"Daddy!" the boy howled joyfully.
"Billy!" exclaimed Starn, hugging the boy close.
"How's—"
"She'll be here in a minute. I run faster than she does. She don't want me to say anything about her."
"Oh." The boy was obviously rigged for telepathy and . . . probably Cytherni was right in not wanting the boy to try to act as a telepathic peacemaker. What was between her and Starn was best dealt with in their own modes of communication. "Why all the gadgets?" he asked to change the subject.
"So I can play with the Pack kids," said Billy. "Of course, I can do a lot of things they can't, with all this stuff of mine, and their folks won't let them use gadgets—most of 'em, anyway. And they can't sneak and do it, because their folks know everything they do! I'm sure glad we don't live here all the time!"
Before Starn could frame a reply to that, Cytherni came in sight. He put Billy down and walked toward her. The boy watched them for a moment, and then dashed away.
When they reached each other, Starn said, "I love you, Cythie. I hope you can still believe that."
"I've never doubted it, Starn," she replied softly. "And I love you."
"But I used you!" he said. "That's not something to forgive!"
"Not for you to forgive yourself for, but . . . you're forgiven by me." She looked curiously into his pained eyes and said, "If you can't use someone you love, and who loves you, when you have to, then who can you use?" Starn puzzled over this line of reasoning, and shook his head. But things were going to be all right between them, and that was the important thing.
"I suppose I should visit my parents," he said after a moment, "if I will be welcome in my father's hut."
"You won't be welcome," she said, "but you must go, anyway. They will be more injured if you don't come. Then we can go home, the three of us. Everybody here will be glad to see us leave, Billy tells me."
"And I'll be glad to go," Starn said fervently.
But after two months of cozy, anticlimactic inactivity Starn grew dissatisfied with himself. There were compensations, certainly, such as Cytherni's announcement that she was pregnant, but Starn was a man whose goal had been attained, and he was left without a new aim, a motive for purposeful activity.
Cytherni had attacked her art with a strong burst of renewed inspiration, and Billy was busy with schooling, and the boy had also taken over the workshop Starn no longer cared to use. The boy apparently was brilliant, and his weeks of getting underfoot at the joint research center had left him, Starn thought at times, knowing as much as all the scientists and Pack men together.
But Starn was at loose ends, and getting miserable. Finally he risked a call to Higgins, and was pleased to find that the Defense Minister's anger with him had faded.
"Sure, I can find a job for you!" Higgins responded to his request. "There are plenty of administrative problems in our relations with the Packs—things you ought to know how to deal with. But don't expect any key positions, boy, not for a long time! You've made too many people too mad for that! But this is an expanding field, what with all the research and increased trade and what not. Come by tomorrow afternoon and we'll talk."
Starn thanked him and hung up in better spirits than he had been for days. If he, a revolutionary, could be of some value to the new world he had opened . . . well, so far as most historical precedents were concerned that would be a unique contribution in itself!
Billy came into his study, having detected, Starn guessed, his improved mood.
"Daddy, I know how to think things in a way that telepaths can't read, without using a shield or anything," the boy announced.
Starn considered this thoughtfully, and without much surprise. At last he said, "But aren't you giving the trick away in telling me about it? If others find out from me that you can have secret thoughts they'll know at least not to trust the thoughts they think are all you are having."
"I know that, Daddy," the boy said gravely. "So I want to show you how to think secret, too, so you can hide this."
"It would be a good ability to have in this job I was talking to Higgins about," Starn mused. "O.K."
He followed the boy into the workshop, and half an hour later he had learned the trick—plus a lot about the working of the human mind that he had never suspected.
"How did you get onto this?" he asked.
"By turning the gadgets on myself, instead of the environment," the boy replied. "Mommy thinks I have a Narcissus complex, and I guess I have a little. Anyway, I wanted to look at me, and when I did, one of the things I learned was how to think secret."
Starn chuckled and regarded the boy proudly. "Anything else important in you?" he asked.
Billy nodded. "I guess I can tell you, now that you can hide it: That theory about a communication line between the unconscious and the genes is right, only the line don't work very well, or very often. I found how to make it work good, in me or in anybody."
"You mean," asked Starn through a suddenly dry throat, "that you can order genetic changes of any kind you wish?"
"Uh-huh," the boy nodded.
"Billy," Starn began tightly, "you haven't meddled—"
"Oh, no. You and Mommy wouldn't like that! My baby sister will be pretty much like me, I guess. But my own children—"
Starn's knees felt weak, so he sank into a chair, staring at his seven-year-old son.
At least the boy wasn't going off half-cocked, testing his new-found ability of genetic manipulation. Maybe by the time he was old enough to have children of his own he also would have the wisdom.
Or would he? Did anybody ever get that wise? Wise enough and knowledgeable enough to make balanced and desirable genetic changes? Capable of deciding that which generations beyond count had puzzled over with total lack of success—what, precisely, should be the nature of the man who followed man?
Could any human, with his finite knowledge, ever answer a question that posed such infinite possibilities and complexities? Why have a god, such as the Great Gene, if you did not mean to leave such matters in his hands?
Billy was looking at him with a slight smile. "Gosh, Daddy, you're an awful alarmist!" he said soothingly and with a touch of amusement. "It won't be that hard to do." Starn, a revolutionary who had ripped the status quo asunder and filled countless complacent lives with the uncertain gales of change, continued to stare at his son, shocked to the core of his being by the realization that his own grandchildren would be Ultimate Novo!
Or . . . something!
Afterword
Baen Books has now reissued the complete writings of Howard L. Myers in two volumes. Below, for those readers interested, we append the complete bibliography of the author. All of Myers' stories were short fiction except for his one novel, Cloud Chamber—although if both parts are combined, as we did in this volume, The Ultimo Novo constitutes a second novel.
Eric Flint and Guy Gordon
Title of story—Pen-name —Date First publication— Volume
The Reluctant Weapon—Dec 1952 Galaxy —1
Lost Calling —Verge Foray —Sept 1967 Analog —1
Practice! —Verge Foray —Mar 1968 Analog —1
His Master's Vice —Verge Foray —May 1968 Analog —2
The Creatures of Man —Verge Foray —May 1968 IF —1
Partner (aka "Duplex") —Verge Foray —June 1968 Analog —1
The Infinity Sense —Verge Foray —Nov. 1968 Analog —2
The Mind-Changer —Verge Foray —July 1969 Analog —2
Ten Percent of Glory —Oct 1969 Fantastic —2
Questor —Jan. 1970 Amazing —1
The Pyrophylic Saurian —Jan. 1970 Analog —2
Psychovore June —1970 Fantastic —1
Heavy Thinker —Aug 1970 Analog —1
Forever Enemy —Dec. 1970 Analog —1
Soul Affrighted —Jan 1971 Amazing —2
Polywater Doodle —Feb 1971 Analog —2
Bowerbird —Verge Foray —Feb 1971 Fantastic —2
/> Fit For a Dog —Sept 1971 Magazine of F&SF —1
The Other Way Around —1971 Infinity 2 —1
All Around the Universe —Jan 1972 Magazine of F&SF —1
War in Our Time —Mar 1972 Analog —1
Misinformation —April 1972 Analog —1
Out, Wit! —June 1972 Analog —1
Man Off a White Horse —July 1972 Analog —2
Health Hazard —Jan 1973 Analog —1
The Earth of Nenkunal —Jan. 1974 Fantastic —1
Little Game —Verge Foray —June 1974 Galaxy —1
The Frontliners —Verge Foray —July 1974 Galaxy —1
Cloud Chamber —1977 Popular Library —2
Note: "Volume" refers to the Baen Books volume in which the story appears. The title of Volume 1 is The Creatures of Man, that of Volume 2, A Sense of Infinity.
THE END
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