Mutants Read online

  Dimly, Captain Gorbel saw where Hoqqueah was leading him, and he did not like what he saw. The seal-man, in his own maddeningly indirect way, was arguing his right to be considered an equal in fact as well as in law. He was arguing it, however, in a universe of discourse totally unfamiliar to Captain Gorbel, with facts whose validity he alone knew and whose relevance he alone could judge. He was in short, loading the dice, and the last residues of Gorbel’s tolerance were evaporating rapidly.

  “Of course there was resistance back there at the beginning,” Hoqqueah said. “The kind of mind that had only recently been persuaded that colored men are human beings was quick to take the attitude that an Adapted Man—any Adapted Man—was the social inferior of the ‘primary’ or basic human type, the type that lived on Earth. But it was also a very old idea on the Earth that basic humanity inheres in the mind, not in the form.

  “You see, Captain, all this might still have been prevented had it been possible to maintain the attitude that changing the form even in part makes a man less of a man than he was in the ‘primary’ state. But the day has come when that attitude is no longer tenable—a day that is the greatest of all moral watersheds for our race, the day that is to unite all our divergent currents of attitudes toward each other into one common reservoir of brotherhood and purpose. You and I are very fortunate to be on the scene to see it.”

  “Very interesting,” Gorbel said coldly. “But all those things happened a long time ago, and we know very little about this part of the galaxy these days. Under the circumstances—which you’ll find clearly written out in the log, together with the appropriate regulations—I’m forced to place the ship on emergency alert beginning tomorrow, and continuing until your team disembarks. I’m afraid that means that henceforth all passengers will be required to stay in quarters.”

  Hoqqueah turned and arose. His eyes were still warm and liquid, but there was no longer any trace of merriment in them.

  “I know very well what it means,” he said. “And to some extent I understand the need—though I had been hoping to see the planet of our birth first from space. But I don’t think you quite understood me, Captain. The moral watershed of which I spoke is not in the past. It is now. It began the day that the Earth itself became no longer habitable for the so-called basic human type. The flowing of the streams toward the common reservoir will become bigger and bigger as word spreads through the galaxy that Earth itself has been seeded with Adapted Men. With t lat news will go a shock of recognition—the shock of realizing that the ‘basic’ types are now, and have been for a long time, a very small minority, despite their pretensions.”

  Was Hoqqueah being Indefeasible?

  Or—

  “Before I go, let me ask: you this one question, Captain. Down there is your home planet, md my team and I will be going out on its surface before long. Do you dare to follow us out of the ship?”

  “And why should I?” Go:bel said.

  “Why, to show the supc riority of the basic type, Captain,” Hoqqueah said softly. “Surely rou cannot admit that a pack of seal-men are your betters, on your ov n ancestral ground!”

  He bowed and went to the door. Just before he reached it, he turned and looked speculat vely at Gorbel and at Lieutenant Averdor, who was staring at him witt an expression of rigid fury.

  “Or can you?” he said. * It will be interesting to see how you manage to comport yourselves 2 s a minority. I think you lack practice.”

  He went out. Both Gorb & and Averdor turned jerkily to the screen, and Gorbel turned it on. The image grew, steadied, settled down.

  When the next trick car le on duty, both men were still staring at the vast and tumbled desert of the Earth.