see how what he knows is related to its various parts, and to abstract from the mass significantly related details. Eidetic memory is a desirable trait in him.”
No doubt—but sometimes it did not seem so to Hamilton. As the child grew older he developed an annoying habit of correcting his elders about minutiae, in which he was always maddeningly accurate. “No, Mother, it was not last Wednesday; it was last Thursday. I remember because that was the day that Daddy took me walking up past the reservoir and we saw a pretty lady dressed in a green jumpsuit and Daddy smiled at her and she stopped and asked me what my name was and I told her my name was Theobald and that Daddy’s name was Felix and that I was four years and one month old. And Daddy laughed and she laughed and then Daddy said—”
“That will do,” said Felix. “You’ve made your point. It was Thursday. But it is not necessary to correct people on little things like that.”
“But when they’re wrong I have to tell them!”
Felix let it ride, but he reflected that Theobald might need to be inordinately fast with a gun when he was older.
Felix had developed a fondness for country life, little as he had wanted to undertake it. Had it not been for his continuous work on the Great Research he might have taken up horticulture seriously. There was something deeply satisfying, he found, in making a garden do what he wanted it to do.
He would have spent all his holidays fussing with his plants, if Phyllis had concurred. But her holidays were less frequent than his, since she had resumed putting in one shift a day at the nearest primary development center as soon as Theobald was old enough to need the knocking around he would get from other children. When she did have a holiday she liked to go somewhere—a flying picnic, usually.
They had to live near the Capital, because of Felix’s work, but the Pacific was only a little over five hundred kilometres west of them. It was convenient to pack a lunch, get to the beach in time for a swim and a nice, long, lazy bake, then eat.
Felix wanted to see the boy’s reaction the first time he saw the ocean. “Well, son, this is it. What do you think of it?”
Theobald scowled out at the breakers. “It’s all right,” he grudged.
“What’s the matter?”
“The water looks sick. And the sun ought to be off that way, not there. And where’s the big trees?”
“What big trees?”
“The high slim ones, with big bushes at the top.”
“Hmmm…what’s wrong with the water?”
“It ain’t blue.”
Hamilton walked back to where Phyllis lay on the sand. “Can you tell me,” he said slowly, “whether or not Baldy has ever seen stereos of royal palms—on a beach, a tropical beach?”
“Not that I know of. Why?”
“Think back. Did you use such a picture to extensionalize for him?”
“No, I’m sure of that.”
“You know what he’s read—has he seen any flat-picture like that.”
She checked back through her excellent and well arranged mem
The incident occurred before Theobald had been entered at the development center; what he had seen, he had seen at home. Of course it was possible that he had seen it in a news or story cast in the receiver at home, but he could not start the machine himself and neither of them recalled such a scene. Nevertheless, it was damned funny.
“What did you start to say, dear?”
Hamilton gave a slight start. “Nothing, nothing at all.”
“What kind of ‘nothing’?”
He shook his head. “Too fantastic. My mind was wandering.”
He went back to the boy and attempted to pump him for details in an effort to ferret out the mystery. But Theobald was not talking. In fact, he was not even listening. He said so.
On a similar occasion but much later an event occurred which was quite as disturbing, but a little more productive. Felix and the boy had been splashing in the surf, until they were quite tired. At least Felix was, which made a majority with only one dissent. They lay down on the sand and let the sun dry them. Presently the salt drying on the skin made them itch, as it has a habit of doing.
Felix scratched Theobald between the shoulder blades—that awkward spot—and reflected to himself how catlike the child was in many ways, even to the sybaritic way in which he accepted this small sensuous pleasure. Just now it suited him to be petted; a moment later he might be as haughty and distant as a Persian tom. Or, like the cat, he might decide to cuddle.
Then Felix lay on his stomach, Theobald straddled his back and returned the favor. Felix was beginning to feel rather catlike himself—it felt so good!—when he began to be aware of a curious and almost inexplicable phenomenon.
When one human monkey does another the great service of scratching him, delightful as it is, it never quite hits the spot. With infuriating obtuseness, despite the most careful coaching, the scratcher will scratch just above, just below, all around the right spot, but never, never, never quite on it, until, in sheer frustration, the scratchee will nearly dislocate his shoulder going after it for himself.
Felix was giving Theobald no instructions; in fact, he was nearly falling asleep under the warm relaxing ecstasy of his son’s ministrations, when he suddenly snapped to attention.
Theobald was scratching where Felix itched.
The exact spot. An area of sensation had only to show up for him to pounce on it and scratch it out of existence.
This was another matter that had to be taken up with Phyllis. He got up and explained to her what had happened, attempting the meanwhile to keep it from the child’s attention by suggesting that he go for a run down the beach—“But don’t go in more than ankle deep.”
“Just try him,” he added, when he had told her of it. “He can do it. He really can.”
“I’d like to,” she said. “But I can’t. I’m sorry to say that I am still fresh and clean and free from vulgar distresses.”
“Phyllis—”
“Yes, Felix?”
“What kind of a person can scratch where another person itches?”
“An angel.”
“No, seriously.”
“You tell me.”
“You know as well as I do. That kid’s a telepath!”
They both looked down the beach at a small, skinny, busy silhouette. “I know how the hen felt that hatched the ducks,” said Phyllis softly. She got quickly to her feet. “I’m going in and get some salt on me, and let it dry. I’ve got to find out about this.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Probably a blind alley—”
HAMILTON FELIX took his son into the city the next day. There were men attached to the Great Research who knew much more about such things than either he or Phyllis; he wished them to examine the boy. He took Theobald to his office, supplied him with a scroll and a reader, a dodge that would tie him to one spot almost as effectively as if he were chained down, and called Jacobstein Ray by telephone. Jacobstein was in charge of a team investigating telepathy and related phenomena.
He explained to Jake that he was unable to leave his own office at the moment. Could Jake drop over, or was he tied up? Jake could and would; he arrived a few minutes later. The two men stepped into an adjoining room, out of earshot of the child. Felix explained what had taken place on the beach and suggested that Jake look into it.
Jake was willing and interested. “But don’t expect too much from it,” he cautioned. “We’ve demonstrated telepathy in young children time and again, under circumstances which made it a statistical certainty that they were receiving information by no known physical means. But there was never any control in the business, the child was never able to explain what was going on, and the ability faded away to nothing as the child grew up and became more coherent. It seems to shrivel away just like the thymus gland.”
Hamilton looked alert. “Thymus gland? Any correlation?”
“Why, no. I just used that as a figure of speech.”
“Mightn’t there be?”
“It seems most unlikely.”
“Everything about this business seems most unlikely. How about putting a crew on it? A good biostatician and one of your operators?”
“I will if you wish.”
“Good. I’ll stat an open voucher to your office. It’s probably a blind alley, but you never know!”
Let us add that it was a blind alley. Nothing ever came of it, but a slight addition to the enormous mass of negative information constituting the main body of scientific knowledge.
Felix and Jake went back into the room where Theobald sat reading. They seated themselves first, in order to be on the same level as the child, and Felix performed the introduction with proper attention to the enormous and vulnerable dignity of a child. He then said:
“Look, sport, Dad wants you to go with Jake and help him with some things for an hour or so. How about it?”
“Why?”
That was a tough one. With less-than-adult minds it had been found to be optimum procedure to keep them from knowing the purpose of the experimentation. “Jake wants to find out some things about the way your mind works. He’ll talk with you about it. Well…will you help him?”
Theobald thought about it.
“It will be a favor to Dad.” Phyllis could have warned him against that approach. Theobald had been rather slow in reaching the degree of social integration necessary to appreciate the cool pleasure of conferring benefits on others.
“Will you do me a favor?” he countered.
“What do you want?”
“A flop-eared buck.” The boy had been raising rabbits, with some adult assistance; but his grandiose plans, if unchecked, would have resulted in their entire home being given over to fat, furry rodents. Nevertheless, Hamilton was somewhat relieved to find the favor desired was no larger.
“Sure thing, sport. You could have had one anyhow.”
Theobald made no answer, but stood up, signifying his willingness to get on with it.
After they had gone Hamilton considered the matter for a moment. A new buck rabbit was all right; he did not mind that as much as he would have minded a new doe. But something had to be done fairly soon, or else his garden would have to be abandoned.
Theobald seemed to be working out, with the busy and wholehearted collaboration of his rabbits, an interesting but entirely erroneous neo-Mendelian concept of inherited characteristics. Why, he wanted to know, did white bunnies sometimes have brown babies? Felix pointed out that a brown buck had figured in the matter, but soon bogged down, and turned the matter over to Mordan—accepting as inevitable the loss of face involved.
Theobald, he knew, was quite capable now of being interested in the get of a flop-eared buck.
The boy had formulated an interesting, but decidedly specialized, arithmetic to keep his records of rabbits, based on the proposition that one plus one equals at least five. Hamilton had discovered it by finding
Hamilton showed the records to Monroe-Alpha the next time Monroe-Alpha and Marion showed up at his home. He had regarded it as an amusing and insignificant joke, but Clifford took it with his usual dead seriousness. “Isn’t it about time you started him on arithmetic?”
“Why, I don’t think so. He is a little young for it—he’s hardly well into mathematical analysis.” Theobald had been led into mathematical symbology by the conventional route of generalized geometry, analysis, and the calculi. Naturally, he had not been confronted with the tedious, inane, and specialized mnemonics of practical arithmetic—he was hardly more than a baby.
“I don’t think he is too young for it. I had devised a substitute for positional notation when I was about his age. I imagine he can take it, if you don’t ask him to memorize operation tables.” Monroe-Alpha was unaware that the child had an eidetic memory and Hamilton passed the matter by. He had no intention of telling Monroe-Alpha anything about Theobald’s genetic background. While custom did not actually forbid such discussion, good taste, he felt, did. Let the boy alone—let him keep his private life private. He and Phyllis knew, the geneticists involved had to know, the Planners had had to know—since this was a star line. Even that he regretted, for it had brought such intrusions as the visit of that old hag Carvala.
Theobald himself would know nothing, or very little, of his ancestral background until he was a grown man. He might not inquire into it, or have it brought to his attention, until he reached something around the age Felix had been when Mordan called Felix’s attention to his own racial significance.
It was better so. The pattern of a man’s inherited characteristics was racially important and inescapable anyhow, but too much knowledge of it, too much thinking about it, could be suffocating to the individual. Look at Cliff—damned near went off the beam entirely just from thinking about his great grandparents. Well, Marion had fixed that.
No, it was not good to talk too much about such things. He himself had talked too much a short time before, and had been sorry ever since. He had been telling Mordan his own point of view about Phyllis having any more children—after the baby girl to come, of course. Phyllis and he had not yet come to agreement about it; Mordan had backed up Phyllis. “I would like for you two to have at least four children, preferably six. More would be better but we probably would not have time enough to select properly for that many.”