“Where?”
“They might prefer to keep hidden.”
“Supermen?”
“I wish I knew. You see, Paradine, we’ve got yardstick trouble again. By our standards these people might seem superdupers in certain respects. In others they might seem moronic. It’s not a quantitative difference; it’s qualitative. They think different. And I’m sure we can do things they can’t.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t want to,” Jane said.
Paradine tapped the fused gadgetry on the box. “What about this? It implies—”
“A purpose, sure.”
“Transportation?”
“One thinks of that first. If so, the box might have come from anywhere.”
“Where — things are — different?” Paradine asked slowly.
“Exactly. In space, or even time. I don’t know; I’m a psychologist. Unfortunately I’m conditioned to Euclid, too.”
“Funny place it must be,” Jane said. “Denny, get rid of those toys.”
“I intend to.”
Holloway picked up the crystal cube. “Did you question the children much?”
Paradine said, “Yeah. Scott said there were people in that cube when he first looked. I asked him what was in it now.”
“What did he say?” The psychologist’s eyes widened.
“He said they were building a place. His exact words. I asked him who — people? But he couldn’t explain.”
“No, I suppose not,” Holloway muttered. “It must be progressive. How long have the children had these toys?”
“About three months, I guess.”
“Time enough. The perfect toy, you see, is both instructive and mechanical. It should do things, to interest a child, and it should teach, preferably unobtrusively. Simple problems at first. Later—”
“X logic,” Jane said, white-faced.
Paradine cursed under his breath. “Emma and Scott are perfectly normal!”
“Do you know how their minds work-now?”
Holloway didn’t pursue the thought. He fingered the doll. “It would be interesting to know the conditions of the place where these things came from. Induction doesn’t help a great deal, though. Too many factors are missing. We can’t visualize a world based on the x factor-environment adjusted to minds thinking in x patterns. This luminous network inside the doll. It could be anything. It could exist inside us, though we haven’t discovered it yet. When we find the right stain—” He shrugged. “What do you make of this?”
It was a crimson globe, two inches in diameter, with a protruding knob upon its surface.
“What could anyone make of it?”
“Scott? Emma?”
“I hadn’t even seen it till about three weeks ago. Then Emma started to play with it.” Paradine nibbled his lip. “After that, Scott got interested.”
“Just what do they do?”
“Hold it up in front of them and move it back and forth. No particular pattern of motion.”
“No Euclidean pattern,” Holloway corrected. “At first they couldn’t understand the toy’s purpose.
They had to be educated up to it.”
“That’s horrible,” Jane said.
“Not to them. Emma is probably quicker at understanding x than is Scott, for her mind isn’t yet conditioned to this environment.”
Paradine said, “But I can remember plenty of things I did as a child. Even as a baby.”
“Well?”
“Was I — mad then?”
“The things you don’t remember are the criterion of your madness,” Holloway retorted. “But I use the word ‘madness’ purely as a convenient symbol for the variation from the known human norm. The arbitrary standard of sanity.”
Jane put down her glass. “You’ve said that induction was difficult, Mr. Holloway. But it seems to me you’re making a great deal of it from very little. After all, these toys—”
“I am a psychologist, and I’ve specialized in children. I’m not a layman. These toys mean a great deal to me, chiefly because they mean so little.”
“You might be wrong.”
“Well, I rather hope I am. I’d like to examine the children.”
Jane rose in arms. “How?”
After Holloway had explained, she nodded, though still a bit hesitandy. “Well, that’s all right. But they’re not guinea pigs.”
The psychologist patted the air with a plump hand. “My dear girl! I’m not a Frankenstein. To me the individual is the prime factor — naturally, since I work with minds. If there’s anything wrong with the youngsters, I want to cure them.”
Paradine put down his cigarette and slowly watched blue smoke spiral up, wavering in an unfelt draught. “Can you give a prognosis?”
“I’ll try. That’s all I can say. If the undeveloped minds have been turned into the x channel, it’s necessary to divert them back. I’m not saying that’s the wisest thing to do, but it probably is from our standards. After all, Emma and Scott will have to live in this world.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I can’t believe there’s much wrong. They seem about average, thoroughly normal.”
“Superficially they may seem so. They’ve no reason for acting abnormally, have they? And how can you tell if they — think differently?”
“I’ll call ’em,” Paradine said.
“Make it informal, then. I don’t want them to be on guard.”
Jane nodded towards the toys. Holloway said, “Leave the stuff there, eh?”
But the psychologist, after Emma and Scott were summoned, made no immediate move towards direct questioning. He managed to draw Scott unobtrusively into the conversation, dropping key words now and then. Nothing so obvious as a word-association test; cooperation is necessary for that.
The most interesting development occurred when Holloway took up the abacus. “Mind showing me how this works?”
Scott hesitated. “Yes, sir. Like this.” He slid a bead deftly through the maze, in a tangled course, so swiftly that no one was quite sure whether or not it ultimately vanished. It might have been merely legerdemain. Then, again — Holloway tried. Scott watched, wrinkling his nose. “That’s right?”
“Uh-huh. It’s gotta go there.”
“Here? Why?”
“Well, that’s the only way to make it work.” But Holloway was conditioned to Euclid. There was no apparent reason why the bead should slide from this particular wire to the other. It looked like a random factor. Also, Holloway suddenly noticed, this wasn’t the path the bead had taken previously, when Scott had worked the puzzle. At least, as well as he could tell.
“Will you show me again?”
Scott did, and twice more, on request. Holloway blinked through his glasses. Random, yes. And a variable. Scott moved the bead along a different course each time.
Somehow, none of the adults could tell whether or not the bead vanished. If they had expected to see it disappear, their reactions might have been different.
In the end nothing was solved. Holloway, as he said good night, seemed ill at ease.
“May I come again?”
“I wish you would,” Jane told him. “Any time. You still think—” He nodded. “The children’s minds are not reacting normally. They’re not dull at all, but I’ve the most extraordinary impression that they arrive at conclusions in a way we don’t understand. As though they used algebra while we used geometry. The same conclusion, but a different method of reaching it.”
“What about the toys?” Paradine asked suddenly.
“Keep them out of the way. I’d like to borrow them, if I may.”
That night Paradine slept badly. Holloway’s parallel had been ill chosen. It led to disturbing theories.
The x factor… The children were using the equivalent of algebraic reasoning, while adults used geometry.
Fair enough. Only.
Algebra can give you answers that geometry cannot, since there are certain terms and symbols which cannot be expressed geometrically. Suppose x logic showed conclusions inconceivable to an adult mind.