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    More Than Human
    More Than Human
    More Than Human
    Ebook296 pages5 hours

    More Than Human

    By Theodore Sturgeon

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Six misfits, one powerful entity. An award-winning novel about belonging by “one of the greatest writers of science fiction and fantasy who ever lived” (Stephen King).

    Individually, they are a seemingly simpleminded young man living in the woods who can read the thoughts of others, a runaway girl with telekinetic powers, twin girls who can barely speak but can teleport across great distances, and an infant with a mind like a supercomputer. Together, they are the Gestalt—a single extraordinary being comprised of remarkable parts—although an essential piece may be missing . . .
     
    But are they the next stage in human development or harbingers of the end of civilization? The answer may come when they are joined by Gerry. Powerfully telepathic, he lacks a moral compass—and his hatred of the world that has rejected him could prove catastrophic.
     
     Winner of the International Fantasy Award and considered Theodore Sturgeon’s masterpiece, More Than Human is a genre-bending wonder that explores themes of responsibility and morality, individuality, and belonging. Moving and suspenseful, lyrical and provocative, the novel was one of the first to elevate science fiction into the realm of literature, and inspired musicians and artists, including the Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills and Nash.
     
    From the Nebula Award–winning author of Godbody, The Dreaming Jewels, and other great works of science fiction, this is an unforgettable reading experience and a must for anyone who enjoys Ramsey Campbell, Robert Silverberg, or Philip José Farmer.
     
    This ebook features an illustrated biography of Theodore Sturgeon including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the University of Kansas’s Kenneth Spencer Research Library and the author’s estate, among other sources.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateApr 30, 2013
    ISBN9781453295410
    Author

    Theodore Sturgeon

    Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) is considered one of the godfathers of contemporary science fiction and dark fantasy. The author of numerous acclaimed short stories and novels, among them the classics More Than Human, Venus Plus X, and To Marry Medusa, Sturgeon also wrote for television and holds among his credits two episodes of the original 1960s Star Trek series, for which he created the Vulcan mating ritual and the expression “Live long and prosper.” He is also credited as the inspiration for Kurt Vonnegut’s recurring fictional character Kilgore Trout. Sturgeon is the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the International Fantasy Award. In 2000, he was posthumously honored with a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. 

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    Reviews for More Than Human

    4/5

    693 ratings40 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Another in the SF Masterworks series, this one was published in 1953. It consists of three interlinked stories and knowing this before reading will help with an understanding of the novel. The connection between the stories is the development of a gestalt consciousness. In the first story Lone, who professes to be a sort of village idiot gathers around him children with extraordinary gifts: telekinesis, telepathy, computer type brains who live in a cave in the woods and are pretty much sociopaths. They exist by meshing their gifts into one enhanced being. In the second story we meet Gerry who is seeking help from a psychiatrist. He had become part of Lone’s group and when Lone was accidentally killed had become the groups focal point. The third story introduces Hip Barrows who after serving in the war as an engineer ended up in an asylum with severe amnesia; with help from one of the gestalt groups previous members he pieces together his memory and his confrontation with Gerry. Sturgeon writes in a style that is at times similar to a stream of consciousness, while introducing some arresting imagery. This serves to make the gestalt group appear strange and out of the ordinary, he links these passages with more regular story telling and so gives his readers some solid groundwork for the development of the novel. While admiring Sturgeons personal writing style and enjoying some of the imagery I was not always convinced that the novel held together. This maybe because the first story which introduces the reader to the gestalt group is written in the third person, while the second story is written in the first person by somebody who is a new character and his connection to the group is not immediately apparent. This literary style lifts the novel out of the run of the mill story telling of much of the nineteen fifties science fiction writing and I can understand why it is considered a ‘masterwork’ in the genre.The jury is out on this one for me, perhaps it needs re-reading, because I am not sure that I grasped all of where Sturgeon was taking me. I felt that his attempt to wrap up the novel became a little pedestrian, which again was not in keeping with what had been written previously. A strange mixture and one that in my opinion is a little too ambitious and so three stars.
    • 5/5
      Love love love it
    • 2/5
      I know this is meant to be a SF masterwork, but I just didn't really like it or enjoy it. I found it difficult to figure out what was going on a lot of the time, and it was not an easy read. The concept is interesting, but as soon as things started to make sense, another part of the book would start and you're back at square one. I also found my attention drifting at times, when the text started to waffle.
    • 5/5
      Thoughtful concept, stick with it as it takes time for all the pieces (pun intended) to come together.
    • 5/5
      i love it!
    • 4/5
      Theodore Sturgeon's "More Than Human" is one of the strangest and, at the same time, most fascinating novels (or group of three connected novellas) that you will read. It is written in beautiful, otherworldly prose that sets it apart in time and space and begins as if it were a narration of an ancient legend. It jumps a bit between plot lines and the reader may have to read some parts, especially in the beginning, more than once. What is amazing about it is that it was written in 1953 and it explored concepts well ahead of its time such as gestalt or group consciousness, communal living, outcasts banding together, people feeling alone because they were different even when the differences were things ordinary people could not do. It is a story of power and absolute power and of loneliness and disconnectedness. Its about adolescent rebellion.

      Sturgeon wrote science fiction, but I am not sure if you could consider this to be of that genre. Despite the telekinesis, the mind reading, the hypnotic trances, the body asportations, the flying car, and the baby with a mind like a giant computer, it is not a future world or a parallel universe story, but one of unusual people with unusual abilities. It is about the geniuses who seem odd and don't fit in. It is about people who appear to be monsters because they can't understand human morality.

      This book is not an adventure book. It is not a mystery. It is not a life event novel. It is a concept piece, pure and simple, and it is filled with all kinds of concepts and ideas. It is a rich tapestry about a possible leap in human evolution. Murder, assault, suicide, and the like all appear in here, but are merely side notes in the great symphony that Sturgeon conducts.

      There are some that may find this hard to read as it is very untraditional in structure and lacks a normal plot development. It simply may not be for everyone.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant.
      Allow all the parts to come-together.
      Right Now Later
    • 4/5
      when will this be available in Philippines i am looking forward to it
    • 5/5
      Evidently Sturgeon's novel is prototypical New Wave SF: characters emphasised over science, competing ideas and ideals foregrounded while chases and battles sidelined. The storytelling is well done, from prose to structure and plotting. Sturgeon uses a distinctive narrative voice: stylised, meant to represent a non-neurotypical intelligence, and achieves that memorably. He does this three times, actually: the first and third parts are in third-person omniscient; the 2nd in first person, each time following a different character. He pairs these voices with an exceedingly economical prose style: this is a short novel, reads fast, but contains a lot of content in that short narrative. Some of that is the prose: poetic but clear, unadorned, it's the combination of simple words not a selection of fancy or unusual words. But just as crucial to the style is the novel's structure and plotting. Three intertwined novellettes or novellas, a focus on short scenes which show rather than tell, with much action relayed retrospectively (either reviewing memories, or relaying history in brief episodes). There are overlapping characters but from different time periods. Against all this, Sturgeon stays alert both to the implications of his ideas, and also their potential. Sturgeon thought about the social and logical implications of his ideas and built his story around them. His plots and premises often flow because they start not "at the beginning", but in medias res. Such choices grab the reader's attention, and Sturgeon lets the full picture resolve naturally, unspooling details and background until the story's uncertain images come into focus. The denouement dilates from his central idea, reflecting on how human evolution, as he conceives it, raises distinct ethical questions for his characters. Sturgeon's finale accommodates both the preceding conflict and thematic ambition, a mix of plot climax and conceptual revelation.I really enjoyed the concept and how Sturgeon realised it, overall a welcome counterweight to the prevailing Marvel / DC approach to superheroes. While Sturgeon never uses the term "superhero" (referring instead to Homo gestalt), arguably a new kind of superhero is precisely what he describes.
    • 5/5
      Most science fiction writing follows one of several typical formulæ. Sturgeon thinks completely out of the box, and this book is mind-blowing.
    • 3/5
      So this is one of those classic Science Fiction books that make it to the best of lists. It was originally written in 1953, and for being that old, it feels modern in its setting. However, it feels incredibly dated in the story. Telepathy has run its course in science fiction, and many of the ideas are old and could be considered laughable.The biggest problem is the idea of the "gestalt". Where multiple people form something that is bigger than them. Unfortunately, it doesn't work, because it feels like the person with the "brain" of this gestalt decides everything, and the rest of the group gets no say. This concept would have worked if there is a true blending, but theres not. The telekinesis part of this gestalt goes off on her own to teach the "brain" humility. Also, the "brain" can't talk to the calculator portion of the gestalt. So there are serious problems to this book.The second problem is how the author deals with racism and disabity. For 1953, I suspect the author was fairly forward thinking about race. But, with the black twins, Beanie and Bonnie, don't even talk and are the "feet" of the gestalt, used mostly for fetching things far away. And baby isn't really a character. He is a "Mongloid" - which I'm assuming is Down Syndrome, but the author never describe him beyond the label. All he is a computer, able to answer questions when given enough input, but never moves past being an infant. So, its a book that has many problems, and it is full of ideas, even if not properly implemented.
    • 3/5
      A novel about friendship, and synergy, as a new form of entity attempts to live in the community of 1950's America.
    • 4/5
      Next Step in Human Evolution

      Humanity could have obliterated itself many times over throughout the ages; yet here we are. What, you may wonder, has saved us from ourselves? The answer is ourselves, we have saved ourselves because of certain traits we possess. We are social creatures, which means we need each other; that existing without others would be impossible. We are creatures of conscious, possessing, at least the vast majority of us, an innate and also learned morality. While we have many other traits and attribute as a species, these couple keep us from destroying ourselves. And, as Theodore Sturgeon dramatizes in More Than Human, even as we advance and evolve into more powerful creations, without these, well, kaput. In fact, these two traits form the essential parts of the next step, Homo Gestalt, and Homo Gestalt isn’t complete until that last one, morality and its concomitant conscious become part of the whole.

      The full novel More Than Human grew out of a novella Sturgeon published in Galaxy in 1952, what became the middle of the novel, “Baby Is Three,” preceded in the novel by “The Fabulous Idiot,” and followed by “Morality.” The novel follows the merging of different individuals who each possess a special trait, telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, advanced intellect, and finally (though not meshed into the group until the end) a conscious. Apart, each is vulnerable. Together they form a new step in human evolution, a species with abilities far beyond those of humans but grounded in humanity. To really use their abilities to move humanity forward, they need each other, and they need the one thing that will prevent them from destroying humankind and themselves: morality brought to the group by the last individual.

      Part 1, “The Fabulous Idiot” follows Lone, a man who possesses telepathic powers, but no real connection to humanity until he finds Evelyn Kew. This ends in the tragedy of lost love. Lone then finds the poor farm family, the Prodds, who bring him in as the child they never could have. But when Mrs. Prodd becomes pregnant, Lone leaves to live in the woods. There he attracts three children, Janie with telekinetic powers, and the twins Bonnie and Beanie, who can’t talk but can teleport. Later, he learns Mrs. Prodd has died and left a mongoloid baby. Lone adopts the baby, who turns our to possess super intelligence. These then form the new Homo Gestalt.

      Part 2, “Baby Is Three” occurs years later after the death of Lone. Gerry Thompson, an orphan and criminal, can’t remember his life and seeks the aid of a psychiatrist. With his aid, Gerry pieces together his life, realizing that he is the telepathic member of a family, the gestalt started by Lone. He has an uncontrolled ruthlessness about him that makes him dangerous.

      Part 3, “Morality” begins years later with the desolate former Air Force Lt. Hip (Hippocrates) Barrows being found by a grown up Janie. Once a gifted engineer, he fell on hard times, being booted from the military and incarcerated in an asylum. Janie helps him discover his past life, the cause of his current condition, and his real purpose in life, which is to join the gestalt and provide them, particularly Gerry, the a governor of morality.

      Winner of the 1954 International Fantasy Award (no longer awarded), Sturgeon offers insights the nature of human and humanity, and a unique imagining of how humankind might evolve in the future.
    • 5/5
      This is, hands down, one of the best books I have ever read! The very end is a tad too philosophical for my taste, but the rest of the book is so amazing that it makes no difference. I can't put my finger on what makes this such a wonderful and special book. It's just…magical, somehow. Really fantastic!!!!!!
    • 1/5
      One of the worst science fiction works I've read. I recently purchased it through 'Better World Books' for $3.98 and I'll be selling it to 'Half Price Books,' for maybe $.25. Perhaps it's the fact 'More Than Human' was written in 1953 and I read it 64 years later. The book was penned when those on the political left were certain, any day now, Man would blow the planet Earth up. These were also the days when telekinesis and telepathy and hypnosis were the going thing. Reading the book, you cannot tell who is speaking, after character after character is added. ** S P O I L E R A L E R T ** And, after flogging myself to keep reading, I finally discover that, basically the book has very little science fiction in it, but a lot about morality and mores and ethos. Ends up the 'Gestalt Five' characters in the book are a new, advanced, evolved, Man. (BTW: I know this review is written sloppy, but, since I'm not getting paid, live with it.)
    • 5/5
      A book that makes you imagine, in the tradition of the best works of science fiction. It tackles the question of how humans will evolve next, and answers it in a plausible, if unexpected, way. Well worth the read. And a good story to boot!
    • 3/5
      Explores the possibilities of human consciousness in the mind-bending concept of "blesh" (a combination of blend and mesh). By our outcasts we are transformed.
    • 4/5
      More Than Humanby Theodore SturgeonI read this when I was a teen, some 40+ years ago. I can't say I remember anything about it from then but I read almost all his books out at the time. This was nice to revisit to see if it jogged any memories but it didn't. I have too many past books stored up there! Lol! Many must have been reshelved.The story is about a variety of children who have odd gifts and sometimes physical quirks that make them freaks to most.I enjoyed how the author followed each character and the reader got to learn about each one and their gift. Then showed how they meshed together. This was very character driven! Janie was my favorite although the twins were pretty amazing!Some of the first parts were a bit slow but it picked up.
    • 4/5
      Classic sci-fi first published in 1953. A group of people with special powers combine to form a new evolutionary entity. Combine a baby who is a genius and can telepathically communicate answers to difficult questions, twins who teleport here and there and anywhere, the simpleton who can read and even control minds, the girl who can move objects telepathically, the guy who could run the world. They lack a conscience and without morality or ethics could wreak havoc. Find out if and how they get this moral compass, experiencing the consequences along the way.
    • 4/5
      More three connected stories than a novel, but still a classic. The first story is the strongest and holds up amazingly well. It navigates the interweaved lives of Lone, the idiot, Alice and Evelyn, the sisters imprisoned by a sadistic father, Jane the telekinetic, and, to a lesser extent, Beanie and Bonnie the African American teleporting toddlers, the Prodds, a farming couple, and... Baby, though Baby becomes more relevant later. This first story lets the reader be as lost as its protagonists, who are growing up either abused or ignored. Their secret is revealed very gradually and organically. The second story, "Baby is Three", is more of its time -- a classic 1950's narrative trope of some revealing a backstory in a psychotherapist's office. The tone will remind many of Heinlein. It's a very good Heinlein story, but not as groundbreaking as the first story. The final story is the weakest. It focuses on a character introduced in the first story but dropped after one page. This is one of those "amnesiac gradually remembers" stories. It begins well but devolves into way too much talking and exposition, some of it to try and defend and bolster a creaky plot. To make it more frustrating, the closing lines of the second story and the title of the third story already clearly established where things were going.This was one of my favorite books half a century ago. Still recommended.
    • 4/5
      Definitely dated - filled with psychological and philosophical babble typical of an older age. The ending went out with a light pitter-patter rather than a bang. Nonetheless still an interesting read with off beat protagonists and a decent pace
    • 4/5
      When my friend Joe and I read this in 7th Grade we were thoroughly impressed, and still often mention scenes we recall.

      Theodore Sturgeon's characters and story development are excellent. His plots are slightly weaker, but still very good.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I give Sturgeon props for his original, unique ideas and occasional inspired metaphors and I have no doubt this book heavily influenced Science Fiction as a genre. In some ways this is a crude version of X-Men. That anyone was writing about telekinesis and gestalt mutant creatures before James Dean could drive is remarkable. That said, this book was not an easy or enjoyable read. At times poetic, but more often, grating, I confess I gave up and opted to “finish” the book by reading the plot summary on Wikipedia.
    • 2/5
      This was okay but it jumped around too much for me. The "main" character kept changing and I was never sure who was who? I appreciate at least some of the statement he was trying to make now that I'm done reading it but while I was reading (listening actually) to it I was too preoccupied trying to figure out if a certain character was actually a different incarnation of another character or not.
    • 5/5
      It's been well over 20 years since I last read this book. It's every bit as great as I remember it, and more. Quietly magnificent, this science fiction novel reverberates. Like looking at visual art, it's the negative spaces in this novel which perfect it. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Unforgettable. Read it while very young and re-read again and again. Seminal, important, brilliant work. Short though and I wished it was longer every time, but this book is a treasure to behold. Just look at the year of publication – how advanced was Sturgeon's thinking? A must-read and a must-keep.
    • 3/5
      This was very difficult to finish reading... I see now that it was originally written as 3 short stories (sort of), and that explains how disjointed it is. But... it wasn't this disjointedness that bothered me as much as... well, the pseudo-psychobabble in it. The whole middle section is a scene in a psychologist's office, the point of which was only half to continue the storyline, the other half was to explore late 1950's psychotherapy methods.If late 1950's psychotherapy methods still held valid today, it might have been okay, but it was all psychojunk that has fallen to the wayside in the the current treatment methods of "drug 'em", don't hypnotize 'em.Anyway, I suppose in its original era it would have been fresh and exciting, but we've had nearly 60 years of better sci-fi, better "human super-evolution" and better psychological exploration fiction. I'll mark it down as a classic sci-fi and be glad that I won't have to read it again.
    • 3/5
      This seems more like an idea for a book than a book itself. Although some of the individual parts are pretty good, it is disjointed and not as coherent as it needs to be. Nor does it really deliver on the apparently important message about the evolution of human capabilities that Sturgeon is apparently trying to convey. Overall, it was a somewhat frustrating read. Parts of the first few pages are so poorly written that I almost quit.
    • 4/5
      'More than Human' by Theodore Sturgeon - Science Fiction.... Science Fiction????? Wow... if this book had not been part of the Easton Presses Masterpieces of SciFi Catalog, I never would have guessed! But that is where I got it so that is how I tag it! This is how the Collector's Notes explain: "John W. Campbell, who presided over the Golden Age of science fiction as editor of 'Astounding' [Magazine], said the SF potential of rocket flight and atomic power had been used up, and suggested that writers mine for ideas [of] the psychic powers being investigated by Prof. J.B. Rhine at Duke University." This genre was a main focus of SF writing in the earlhy to mid-1050's.This is a book about a group of children with different psychic powers who join as a group and become the next step in the evolution of man. To paraphrase one one character: evolution of the psyche rather than the physical. They work together as a unit in order to accomplish tasks, a unit that grows up together and remain as a group as they grow into adulthood. This is a story of individuals with the ability to have absolute power over others, and how they do and do not follow that course.The first third of Part I was difficult for me to follow, it jumps between characters who seemingly have nothing to do with one another. The only thread of a hint of the story line is that they all have a different psychic power. But keep with it, those Individual threads come together in a powerful manner. As I read it, I realized it was asking many questions of the reader concerning evolution of man, morality, ethics, companionship and being alone in the world. For me, the "end" of the book was more of a conclusion of a third story (the tree parts of this book were originally published as three separate short stories concerning the same individuals) than the ending of a tale. It presents a manner in which this group of psychic individuals can grow, expand, "replicate" and leaves a possible thread for a 4th Part telling the tale of the next important event in thier lives.If you are the type of SF fan who has a focus on aliens, space travel, war on far away planets, this is not for you. If you are one who will accept the idea that SF, if not now, has at one time in the past focused on ideas other than the above list, you will enjoy this book. If you are not "into" stories about the psyche, I suggest you read this anyway, it is bound to open you to a genre which is part of the history of SF writing.
    • 5/5
      I read this book the first time when I was about 15, loved the story but did not understand all the subtleties around it. Rereading it, I still loved the book, but also enjoyed the complexeties in the story. As someone already stated before me " Sturgeon writes like a poet, thinks like a psychologist, and understands like a philosopher" I very much agree with this statement . This is very much the kind of Science Fiction I like to read.

    Book preview

    More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon

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    PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF THEODORE STURGEON

    One of the greatest . . . I can’t recommend his work too highly! —Stephen King

    I look upon Sturgeon with a secret and growing jealousy. —Ray Bradbury

    A master storyteller certain to fascinate. —Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

    One of the masters of modern science fiction. —The Washington Post Book World

    The Sturgeon magic does not diminish with the years. His stories have a timeless quality and a universality which is beyond fantasy and science fiction. —Madeleine L’Engle

    The corpus of science fiction produced by Theodore Sturgeon is the single most important body of science fiction by an American. —Samuel R. Delany

    More Than Human

    A quantum leap in the development of science fiction as an art. —The Washington Post

    One of the best science fiction novels of the year. —The New York Times

    Godbody

    Embodies the very best of Theodore Sturgeon . . . a master. —San Francisco Chronicle

    The capstone of Sturgeon’s art . . . Read it, enjoy it, reread it, give it to somebody you love. —Robert A. Heinlein

    You will do more than enjoy; you will be increased. —Stephen King

    To Marry Medusa

    "Dazzling . . . Sturgeon swerves around cliché and dull language like a maniac. At times, it seems like he’s working in his own personal version of the English language. It’s like taking a road trip with an incredibly eccentric dude: You may know the most logical or efficient route, but the offbeat guy will know the way past the most stunning vistas. Read a little of Medusa, and you’ll see what I mean." —SF Site

    A fine example of what science fiction is supposed to be: simultaneously plot- and character-driven and completely devoid of fluff. . . . A fantastic classic. —SF Signal

    The Dreaming Jewels

    An intensely written and very moving novel of love and retribution. —Washington Star

    Venus Plus X

    "It’s interesting to read Venus’ sexual commentary in the wake of a second wave of feminism, the gay liberation, and the sexual revolution of the ’60s. Obviously, in 1960 the novel was way ahead of its time. It has lost some of that power, but its critique of American prudence still holds." —City Paper (Baltimore)

    More Than Human

    Theodore Sturgeon

    To His Gestaltitude

    Nicholas Samstag

    Contents

    1 The Fabulous Idiot

    2 Baby Is Three

    3 Morality

    A Biography of Theodore Sturgeon

    1

    THE FABULOUS IDIOT

    THE IDIOT LIVED IN a black and gray world, punctuated by the white lightning of hunger and the flickering of fear. His clothes were old and many-windowed. Here peeped a shinbone, sharp as a cold chisel, and there in the torn coat were ribs like the fingers of a fist. He was tall and flat. His eyes were calm and his face was dead.

    Men turned away from him, women would not look, children stopped and watched him. It did not seem to matter to the idiot. He expected nothing from any of them. When the white lightning struck, he was fed. He fed himself when he could, he went without when he could. When he could do neither of these things he was fed by the first person who came face to face with him. The idiot never knew why, and never wondered. He did not beg. He would simply stand and wait. When someone met his eyes there would be a coin in his hand, a piece of bread, a fruit. He would eat and his benefactor would hurry away, disturbed, not understanding. Sometimes, nervously, they would speak to him; they would speak about him to each other. The idiot heard the sounds but they had no meaning for him. He lived inside somewhere, apart, and the little link between word and significance hung broken. His eyes were excellent, and could readily distinguish between a smile and a snarl; but neither could have any impact on a creature so lacking in sympathy, who himself had never laughed and never snarled and so could not comprehend the feelings of his gay or angry fellows.

    He had exactly enough fear to keep his bones together and oiled. He was incapable of anticipating anything. The stick that raised, the stone that flew found him unaware. But at their touch he would respond. He would escape. He would start to escape at the first blow and he would keep on trying to escape until the blows ceased. He escaped storms this way, rockfalls, men, dogs, traffic and hunger.

    He had no preferences. It happened that where he was there was more wilderness than town; since he lived wherever he found himself, he lived more in the forest than anywhere else.

    They had locked him up four times. It had not mattered to him any of the times, nor had it changed him in any way. Once he had been badly beaten by an inmate and once, even worse, by a guard. In the other two places there had been the hunger. When there was food and he was left to himself, he stayed. When it was time for escape, he escaped. The means to escape were in his outer husk; the inner thing that it carried either did not care or could not command. But when the time came, a guard or a warden would find himself face to face with the idiot and the idiot’s eyes whose irises seemed on the trembling point of spinning like wheels. The gates would open and the idiot would go, and as always the benefactor would run to do something else, anything else, deeply troubled.

    He was purely animal—a degrading thing to be among men. But most of the time he was an animal away from men. As an animal in the woods he moved like an animal, beautifully. He killed like an animal, without hate and without joy. He ate like an animal, everything edible he could find, and he ate (when he could) only enough and never more. He slept like an animal, well and lightly, faced in the opposite direction from that of a man; for a man going to sleep is about to escape into it while animals are prepared to escape out of it. He had an animal’s maturity, in which the play of kittens and puppies no longer has a function. He was without humor and without joy. His spectrum lay between terror and contentment.

    He was twenty-five years old.

    Like a stone in a peach, a yolk in an egg, he carried another thing. It was passive, it was receptive, it was awake and alive. If it was connected in any way to the animal integument, it ignored the connections. It drew its substance from the idiot and was otherwise unaware of him. He was often hungry, but he rarely starved. When he did starve, the inner thing shrank a little perhaps; but it hardly noticed its own shrinking. It must die when the idiot died but it contained no motivation to delay that event by one second.

    It had no function specific to the idiot. A spleen, a kidney, an adrenal—these have definite functions and an optimum level for those functions. But this was a thing which only received and recorded. It did this without words, without a code system of any kind; without translation, without distortion, and without operable outgoing conduits. It took what it took and gave out nothing.

    All around it, to its special senses, was a murmur, a sending. It soaked itself in the murmur, absorbed it as it came, all of it. Perhaps it matched and classified, or perhaps it simply fed, taking what it needed and discarding the rest in some intangible way. The idiot was unaware. The thing inside….

    Without words: Warm when the wet comes for a little but not enough for long enough. (Sadly): Never dark again. A feeling of pleasure. A sense of subtle crushing and Take away the pink, the scratchy. Wait, wait, you can go back, yes, you can go back. Different, but almost as good. (Sleep feelings): Yes, that’s it! That’s the—oh! (Alarm): You’ve gone too far, come back, come back, come—(A twisting, a sudden cessation; and one less voice.) … It all rushes up, faster, faster, carrying me. (Answer): No, no. Nothing rushes. It’s still; something pulls you down on to it, that’s all. (Fury): They don’t hear us, stupid, stupid…. They do…. They don’t, only crying, only noises.

    Without words, though. Impression, depression, dialogue. Radiations of fear, tense fields of awareness, discontent. Murmuring, sending, speaking, sharing, from hundreds, from thousands of voices. None, though, for the idiot. Nothing that related to him; nothing he could use. He was unaware of his inner ear because it was useless to him. He was a poor example of a man, but he was a man; and these were the voices of the children, the very young children, who had not yet learned to stop crying to be heard. Only crying, only noises.

    Mr. Kew was a good father, the very best of fathers. He told his daughter Alicia so, on her nineteenth birthday. He had said as much to Alicia ever since she was four. She was four when little Evelyn had been born and their mother had died cursing him, her indignation at last awake and greater than her agony and her fear.

    Only a good father, the very finest of fathers, could have delivered his second child with his own hands. No ordinary father could have nursed and nurtured the two, the baby and the infant, so tenderly and so well. No child was ever so protected from evil as Alicia; and when she joined forces with her father, a mighty structure of purity was created for Evelyn. Purity triple-distilled, Mr. Kew said to Alicia on her nineteenth birthday. I know good through the study of evil, and have taught you only the good. And that good teaching has become your good living, and your way of life is Evelyn’s star. I know all the evil there is and you know all the evil which must be avoided; but Evelyn knows no evil at all.

    At nineteen, of course, Alicia was mature enough to understand these abstracts, this way of life and distillation and the inclusive good and evil. When she was sixteen he had explained to her how a man went mad if he was alone with a woman, and how the poison sweat appeared on his body, and how he would put it on her, and then it would cause the horror on her skin. He had pictures of skin like that in his books. When she was thirteen she had a trouble and told her father about it and he told her with tears in his eyes that this was because she had been thinking about her body, as indeed she had been. She confessed it and he punished her body until she wished she had never owned one. And she tried, she tried not to think like that again, but she did in spite of herself; and regularly, regretfully, her father helped her in her efforts to discipline her intrusive flesh. When she was eight he taught her how to bathe in darkness, so she would be spared the blindness of those white eyes of which he also had magnificent pictures. And when she was six he had hung in her bedroom the picture of a woman, called Angel, and the picture of a man, called Devil. The woman held her palms up and smiled and the man had his arms out to her, his hands like hooks, and protruding point-outward from his breastbone was a crooked knife blade with a wetness on it.

    They lived alone in a heavy house on a wooded knoll. There was no driveway, but a path which turned and turned again, so that from the windows no one could see where it went. It went to a wall and in the wall was an iron gate which had not been opened in eighteen years and beside the gate was a steel panel. Once a day Alicia’s father went down the path to the wall and with two keys opened the two locks in the panel. He would swing it up and take out food and letters, put money and mail in, and lock it again.

    There was a narrow road outside which Alicia and Evelyn had never seen. The woods concealed the wall and the wall concealed the road. The wall ran by the road for two hundred yards, east and west; it mounted the hill then until it bracketed the house. Here it met iron pickets, fifteen feet high and so close together a man could hardly press a fist between them. The tops of the pickets curved out and down, and between them was cement, and in the cement was broken glass. The pickets ran east and west, connecting the house to the wall; and where they joined, more pickets ran back and back into the woods in a circle. The wall and the house, then, were a rectangle and that was forbidden territory. And behind the house were the two square miles of fenced woodland, and that belonged to Evelyn, with Alicia to watch. There was a brook there; wild flowers and a little pond; friendly oaks and little hidden glades. The sky above was fresh and near and the pickets could not be seen for the shouldering masses of holly which grew next to them, all the way around, blocking the view, breaking the breeze. This closed circle was all the world to Evelyn, all the world she knew, and all in the world she loved lay in it.

    On Alicia’s nineteenth birthday Evelyn was alone by her pond. She could not see the house, she could not see the holly hedge nor the pickets, but the sky was there, up and up, and the water was there, by and by. Alicia was in the library with her father; on birthdays he always had special things planned for Alicia in the library. Evelyn had never been in the library. The library was a place where her father lived, and where Alicia went at special times. Evelyn never thought of going there, any more than she thought of breathing water like a speckled trout. She had not been taught to read, but only to listen and obey. She had never learned to seek, but only to accept. Knowledge was given to her when she was ready for it and only her father and sister knew just when that might be.

    She sat on the bank, smoothing her long skirts. She saw her ankle and gasped and covered it as Alicia would do if she were here. She set her back against a willow-trunk and watched the water.

    It was spring, the part of spring where the bursting is done, the held-in pressures of desiccated sap-veins and gum-sealed buds are gone, and all the world’s in a rush to be beautiful. The air was heavy and sweet; it lay upon lips until they parted, pressed them until they smiled, entered boldly to beat in the throat like a second heart. It was air with a puzzle to it, for it was still and full of the colors of dreams, all motionless; yet it had a hurry to it. The stillness and the hurry were alive and laced together and how could that be? That was the puzzle.

    A dazzle of bird notes stitched through the green. Evelyn’s eyes stung and wonder misted the wood. Something tensed in her lap. She looked down in time to see her hands attack one another, and off came her long gloves. Her naked hands fled to the sides of her neck, not to hide something but to share something. She bent her head and the hands laughed at one another under the iron order of her hair. They found four hooks and scampered down them. Her high collar eased and the enchanted air rushed in with a soundless shout. Evelyn breathed as if she had been running. She put out her hand hesitantly, futilely, patted the grass beside her as if somehow the act might release the inexpressible confusion of delight within her. It would not, and she turned and flung herself face down in a bed of early mint and wept because the spring was too beautiful to be borne.

    He was in the wood, numbly prying the bark from a dead oak, when it happened. His hands were still and his head came up hunting, harking. He was as aware of the pressures of spring as an animal, and slightly more than an animal could be. But abruptly the spring was more than heavy, hopeful air and the shifting of earth with life. A hard hand on his shoulder could have been no more tangible than this call.

    He rose carefully, as if something around him might break if he were clumsy. His strange eyes glowed. He began to move—he who had never called nor been called, nor responded before. He moved toward the thing he sensed and it was a matter of will, not of external compulsion. Without analysis he was aware of the bursting within him of an encysted need. It had been a part of him all his life but there was no hope in him that he might express it. And bursting so, it flung a thread across his internal gulf, linking his alive and independent core to the half-dead animal around it. It was a sending straight to what was human in him, received by an instrument which, up to now, had accepted only the incomprehensible radiations of the new-born, and so had been ignored. But now it spoke, as it were, in his own tongue.

    He was careful and swift, careful and silent. He turned his wide shoulders to one side and the other as he moved, slipping through the alders, passing the pines closely as if it were intolerable to leave the direct line between himself and his call. The sun was high; the woods were homogeneously the woods, front, right, left; yet he followed his course without swerving, not from knowledge, not by any compass, but purely in conscious response.

    He arrived suddenly, for the clearing was, in the forest, a sudden thing. For fifty feet outward the earth around the close-set pickets had been leached and all trees felled years ago, so that none might overhang the fence. The idiot slipped out of the wood and trotted across the bare ground to the serried iron. He put out his arms as he ran, slid his hands between the pickets and when they caught on his starved bony forearms, his legs kept moving, his feet sliding, as if his need empowered him to walk through the fence and the impenetrable holly beyond it.

    The fact that the barrier would not yield came to him slowly. It was as if his feet understood it first and stopped trying and then his hands, which withdrew. His eyes, however, would not give up at all. From his dead face they yearned through the iron, through the holly, ready to burst with answering. His mouth opened and a scratching sound emerged. He had never tried to speak before and could not now; the gesture was an end, not a means, like the starting of tears at a crescendo of music.

    He began to move along the fence walking sidewise, finding it unbearable to turn away from the call.

    It rained for a day and a night and for half the next day, and when the sun came out it rained again, upward; it rained light from the heavy jewels which lay on the rich new green. Some jewels shrank and some fell and then the earth in a voice of softness, and leaves in a voice of texture, and flowers speaking in color, were grateful.

    Evelyn crouched on the window seat, elbows on the sill, her hands cupped to the curve of her cheeks, their pressure making it easy to smile. Softly, she sang. It was strange to hear for she did not know music; she did not read and had never been told of music. But there were birds, there was the bassoon of wind in the eaves sometimes; there were the calls and cooings of small creatures in that part of the wood which was hers and, distantly, from the part which was not. Her singing was made of these things, with strange and effortless fluctuations in pitch from an instrument unbound by the diatonic scale, freely phrased.

    But I never touch the gladness

    May not touch the gladness

    Beauty, oh beauty of touchness

    Spread like a leaf, nothing between me and the sky but light,

    Rain touches me

    Wind touches me

    Leaves, other leaves, touch and touch me….

    She made music without words for a long moment and was silent, making music without sound, watching the raindrops fall in the glowing noon.

    Harshly, What are you doing?

    Evelyn started and turned. Alicia stood behind her, her face strangely tight. What are you doing? she repeated.

    Evelyn made a vague gesture toward the window, tried to speak.

    Well?

    Evelyn made the gesture again. Out there, she said. I—I— She slipped off the window seat and stood. She stood as tall as she could. Her face was hot.

    Button up your collar, said Alicia. What is it, Evelyn? Tell me!

    I’m trying to, said Evelyn, soft and urgent. She buttoned her collar and her hands fell to her waist. She pressed herself, hard. Alicia stepped near and pushed the hands away. Don’t do that. What was that… what you were doing? Were you talking?

    Talking, yes. Not you, though. Not Father.

    There isn’t anyone else.

    There is, said Evelyn. Suddenly breathless, she said, Touch me, Alicia.

    "Touch you?"

    Yes, I … want you to. Just … She held out her arms. Alicia backed away.

    We don’t touch one another, she said, as gently as she could through her shock. What is it, Evelyn? Aren’t you well?

    Yes, said Evelyn. No. I don’t know. She turned to the window. It isn’t raining. It’s dark here. There’s so much sun, so much—I want the sun on me, like a bath, warm all over.

    Silly. Then it would be all light in your bath…. We don’t talk about bathing, dear.

    Evelyn picked up a cushion from the window seat. She put her arms around it and with all her strength hugged it to her breast.

    Evelyn! Stop that!

    Evelyn whirled and looked at her sister in a way she had never used before. Her mouth twisted. She

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