“Why, what would it have to do with you?” she asked.
“It would be in the area where we are supposed to have knowledge. If a cyberneticist fails to recognize that his companion has a broken bone, he is not culpable; if a physician makes the same mistake, he merits severe punishment.
“It would be our duty to recognize the new talent, isolate it, and understand it, we on the Exotics. It may be that Donal has something he does not recognize himself.” He looked at her. “And that is the question I must ask you. You are closer to him than anyone else; do you think Donal may have something — something markedly different about him? I don’t mean simply his superior genius; that would be simply more of the same kind of thing other men have had; I mean some true ability over and above that of the normal human.”
Anea became very still for a long moment, looking beyond rather than at Sayona. Then she looked at Sayona again, and said, “Do you want me to guess? Why don’t you ask him?”
It was not that she did not know the answer; she did not know how, or what she knew, nor did she know how to convey it, nor whether it was wise to convey it. But the knowing within her was quietly and completely certain that Donal knew, and would know what should and should not be said.
Sayona shrugged wryly. “I am a fool; I do not believe what all my own knowledge assures me. It was perfectly certain that the Select of Kultis would make such an answer. I am afraid to ask him; knowing that makes the fear no less. But you are right, my dear. I… will ask him.”
She lifted her hand.
“Donal!” she called.
Out on the balcony he heard her voice. He did not move his eyes from the stars.
“Yes,” he answered.
There were footsteps behind him, and then the voice of Sayona. “Donal—”
“You’ll have to forgive me,” said Donal, without turning. “I didn’t mean to make you wait. But I had something on my mind.”
“Quite all right,” said Sayona. “I hate to disturb you — I know how busy you’ve been lately. But there was a question I wanted to ask.”
“Am I a superman?” asked Donal.
“Yes, that’s essentially it,” Sayona chuckled. “Has somebody else been asking you the same question?”
“No,” Donal was smiling himself. “But I imagine there’s some would like to.”
“Well, you mustn’t blame them,” said Sayona, seriously. “In a certain sense, you actually are, you know.”
“In a sense?”
“Oh,” Sayona made a little dismissing gesture with his hand. “In your general abilities, compared to the ordinary man. But that wasn’t my question—”
“I believe you have said that a name is without meaning in itself. What do you mean by ‘Superman’? Can your question be answered, if that tag has no meaning, no definition?
“And who would want to be a Superman?” asked Donal in a tone halfway between irony and sadness, his eyes going to the depth beyond depth of starspace. “What man would want twenty billion children to raise? What man would cope with so many? How would he like to make the necessitous choices between them, when he loved-them all equally? Think of the responsibility involved in refusing them candy when they shouldn’t — but could — have it, and seeing that they went to the dentist against their wills! And if ‘Superman’ means a unique individual — think of having twenty billion children to raise, and no friend to relax with, complain to, to blow off steam to, so that the next day’s chores would be more bearable.
“And if your ‘Superman’ were so super, who could force him to spend his energies wiping twenty billion noses, and cleaning up the messes twenty billion petulant bratlings made? Surely a Superman could find some more satisfying use for his great talents?”
“Yes, yes,” said Sayona. “But of course, I wasn’t thinking of anything so far-fetched.” He looked at Donal’s back with mild annoyance. “We know enough about genetics now to realize that we could not have, suddenly, a completely new version of the human being. Any change would have to come in the shape of one new, experimental talent at a time.”
“But what if it were an undiscoverable talent?”
“Undiscoverable?”
“Suppose,” said Donal, “I have the ability to see a strange new color? How would I describe it to you — who cannot see it?”
“Oh, we’d locate it all right,” replied Sayona. “We’d try all possible forms of radiation until we found one you could identify as the color you were seeing.”
“But still you wouldn’t be able to see it, yourselves.”
“Well, no,” said Sayona. “But that would be hardly important, if we knew what it was.”
“Are you sure?” persisted Donal, not turning. “Suppose there was someone with a new way of thinking, someone who in childhood forced himself to do his thinking within the framework of logic — because that was the only way those around him thought. Gradually, however, as he grows older he discovers that there are relationships for him that do not exist for other minds. He knows, for example, that if I cut down that tree just below us out here in my garden, some years in time, and some light-years in distance away, another man’s life will be changed. But in logical terms he cannot explain his knowledge. What good would it do you then, to know what his talent was?”
“No good at all, of course,” said Sayona, good-humoredly, “but on the other hand it would do him no good at all, either, since he lives in, and is part of, a logical society. In fact, it would do him so little good, he would undoubtedly never discover his talent at all; and the mutation, being a failure, would die aborning.”
“I disagree with you,” said Donal. “Because I, myself, am an intuitional superman. I have a conscious intuitive process. I use intuition consciously, as you use logic, to reach a conclusion. I can crosscheck, one intuition against the other, to find out which is correct; and I can build an intuitive structure to an intuitive conclusion. This is one, single talent — but it multiplies the meaning and the power of all the old, while adding things of its own.”
Sayona burst out laughing.
“And since, according to my own argument, this ability would do you so little good that you wouldn’t even be able to discover it, it therefore stands that you wouldn’t be able to answer my question about being a superman in the affirmative, when I ask it! Very good, Donal. It’s been so long since I’ve had the Socratic method used in argument against me I didn’t even recognize it when I came face to face with it.”
“Or perhaps you instinctively would prefer not to recognize my talent,” said Donal.
“No, no. That’s enough,” said Sayona, still laughing. “You win, Donal. Anyway, thank you for setting my mind at rest. If we had overlooked a real possibility, I would have held myself personally responsible. They would have taken my word for it and — I would have been negligent.” He smiled. “Care to tell me what the real secret of your success has been, if it’s not a wild talent?”
“I am intuitive,” said Donal.
“Indeed you are,” said Sayona. “Indeed you are. But to be merely intuitive—” he chuckled, “Well, thank you, Donal. You don’t know how you’ve relieved my mind on this particular score. I won’t keep you any longer.” He hesitated, but Donal did not turn around. “Good night.”
“Good night,” said Donal. He heard the older man’s footsteps turn and move away from him.
“Good night,” came Sayona’s voice from the lounge behind him.
“Good night,” answered Anea.
Sayona’s steps moved off into silence. Still Donal did not turn. He was aware of the presence of Anea in the room behind him, waiting.
“Merely intuitive,” he echoed to himself, in a whisper. “Merely—”
He lifted his face once more to the unknown stars, the way a man lifts his face from the still heat of the valley to the coolness of the hills, in the early part of the long work day when the evening’s freedom is yet far off. And the look on his face was one which no living person — not even Anea — had seen. Slowly, he lowered his eyes, and slowly turned; and, as he turned, the expression faded from him. As Anea had said, carefully he hooded the brilliance of his’ light that he might not blind them; and, turning full around at last, entered once more, and for a little while again, into the habitation of Man.