Gilead did; he knew in fact that he was already beyond the point of no return. With the destruction of the films went his last chance of rehabilitating his former main persona. This gave him no worry; the matter was done. He had become aware that from the time he had admitted that he understood the first message this man had offered him concealed in a double deck of cards he had no longer been a free actor, his moves had been constrained by moves made by Baldwin. Yet there was no help for it; his future lay here or nowhere.

"I know it; go ahead."

"I know what your mental reservations are, Joe; you are simply accepting risk; not promising loyalty."

"Yes but why are you considering taking a chance on me?"

Baldwin was more serious in manner than he usually allowed himself to be. ТYou're an able man, Joe. You have the savvy and the moral courage to do what is reasonable in an odd situation rather than what is conventional.У

ТThat's why you want me?У

"Partly that. Partly because I like the way you catch on to a new card game." He grinned. "And even partly because Gail likes the way you behave with a colt."

"Gail? What's she got to do with it?"

"She reported on you to me about five minutes ago, during the raid."

"Hmm go ahead."

"You've been warned." For a moment Baldwin looked almost sheepish. "I want you to take what I say next at its face value, Joe don't laugh."

"Okay."

"You asked what I was. I'm sort of the executive secretary of this branch of an organization of supermen."

"I thought so."

"Eh? How long have you known?"

"Things added up. The card game, your reaction time. I knew it when you destroyed the films.'*

"Joe, what is a superman?"

Gilead did not answer.

"Very well, let's chuck the term," Baldwin went on. "It's been overused and misused and beat up until it has mostly comic connotations. I used it for shock value and I didn't shock you. The term 'supermen' has come to have a fairy tale meaning, conjuring up pictures of x-ray eyes, odd sense or^ns, double hearts, uncuttable skin, steel muscles an adolescent's dream of the dragon-killing hero. Tripe, of course. Joe, what is a man? What is man that makes him more than an animal? Settle that and we'll take a crack at denning a superman or New Man, konw novis, who must displace homo sapiens is displacing him because he is better able to survive than is homo sap. I'm not trying to define myself, I'll leave it up to my associates and the inexorable processes of time as to whether or not I am a superman, a member of the new species of man same test to apply to you."

"Me?"

"You. You show disturbing symptoms of being homo novis, Joe, in a sloppy, ignorant, untrained fashion. Not likely, but you just might be one of the breed. Now what is man? What is the one thing he can do better than animals which is so strong a survival factor that it outweighs all the things that animals of one sort or another can do much better than he can?"

"He can think,"

"I fed you that answer; no prize for it. Okay, you pass yourself off a man; let's see you do something, What is the one possible conceivable factor or factors, if you prefer which the hypothetical superman could have, by mutation or magic or any means, and which could be added to this advantage which man already has and which has enabled him to dominate this planet against the unceasing opposition of a million other species of fauna? Some factor that would make the domination of man by his successor, as inevitable as your domination over a hound dog? Think, Joe. What is the necessary direction of evolution to the next dominant species?"

Giiead engaged in contemplation for what was for him a long time. There were so many lovely attributes that a man might have: to be able to see both like a telescope and microscope, to see the insides of things, to see throughout the spectrum, to have hearing of the same order, to be immune to disease, to grow a new arm or leg, to fly through the air without bothering with silly gadgets like helicopters or jets, to walk unharmed the ocean bottom, to work without tiring

Yet the eagle could fly and he was nearly extinct, even though his eyesight was better than man's. A dog has better smell and hearing; seals swim better, balance better, and furthermore can store oxygen. Bats can survive where men would starve or die of hardship; they are smart and pesky hard to kill. Rats could

Wait! Could tougher, smarter rats displace man? No, it Just wasn't in them; too small a brain.

"To be able to think better," Gilead answered almost instantly. "Hand the man a cigar! Supermen are superthinkers; anything else is a side issue. I'll allow the possibility ofsuper-somethings which might exterminate or dominate mankind other than by outsmarting him in his own racket thought. But I deny that it is possible for a man to conceive in discrete terms what such a super-something would be or how this something would win out. New Man will beat out homo sap in homo sap's own specialty rational thought, the ability to recognize data, store them, integrate them, evaluate correctly the result, and arrive at a correct decision. That is how man got to be champion; the creature who can do it better is the coming champion. Sure, there are other survival factors, good health, good sense organs, fast reflexes, but they aren't even comparable, as the long, rough history of mankind has proved over and over Marat in his bath, Roosevelt in his wheelchair, Caesar with his epilepsy and his bad stomach. Nelson with one eye and one arm, blind Milton; when the chips are down it's brain that wins, not the body's tools.'

"Stop a moment," said Gilead. "How about E.S.P.?

Baldwin shrugged. "I'm not sneering at extra-sensory perception any more than I would at exceptional eyesight E.S.P. is not in the same league with the ability to think correctly. E.S.P. is a grab bag name for the means other than the known sense organs by which the brain may gather data but the trick that pays off with first prize is to make use of that data, to reason about it. If you would like a telepathic hookup to Shanghai, I can arrange it; we've got operators at both ends but you can get whatever data you might happen to need from Shanghai by phone with less trouble, less chance of a bad connection, and less danger of somebody listening in. Telepaths can't pick up a radio message; it's not the same wave band."

"What wave band is it?"

"Later, later. You've got a lot to leam."

"I wasn't thinking especially of telepathy. I was thinking of all parapsychological phenomena."

"Same reasoning. Appellation would be nice, if telekinetics had gotten that far which it ain't. But a pick-up truck moves things handily enough. Television in the hands of an intelligent man counts for more than clairvoyance in a moron. Quit wasting my time, Joe."

"Sorry."

"We defined thinking as integrating data and arriving at correct answers. Look around you. Most people do that stunt just well enough to get to the corner store and back without breaking a leg. If the average man thinks at all, he^ does silly things like generalizing from a single datum. He uses one-valued logics. If he is exceptionally bright, he may use twovalued, 'either-or' logic to arrive at his wrong answers. If he is hungry, hurt, or personally interested in the answer, he can't use any sort of logic and will discard an observed fact as blithely as he will stake his life on a piece of wishful thinking. He uses the technical miracles created by superior men without wonder nor surprise, as a kitten accepts a bowl of milk. Far from aspiring to higher reasoning, he is not even aware that higher reasoning exists. He classes his own mental process as being of the same sort as the genius of an Einstein. Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.

"For explanations of a universe that confuses him he seizes onto numerology, astrology, hysterical religions, and other fancy ways to go crazy. Having accepted such glorified nonsense, facts make no impression on him, even if at the cost of his own life. Joe, one of the hardest things to believe is the abysmal depth of human stupidity.