Phil stuck out his hand. "It's a deal, Ben. When do we start?"
"As soon as the term closes."
"Let's see we ought to be able to get underway late Friday afternoon then. Which car will we use, yours or mine?"
"My coupe ought to be about right. It has lots of baggage space."
Joan, who had followed the conversation with interest, broke in on them. "Why use your car, Ben? Three people can't be comfortable in a coupe."
"Three people? Wha' d'yu mean, three people? You aren't going, bright eyes."
"So? That's what you think. You can't get rid of me at this point; I'm the laboratory case. Oh no, you can't leave me behind."
"But Joan, this is a stag affair."
"Oh, so you want to get rid of me?"
"Now Joan, we didn't say that. It just would look like the devil for you to be barging about the country with a couple of men "
"Sissies! Tissyprissles! Pantywaists! Worried about your reputations."
"No, we're not. We're worried about yours."
"It won't wash. No girl who lives alone has any reputation. She can be as pure as Ivory soap and the cats on the campus, both sexes, will take her to pieces anyway. What are you so scared of? We aren't going to cross any state lines."
Cobum and Huxley exchanged the secret look that men employ when confronted by the persistence of an unreasonable woman.
"Look out, Joan!" A big red Santa Fe bus took the shoulder on the opposite side of the highway and slithered past. Joan switched the tail of the grey sedan around an oil tanker truck and trailer on their own side of the road before replying. When she did, she turned her head to speak directly to Phil who was riding in the back seat.
"What's the matter, Phil?"
"You darn near brought us into a head on collision with about twenty tons of the Santa Fe's best rolling stock!"
"Don't be nervous; I've been driving since I was sixteen and I've never had an accident.'
"I'm not surprised; you'll never have but one. Anyhow," Phil went on, "can't you keep your eyes on the road? That's not too much to ask, is it?"
"I don't need to watch the road. Look." She turned her head far around and showed him that her eyes were jammed shut. The needle of the speedometer hovered around ninety.
"Joan! Pleasel"
She opened her eyes and faced front once more. "But I don't have to look in order to see. You taught me that yourself, Smarty. Don't you remember?"
"Yes, yes, but I never thought you'd apply it to driving a earl"
'*Why not? I'm the safest driver you ever saw; I can see everything that's on the road, even around a blind curve. If I need to, I read the other drivers' minds to see what they are going to do next."
"She's right, Phil. The few times I've paid attention to her driving she's been doing just exactly what I would have done in the same circumstances. That's why I haven't been nervous."
"All right. All right," Phil answered, "but would you two supermen keep in mind that there is a slightly nervous ordinary mortal in the back seat who can't see around comers?"
"I'll be good," said Joan soberly. "I didn't mean to scare you, Phil."
"I'm interested," resumed Ben, "in what you said about not looking toward anything you wanted to see. I can't do it too satisfactorily. I remember once you said it made you dizzy to look away and still use direct perception."
"It used to, Ben, but I got over it, and so will you. It's just a matter of breaking old habits. To me, every direction is in 'front* all around and up and down. I can focus my attention in any direction, or two or three directions at once. I can even pick a point of away from where I am physically, and look at the other side of things but that is harder."
"You two make me feel like the mother of the Ugly Duckling," said Phil bitterly. "Will you still think of me kindly when you have passed beyond human communication?"
"Poor Phil!" exclaimed Joan, with sincere sympathy in her voice. "You taught us, but no one has bothered to teach you. Tell you what, Ben, let's stop tonight at an auto camp pick a nice quiet one on the outskirts of Sacramento and spend a couple of days doing for Phil what he has done for us."
"Okay by me. It's a good idea."
"That's mighty white of you, pardner," Phil conceded, but it was obvious that he was pleased and mollified. "After you get through with me will I be able to drive a car on two wheels, too?"
"Why not leam to levitate?" Ben suggested. "It's simpler less expensive and nothing to get out of order."
"Maybe we will some day," returned Phil, quite seriously, "there's no telling where this line of investigation may lead."
"Yeah, you're right," Ben answered him with equal sobriety. "I'm getting so that I can believe seven impossible things before breakfast. What were you saying just before we passed that oil tanker?"
"I was just trying to lay before you an idea I've been mulling over in my mind the past several weeks. It's a big idea, so big that I can hardly believe it myself,"
"Well, spill it."
Phil commenced checking points off on his fingers. "We've proved, or tended to prove, that the normal human mind has powers previously unsuspected, haven't we?"
"Tentatively yes. It looks that way."
"Powers way beyond any that the race as a whole makes regular use of."
"Yes, surely. Go on."
"And we have reason to believe that these powers exist, have their being, by virtue of certain areas of the brain to which functions were not previously assigned by physiologists? That is to say, they have organic basis, just as the eye and the sight centers in the brain are the organic basis for normal sight?"
"Yes, of course."
"You can trace the evolution of any organ from a simple beginning to a complex, highly developed form. The organ develops through use. In an evolutionary sense function begets organ."
"Yes. That's elementary."
"Don't you see what that implies?"
Cobum looked puzzled, then a look of comprehension spread over his face. Phil continued, with delight in his voice, "You see it, too?" The conclusion is inescapable: there must have been a time when the entire race used these strange powers as easily as they heard, or saw, or smelled. And there must have been a long, long period hundreds of thousands, probably millions of years during which these powers were developed as a race. Individuals couldn t do it, any more than I could grow wings. It had to be done racially, over a long period of time. Mutation theory is no use either mutation goes by little jumps, with use confirming the change. No indeed these strange powers are vestigial hangovers from a time when the whole race had 'em and used 'em."
Phil stopped talking, and Ben did not answer him, but sat in a brown study while some ten miles spun past. Joan started to speak once, then thought better of it. Finally Ben commenced to speak slowly.
"I can't see any fault in your reasoning. It's not reasonable to assume that whole areas of the brain with complex functions 'jest growed.' But, brother, you've sure raised hell with modem anthropology."
"That worried me when I first got the notion, and that's why I kept my mouth shut. Do you know anything about anthropology?"
"Nothing except the casual glance that any medical student gets."
"Neither did I, but I had quite a lot of respect for it. Professor Whoosistwitchell would reconstruct one of our great grand-daddies from his collar bone and his store teem and deliver a long dissertation on his most intimate habits, and I would swallow it, hook, line, and sinker, and be much impressed. But I began to read up on the subject. Do you know what I found?"