Collie blushed, and was angry with himself for it.

  ‘Just take it easy,’ advised Temple as they left the building. ‘Go take your tests at the laboratory, and the rest of the time you can do what you like. Get to know your neighbors. They’ll show you the ropes. We have entertainment here every night – movies, dances, and so on. I think you’ll enjoy yourself.’

  Dusk was on them as they walked up the path toward the houses. Down at the foot of the road, the city opened a thousand eyes, glowed and winked and blazed like stars fallen to earth. Overhead, the sky was gentle with evening. Collie filled his lungs and let some of the tension ease out of him.

  Gravel scrunched underfoot as they went by the lighted porches of the neat cottages. ‘There are about a hundred living here right now,’ said Temple. ‘We’ve got places for five hundred before we have to build more. I hope we’ll have to do that soon. But – I wonder … Here’s yours, then. Here’s your key. Go on, open it yourself, it’s your house now.’

  The interior was pleasantly and conveniently furnished. Temple moved unobtrusively about, showing Collie how to operate the gadgets. There were a lot of them. ‘We’ll send you some clothes in the morning, modern style,’ he said. ‘They’ll be made up tonight according to your measurements. And here’s some cash, in case you need it, and you can draw more whenever you wish.’

  Collie’s lips tightened. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t want charity.’

  ‘You’re not getting it. We need you worse than you need us. We’re just grubstaking you.’ Temple moved toward the door. ‘I’ll say goodnight now. Got work to do, may not see you for a while. If there’s anything you want to know, or want help with, go ask the counsellor in the main office building. Good luck, Collie.’

  When he was gone, there was an odd desolation. Collie felt very much alone. He wandered listlessly around the house, trying this and that. The color television was interesting, but it reminded him too much of the strangeness, little of it had any meaning for him. He sat down in a chair which molded itself to his body. ‘Damn,’ he muttered. ‘Homesick already.’

  IV

  The chiming at the door brought him to his feet. A look at the visiplate showed him a stranger outside. His hand dropped toward his knife, then he remembered it was in his bag – he’d have felt silly wearing it. ‘Come in,’ he said. His voice wobbled, and his anger at himself for that brought a return of steadiness. ‘Come on in.’

  He had never seen a negro before, though he recognized the type from descriptions – a tall young fellow, elegantly clad in an iridescent lounge suit. ‘Hi, there.’ The voice was deep and rich. ‘Ah’m Joe Gammony.’

  ‘Uh – Jim Collingwood.’ They shook hands.

  ‘Ah saw a new one was comin’, an’ mah wife an’ me thought we’d ask you ovuh. Meet some o’ the folks hoah. Like to?’

  ‘Why – sure. Thanks. Thanks a lot.’ Collie remembered he had a supply cabinet. ‘Like a drink first?’

  ‘Sho’, thanks, don’ mind if Ah do.’ Gammony accepted a glass and tossed it off with a grin. ‘Hoo, boy! Goes down right, don’ it?’ He leaned easily against the wall, hands in pockets. ‘Look, Jim, we-all is pretty free heah. Got to be. You don’ mind a few questions, Ah hope?’

  ‘N-no.’

  ‘Well, Ah’ll tell you ‘bout mahself fuhst. Ah’m from Virginny, backwoods like Ah see you is. Been heah ‘bout a year now. Ah was bo’n with a – kinesthesia, they call it. Got a perfec’ sense o’ balance an’ direction. Nevah get lost. Walked when Ah was six months old, tha’s why Ah got bowlegs.’ He chuckled. ‘Damn good pilot, too, when they’d taught me to fly. Don’ need no instruments to tell me is Ah upside down or sideways to. Don’ get dizzy easy, an’ get ovuh it fast when Ah do. They’re still findin’ uses fo’ mah sense. Tha’s all.’

  Collie told his own story and Gammony nodded without surprise. ‘Tha’s took a bigger change nor mine,’ he said. ‘Mine, it was jes’ a little difference up in mah head somewheres, but you need a different bone an’ muscle, some different at least, an’ then they’s yo’ lungs, or mebbe it’s yo’ blood. They’ll find that out. But Ah bet there ain’t but one like you in the whole world. Come on, now, Jim – no, Collie, you said. Come on an’ meet the folks.’

  They went into the adjoining cottage. Gammony’s wife was a pleasant negress, with a couple of children clinging wide-eyed to her skirts. ‘The sprats ain’t like me,’ explained the father. ‘Recessive mutation, Ah reckon, like most of ‘em is.’ He seemed to have learned a lot in a year, but then he seemed pretty bright too.

  A small man with sharp dark eyes was introduced as Abe Feinberg, from Illinois. His hands were delicate, the extra joint in the thin fingers making them seem almost boneless. ‘Highly developed tactile sense,’ he said, ‘together with ability to handle small things. It’s useful for close work. I have a job finishing micrometric parts.’

  Bulking over him, six and a half feet tall and so broad he seemed almost squat, was a blond giant. ‘Misha Ivanovitch,’ he said. ‘Dey found me in Russia two years back – da, dey sheck a lot of de whole world. I’m just a strong man. Like a horse, strong.’ He grinned. ‘Not mosh use, dough. I’m not like a tractor strong.’

  A slender, brown-haired girl, quite good-looking, said she was Lois Grenfell from Ontario. ‘Unusual hearing – well into the super-and subsonic ranges, with more tone discrimination than anyone else. Sure, of course I write music, but what’s the use? Nobody else can hear the nuances.’

  A gaunt, shock-haired man was paying her considerable attention. ‘Tom O’Neill. They found me in Ireland. It’s my eyes. Telescopic vision. Oh, sure, I can see at ordinary distances too. There are several people I know of with straight telescopic, but they don’t get in here. The poor divvils are having to wear glasses to see at less than a hundred feet.’

  Alexander Arakelian of California, short and stout and dark, invited Collie to take a punch at him. ‘Go ahead. Any time. Don’t warn me.’ Collie sprang, throwing his fist ahead, and nearly went to the floor as he missed. ‘Sorry. Frankly, I didn’t realize you’d be that fast. Damn near clipped me. Yeah, it’s super-quick perception and reaction. Something about my nerve cells, they aren’t sure just what.’

  There were more. A good two dozen people were crowded into Gammony’s living room. Collie couldn’t remember all the names and traits. As he sat back with a glass in his hand, looking them over, he tried to think what it was they had in common.

  First: They were all young. Obviously, none could be over twenty-eight, for the war had been twenty-nine years ago. The ages ranged from fifteen to the upper limit.

  Second: They all looked pretty human. Any of them could pass for an ordinary, unmutated person unless you looked closely; the only odd one was a lightning calculator who happened to have eyes of brilliant red, not unpleasing. Feinberg, who seemed the most talkative man present, explained that a good mutation was, generally, something added to the normal human capacities. A man with boneless hands might be capable of highly delicate work, but he would be too specialized, not strong enough, to count as favorable. In like manner, there had been a lot of people born with both good and bad traits – a cripple with Miss Grenfell’s type of hearing, for instance, or a super-strong moron. But they didn’t count either.

  Third: They were all well taken care of, highly paid, educated free for any work they chose. But the work seemed invariably to be such as they could do at home or in the shops and laboratories maintained up here.

  Fourth: None of them were very happy.

  It wasn’t till later in the evening, when alcohol had dissolved most of his stiffness, that Collie really noticed this. It wasn’t plain on them – it crept out in an occasional word, a sarcastic reference, a fleeting change of expression. He didn’t know how to find out more about it. But hell and damnation, he had to know.

  ‘Seems like they treat you pretty nice,’ he ventured cautiously. He was sitting between Feinberg and Ivanovitch, on the fringes of the conversation.

  ‘Yeah. I s’pose. I s’pose.’ Feinberg had drunk a good deal, his cheeks were flushed and his voice not entirely under control. ‘Lucky bastards. Born to the purple.’

  ‘I been wonderin’ what I could do. I’m just a farmer an’ hunter.’

  ‘They’ll teach you. Hard to say, though. You and Misha are in pretty much the same boat. You can’t do anything that a machine can’t do better.’

  Feinberg took out a cigaret and lit it and inhaled raggedly. ‘That’s the trouble with all of us, really. What the hell are we supposed to do? Sure, I get work sent up to me for finishing, and I do a good job on it, sure, sure. Only they could build a microfinisher to do it automatically. Keep Feinberg happy, though. Keep him too busy at his bench to think.’

  ‘Nyet, it’s not so bad,’ said Ivanovitch heavily. ‘I go roll rocks and swing a hammer, what’s bad about dat? Better dan a liddle willage out in de woods and starving heff de time.’

  ‘Oh, well, if you just want a full belly—’ Feinberg looked glumly at his glass.

  ‘Go on home, Collie,’ he said all at once. ‘Tell ‘em to cram it. Go back where the deer and the antelope play, dig in the ground, hunt bears, raise a litter of kids. You’ll be a lot more useful there than here.’ He sensed Collie’s hurt and laid a hand on his arm. ‘It’s for your own good, kid. I like you. I don’t want to see you go through this damn mill.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Collie. ‘What’s here you don’t like?’

  ‘Call it philosophical objections, if you want. Though there’s a lot of practical ones. Talk to Joe Gammony, among others. He married a plain ordinary girl before they found him. Ask about the ways they tried to make him leave her behind when he came here. Ask about the way they’ve tried to get her from him ever since. Oh, no, nothing wicked. Nothing outright. No “or else” about it. We’re all gentlemen here, we aren’t vile Siberians. But they want to breed Joe to another of their superpeople. They don’t want him wasting his genes on a mere human being.

  ‘Some of us don’t care. You been having you a hell of a good time, eh, Misha?’ The giant grinned. Feinberg ran a hand through his own lank hair and went on. ‘They introduced a girl to me. She lives up here too. Kinestesia, like Joe’s. They want her to have children by him, to reinforce the trait, and by me, to cross-breed. Throw in a lightning calculator and an Alaric Wayne brain, and you’ve got the super engineer, eh? Only Joe’s a good Catholic, and I’m well, hell, I’m stubborn. I want to find my own dame and live a normal life.

  ‘Normal! Hell, what’s normal about this? What’s normal about made work, a sop to keep you busy? What’s normal about spending your life on a goddam mountaintop, always seeing the same people, always the same gossip. Sure, we’re a pretty good bunch up here, in spite of our petty feuds and factions, but goddammit, there’s a whole world outside. Hell, you don’t even dare go downtown for a drink. You’d be lynched, Americans never did like privilege, unless they were the ones who had it. I don’t even like it when it’s mine. My people were kicked around too long for me to subscribe to any Master Race.

  ‘Just ask yourself, Collie. Ask yourself what is a superman. What is a favorable mutation? What real basis did they have for choosing us? What good are we?

  ‘What good is the whole mucking program? Hell, we’re all full of mutated genes. Every living thing on Earth is. We’re not going to lick the problem by trying to breed supermen. The supermen are just as likely to beget crippled idiots as anyone else.

  ‘They say Nietzsche preached the superman. That only proves they never bothered to read Nietzsche. This is not what he had in mind. Shaw, there was the real supermanmonger. Sure, he was clever, witty, humane, but he couldn’t think. He lacked depth. Down underneath, he despised the scientific method. So do most of us. Maybe rightly so, because it’s inhuman. It’s inhuman to look at the world so coldly. People aren’t reasonable. It’s much more comfortable to look around for a father image – and hell, if you can’t find one, you make one. You breed him!’

  Collie went home about midnight. He felt tired, drained of strength with all he had seen and heard this day. The world could not be the same for him, not ever again, and he wished most desperately that it could. But it was long before he got to sleep.

  V

  The counsellor said, ‘Frankly, I can’t think of any job for you which would use your special abilities. But you have a good intelligence, so there’s no reason why you couldn’t go into something like engineering.’

  ‘Well—’ Collie scratched his head. ‘I heard talk ‘bout sponge divin’, off Florida. I can hold my breath good, you know.’

  ‘That’s just to supply a backward local market,’ said the counsellor gently. ‘Our sponges are synthetic. I’m afraid there wouldn’t be any place for you in the trade.’

  ‘It was just a thought. I could do a lot better with your scoutin’ teams among the backwoods people.’

  ‘Sorry, we couldn’t permit that. It would be dangerous for you.’

  Collie bristled. ‘Look here. I’m a free citizen an’ I can go where I damn well want.’

  ‘We can’t stop you from leaving,’ said the counsellor, ‘but we can refuse you a job.’ He smiled. ‘Let’s not argue about this. It’s for your own good. We want you to be safe and prosperous, that’s all.’

  ‘Well—’ Collie backed down. He wasn’t used to arguing. Among his folk, you kept your voice low or you stepped outside – nothing in between. ‘Well, mebbe you’re right. I’ll have to think about it.’

  ‘Take all the time you want,’ said the counsellor. ‘But wouldn’t you like to go to school? We’ll be starting a new class, three hours a day, very soon.’

  ‘Yeah – yeah, I reckon so. Thanks.’ Collie got out as quickly as he could.

  He slouched gloomily along the walk toward his house. Goddammit all, anyway. Abe Feinberg might be right, at that. Only what could you do? Go back home – after all his brave excited words? It didn’t appeal to him. Even if he announced his intention of doing so, they’d argue and stall and make excuses. They’d find ways to make retreat just too embarrassing for him. He swung clenched fists at his sides. This was like being meshed in cobwebs. Fine and silky and gluey.

  As he stamped onto his porch, he noticed Misha Ivanovitch passing by. The big Russian was whistling cheerfully to himself. ‘Hey,’ called Collie, ‘how ‘bout a drink with me?’

  ‘Da.’ Ivanovitch grinned and turned around. ‘I hev trobble saying no in American.’

  They entered the cottage, leaving the door open to the summer air. Collie sloshed whiskey into two glasses. ‘I’m gettin’ tired o’ drinkin’ up here,’ he said after the third round. ‘I never even been downtown.’

  ‘I hev,’ said Ivanovitch. ‘Dey got bars and t’ings.’

  ‘Let’s go!’

  ‘Well—’ Ivanovitch’s big mild face clouded. ‘We ain’t so wery welcome down dere.’

  ‘Goddammit, we’re free people, ain’t we?’ Collie stalked toward the door. ‘If you don’t want to go, I’ll go alone.’

  ‘Hokay. I’ll kip you out of trouble, mebbe.’

  The sun was low as they walked rapidly down the path. Collie wanted to run, he could have been at his goal in minutes, but Ivanovitch’s lumbering gait would have been left behind. As they descended, the city was no longer a neat relief map, it rose and spread until they were between houses. Here cars sped past, purring ovoids that flashed with metal and plastic, and there were more people around than Collie was used to. The liquor was dying in him, and he wondered if he might not have been foolish, but too late now. He’d look a proper fool turning back, wouldn’t he?

  ‘We get dat bus, huh?’ Ivanovitch stepped out on a curb.

  The long gray vehicle stopped for them, and they boarded it and found seats. Collie craned his neck to look around. About twenty passengers, they all seemed very ordinary city folk. There were a couple of mutants, of course – a young man with a lumpy, almost canine face, and another quite hairless. Not for the first time, Collie wanted to thank God for his own genes. If I’d been like that—

  But what was this mysterious ‘I’ which reached back a few years and forward an unknown number of days? What was it that housed in his skull and looked out at the world, forever a prisoner within itself, and – and – Collie drew back from the thought with a shudder.

  During his reverie, the bus had reached the loop. ‘Let’s get off here,’ said Ivanovitch. ‘I know a place.’ Collie envied the giant’s placidity as they paid and debarked. Then his feelings were lost in sheer wonder.

  The buildings around him were not extremely high – thirty stories was the limit, for the city had been planned as decentralized to reduce the traffic problem. But to him they were mountainous, sheer walls looming overhead, tier upon tier of frozen waterfalls, dizzying spires, flashing glass, signs winking and glaring through the young twilight. The city roared around him, hurrying faceless crowds, rainbow of garments, clattering shoes on hard pavement, a steady, restless grumble of traffic, voices and voices and voices. He shrank close to Ivanovitch and let himself be led.

  They entered a tavern. It was a long dim-lit room, booths on one side and the bar on the other. ‘Live’ murals moved sensuously on the walls, and the television was flickering in one corner. The place was pretty full, men coming off work and stopping in for a drink, and the talking and laughing was like a storm in his skull.

  Ivanovitch bellied up to the bar, easing others aside, and thumped it so the glasses jumped. ‘Two vodkas,’ he said. ‘Beer chasers.’

  Collie sipped the liquid fire cautiously and looked around him with large eyes. At first glance, there was an incredible gaiety here, like a festival at home. Then you looked closer and saw the worn faces and the weary eyes, and you heard the voices more clearly. He wondered if anyone in here was really happy.

  But why should that be? These people had more to eat and wear and see and do than he had ever known; they had comfortable houses, no need to carry weapons, medicine like witchcraft to ease their hurts. Collie had no illusions about the ‘natural life’. It was toil and endurance, rain and snow and harrying wind, hunger and sickness and early death. What was it that lay like a worm in these men and women?