"i've listened to dr. endhart teaching that to the small children," she replied. "it—it is difficult to believe." she began to laugh again; waves of hysteria swept her body. "i'm sorry, lanny. i've thought, sometimes, that i'm losing my mind. we're never really certain of ourselves, are we? two plus two doesn't have to make four, i suppose; it's just more convenient when it does."
"i could show you how to heal yourself, tak laleen."
"ever since i came here i've been learning, lanny. but it does no good unless i'm willing to learn first. my mind is tied down by everything i already know. i can put my two and two together as often as i like, and i still come up with four. any other answer is insanity."
twice, as they walked through the streets, pendillo took a turn which led toward one of the enemy chapels. lanny swiftly guided the missionary in another direction. the third time they came upon the chapel of the triangle suddenly, and before he could pull tak laleen back she broke free and fled toward the glowing triangle, crying for help in her native tongue.
lanny sprinted after her. tak laleen beat with her fists on the metal door. from the air above them came the high whine of a materializing force-field. capsules swung down upon them. the missionary was swallowed within the church. lanny and his father were enveloped in a single bubble.
it rose on an automatic beam and arched toward the skyport. in panic lanny glanced down through the opalescent field at the settlement rolling by beneath them, and the choppy water of the bay, turned scarlet by the setting sun. pendillo leaned calmly against the curved wall of their prison.
"she betrayed us!" lanny cried.
"i expected her to, my son."
"you—you knew this would happen?"
"a teacher must sometimes contrive a unique—and possibly painful—learning situation. it's one of the risks of our profession."
"why, father? she'll tell the almost-men about the attack on the skyport; she'll tell them—"
pendillo tapped the curved wall of force. "we're in a tight spot, lanny. it's up to you to get us out—without a gun and without any of the enemy machines. all you have to work with are your brains and what we've taught you for the past twenty years. i think you can count on some help from gill later on. he'll have to attack the skyport tonight, without working out all his fine plans for seizing the arsenal. and gill won't have any guns, either."
"so you and endhart planned this."
"that's why i insisted on keeping tak laleen alive. i thought we might need her as—as a catalyst. the vote of the resistance council rushed things a little, but on the whole i think it worked out quite satisfactorily. your education is finished, lanny—for all of you who are the new breed. now start applying what we think you know."
for a brief time the prison sphere that held lanny and juan pendillo was suspended above the teeming tiers of skyport streets. enough time, lanny guessed, for the enemy to question tak laleen and to reach some decision based upon what she had to tell them. abruptly the capsule was hauled down. lanny and his father were dumped into barred cells buried somewhere in the bowels of the city.
"what will they do with us?" lanny asked.
from the adjoining cell his father answered placidly, "it depends on tak laleen's statement—and how much of it they believe."
"will they condemn us to readjustment?"
"undoubtedly, unless you solve our problem first—and these bars seem thoroughly solid to me."
lanny drew in his breath sharply, suddenly afraid. "what's it like, father—the readjustment?"
"no one knows, really. a machine tears your mind apart and puts it together again—differently."
lanny shivered as he remembered the half-dozen readjustment cases he had seen in the santa barbara treaty area—living shells, with all initiative and individuality drained from their souls. he moved to the barred door of his cell. for a split-second of panic he seized the bars and futilely tried to pry them apart. slowly edging into his consciousness came a vague awareness of the structural pattern of the energy units in the metal. it was the same extension of his integrated community of cells which he had with his hunting club. his panic vanished; he felt a little ashamed because he had been afraid. it would be no problem to escape.
he held the bars and allowed his mind to feel through the pattern of energy organization. the metal was very different from any of the familiar substances lanny knew, but far less complex because the arrangement was so rigidly disciplined. there were two things that lanny might do. he could fit the energy units of his own body past the space intervals of the metal—in effect, passing through the metal barrier. but that would be slow and exacting work. it would require a considerable concentration to move the specialized cells of his body across the metal maze. the second method was easier. as he extended his cerebral integration into the metal, he could rearrange the energy unit pattern. the bars should fragment and fall apart.
lanny was amazed how rapidly the change took place. before he could adjust the pattern of more than half a dozen energy units, a chain reaction began. lanny found he had to absorb an enormous flow of superfluous energy to prevent an explosion.
as soon as he crossed into the corridor, watching photo-electric cells sent an alarm pulsing into the guard room on the tier above. the metal-walled corridor throbbed with the deafening cry of a siren.
lanny darted toward his father's cell. "hold the metal and make it over with your mind—just as we integrate with our clubs. it's the same principal, father."
pendillo shrugged. "i can't, lanny. i don't know how."
lanny had no time to weigh the significance of what his father said for the scream of the siren stopped and a guard appeared at the head of the corridor. the guard wrapped himself hastily in the shell of a force-field capsule. he fired his energy gun. the knife of flame arched through the corridor and struck lanny's face. his body reacted instinctively, absorbing and storing part of the charge and re-constructing the rest so that it became a harmless combination of inert gasses.
but as the blinding flame splashed bright in lanny's eyes—the way it had once before, when he murdered old barlow—lanny's mind faced the traumatic shock of remembering. lanny had murdered barlow—he knew that, now—murdered him with a blaze of energy which he had stored when he brushed against the force-field capsule surrounding tak laleen.
it was not the fact of murder that had clamped the strait-jacket of forgetfulness on lanny's mind and allowed him to think tak laleen had killed barlow. he had known, for one split-second, the full maturity of the education pendillo had given his sons. known it too soon, with too little preparation. now he understood why he had felt ashamed, why he'd retreated deliberately from the truth: because he had killed barlow to resolve an old argument, not to be rid of a traitor. the method of murder had, ironically, given him the answer to barlow's poison of despair; but because the two had happened simultaneously, the emotional shock of one had affected the other.
the bursting charge of energy washed away his absurdly exaggerated sense of guilt. he achieved the mature integration he had lost before; his mind was whole again. the integration was nothing new—merely a restatement of what pendillo had taught him, what all the treaty area teachers taught the new children. the mind of man could control the energy structure of matter. pendillo called that rationality. but matter and energy were synonymous. the teachers had implied that without teaching it directly. a mind that could heal a body wound was also able to control the energy blast from an enemy gun.
from his father's cell lanny heard a stifled groan. he looked back. the bars of the cell had been twisted by the blast; pendillo was badly hurt. his wounds seemed to be extensive, but lanny was sure his father would heal himself quickly.
lanny sprang at the guard. the almost-man had enough courage to hold his ground, still sure of his impregnable machines. he was aiming his energy gun again when lanny touched the opalescent capsule. that, too, was nothing now; lanny had found his way into the new world. the field of force was simply energy in another form. lanny could have reshaped the field, intensified it, or dissolved it as he chose.
he shattered the capsule, like a bubble of glass. he smashed the gun aside. the guard stood before him, stripped of his mechanical armor—a man, facing his enemy as a man.
as the guard turned to run, lanny reached out for him leisurely. weakly the guard swung his fist at lanny's face. lanny laughed and slapped at the ineffectual, white hand. the guard howled and clutched the broken fingers against his mouth. desperately he kicked at lanny with his metal-soled boots. lanny dodged. the unexpected momentum sent the guard reeling and he had no efficient capsule to hold him up.
he sprawled on the metal floor close to his energy gun. he grasped for the weapon as lanny leaped toward him. for one brief moment lanny saw madness film his enemy's eyes. then the guard began to scream. he thrust the muzzle of the energy gun against his own chest and pressed the firing stud.
lanny turned away from the smoldering heap of charred flesh and went back to his father's cell. he disorganized the energy units of the tormented knot of metal bars and knelt beside pendillo. lanny was amazed that his father had made no effort to heal his wounds. juan was bleeding profusely; his eyes were glazed with pain. lanny lifted pendillo tenderly in his arms.
"father! you must begin the healing—"
"i do not know how, lanny."
"all men control their own body cells!"
"so you were taught, and what a man believes is true—for him."
cautiously lanny extended his energy integration into his father's body. it was something he had never done before with a living man. the weak disorganization of cells frightened him. clearly pendillo was telling the truth; he was incapable of ordering his own healing. then how had he taught his sons so well, if he could not use the technique himself?
hesitantly lanny released into his father's body some of the energy he had stored. he wasn't sure what the effect would be, but it seemed to help. pendillo tried to smile; his eyes became clearer.
"thanks, lanny. but you can't save me, my son. i've lost too much blood; i have too many internal injuries."
"but you could do it for yourself, father." lanny shook his head. "i don't understand why—"
"you wouldn't, lanny. you're the new breed."
"you say that so often."
"in my time that might have meant a new species—supermen we created by genetics in a biological laboratory. but we've done more than that. you aren't freaks; you're our children in every sense of the word. we have made you men; we've taught you how to think."
"you deliberately made us as we are?"
"every man who lived before your time was an almost-man, lanny. he had your same potential, but he hadn't learned how to use it."
"how are we different?"
pendillo was seized with a sudden spasm of coughing; blood trickled from his lips. once again lanny released a shock wave of energy into his father's body, and pendillo's strength was partially restored.
"i will tell you as much as i can," pendillo promised, but his voice was no longer as clear as it had been. "i don't have much time left. the idea for our new breed of men began at the time of the invasion. lanny, there wasn't much to choose from between our people and the enemy. our cities were like theirs; we were enslaved by machines—by the technological bric-a-brac of our culture—as they are. only our science was different. we had exploited the energy of coal and oil and water-power; we were beginning to accumulate a good deal of data about the basic atomic structure of matter.
"but we would have ridiculed any serious consideration of degravitation, or the magnetic energy of a field of force. these were the trappings of our escapist fiction, not of genuine science. we had a more or less closed field allowed to legitimate scientific research; any data beyond it was vigorously ignored.
"then, from nowhere, we were invaded and utterly defeated by an alien people who used the precise laws of science we had scorned. furthermore, we saw them ridicule our principles as semi-religious rituals of a savage culture. in the invasion less than a tenth of mankind survived. we were herded into the treaty areas, with no government and no real leadership. some of us had been teachers before the war; the survivors looked to us to preserve the spirit and the ideals of man.
"we had to make a selective choice, lanny. we had no books, no written records, no way to preserve the whole of the past. the teachers in all the treaty areas quickly established contact by courier. the lesson of the invasion had taught us a great deal. men had been imprisoned by one scientific dogma, which had produced a mechanized and neurotic world. the almost-men were trapped by another that had produced the same end result.
"so we had our first objective: to teach our children the supreme dignity, the magnificent godliness, of the rational mind. we didn't tell you what to think—which had been our mistake in the past—but simply the vital necessity of rational thought. we taught you that the mind was the integrating factor in the universe; everything else was chaos, without objectivity or direction, until it was controlled by mind. after that, we jammed your brains with data from every field of knowledge that had ever been explored by man. that's why we interchanged couriers so frequently. in our world we had been specialists; we had to share the facts among ourselves so the new breed might have them all."
