From the entrance room they started down a corridor which seemed immensely long and was not at all, for the walls came in and the ceiling drew even lower while the floor rose slightly, giving a completely disturbing false perspective.
‘It’s all right,’ said Janie softly. He curled his lips at her, meaning to smile but quite unable to, and wiped cold water from his upper lip.
She stopped near the end door and touched the wall. A section of it swung back, revealing an ante-room with one other door in it. ‘Wait here, will you, Hip?’ She was completely composed. He wished there were more light.
He hesitated. He pointed to the door at the end of the hall. ‘Is he in there?’
‘Yes.’ She touched his shoulder. It was partly a salutation, partly an urging towards the little room.’ I have to see him first,’ she said. ‘Trust me, Hip.’
‘I trust you all right. But are you—is he—‘
‘He won’t do anything to me. Go on, Hip.’
He stepped through. He had no chance to look back, for the door swung swiftly shut. It gave no more sign of its existence on this side than it had on the other. He touched it, pushed it. It might as well have been that great wall outside. There was no knob, no visible hinge or catch. The edges were hidden in the panelling; it simply had ceased to exist as a door.
He had one blinding moment of panic and then it receded. He went and sat down across from the other door which led, apparently, into the same room to which the corridor led.
There was not a sound.
He picked up an ottoman and placed it against the wall. He sat with his back tight against the panelling, watching the door with wide eyes.
Try that door, see if it’s locked too.
He didn’t dare, he realized. Not yet. He sensed vaguely what he would feel if he found it locked; he wanted no more just now than that chilling guess.
‘Listen,’ he hissed to himself, furiously, ‘you’d better do something. Build something. Or maybe just think. But don’t sit here like this.’
Think. Think about that mystery in there, the pointed face with its thick lenses, which smiled and said, Go on, die.
Think about something else! Quick!
Janie. By herself, facing the pointed face with the—
Homo Gestalt, a girl, two tongue-tied Negroes, a mongoloid idiot, and a man with a pointed face and—
Try that one again. Homo Gestalt, the next step upward. Well, sure, why not a psychic evolution instead of the physical? Homo sapiens stood suddenly naked and unarmed but for the wrinkled jelly in his king-sized skull; he was as different as he could be from the beasts which bore him.
Yet he was the same, the same; to this day he was hungry to breed, hungry to own; he killed without compunction; if he was strong he took, if he was weak he ran; if he was weak and could not run, he died.
Homo sapiens was going to die.
The fear in him was a good fear. Fear is a survival instinct; fear in its way is a comfort for it means that somewhere hope is alive.
He began to think about survival.
Janie wanted Homo Gestalt to acquire a moral system so that such as Hip Barrows would not get crushed. But she wanted her Gestalt to thrive as well; she was a part of it. My hand wants me to survive, my tongue, my belly wants me to survive.
Morals: they’re nothing but a coded survival instinct!
Aren’t they? What about the societies in which it is immoral not to eat human flesh? What kind of survival is that?
Well, but those who adhere to morality survive within the group. If the group eats human flesh, you do too.
There must be a name for the code, the set of rules, by which an individual lives in such a way as to help his species—something over and above morals.
Let’s define that as the ethos.
That’s what Homo Gestalt needs: not morality, but an ethos. And shall I sit here, with my brains bubbling with fear, and devise a set of ethics for a superman?
I’ll try. It’s all I can do.
Define:
Morals: Society’s code for individual survival. (That takes care of our righteous cannibal and the correctness of a naked man in a nudist group.)
Ethics: An individual’s code for society’s survival. (And that’s your ethical reformer: he frees his slaves, he won’t eat humans, he ‘turns the rascals out’.)
Too pat, too slick; but let’s work with ‘em.
As a group, Homo Gestalt can solve his own problems. But as an entity:
He can’t have a morality, because he is alone.
An ethic then. ‘An individual’s code for society’s survival.’ He has no society; yet he has. He has no species; he is his own species.
Could he—should he choose a code which would serve all of humanity?
With the thought, Hip Barrows had a sudden flash of insight, completely intrusive in terms of his immediate problem; yet with it, a load of hostility and blind madness lifted away from him and left him light and confident. It was this:
Who am I to make positive conclusions about morality, and codes to serve all of humanity?
Why—I am the son of a doctor, a man who chose to serve mankind, and who was positive that this was right. And he tried to make me serve in the same way, because it was the only rightness he was sure of. And for this I have hated him all my life… I see now, Dad. I see!
He laughed as the weight of old fury left him forever, laughed in purest pleasure. And it was as if the focus was sharper, the light brighter, in all the world, and as his mind turned back to his immediate problem, his thought seemed to place its fingers better on the rising undersurface, slide upward towards the beginnings of a grip.
The door opened. Janie said, ‘Hip—‘
He rose slowly. His thought reeled on and on, close to something. If he could get a grip, get his fingers curled over it… ‘Coming.’
He stepped through the door and gasped. It was like a giant greenhouse, fifty yards wide, forty deep; the huge panes overhead curved down and down and met the open lawn—it was more a park—at the side away from the house. After the closeness and darkness of what he had already seen it was shocking but it built in him a great exhilaration. It rose up and up, and up rose his thought with it, pressing its fingertips just a bit higher…
He saw the man coming. He stepped quickly forward, not so much to meet him as to be away from Janie if there should be an explosion. There was going to be an explosion; he knew that.
‘Well, Lieutenant. I’ve been warned, but I can still say—this is a surprise.’
‘Not to me,’ said Hip. He quelled a surprise of a different nature; he had been convinced that his voice would fail him and it had not. ‘I’ve known for seven years that I’d find you.’
‘By God,’ said Thompson in amazement and delight. It was not a good delight. Over Hip’s shoulder he said, ‘I apologize, Janie. I really didn’t believe you until now.’ To Hip he said, ‘You show remarkable powers of recovery.’
‘Homo sap’s a hardy beast,’ said Hip.
Thompson took off his glasses. He had wide round eyes, just the colour and luminescence of a black-and-white television screen. The irises showed the whites all the way around; they were perfectly round and they looked as if they were just about to spin.
Once, someone had said, Keep away from the eyes and you’ll be all right.
Behind him Janie said sharply, ‘Gerry!’