Beyond This Horizon by Robert A. Heinlein
It was a matter of prime significance, aside from Theobald’s fantastic delusion, that a telepathic person had been able to locate a person whom he had never seen and whose existence he had no reason to suspect. It was a fair-sized brick in the Great Research. Dutifully, Hamilton reported the affair to Carruthers.
Carruthers was intensely interested. He asked questions about it, took the matter home with him, and nursed it. The next day he called Felix to explain a plan he had conceived. “Mind you,” he said, “I’m not urging you to do this. I’m not even asking you. It’s your wife, and your baby, and your boy. But I think it’s a unique opportunity to advance the Research.”
Felix thought about it. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
“How would you like,” he said to Phyllis, when they were alone that night, “to go to Buenos Aires to have Justina?”
“Buenos Aires? Why there?”
“Because there is the only telepath machine on Earth. And it can’t be moved out of the cold laboratory.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Da Capo
“I’VE GOT it again.” The receiver for the telepath made the announcement grimly. The gadget was still cantankerous; during the past few days it had worked beautifully part of the time—about twenty minutes in all!—and had refused to come to life the rest of the time. It seemed to have soaked up some of the contrariness of the subtle life-force it tapped.
“What are you getting?”
“Feels like a dream. Water, long stretches of water. Shore line in the back with mountain peaks.” A recorder at his elbow took down everything he said, with the exact times. “Are you sure it’s the baby?”
“Sure as I was yesterday. Everybody is different over it. They taste different. I don’t know how else to express it. Hold on! Something else…a city, a damn big city, bigger than Buenos Aires.”
“Theobald,” said Mordan Claude gently, “can you still hear her?” Mordan had been brought because Felix conceded that Claude had a handier way with the child than Felix. The child could not hear the telepath receiver where they had spotted him, although Claude could cut in through an earphone. Phyllis, of course, was in another room, busy with her fundamental affairs…it made no difference to the gadget, nor to Theobald. Felix had a roving assignment, privileged to make a nervous nuisance out of himself to anyone.
The boy leaned back against Mordan’s thigh. “She’s not over the ocean any more,” he said. “She’s gone to Capital City.”
“Are you sure it’s Capital City?”
“Sure.” His voice was scornful. “I’ve been there, ain’t I? And there’s the tower.”
Beyond the partition someone was asking, “A modern city?”
“Yes. Might be the Capital. It’s got a pylon like it.”
“Any other details?”
“Don’t ask me so many questions—it breaks into the revery…she’s moving again. We’re in a room… Lot of people, all adults. They’re talking.”
“What now, son?” Claude was saying.
“Aw, she’s gone to that party again.”
Two observers, standing clear of the activity were whispering. “I don’t like it,” the short one said. “It’s ghastly.”
“But it’s happening.”
“But don’t you realize what this means, Malcolm? Where can an unborn child get such concepts?”
“Telepathically from its mother, perhaps. The brother is certainly a telepath.”
“No, no, no! Not unless all our ideas of cerebration are mistaken. Conceptions are limited to experiences, or things similar to experiences. An unborn child has experienced nothing but warmth and darkness. It couldn’t have such conceptions.”
“Ummm.”
“Well—answer me!”
“You’ve got me—I can’t.”
Someone was saying to the receiver, “Can you make out any of the people present?”
He raised his headset. “Quit bothering me! You drive it out with my own thoughts when you do that. No, I can’t. It’s like dream images… I think it is a dream. I can’t feel anything unless she thinks about it.”
A little later. “Something’s happening…the dream’s gone. Uneasy…it’s very unpleasant…she’s resisting it…it’s…it’s… Oh, Great—it’s awful…it hurts! I can’t stand it!” He tore off his headset, and stood up, white and shaking. At the same instant Theobald screamed.
It was a matter of minutes only when a woman came out the door of Phyllis’ room and motioned to Hamilton.
“You can come in now,” she said cheerfully.
Felix got up from where he was kneeling with Theobald. “Stay with Uncle Claude, Sport,” he said, and went in to his wife.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Beyond This Horizon—”
IT WAS nice to be able to come to the beach again. It was swell that Phyllis felt up to such little expeditions. It was pleasant to lie in the sun with his family and soak up comfort.
Things had not turned out the way he had planned, but things rarely did. Certainly he would never have believed all this a few years back… Phyllis and Baldy, and now Justina. Once he had asked Claude to tell him the meaning of life—now he did not care. Life was good, whatever it was. And the prime question had been answered for him. Let the psychologicians argue it all they pleased—there was a life, some kind of life, after this one. Where a man might find out the full answer—maybe.
For the main question: “Do we get another chance?” had been answered—by the back door. There was something more to the ego of a new-born child than its gene pattern. Justina had answered that, whether she knew it or not. She had brought memory patterns with her; she had lived before. He was convinced of that. Therefore, it was a dead sure cinch that the ego went somewhere after the body disintegrated. Where, he would worry about when the time came.
It did seem extremely likely that Justina did not know what she had proved (and of course there was no way of asking her). Her telepathic patterns after she was born were meaningless, confused, as one would expect of a baby. Shock amnesia the psychologicians had decided to call it. Good a name as any. Being born must be something like being awakened out of a sound sleep by a dash of cold water in the face. That would shock anybody.
He had not made up his mind yet whether he wanted to continue active in the Great Research, or not. He might just be lazy and raise dahlia bulbs and kids. He didn’t know. Most of it was pretty long distance stuff, and he personally was satisfied. Take that work that Cliff was on—centuries and then some. Cliff had compared the job with that of trying to figure out the entire plot of a long stereo-story from just one flash frame.
But they would finish it—some day. Theobald wouldn’t see it, but he would see more of it than Felix, and his son would see still more. His sons would roam the stars—no limit.
It was nice that Theobald seemed to have gotten over that ridiculous fixation identifying Justina with Old Carvala. True, he did not seem actually fond of the baby, but that was expecting a lot. He seemed more puzzled by her, and interested.
There he was now, leaning over the baby’s basket. He really did seem—
“Theobald!”
The boy stood up straight quickly.
“What were you doing?”
“Nothing.” Maybe so—but it looked very much as if he had pinched her.
“Well, I think you had better find another place to do it. The baby needs to sleep now.”
The boy shot a quick glance at the infant and turned away. He walked slowly down toward the water.
Felix settled back, after glancing at Phyllis. Yes, she was still asleep. It was a good world, he assured himself again, filled with interesting things. Of which the most interesting were children. He glanced at Theobald. The boy was a lot of fun now, and would be more interesting as he grew up—if he could refrain from wringing his cussed little neck in the meantime!
THE END
Robert A. Heinlein, Beyond T
(Series: # )