“Not at all,” I said. “Perhaps the three ladies who just came in-”
“I’ll attend to it.” The autohost was tall, lean, black mustache, constantly smiling, but it was the kind of smile that looked glued on. I’ve never understood why the people who arrange these things can’t get the details right. He strode over to the table where Kayla and the others were seated and made his request. The women looked my way, one of them nodded, and Kayla raised a hand in my direction.
I went over. Introductions all around. I gave my name as Chase Dellmar. “I know you from somewhere,” I told Kayla, putting on my best puzzled frown.
She studied me. Shook her head. “I don’t think we’ve ever met.”
I pressed an index finger against my lips and creased my brow, thinking deeply about where we might have connected. There was some back and forth about places we’d both worked. No link there. Different schools. Must be my imagination. We ordered, lunch came, we talked aimlessly. The women were all assigned to the same facility.
There was a problem of some sort with the boss, who was forever taking credit for other people’s ideas, who wouldn’t listen to anyone, and who didn’t spend enough time with the software. That was station-speak for someone who didn’t socialize, a capital crime in a small society. The usual cautions about supervisors fraternizing with the help didn’t apply to the same degree in places like Morinda.
I waited until we were finished and dividing the check. Then it struck me. I brightened, looked directly at Kayla, and said, “You’re Hap’s sister.”
She went white. “You know Hap?”
“I was Chase Bonner when you knew me. I used to come by the apartment.”
She frowned.
“Years ago, of course. I can understand you might have forgotten.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I remember you. Of course. It’s just that it’s been so long.”
“I can’t believe I’d run into you here.”
“Yes. That’s a wild coincidence, isn’t it?”
“How’s Hap? I haven’t seen him in a lot of years.”
“Oh. He’s okay. I guess. Actually, I haven’t seen him myself in a long time.” We were out of the restaurant by then, trailing behind her companions. “Listen,” she said, “it’s been a pleasure to see you again, uh…” She had to struggle for the name. “Shelley.”
“Chase.” I smiled gently. “It’s okay. We didn’t spend that much time together. I wouldn’t expect you to remember me.”
“No. I remember you. It’s just that I have to get back to work, and I guess my mind is on other things.”
“Sure,” I said. “I understand. How about letting me buy you a drink while I’m here?
Maybe this evening?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Chase. My husband-”
“Bring him along-”
“-doesn’t drink.”
“Dinner then. My treat.”
“I can’t let you do that.” Still backing away from me.
“It’s okay. It’s something I’d really like to do, Kayla.”
“You have a number?” I gave it to her. “Let me check with him, and I’ll get back to you.”
“Okay. I hope you can make it.”
“I’m sure we can manage it, Chase. And thank you.”
We met at the same place where Jack and I had eaten the evening before. I brought him along to balance the sides.
Remilon Bentner was a pleasant enough dinner companion, easygoing, plainspoken, a good conversationalist. He and Jack, it turned out, both played a game that had become popular at the station. It was called Governance, and required participants to make political and social-engineering decisions. We have, for example, implants that will stimulate intelligence. No known side effects. Do we make them available to the general public? “I did, and I got some unpleasant surprises,” said Rem. “High IQs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”
“In what way?” I asked.
Jack was drinking coffee. “Beyond a certain level, roughly one-eighty, people, young ones especially, tend to become disruptive. Rebellious.”
“But that,” I said, “is because they become restless, right? Their peers are slower, so the brighter ones lose patience.”
“Actually,” said Rem, “they’re simply harder to program. You ever wonder why human intelligence is set where it is?”
“I assume,” I said, “it’s because the dumber apes walked into the tigers.”
“But why not higher?” asked Jack. “When Kasavitch did his Phoenician study at the beginning of the last century, he concluded there was no evidence humans are any smarter now than they were at the dawn of history. Why not?”
“Easy,” said Kayla. “Fifteen thousand years is too short a time for evolutionary effects to take hold. Kasavitch-did I get his name right?-needs to come back in a hundred thousand years and try again. I think he’ll see a difference.”
“I don’t think so,” said Bentner. “There seems to be a ceiling.”
“Why?” I asked.
“The experts think that once you get past one-eighty, you become too much of a social problem. Uncontrollable. Herd-of-cats syndrome. Authority tends to be a bit mindless no matter how you structure the political system. The high-IQ types have a hard time tolerating it.” He grinned. “That puts them at a serious disadvantage. These people get to about seven years old and after that they have to learn everything the hard way. Where a truly superior intelligence should help them, it becomes a handicap. In the old days, the tribe would get sick of it and wouldn’t protect them. So the tigers got them.”
“The same thing,” said Jack, “seems to be true among the Mutes. They have more or less the same range we do. And the same ceiling.” The Mutes were the only known alien race. They were a telepathic species.
“I’d expect,” I said, “that the rules would be different for telepaths.”
Bentner shook his head. “Apparently not. Jack, what did you do? Did you use the implants?”
Jack shook his head. “No. I didn’t think a whole society full of people who thought they knew everything would be a good idea.”
“Smart man. My society became unstable within two generations. I’ve a friend whose state collapsed altogether.”
“Did you know,” said Jack, “that the suicide rate among people with genius-level IQs is almost three times what it is among the general population?”
“We’re dumb for a reason,” I said.
“That’s right.” Bentner grinned. “And thank God for it.” He lifted a glass. “To mediocrity,” he said. “May it flourish.”
A few minutes later, I mentioned as a by-the-way that my hobby was collecting antique cups. That caught nobody’s interest. But I turned to Kayla. “Now that I think of it, you guys had one.”
“One what?”
“An antique cup. Remember? It had that strange writing on it.”
“Not us,” she said. “I don’t remember anything like that.”
“Sure,” I said. “I remember it clearly. It was gray, with a green-and-white eagle.
Wings spread.”
She considered it. Pursed her lips. Shook her head. Then surprised me. “Yes. I remember. It was on the mantel.”
“You know,” I said, “I always admired that cup.”
“I hadn’t thought about it in years. But that’s right. We did have one like that.”
“Those were good days, Kayla. I don’t know why that cup sticks in my memory. I tend to associate it with happy times, I guess.”
“That sounds as if you’re having problems.”
“No. Not at all. But that was a more innocent age. You know how it is.”
“Of course.”
She and I were drinking tea, and we each took a sip. “I wonder where it is now,” I said. “The cup. Do you still have it?”
“I don’t know where it is,” she said. “I don’t have it. I haven’t seen it since I was a girl.”
“Maybe Hap has it.”
“Could be.”
“You know,” I said, “when I get home I think I’ll look him up. It would be nice to see him again.”
Her features hardened. “You wouldn’t like him now.”
“Oh?”
“He’s too much like his father.” She shook her head in disapproval. “Well, let it go.”
We talked about her work on the station, and when I saw an opening, I went back to the cup: “You know, I was always intrigued by it. By the cup. Where did it come from originally, Kayla? Do you know?”