Dickson, Gordon - The Human Edge

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The Human Edge

Gordon R. Dickson

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are

fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

"Danger—Human," first published inAstounding Science Fiction , December 1957, ©

1957 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. "Sleight of Wit," first published inAnalog ,

by the Condé Nast Publications, Inc. "An Ounce of Emotion," first published inIF:

Corporation. "Brother Charlie," first published inThe Magazine of Fantasy and

Mercury Press, Inc. "Tiger Green," first published inIF: Worlds of Science Fiction ,

Publications, Inc. "On Messenger Mountain," first published inWorlds of Tomorrow ,

form.

A Baen Book

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-7174-1

Cover art by David Mattingly

First printing, December 2003

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Typeset by Bell Road Press, Sherwood, OR

Produced by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

Dedicating a collection of another person's work might seem presumptuous, particularly

when that person is no longer around to give an opinion. However, Gordon R. Dickson was a

strong supporter of space exploration, and I recall when, at a Nebula Awards ceremony in the

early 1970s, he stood up to announce the formation of a loose organization of sf writers called,

informally, Friends of the Space Program. I think he would approve of this dedication.

For

Michael P. Anderson

Kalpana Chawla

Laurel Clark

Rick D. Husband

William C. McCool

Ilan Ramon

Pioneers on the Star Road

BOOKS by GORDON R. DICKSON

The Right to Arm Bears

The Magnificent Wilf

Mindspan

Hoka! Hoka! Hoka!

(with Poul Anderson)

Hokas Pokas

(with Poul Anderson)

The Human Edge

(selected by Hank Davis)

INTRODUCTION:

THE DICKSON EDGE

Wrong!

I know what you're thinking. . . .

(And it's not "Do I feel lucky?" If you're looking at this page, you have a hefty hunk of first-rate

science fiction by Gordon R. Dickson in hand, so youare lucky, regardless of what you may feel. I

wouldn't recommend buying a lottery ticket, however—lucking into a Dickson book may have used up

your quota of good fortune for the day. . . .)

You're thinking, these are twelve stories by the same author, all on the same subject, so there's

liable to be a certain similarity from one story to the next. . . .

Actually you are right about there being a similarity from one story to the next, except that the

similarity is that all the stories are well-crafted, ingeniously plotted, show a wide range of tone

(sometimes amusing, sometimes grim, sometimes a bit of both), and never fail to entertain.

Or, to put it more succinctly, the certain similarity is that these stories are all by the same grand

master: Gordon R. Dickson.

Why should anyone want to listen to Bach's Goldberg Variations, after all? I mean, two sides of an

LP—if you remember LPs—or an entire CD taken up by thirty (or thirty-one, if you count the reprise of

the aria) variations on one tune, and played on one instrument, either harpsichord or piano . . . how

much variety can there be in that, right?

I'm not going to claim that Gordon R. Dickson was in Bach's league (but then, who in at least the

last 100 years has been?), but as with Bach, you are dealing with a high order of talent and

craftsmanship. And Dickson can ring ingenious and fresh changes on one theme.

The theme: when human meets alien, even a more technologically advanced alien, said alien had

better not get too cocky. Humans can be very tricky when they need to be, giving them an edge—the

human edge.

James Blish, reviewing a Dickson novel several years ago, commented that while many critics

lumped Dickson and another sf master, Poul Anderson, together, there was a notable difference.

Anderson's characters might prevail, or they might fail in spite of their valiant struggle, in stories "written

from a floor of brave gloom" (as I recall Blish putting it), but Dickson's characters struggledand

prevailed. Dickson's universe was neither impersonal nor hostile, and the human spirit would win, Blish

wrote approvingly.

I recall several Dickson stories (but no novels) with downer endings, so he definitely wasn't writing

from the Pollyanna side of the Force. (I also recall quite a few Blish stories that I consider gloomy, so he

wasn't, either.) But on the whole, in Dickson's universe, man not only endures, but prevails, to crib a line

from Faulkner. (Washe in Bach's league? You decide.)

Algis Budrys once stated that a sure-fire recipe for being thought profound was frequently to

reiterate that the universe is very big, and insignificant humans are very, very small. After noting that

though the instruments do show that the universeis very big, that doesn't necessarily say anything about

humans. "They are our instruments, after all," he added, "and we somehow managed to build them." He

was writing about a writer whom he praised for having "wider horizons" than other writers who were

stuck in the big universe/puny humans mode. And while the writer wasn't Gordon R. Dickson, the same

description fits his work very well.

So here Dickson is, spinning virtuoso variations on a theme, in stories written years apart,

appearing in many different publications, sometimes with humor, sometimes with grim seriousness, and

always with wide horizons; not to mention a towering talent for entertaining.

And you definitelywill be entertained.

Itold you that you should feel lucky, didn't I?

—Hank Davis

My appreciative thanks to Jim Baen, who had the idea for a Dickson collection on this theme, gave

it its title, and suggested the story "Danger: Human" as the opening shot.

DANGER—HUMAN

For a curtain raiser, this one takes the viewpoint of the extraterrestrials, a

sympathetic bunch of regular guys, who capture a strange monster called a "human" and

make the mistake of experimenting on him. There may be things that extraterrestrials

Were Not Meant to Know. . . .

The spaceboat came down in the silence of perfect working order—down through the cool, dark

night of a New Hampshire late spring. There was hardly any moon and the path emerging from the

clump of conifers and snaking its way across the dim pasture looked like a long strip of pale cloth,

carelessly dropped and forgotten there.

The two aliens checked the boat and stopped it, hovering, some fifty feet above the pasture, and all

but invisible against the low-lying clouds. Then they set themselves to wait, their woolly, bearlike forms

settled on haunches, their uniform belts glinting a little in the shielded light from the instrument panel,

talking now and then in desultory murmurs.

"It's not a bad place," said the one of junior rank, looking down at the earth below.

"Why should it be?" answered the senior.

The junior did not answer. He shifted on his haunches.

"The babies are due soon," he said. "I just got a message."

"How many?" asked the senior.

"Three—the doctor thinks. That's not bad for a first birthing."

"My wife only had two."

"I know. You told me."

They fell silent for a few seconds. The spaceboat rocked almost imperceptibly in the waters of

night."Look—" said the junior, suddenly. "Here it comes, right on schedule."

The senior glanced overside. Down below, a tall, dark form had emerged from the trees and was

coming put along the path. A little beam of light shone before him, terminating in a blob of illumination

that danced along the path ahead, lighting his way. The senior stiffened.

"Take controls," he said. The casualness had gone out of his voice. It had become crisp,

impersonal.

"Controls," answered the other, in the same emotionless voice.

"Take her down."

"Down it is."

The spaceboat dropped groundward. There was an odd sort of soundless, lightless explosion—it

was as if concussive wave had passed, robbed of all effects but one. The figure dropped, the light rolling

from its grasp and losing its glow in a tangle of short grass. The spaceboat landed and the two aliens got

out. In the dark night they loomed furrily above the still figure. It was that of a lean, dark man in his early

thirties, dressed in clean, much-washed corduroy pants and checkered wool lumberjack shirt. He was

unconscious, but breathing slowly, deeply and easily.

"I'll take it up by the head, here," said the senior. "You take the other end. Got it? Lift! Now, carry

it into the boat."

The junior backed away, up through the spaceboat's open lock, grunting a little with the

awkwardness of his burden.

"It feels slimy," he said.

"Nonsense!" said the senior. "That's your imagination."

Eldridge Timothy Parker drifted in that dreamy limbo between awakeness and full sleep. He found

himself contemplating his own name.

Eldridge Timothy Parker. Eldridgetimothyparker. Eldridge TIMOTHYparker. ELdrlDGEtiMOthy

PARKer——

There was a hardness under his back, the back on which he was lying—and a coolness. His flaccid

right hand turned flat, feeling. It felt like steel beneath him. Metal? He tried to sit up and bumped his

forehead against a ceiling a few inches overhead. He blinked his eyes in the darkness—

Darkness?

He flung out his hands, searching, feeling terror leap up inside him. His knuckles bruised against

walls to right and left. Frantic, his groping fingers felt out, around and about him. He was walled in, he

was surrounded, he was enclosed.

Completely.

Like in a coffin.

Buried—

He began to scream. . . . * * *

Much later, when he awoke again, he was in a strange place that seemed to have no walls, but

many instruments. He floated in the center of mechanisms that passed and re-passed about him,

touching, probing, turning. He felt touches of heat and cold. Strange hums and notes of various pitches

came and went. He felt voices questioning him.

Who are you?

"Eldridge Parker—Eldridge Timothy Parker—"

What are you?

"I'm Eldridge Parker—"

Tell about yourself.

"Tell what? What?"

Tell about yourself.

"What? What do you want to know? What—"

Tell about. . . .

"But I—"

Tell. . . . * * *

. . . well, i suppose i was pretty much like any of the kids around our town . . . i was a pretty good

shot and i won the fifth grade seventy-five yard dash . . . i played hockey, too . . . pretty cold weather

up around our parts, you know, the air used to smell strange it was so cold winter mornings in January

when you first stepped out of doors . . . it is good, open country, new england, and there were lots of

smells . . . there were pine smells and grass smells and i remember especially the kitchen smells . . . and

then, too, there was the way the oak benches in church used to smell on Sunday when you knelt with

your nose right next to the back of the pew ahead. . . .

. . . the fishing up our parts is good too . . . i liked to fish but i never wasted time on

weekdays . . . we were presbyterians, you know, and my father had the farm, but he also had money

invested in land around the country . . . we have never been badly off but i would have liked a

motor-scooter. . . .

. . . no i did not never hate the germans, at least i did not think i ever did, of course though i was

over in europe i never really had it bad, combat, i mean . . . i was in a motor pool with the raw smell of

gasoline, i like to work with my hands, and it was not like being in the infantry. . . .

. . . i have as good right to speak up to the town council as any man . . . i do not believe in pushing

but if they push me i am going to push right back . . . nor it isn't any man's business what i voted last

election no more than my bank balance . . . but i have got as good as right to a say in town doings as if i

was the biggest landholder among them. . . .

. . . i did not go to college because it was not necessary . . . too much education can make a fool of

any man, i told my father, and i know when i have had enough . . . i am a farmer and will always be a

farmer and i will do my own studying as things come up without taking out a pure waste of four years to

hang a piece of paper on the wall. . . .

. . . of course i know about the atom bomb, but i am no scientist and no need to be one, no more

than i need to be a veterinarian . . . i elect the men that hire the men that need to know those things and

the men that i elect will hear from me johnny-quick if things do not go to my liking. . . .

. . . as to why i never married, that is none of your business . . . as it happens, i was never at ease

with women much, though there were a couple of times, and i still may if jeanie lind. . . .

. . . i believe in god and the united states of america. . . .

* * *

He woke up gradually. He was in a room that might have been any office, except the furniture was

different. That is, there was a box with doors on it that might have been a filing cabinet and a table that

looked like a desk in spite of the single thin rod underneath the center that supported it. However, there

were no chairs—only small, flat cushions, on which three large woolly, bearlike creatures were sitting

and watching him in silence.

He himself, he found, was in a chair, though.

As soon as they saw his eyes were open, they turned away from him and began to talk among

themselves. Eldridge Parker shook his head and blinked his eyes, and would have blinked his ears if that

had been possible. For the sounds the creatures were making were like nothing he had ever heard

before; and yet he understood everything they were saying. It was an odd sensation, like a double-image

earwise, for he heard the strange mouth-noises just as they came out and then something in his head

twisted them around and made them into perfectly understandable English.

Nor was that all. For, as he sat listening to the creatures talk, he began to get the same double

image in another way. That is, he still saw the bearlike creature behind the desk as the weird sort of

animal he was, while out of the sound of his voice, or from something else, there gradually built up in

Eldridge's mind a picture of a thin, rather harassed-looking gray-haired man in something resembling a

uniform, but at the same time not quite a uniform. It was the sort of effect an army general might get if he

wore his stars and a Sam Browne belt over a civilian double-breasted suit. Similarly, the other creature

sitting facing the one behind the desk, at the desk's side, was a young and black-haired man with

something of the laboratory about him, and the creature further back, seated almost against the wall, was

neither soldier nor scientist, but a heavy older man with a sort of book-won wisdom in him.

"You see, commander," the young one with the black-haired image was saying, "perfectly restored.

At least on the physical and mental levels."

"Good, doctor, good," the outlandish syllables from the one behind the desk translated themselves

in Eldridge's head. "And you say it . . . he, I should say . . . will be able to understand?"

"Certainly, sir," said the doctor-psychologist—whatever-he-was. "Identification is absolute—"

"But I mean comprehend—encompass—" The creature behind the desk moved one paw slightly.

"Follow what we tell him—"

The doctor turned his ursinoid head toward the third member of the group. This one spoke slowly,

in a deeper voice.

"The culture allows. Certainly."

The one behind the desk bowed slightly to the oldest one.

"Certainly, Academician, certainly." * * *

They then fell silent, all looking back at Eldridge, who returned their gaze with equivalent interest.

There was something unnatural about the whole proceeding. Both sides were regarding the other with

the completely blunt and unshielded curiosity given to freaks.

The silence stretched out. It became tinged with a certain embarrassment. Gradually a mutual

recognition arose that no one really wanted to be the first to address an alien being directly.

"It . . . he is comfortable?" asked the commander, turning once more to the doctor.

"I should say so," replied the doctor, slowly. "As far as we know. . . ."

Turning back to Eldridge, the commander said, "Eldridge-timothyparker, I suppose you wonder

where you are?"

Caution and habit put a clamp on Eldridge's tongue. He hesitated about answering so long that the

commander turned in distress to the doctor, who reassured him with a slight movement of the head.

"Well, speak up," said the commander, "we'll be able to understand you, just as you're able to

understand us. Nothing's going to hurt you; and anything you say won't have the slightest effect on

your . . . er . . . situation."

He paused again, looking at Eldridge for a comment. Eldridge still held his silence, but one of his

hands unconsciously made a short, fumbling motion at his breast pocket.

"My pipe—" said Eldridge.

The three looked at each other. They looked back at Eldridge.

"We have it," said the doctor. "After a while we may give it back to you. For now . . . we cannot

allow . . . it would not suit us."

"Smoke bother you?" said Eldridge, with a touch of his native canniness.

"It does not bother us. It is . . . merely . . . distasteful," said the commander. "Let's get on. I'm going

to tell you where you are, first. You're on a world roughly similar to your own, but many . . ." he

hesitated, looking at the academician.

"Light-years," supplemented the deep voice. " . . . Light-years in terms of what a year means to

you," went on the commander, with growing briskness. "Many light-years distant from your home. We

didn't bring you here because of any personal . . . dislike . . . or enmity for you; but for. . . ."

"Observation," supplied the doctor. The commander turned and bowed slightly to him, and was

bowed back at in return.

" . . . Observation," went on the commander. "Now, do you understand what I've told you so far?"

"I'm listening," said Eldridge.

"Very well," said the commander. "I will go on. There is something about your people that we are

very anxious to discover. We have been, and intend to continue, studying you to find it out. So far—I

will admit quite frankly and freely—we have not found it; and the concensus among our best minds is

that you, yourself, do not know what it is. Accordingly, we have hopes of . . . causing . . . you to

discover it for yourself. And for us."

"Hey. . . ." breathed Eldridge.

"Oh, you will be well treated. I assure you," said the commander, hurriedly. "You have been well

treated. You have been . . . but you did not know . . . I mean you did not feel—"

"Can you remember any discomfort since we picked you up?" asked the doctor, leaning forward.

"Depends what you mean—"

"And you will feel none." The doctor turned to the commander. "Perhaps I'm getting ahead of

myself?"

"Perhaps," said the commander. He bowed and turned back to Eldridge. "To explain—we hope

you will discover our answer for it. We're only going to put you in a position to work on it. Therefore,

we've decided to tell you everything. First—the problem. Academician?"

The oldest one bowed. His deep voice made the room ring oddly.

"If you will look this way," he said. Eldridge turned his head. The other raised one paw and the wall

beside him dissolved into a maze of lines and points. "Do you know what this is?"

"No," said Eldridge.

"It is," rumbled the one called the academician, "a map of the known universe. You lack the training

to read it in four dimensions, as it should be read. No matter. You will take my word for it . . . it is a

map. A map covering hundreds of thousands of your light-years and millions of your years."

He looked at Eldridge, who said nothing.

"To go on, then. What we know of your race is based upon two sources of information. History.

And Legend. The history is sketchy. It rests on archaeological discoveries for the most part. The legend

is even sketchier and—fantastic."

He paused again. Still Eldridge guarded his tongue.

* * *

"Briefly, there is a race that has three times broken out to overrun this mapped area of our galaxy

and dominate other civilized cultures—until some inherent lack or weakness in the individual caused the

component parts of this advance to die out. The periods of these outbreaks has always been disastrous

for the dominated cultures and uniformly without benefit to the race I am talking about. In the case of

each outbreak, though the home planet was destroyed and all known remnants of the advancing race

hunted out, unknown seed communities remained to furnish the material for a new advance some

thousands of years later. That race," said the academician, and coughed—or at least made some kind of

noise in his throat, "is your own."

Eldridge watched the other carefully and without moving.

"We see your race, therefore," went on the academician, and Eldridge received the mental

impression of an elderly man putting the tips of his ringers together judiciously, "as one with great or

overwhelming natural talents, but unfortunately also with one great natural flaw. This flaw seems to be a

desire—almost a need—to acquire and possess things. To reach out, encompass, and absorb. It is not,"

shrugged the academician, "a unique trait. Other races have it—but not to such an extent that it makes

them a threat to their co-existing cultures. Yet, this in itself is not the real problem. If it was a simple

matter of rapacity, a combination of other races should be able to contain your people. There is a natural

inevitable balance of that sort continually at work in the galaxy. No," said the academician and paused,

looking at the commander.

"Go on. Go on," said the commander. The academician bowed.

"No, it is not that simple. As a guide to what remains, we have only the legend, made anew and

reinforced after each outward sweep of you people. We know that there must be something more than

we have found—and we have studied you carefully, both your home world and now you, personally.

Theremust be something more in you, some genius, some capability above the normal, to account for

the fantastic nature of your race's previous successes. But the legend says only—Danger, Human! High

Explosive. Do not touch—and we find nothing in you to justify the warning."

He sighed. Or at least Eldridge received a sudden, unexpected intimation of deep weariness.

"Because of a number of factors—too numerous to go into and most of them not understandable to

you—it is our race which must deal with this problem for the rest of the galaxy. What can we do? We

dare not leave you be until you grow strong and come out once more. And the legend expressly warns

us against touching you in any way. So we have chosen to pick one—but I intrude upon your field,

doctor."

The two of them exchanged bows. The doctor took up the talk speaking briskly and entirely to

Eldridge.

"A joint meeting of those of us best suited to consider the situation recommended that we pick up

one specimen for intensive observation. For reasons of availability, you were the one chosen. Following

your return under drugs to this planet, you were thoroughly examined, by the best of medical techniques,

both mentally and physically. I will not go into detail, since we have no wish to depress you unduly. I

merely want to impress on you the fact that we found nothing. Nothing. No unusual power or ability of

any sort, such as history shows you to have had and legend hints at. I mention this because of the further

course of action we have decided to take. Commander?"

The being behind the desk got to his hind feet. The other two rose.

"You will come with us," said the commander.

Herded by them, Eldridge went out through the room's door into brilliant sunlight and across a

small stretch of something like concrete to a stubby egg-shaped craft with ridiculous little wings.

"Inside," said the commander. They got in. The commander squatted before a bank of instruments,

manipulated a simple sticklike control, and after a moment the ship took to the air. They flew for perhaps

half an hour, with Eldridge wishing he was in a position to see out one of the high windows, then landed

at a field apparently literally hacked out of a small forest of mountains.

Crossing this field on foot, Eldridge got a glimpse of some truly huge ships, as well as a number of

smaller ones such as the one in which he had arrived. Numbers of the furry aliens moved about, none

with any great air of hurry, but all with purposefulness. There was a sudden, single, thunderous sound

that was gone almost before the ear could register it; and Eldridge, who had ducked instinctively, looked

up again to see one of the huge ships falling—there is no other word for it—skyward with such

unbelievable rapidity it was out of sight in seconds.

The four of them came at last to a shallow, open trench in the stuff which made the field surface. It

was less than a foot wide and they stepped across it with ease. But once they had crossed it, Eldridge

noticed a difference. In the five hundred yard square enclosed by the trench—for it turned at right angles

off to his right and to his left—there was an air of tightly-established desertedness, as of some highly

restricted area, and the rectangular concrete-looking building that occupied the square's very center

glittered unoccupied in the clear light.

They marched to the door of this building and it opened without any of them touching it. Inside was

perhaps twenty feet of floor, stretching inward as a run inside the walls. Then a sort of moat—Eldridge

could not see its depth—filled with a dark fluid with a faint, sharp odor. This was perhaps another

twenty feet wide and enclosed a small, flat island perhaps fifteen feet by fifteen feet, almost wholly taken

up by a cage whose walls and ceiling appeared to be made of metal bars as thick as a man's thumb and

spaced about six inches apart. Two more of the aliens, wearing a sort of harness and holding a short,

black tube apiece, stood on the ledge of the outer rim. A temporary bridge had been laid across the

moat, protruding through the open door of the cage.

They all went across the bridge and into the cage. There, standing around rather like a board of

directors viewing an addition to the company plant, they faced Eldridge; and the commander spoke.

"This will be your home from now on," he said. He indicated the cot, the human-type chair and the

other items furnishing the cage. "It's as comfortable as we can make it."

"Why?" burst out Eldridge, suddenly. "Why're you locking me up here? Why—"

"In our attempt to solve the problem that still exists," interrupted the doctor, smoothly, "we can do

nothing more than keep you under observation and hope that time will work with us. Also, we hope to

influence you to search for the solution, yourself."

"And if I find it—what?" cried Eldridge.

"Then," said the commander, "we will deal with you in the kindest manner that the solution permits.

It may be even possible to return you to your own world. At the very least, once you are no longer

needed, we can see to it that you are quickly and painlessly destroyed."

Eldridge felt his insides twist within him.

"Kill me?" he choked. "You think that's going to make me help you? The hope of getting killed?"

They looked at him almost compassionately.

"You may find," said the doctor, "that death may be something you will want very much, only for

the purpose of putting a close to a life you've become weary of. Look,"—he gestured around him—"you

are locked up beyond any chance of ever escaping. This cage will be illuminated night and day; and you

will be locked in it. When we leave, the bridge will be withdrawn, and the only thing crossing that moat—

which is filled with acid—will be a mechanical arm which will extend across and through a small opening

to bring you food twice a day. Beyond the moat, there will be two armed guards on duty at all times, but

even they cannot open the door to this building. That is opened by remote control from outside, only

after the operator has checked on his vision screen to make sure all is as it should be inside here."

He gestured through the bars, across the moat and through a window in the outer wall.

"Look out there," he said.

Eldridge looked. Out beyond, and surrounding the building the shallow trench no longer lay still and

empty under the sun. It now spouted a vertical wall of flickering, weaving distortion, like a barrier of heat

waves.

"That is our final defense, the ultimate in destructiveness that our science provides us—it would

literally burn you to nothingness, if you touch it. It will be turned off only for seconds, and with elaborate

precautions, to let guards in, or out."

Eldridge looked back in, to see them all watching him.

"We do this," said the doctor, "not only because we may discover you to be more dangerous than

you seem, but to impress you with your helplessness so that you may be more ready to helpus. Here you

are, and here you will stay."

"And you think," demanded Eldridge hoarsely, "that this's all going to make me want to help you?"

"Yes," said the doctor, "because there's one thing more that enters into the situation. You were

literally taken apart physically, after your capture; and as literally put back together again. We are

advanced in the organic field, and certain things are true of all life forms. I supervised the work on you,

myself. You will find that you are, for all practical purposes, immortal and irretrievably sane. This will be

your home forever, and you will find that neither death nor insanity will provide you a way of escape."

They turned and filed out. From some remote control, the cage door was swung shut. He heard it

click and lock. The bridge was withdrawn from the moat. A screen lit up and a woolly face surveyed the

building's interior.

The building's door opened. They went out; and the guards took up their patrol, around the rim in

opposite directions, keeping their eyes on Eldridge and their weapons ready in their hands. The

building's door closed again. Outside, the flickering wall blinked out for a second and then returned again.

The silence of a warm, summer, mountain afternoon descended upon the building. The footsteps of

the guards made shuffling noises on their path around the rim. The bars enclosed him.

Eldridge stood still, holding the bars in both hands and looking out.

He could not believe it. * * *

He could not believe it as the days piled up into weeks, and the weeks into months. But as the

seasons shifted and the year came around to a new year, the realities of his situation began to soak into

him like water into a length of dock piling. For outside, Time could be seen at its visible and regular

motion; but in his prison, there was no Time.

Always, the lights burned overhead, always the guards paced about him. Always the barrier burned

beyond the building, the meals came swinging in on the end of a long metal arm extended over the moat

and through a small hatchway which opened automatically as the arm approached; regularly, twice

weekly, the doctor came and checked him over, briefly, impersonally—and went out again with the

changing of the guard.

He felt the unbearableness of his situation, like a hand winding tighter and tighter day by day the

spring of tension within him. He took to pacing feverishly up and down the cage. He went back and

forth, back and forth, until the room swam. He lay awake nights, staring at the endless glow of

illumination from the ceiling. He rose to pace again.

The doctor came and examined him. He talked to Eldridge, but Eldridge would not answer. Finally

there came a day when everything split wide open and he began to howl and bang on the bars. The

guards were frightened and called the doctor. The doctor came, and with two others, entered the cage

and strapped him down. They did something odd that hurt at the back of his neck and he passed out.

When he opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was the doctor's woolly face, looking down

at him—he had learned to recognize that countenance in the same way a sheep-herder eventually comes

to recognize individual sheep in his flock. Eldridge felt very weak, but calm.

"You tried hard—" said the doctor. "But you see, you didn't make it. There's no way outthat way

for you."

Eldridge smiled.

"Stop that!" said the doctor sharply. "You aren't fooling us. We know you're perfectly rational."

Eldridge continued to smile.

"What do you think you're doing?" demanded the doctor. Eldridge looked happily up at him.

"I'm going home," he said.

"I'm sorry," said the doctor. "You don't convince me." He turned and left. Eldridge turned over on

his side and dropped off into the first good sleep he'd had in months.

* * *

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摘要：

TheHumanEdgeGordonR.DicksonThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental."Danger—Human,"firstpublishedinAstoundingScienceFiction,December1957,©1957byStreet&SmithPublications,Inc."SleightofWit,"firstpublished...

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Dickson, Gordon - The Human Edge

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