«Why, that’s all right,» said Grant. «Take this one. I don’t really need it.»
«Sure you don’t?»
«Not at all.»
The old man stretched out his hand, took a sip, sighed gustily.
«Now that’s what I call a proper mix,» he said. «Doctor makes Jenkins water mine.»
There was something in the house that got under one’s skin. Something that made one feel like an outsider—uncomfortable and naked in the quiet whisper of its walls.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, Grant slowly unlaced his shoes, dropped them on the carpet.
A robot who had served the family for four generations, who talked of men long dead as if he had brought them a glass of whiskey only yesterday.
An old man who worried about a ship that slid through the space-darkness beyond the solar system. Another man who dreamed of another race, a race that might go hand in paw with man down the trail of destiny.
And over it all, almost unspoken and yet unmistakable, the shadow of Jerome A. Webster—the man who had failed a friend, a surgeon who had failed his trust.
Juwain, the Martian philosopher, had died, on the eve of a great discovery, because Jerome A. Webster couldn’t leave this house, because agoraphobia chained him to a plot a few miles square.
On stockinged feet, Grant crossed to the table where Jenkins had placed his pack. Loosening the straps, he opened it, brought out a thick portfolio.
Back at the bed again, he sat down and hauled out sheafs of papers, thumbed through them.
Records, hundreds of sheets of records. The story of hundreds of human lives set down on paper. Not only the things they told him or the questions that they answered, but dozens of other little things—things he had noted down from observation, from sitting and watching, from living with them for an hour or day.
For the people that he ferreted out in these tangled hills accepted him. It was his business that they should accept him. They accepted him because he came on foot, briar-scratched and weary, with a pack upon his shoulder.
To him clung none of the modernity that would have set him apart from them, made them suspicious of him. It was a tiresome way to make a census, but it was the only way to make the kind the World Committee wanted—and needed.
For somewhere, sometime, studying sheets like these that lay upon the bed, some man like him would find a thing he sought, would find a clue to some life that veered from the human pattern. Some betraying quirk of behaviorism that would set out one life against all the others.
Human mutations were not uncommon, of course. Many of them were known, men who held high position in the world. Most of the World Committee members were mutants, but, like the others, their mutational qualities and abilities had been modified and qualified by the pattern of the world, by unconscious conditioning that had shaped their thoughts and reactions into some conformity with other fellow men.
There had always been mutants, else the race would not have advanced.
But until the last hundred years or so they had not been recognized as such.
Before that they had merely been great businessmen or great scientists or great crooks. Or perhaps eccentrics who had gained no more than scorn or pity at the hands of a race that would not tolerate divergence from the norm.
Those who had been successful had adapted themselves to the world around them, had bent their greater mental powers into the pattern of acceptable action. And this dulled their usefulness, limited their capacity, hedged their ability with restrictions set up to fit less extraordinary people.
Even as today the known mutant’s ability was hedged, unconsciously, by a pattern that had been set—a groove of logic that was a terrible thing.
But somewhere in the world there were dozens, probably hundreds, of other humans who were just a little more than human—persons whose lives had been untouched by the rigidity of complex human life. Their ability would not be hedged, they would know no groove of logic.
From the portfolio Grant brought out a pitifully thin sheaf of papers, clipped together, read the title of the script almost reverently:
«Unfinished Philosophical Proposition and Related Notes of Juwain.»
It would take a mind that knew no groove of logic, a mind unhampered by the pattern of four thousand years of human thought, to carry on the torch the dead hand of the Martian philosopher had momentarily lifted. A torch that lit the way to a new concept of life and purpose, that showed a path that was easier and straighter. A philosophy that would have put mankind ahead a hundred thousand years in two short generations.
Juwain had died and in this very house a man had lived out his haunted years, listening to the voice of his dead friend, shrinking from the censure of a cheated race.
A stealthy scratch came at the door. Startled, Grant stiffened, listened. It came again. Then, a little, silky whine.
Swiftly Grant stuffed the papers back in the portfolio, strode to the door.
As he opened it, Nathaniel oozed in, like a sliding black shadow.
«Oscar,» he said, «doesn’t know I’m here. Oscar would give it to me if he knew I was.»
«Who’s Oscar?»
«Oscar’s the robot that takes care of us.»
Grant grinned at the dog. «What do you want, Nathaniel?»
«I want to talk to you,» said Nathaniel. «You’ve talked to everyone else. To Bruce and Grandpa. But you haven’t talked to me and I’m the one that found you.»
«O.K.,» invited Grant. «Go ahead and talk.»
«You’re worried,» said Nathaniel.
Grant wrinkled his brow. «That’s right. Perhaps I am. The human race is always worried. You should know that by now, Nathaniel.»
«You’re worrying about Juwain. Just like Grandpa is.»
«Not worrying,» protested Grant. «Just wondering. And hoping.»
«What’s the matter with Juwain?» demanded Nathaniel. «And who is he and—»
«He’s no one, really,» declared Grant. «That is, he was someone once, but he died years ago. He’s just an idea now. A problem. A challenge. Something to think about.»
«I can think,» said Nathaniel, triumphantly. «I think a lot, sometimes. But I mustn’t think like human beings. Bruce tells me I mustn’t. He says I have to think dog thoughts and let human thoughts alone. He says dog thoughts are just as good as human thoughts, maybe a whole lot better.»
Grant nodded soberly. «There is something to that, Nathaniel. After all, you must think differently than man. You must—»
«There’s lots of things that dogs know that men don’t know,» bragged Nathaniel. «We can see things and hear things that men can’t see nor hear. Sometimes we howl at night, and people cuss us out. But if they could see and hear what we do they’d be scared too stiff to move. Bruce says we’re … we’re—»
«Psychic?» asked Grant.
«That’s it,» declared Nathaniel. «I can’t remember all them words.»
Grant picked his pajamas off the table.
«How about spending the night with me, Nathaniel? You can have the foot of the bed.»
Nathaniel stared at him round eyed. «Gee, you mean you want me to?»
«Sure I do. If we’re going to be partners, dogs and men, we better start out on an even footing now.»
«I won’t get the bed dirty,» said Nathaniel. «Honest I won’t. Oscar gave me a bath tonight.»
He flipped an ear.
«Except,» he said, «I think he missed a flea or two.»
Grant stared in perplexity at the atomic gun. A handy thing, it performed a host of services, ranging from cigarette lighter to deadly weapon. Built to last a thousand years, it was foolproof, or so the advertisements said. It never got out of kilter—except now it wouldn’t work.
He pointed it at the ground and shook it vigorously and still it didn’t work. He tapped it gently on a stone and got no results.