Free Thunder and Roses by Theodore Sturgeon Page A

Binnie’s right. Maybe it would be like the grim gorilla, too.” He wet his lips. “Maybe both. An extension of the basic urges—hunger and sex and self-preservation, but carried so far that in self-preservation he might try to save humanity purely to keep it from killing him off when everything went to blazes.”
    “That’s interesting,” said Robin. “Miss McCarthy?”
    “I think,” she said slowly, “that he would be something quite beyond our understanding. I think that physically he would be superb—not muscle-bound, no; but balanced and almost impervious to diseases, with the kind of reflexes which would make him almost invulnerable to any physical accident. But the big difference would be in the mind, and I can’t describe that. He couldn’t describe it himself. If he tried, he would be like a teacher—a really good teacher—trying to teach algebra to a class of well-trained, unusually intelligent—chimpanzees.”
    “Superman!” said Robin. “Miss Effingwell?”
    He looked directly at Peg, who, just in time, checked herself from looking behind her to see whom he was talking to. “M-me?” she squeaked stupidly. “I really don’t know, Ro—uh, Freddy. I think Miss McCarthy has the right idea. What do you think?”
    Laughing, Robin rose and tossed a bill on the table. “It would be a man with such profound understanding that he could define maturity in a sentence. A simple sentence. He wouldn’t be asking other people what they thought. Good night, chillun. Going my way, Miss Effingwell?”
    Peg nodded mutely.
    “We wus robbed!” Cortlandt called after them. “You have an answer tucked away in your insight, Freddy!”
    “Sure I have,” winked Robin, “and I’m taking it outsight with me!”
    Followed by reverent groans, Robin and Peg departed.
    Out on the street, Robin squeezed her upper arm and said, “Hello, Peg.…” When he spoke quietly, his voice was almost the same as the one she remembered.
    She said, “Oh, Robin—”
    “How long have you been looking for me?”
    “Three months. Ever since you—”
    “Yes. Why?”
    “I wanted to know how you were. I wanted to know what was happening to you. Your glands—”
    “I can assume your clinical interest. That’s not what I meant by
why
. So—why?”
    She said nothing. He shrugged. “I know. I just wanted to hear you say it. No—” he said hastily, “don’t say it now. I was playing with you. I’m sorry.”
    The “I’m sorry,” was an echo, too. “Where are we going?”
    “That depends,” said Robin. “We’ll talk first.”
    He led the way across Washington Square South and up wandering West Fourth Street. Around the corner of Barrow Street was a dimly lit restaurant, once a stable, with flagstone flooring and field-stone walls. The tables were candlelit, the candles set in multicolored holders made of the drippings of the countless candles which had glimmered there before. A speaker, high up, murmured classical music. They found a table and Robin ordered sherry. The sound of his voice brought sharply to her their silence with each other; she had never been silent with Robin before. She felt a togetherness, a sharing, which was a new thing; he was not so evident to her as
they
were, listening to the music and watching the tilt and twist of reflected candle flames in the meniscus of their wine.
    When the music permitted, and a little after, she asked, “Where have you been?”
    “Nowhere. Right here in New York. And in the back room of my Westchester place. Sandy Hook, for a while. You know—around.”
    “Why have you been hiding?”
    He looked quickly at her and away. “Have I changed?”
    “You certainly have.”
    “A lot,” he agreed. “And I knew it. I didn’t want anyone else to know it. I didn’t want anyone to watch it happen. It’s happened fast. It’s happening fast. I—I don’t know where it’s going.”
    “Have you been sick?”
    “Oh, no—well, some aches in my hands and face and