«Why, it’s a triumphant confirmation of the historical theory I was just explaining,» said Heym. «We’ve isolated pure genius from mediocrity and left it free to work out its own destiny. The result has even exceeded our predictions.
«Most of man’s history has been spent in the stone ages, because the savage is even more superstitious and conservative than the civilized man, whose culture does have a certain momentum. But the people of this planet had invented metallurgy and writing within a thousand years of the colony’s establishment. The essential difference was that there was progress made each generation, rather than every hundred or thousand generations. Every mind is creative, and every individual is willing to accept the ideas and work of every other.
«No doubt there are aggressive and conservative and selfish people born. But on this world the weight of social conditioning and social pressure is away from those tendencies, they don’t get a chance to develop themselves.
«Man’s brain is physically not qualitatively different from that of the other higher mammals. It has no feature not found in the brain of an ape, say. But the quantitative difference, in the relatively immense forebrain, leads to a qualitative difference of mental type. Man is sharply differentiated from the other animals by the power to make indefinite orders of abstraction. Hence progress is possible for him.
«It seems»—Heym’s voice rose over the whistle of wind—«that genius shows a similar qualitative distinction, due to quantitative difference, from mere human intelligence. The genius is basically a distinct type, just as the moron is on the other end of the scale. And here—on Seventeen—the new type has been set free.»
He turned around from the window. The voice of the storm seemed remote, lost in the tremendous silence that suddenly filled the room. Goram sat motionless, staring at the floor, and the slow seconds ticked away before he spoke.
«I don’t know—» he murmured. «I don’t know—»
Defeat and despair and a binding hatred rose into Heym’s throat, tasting of vomit. You don’t know! His mind screamed the thought, it seemed incredible that Goram should sprawl there, not moving, not hearing. No, you don’t know. Your sort never does, never has known anything but his own witless bestial desires, its own self-righteous rationalization of impulses that should have died with Smilodon. You’ll destroy Seventeen, in spite of all reason, in sheer perversity—and you’ll say you did it for the good of the Empire!
The knife seemed to spring of its own accord into his hand. He was lunging forward before he realized it. He saw the blade gleam down as if another man were wielding it. The blow shocked back into his muscles and for an instant his mind wavered, it wasn’t real—what am I doing?
No time to lose. Goram twisted around in his seat, yelling, grabbing for Heym. The knife was deep in his neck. Heym yanked at it—pull it loose, stick it in the throat, kill—
Something struck him from behind. The world shattered in a burst of stars, he crashed to the floor and rolled over. Through a haze of dizzy pain he saw men bending over Goram—men of the planet, rescuers for the monster who would annihilate them.
Words tumbled from the hotel clerk, anxious, shaken: «Are you hurt? Did you—Still, lie still, here comes a doctor—»
Pain curled Goram’s lips back from his teeth, but he muttered reply: «No… I’m all right… flesh wound—»
The doctor bent over his bloody form. «Deep,» he said, «but it missed the important veins. Here I’ll just pull it out—»
«Go ahead,» whispered Goram. «I’ve taken worse than this, though… I never expected it here.»
Heym lay on the floor while they worked over the soldier. His ringing, whirling head throbbed toward steadiness, and slowly, with so tremendous an impact that it overloaded his nerves and entered his consciousness without emotional shock, the realization grew.
Goram had spoken to the natives—in their own language.
A man bent over the psychologist. «Are you all right?» he asked. «I’m sorry I had to hit you so hard. Here—drink this.»
Heym forced the liquid down his throat. It coursed fierily through his veins, he sat up with an arm supporting him about his waist and held his head in his hands.
Someone else spoke, the voice seemed to come from across an abyss: «Did he hear?»
«I’m afraid so.» Goram, his neck bandaged, spoke painfully. A rueful smile crossed his ugly face. «The excitement was too much for me, or I would have kept silent. This is going to be—inconvenient.»
The men of the planet helped Heym into a chair. He began to revive, and looked dazedly across at the man he had tried to kill. The others stood around the chairs, tall bearded men in barbaric dress, watching him with alertness and a strange pity.
«Yes,» said Tamman Goram very quietly, «the assistant Grand Marshal of the Solarian Empire is a native of Station Seventeen.»
«Who else?» whispered Heym. «How and why? I tried to kill you because I thought you meant to order the planet sterilized.»
«It was an act,» said Goram. «I meant to concede at last that the station was harmless and could be safely left to the Foundation’s observers. Coming from one who had apparently been strongly inclined to the opposite view, the statement would have been doubly convincing to Imperial officialdom. It was a powerful and suspicious minister who ordered the investigation, and I went to soothe his feelings. His successor will be one of our men, who will see that Station Seventeen drops into safe obscurity as an unimportant and generally unsuccessful experiment conducted by a few harmless cranks.»
«But… aren’t you… weren’t you—»
«Oh, yes. My history is perfectly genuine. I was planted as an obscure recruit in the border guards many years ago, and since then my rise has been strictly in accord with Imperial principles. All our men in the Empire will bear the most searching investigation. Sometimes they come from families which have lived several generations on Imperial planets. Our program of replacing key personnel with our men is planned centuries ahead of time, and succeeds by the simple fact that on the average, over long periods of time, they are so much more capable than anyone else.»
«How long—?»
«About five hundred years. You underestimated the capabilities of your experimental animals.» Goram rested for a moment, then asked, «If human intelligence is qualitatively different from animal intelligence, and genius is different from ordinary reasoning power—then tell me, what about the equivalent of geniuses in a world where the average man is a genius by the usual standards?»
«Pure genius strains kept right on evolving, more rapidly indeed than can be explained on any other basis than the existence of an orthogenetic factor in evolution. Super genius—give it a different name, call it transcendence, since it is a different quality—has capabilities which the ordinary mind can no more than comprehend than pure instinct can comprehend logic.
«Your spectacular god-revelations were not forgotten, they were treated discreetly. Later, when a theory of evolution was developed, it seemed strange that man, though obviously an animal, should have no apparent phylogenesis. The stories of the ‘gods,’ the theories of evolution and astronomy—we began to suspect the truth. With that suspicion, it was not hard for a transcendent to spot your masquerading psychologists. Kidnapping, questioning under drugs developed by psychiatry, and release of the prisoner with memory of his experience removed told us the rest. Later, disguised as other prisoners, with their knowledge, and his own intelligence to fill the gaps, one transcendent after another made his way to the observation asteroid—thence out into the Galaxy, where a little spying was sufficient to reveal the principles of the interstellar drive and the other mechanisms of the Empire.»