What might group life be like if ninety percent were healthy? The Peckham Experiment had offered only tantalizing glimpses. The Second World War, that trauma of the sick society, had cut it short. A postwar reorganization had expired for lack of financial backing, and the bold experiment was over.
But not forgotten. It was a topic for informed conjecture for many years thereafter. Certain persons studied the implications of the experiment and drew forth an intriguing supposition. If the average person were sick, and “normal” were in fact subnormal, so that he never comprehended his true physical potential — what of his mental potential? Could it be that health and proper upbringing might convert the average into superior, and the superior into genius?
What benefits might derive from genius cultured artificially? What would industry pay for employees of guaranteed IQ? How might the nation benefit? Just how high was the limit?
Certain private interests decided to speculate. Money appeared, and preliminary researches commenced. What might be the elements of a suitable upbringing for genius-on-tap? What was the best stock for production? As beef, not contented cows, was the object of ranching, so IQ, not conventionality, was to be the object of this project.
Studies performed in the interim since Peckham suggested astonishing facts. Heredity was vital, yes — but so was environment, in ways more devious and wonderful than suspected before. Health was essential — but so was education. The basic theory and practice of conventional schooling was long overdue for revolution.
Item: The expectation of the supervisor affected the performance of the subject. Thus American “self-fulfilling prophecies” resulted in lower grades for Negro and Indian schoolchildren, higher grades for Whites of prominent families — regardless of merit by objective standards.
Item: There was no correlation between school performance and life achievement. There was no practical advantage in additional years of schooling or the possession of diplomas apart from the self-fulfilling prophecy of society.
Item: Whatever was useful in the current eight-year introductory scholastic curriculum could be effectively mastered by a normal twelve-year-old child in four months — who would pick up most of it without formal instruction.
Item: The true “creative” child tended to be skeptical, independent, assertive, and had a wide range of interests: a natural maker of waves. He was, by normal definition, not a “good” student.
Item: In the human child, the brain achieved eighty percent of its adult weight by the age of three years, compared to a body weight of twenty percent. Any retardation occurring in this period became permanent.
Item: Creatures — of any species — raised in the dark developed no rods and cones in the eyes, and thus were blind for life. Creatures — of any species — raised in a restrictive, nonstimulating environment never developed their full “normal” mental or emotional capacities, and thus were dull for life. Physical infection, malnutrition, and sensory and cultural deprivation actually created inferior specimens.
Item: It was theoretically possible to raise the IQ of the average child by thirty points or more — merely by providing suitable equipment and information and permitting free rein for normal initiative. The child, thus encouraged, would fulfill a greater proportion of his natural potential — a fulfillment denied to his contemporaries.
Thus the project. All over the world, money was spent lavishly to locate potential genius stock and fatten it into complete health and vigor, that it might produce outstanding offspring. The offcolor nickname stemmed from conjecture how this had been accomplished. Virile, intelligent men of every race mated to women not their spouses, women at the peak of health, both parties paid liberally for their service. Tour of duty perhaps two years; illness, hunger or reproductive laxity frowned upon.
The babies had never known their biological parents. They had been removed from their various locales of production and committed to the maximum-security grounds of the project, there to be subjected to the most healthful and stimulating environment envisioned by man. Their individual families were replaced by something better: the group family. The adult staff, male and female, was trained to withhold nothing from any child except freedom to leave the project, and never to interfere needlessly in juvenile matters.
The results, as the years progressed, were generally disappointing. After phenomenal early growth, the average project child settled into bright but not exceptional mentality, and became, relative to expectations, moderately talented. It was as though this vast effort had succeeded largely in accelerating the rate of growth, but not the ultimate achievement. The children spread out in the normal bell-shaped curve, centered on IQ 125 — a result that would have been predicated on heredity alone, without the benefit of the improved environment. Only one true genius showed up on the tests, though there were a number of very intelligent children too — and as many who were average (IQ 100) or slightly below.
Officially, then, the project was a failure. Something evidently had been overlooked. There would be no assembly-line genius to market. The financial backing dwindled. After fifteen years it had to be disbanded and the subjects set free.
The officials had not known about Schön.
A group of men were seated in the common room, silent and somber. They looked up as he approached, their faces impassive.
“Please — a private meeting,” one said.
“Sorry.” Ivo passed quickly to the far door, not wanting to intrude. The “night” shift was barely over; why had they gathered at this time, almost surreptitiously? What were they doing, so privately? None of his business.
Harold Groton was coming down the hall from the other direction, full from his own breakfast. “There’s some kind of meeting,” Ivo advised him. “Exclusive. I ran afoul of it already, in the common room.”
“I know. I was just—” Groton paused, catching at Ivo’s arm. “By God! I just realized — you saw the destroyer and survived!”
“I fell below its critical limit, it would seem.”
“Afra says you know someone important — someone who can untangle this mess.”
“Afra says too much.” Ivo jerked his arm away, fed up with irrelevancies.
“That trick with the game — the intuitive calculation. Was Brad serious? Can you win every time?”
“Yes, if it’s the right type, and if I have the choice of openings.” What was he getting at? A Senator was dead, six other minds had been blasted by an alien destruction signal, and organizational chaos was incipient. Yet Groton, who had seemed yesterday to have some depth of feeling, concerned himself first with astrology and then with a superficial game!
“Come on — I’ll yield my slot to you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“No time to explain. We’re late already.” Groton pulled him back toward the common room.
Ivo shrugged and went along.
The still figures looked up again as they entered. Some were women, he saw now; he had not looked carefully before. “This is Ivo,” Groton said. “He was Dr. Carpenter’s friend. Therefore he has the privilege, and I am giving him my seat in the tourney.”
Tourney?
The others exchanged glances and shrugs. They did not appear pleased, but Groton evidently had the right of it.
“I can’t stay,” Groton said to him. “There’s no kibitzing. Play seriously. Good luck.” He was gone.