“Is it inheritable?” Hamilton asked suspiciously.
“Well, truthfully, we don’t know. I can’t point to a particular spot on a particular chromosome and say, ‘There lies happiness. ‘ It’s more subtle than blue eyes versus brown eyes. But I want to delve into this more deeply. Felix, when did you begin to suspect that life was not worth living?” Hamilton stood up and paced nervously, feeling in himself such agitation as he had not felt since adolescence. He knew the answer to that question. He knew it well. But did he wish to bare it to this stranger?
No one speaks to a little child of chromosome charts. There was nothing to mark Hamilton Felix out from other infants in the first development center he could remember. He was a nobody, kindly and intelligently treated, but of importance to no one but himself. It had dawned on him slowly that his abilities were superior. A bright child is dominated in its early years by other, duller children, simply because they are older, larger, better informed. And there are always those remote omniscient creatures, the grown ups.
He was ten-or was it eleven? — when he began to realize that in competition he usually excelled. After that he tried to excel, to be conspicuously superior, cock-o’ — the-walk. He began to feel the strongest of social motivations, the desire to be appreciated. He knew now what he wanted to be when he “grew up.”
The other fellows talked about what they wanted to do. (“I’m going to be a rocket pilot when I grow up.” “So am I.” “I’m not. My father says a business man can hire all the rocket pilots he wants.” “He couldn’t hire me.” “He could so.”)
Let them talk. Young Felix knew what he wanted to do. He would be an encyclopedic synthesist. All the really great men were synthesists. The whole world was their oyster. Who stood a chance of being elected to the Board of Policy but a synthesis? What specialist was there who did not, in the long run, take his orders from a synthesist? They were the leaders, the men who knew everything, the philosopher-kings of whom the ancients had dreamed.
He kept his dream to himself. He appeared to be pulling out of his pre-adolescent narcissist period and to be undergoing the social integration of adolescence with no marked trouble. His developers were unaware that he was headed for an insuperable obstacle. Youths seldom plan to generalize their talents; it takes more subtle imagination than they usually possess to see romance in being a policy former.
Hamilton looked at Mordan. The man’s face invited confidence. “You’re a synthesist, aren’t you? You aren’t a geneticist.”
“Naturally. I couldn’t specialize in the actual techniques. That takes a lifetime.”
“The best geneticist on your staff can’t hope to sit where you are sitting.”
“Of course not. They wouldn’t wish to.”
“Could I become your successor? Go ahead-answer me. You know my chart.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“You know why. You have an excellent memory, more than adequate for any other purpose, but it’s not an eidetic memory. A synthesist must have complete memory in order to be able to cover the ground he must cover.”
“And without it,” Hamilton added, “a man can never be recognized as a synthesist. He just isn’t one, any more than a man can claim to be an engineer who can’t solve fourth degree equations in his head. I wanted to be a synthesist and I wasn’t equipped for it. When it was finally pounded into my head that I couldn’t take first prize, I wasn’t interested in second prize.”
“Your son could be a synthesist.”
Hamilton shook his head. “It doesn’t matter any more. I still have the encyclopedic viewpoint, but I wouldn’t want to trade places with you. You asked me when and how it was that I first came to the conclusion that life doesn’t mean anything. I’ve told you how I first began to have my doubts, but the point is: I still have ’em.”
“Wait,” Mordan put in. “You still have not heard the whole story. It was planned that eidetic memory would be incorporated in your line either in your generation, or in your father’s. Your children will have it, if you co-operate. There is still something lacking which needs to be added and will be added. I said you were a survival type. You are-except for one thing. You don’t want children. From a biological standpoint that is as contra-survival as a compulsion to suicide. You got that tendency from your dexter great-grandfather. The tendency had to be accepted at the time as he Was dead before his germ plasm was used and we hadn’t much supply in the bank to choose from. But it will be corrected at this linkage. Your children will be anxious to have children-I can assure you of that.”