first time that your speedster has landed physically upon Arisia.”
The girl shrank, appalled. “You told me to come back when I found out that I
didn’t know it all,” she finally forced herself to say. “I learned that in the tube; but I didn’t
realize until just now that I don’t know anything. Is there any use, Mentor, in going on
with me?” she concluded, bitterly.
“Much,” he assured her. “Your development has been eminently satisfactory, and
your present mental condition is both necessary and sufficient.”
“Well, I’ll be a spr . . .” Kathryn bit off the expletive and frowned. “What were you
doing to me before, then, when I thought I got everything?”
“Power of mind,” he informed her. “Sheer power, and penetration, and control.
Depth, and speed, and all the other factors with which you are already familiar.”
“But what was left? I know there is—lots of it—but I can’t imagine what.”
“Scope,” Mentor replied, gravely. “Each of those qualities and characteristics
must be expanded to encompass the full sphere of thought. Neither words nor thoughts
can give any adequate concept of what it means; a practically wide-open two-way will
be necessary. This cannot be accomplished, daughter, in the adolescent confines of
your present mind; therefore enter fully into mine.”
She did so: and after less than a minute of that awful contact slumped, inert and
boneless, to the floor.
The Arisian, unchanged, unmoved, unmoving, gazed at her until finally she
began to stir.
“That . . . father Mentor, that was . . .” She blinked, shook her head savagely,
fought her way back to full consciousness. “That was a shock.”
“It was,” he agreed. “More so than you realize. Of all the entities of your
Civilization, your brother and now you are the only ones it would not kill instantly. You
now know what the word ‘scope’ means, and are ready for your last treatment, in the
course of which I shall take your mind as far along the road of knowledge as mine is
capable of going.”
“But that would mean . . . you’re implying . . . But my mind can’t be superior to
yours, Mentor! Nothing could be, possibly—it’s sheerly, starkly unthinkable!”
“But true, daughter, nevertheless. While you are recovering your strength from
that which was but the beginning of your education, I will explain certain matters
previously obscure. You have long known, of course, that you five children are not like
any others. You have always known many things without having learned them. You
think upon all possible bands of thought. Your senses of perception, of sight, of hearing,
of touch, are so perfectly merged into one sense that you perceive at will any possible
manifestation upon any possible plane or dimension of vibration. Also, although this
may not have occurred to you as extraordinary, since it is not obvious, you differ
physically from your fellows in some important respects. You have never experienced
the slightest symptom of physical illness; not even a headache or a decayed tooth. You
do not really require sleep. Vaccinations and inoculations do not ‘take*. No pathogenic
organism, however virulent; no poison, however potent. . .”
“Stop, Mentor!” Kathryn gasped, turning white. “I can’t take it—you really mean,
then, that we aren’t human at all?”
“Before going into that I should give you something of background. Our Arisian
visualizations foretold the rise and fall of galactic civilizations long before any such
civilizations came into being. That of Atlantis, for instance. I was personally concerned
in that, and could not stop its fall.” Mentor was showing emotion now; his thought was
bleak and bitter.
“Not that I expected to stop it,” he resumed. “It had been known for many cycles
of time .that the final abatement of the opposing force would necessitate the
development of a race superior to ours in every respect.
“Blood lines were selected in each of the four strongest races of this that you
know as the First Galaxy. Breeding programs were set up, to eliminate as many as
possible of their weaknesses and to concentrate all of their strengths. ‘ From your
knowledge of genetics you realize the magnitude of the task; you know that it would
take much time uselessly to go into the details of its accomplishment. Your father and
your mother were the penultimates of long—very long—lines of mating; their
reproductive cells were such that in their fusion practically every gene carrying any trait
of weakness was rejected. Conversely, you carry the genes of every trait of strength
ever known to any member of your human race. Therefore, while in outward seeming
you are human, in every factor of importance you are not; you are even less human
than am I myself.”
“And just how human is that?” Kathryn flared, and again her most penetrant
probe of force flattened out against the Arisian’s screen.
“Later, daughter, not now. That knowledge will come at the end of your
education, not at its beginning.”
“I was afraid so.” She stared at the Arisian, her eyes wide and hopeless;
brimming, in spite of her efforts at control, with tears. “You’re a monster, and I am . . . or
am going to be—a worse one. A monster . . . and I’ll have to live a million years . . .
alone . . . why? Why, Mentor, did you have to do this to me?”
“Calm yourself, daughter. The shock, while severe, will pass. You have lost
nothing, have gained much.”
“Gained? Bah!” The girl’s thought was loaded with bitterness and scorn. “I’ve lost
my parents—I’ll still be a girl long after they have died. I’ve lost every possibility of ever
really living. I want love—and a husband—and children— and I can’t have any of them,
ever. Even without this, I’ve never seen a man I wanted, and now I can’t ever love
anybody. I don’t want to live a million years, Mentor— especially alone!” The thought
was a veritable wail of despair.
“The time has come to stop this muddy, childish thinking.” Mentor’s thought,
however, was only mildly reproving. “Such a reaction is only natural, but your
conclusions are entirely erroneous. One single clear thought will show you that you
have no present psychic, intellectual, emotional, or physical need of a complement.”
“That’s true . . .” wonderingly. “But other girls of my age . . .”
“Exactly,” came Mentor’s dry rejoinder. “Thinking of yourself as an adult of Homo
Sapiens, you were judging yourself by false standards. As a matter of fact, you are an
adolescent, not an adult. In due time you will come to love a man, and he you, with a
fervor and depth which you at present cannot even dimly understand.”
“But that still leaves my parents,” Kathryn felt much better. “I can apparently age,
of course, as easily as I can put on a hat . . . but I really do love them, you know, and it
will simply break mother’s heart to have all her daughters turn out to be—as she
thinks—spinsters.”
“On that point, too, you may rest at ease. I am taking care of that Kimball and
Clarrissa both know, without knowing how they know it, that your life cycle is
tremendously longer than theirs. They both know that they will not live to see their
grandchildren. Be assured, daughter, that before they pass from this cycle of existence
into the next—about which I know nothing—they shall know that all is to be supremely
well with their line; even though, to Civilization at large, it shall apparently end with you
Five.”
“End with us? What do you mean?”
“You have a destiny, the nature of which your mind is not yet qualified to receive.
In due time the knowledge shall be yours. Suffice it now to say that the next forty or fifty
years will be but a fleeting hour in the span of life which is to be yours. But time, at the
moment, presses. You are now fully recovered and we must get on with this, your last
period of study with me, at the end of which you will be able to bear the fullest, closest
impact of my mind as easily as you have heretofore borne full contact with your sisters’.
Let us proceed with the work.”
They did so. Kathryn took and survived those shattering treatments, one after
another, emerging finally with a mind whose power and scope can no more be
explained to any mind below the third level than can the general theory of relativity be
explained to a chimpanzee.
“It was forced, not natural, yes,” the Arisian said, gravely, as the girl was about to
leave. “You are many millions of your years ahead of your natural time. You realize,
however, the necessity of that forcing. You also realize that I can give you no more
formal instruction. I will be with you or on call at all times; I will be. of aid in crises; but in