"As the Challon, I realized that the embryo Homer was of low actual intelligence, but high potential intelligence. The dangerous peculiarity of this planet is that several of the higher species have no known or recognized function for the most important portion of their brain. It lies fallow, unused, blocked off much as Timmy's whole mind is blocked off from his service. In eight years I have done no more than form the mere skeleton of a theory to account for that, but the means of correction was obvious from the start. Like the appendix that floats free at one end and serves no known purpose, the brain has an incomplete neural path of an unusual nature that has effectively camouflaged its true purpose. The intended function of the connection was the energizing of that prime center which you have not yet discovered and without which you differ from Timmy only in degree, for you cannot realize more than a fragment of your incredible potential.

"The same condition exists among the higher mammals. Releasing Homer's blocked potential placed at his service the intellectual capacity of a very clever human—according to your false standards—but not of a human genius. If I had not imposed my ego on him ... you see, I cannot help thinking of myself as the Challon, although I know I am Homer ... if I had not robbed Homer of his identity and self-will, of his right to possess and control himself, he would have developed personality, characteristics and aptitudes of his own, appropriate to a canine of high intelligence. As it is, there are false memories of aptitudes Homer never had nor could have. Physical limitations alone make some of them impossible. How could a dog tinker with machinery, for example? Yet I 'remember' working on machines of my own design. Homer's mind, in other words, remembers as first-person data experiences it never had.

"In actual fact, 'I' who speak to you now am no more than the record contained in a book. In terms of personality, Homer is the hidden structure giving strength and substance to a false facade. 'I' am the false facade, faithfully copied from another structure. 'I' am a superimposure of ephemeral data, governing its own employment by a mind that has been restricted from developing its own data. The 'I' that speaks to you has no real existence, though its pattern is being subtly and continuously altered by that which it cloaks. If you put a drop of intense stain and a drop of powerful scent into a large tank of distilled water, you change the superficial character of the water, make it seem to be other than what it is. But it remains essentially a tank full of water, now containing an obtrusive trifle of alien matter in addition to the hydrogen and oxygen that decide its most significant properties. That is what the Challon did to Homer—he released the potential, then accidentally but indelibly stained it with his own personality.

"To me, now, it merely seems as though I first suffered death and then an unwelcome resurrection, awakening in despair to find myself usurping the helpless body of an almost new-born animal. Nothing physical or spiritual of the Challon survived, but the embryo mind had been fed a ready-made identity and so believed that it had already existed as a Challon before re-birth as a dog. Its brain received instantly all 'my' training, so that it became at once 'mature.' What I have endured in these eight years—the isolation of mind and inadequacy of body—have been a blunderer's reward visited upon his victim as a further injury. Now that Homer lies near death—and 'I' with him, of course—I welcome 'our' approaching release from an unhappy situation.

* * * * *

"Wait—let me finish. Your main concern is what will happen to Timmy when 'we' die, but it will be simpler to understand if I explain as much as I can first. Finding myself to be a rational mind in the helpless, immature body of an animal, I thought I was isolated forever. In choosing the embryo to begin with, I was driven by the need for haste and had not understood the limitations of a canine in a human world, nor would I have had any alternative if I had fully understood. When it was too late, it was not difficult to predict my future. I had no means of communicating with the dominant species, Man. In time, if I survived the hazards a puppy is exposed to, I could reveal my unusual intelligence—could even learn to communicate in some hopelessly labored manner. By using my store of inherited knowledge I could, if anyone would take a dog seriously, advance your science. But I could do nothing toward my main goals without exposing myself as an imitation Challon, and that I must never do lest I loose terrible consequences.

"I knew that the life span of my new body was pitifully short. The female had suffered repeated convulsions that affected the formation of the embryos and we were an ugly litter of little mongrels, doomed by our physical imperfections to a shorter-than-normal life if we were allowed to live and exposed to early drowning if we could not quickly charm ourselves into a home.

"The remainder of the litter—my brothers and sisters, if I could think of them as such—were callously placed in a weighted sack and tossed in the swamp, but by that time I had found a home. The Douglas home. Their child, Timmy, was an imbecile whose short-circuited mind lay open to me. I found by hasty experiments that Homer's mind was capable of controlling and manipulating the imbecile, like a puppeteer. The difficulties of controlling two bodies at once are tremendous, which is why Homer always struck you as clumsy and almost half-witted—he had to receive the absolute minimum of concentration so that his exhaustion at climbing the bluff this afternoon, for example, was not recognized in time. Well, there it is. I took over Timmy's helpless body eight years ago—too abruptly and with many errors—but it insured my survival for a short time at least. Now that time is at an end and the greater part of what I must do is still to be done—"

* * * * *

Phil sat with his face averted, his hands clenched between his knees. "The instinct to survive," he said in a muffled voice. "I can't blame you for what you did, but it was cruel! What a damnable trick to play on the parents!"

"Believe me, I know what you feel but there was no other way."

"No other!" He swung around, his face mottled and his breathing heavy. "Whatever you are, you made a Machiavellian puppet-master out of a lousy, flea-bitten mongrel! Was it beyond those powers to heal Timmy's mind?"

"I am not a psychopathic criminal."

"Do you imply that healing Timmy would involve repeating the swindle you worked on Homer?"

"No. I could have by-passed the simple neural block that was leaving Timmy helpless, and so have given him what to you would have seemed his normal intelligence. In addition, I could have completed the work that nature left incomplete in all of you, and so have released his full, enormous capabilities. I could have done all this—can still do it—and still leave Timmy's ego untouched, to develop in its own way, among its own kind, knowing nothing of me for what I am."

"But you haven't done so. Why? Why!"

"I dared not."

"Danger? From a small boy?"

"Deadly danger—danger of infection that might threaten every intelligent race in the galaxy and even spread across the great gulfs of space beyond—"

"All this from poor little Timmy?"

"From what he might thereby become."

"I'm licked." Phil threw out his hands angrily. "I try to get a straight answer and all I get is implications. You tell me an outrageous story, and I believe you. You tell me you've neatly arranged to break the hearts of two of my best friends, and I respect your good intentions in doing so. Why? I love you like a brother, but I'm ready to take a rock and crush your skull in for a monster. I mean it! I could kill Homer with a single kick! I could—"

"I know, and I'm afraid of that hysterical impulse. I know the nature of the struggle going on in your mind better than you do, but only you can fight for control. I must wait for the outcome. When you have control of yourself—"

"You're so bloody sane and smug you with your secondhand suit and hand-me-down knowledge!" He jumped up in a fury and turned his back on Timmy, addressing himself directly to Homer whose patient, pain-filled eyes held undeniable understanding. "Look at you! The telepathic genius with personal immortality—at a price only you could stomach! Too bad you got caught short and had to live in a cur! Tough, isn't it, having to wait for a mere moron to get control of himself! You know all the answers—why don't you control the situation?"

"Because the hand-me-down knowledge is no longer backed by the mental capacity of a Challon."

Phil stiffened as Tim's answering voice sounded behind him, quiet and friendly. Against his will, he turned back to the boy and seated himself again on the log. The boy's eyes caught and held his.

"The morality and outlook of the Challon are my morality and outlook, whether I wish it so or not." Tim might have been making a pleasantly inconsequential remark about the weather for all the importance he seemed to attach to his statement, yet his eyes held the strained, tight-lipped face. "The insight and understanding bequeathed by the Challon are sufficient to keep Homer's mind sane under long stress, and of course—"

His soothing voice went on and on, and presently his lungs expelled a soft breath of relief as Phil relaxed a trifle, still breathing raggedly. Alert eyes watched him mop his damp forehead but the quiet words flowed in an unhurried stream, soothing, distracting, keeping the thread intact. At last the crises seemed behind them. "... So I can only wait for you to absorb the emotional impact of what I've told you. I had planned to prepare you, to break it gently if I could, but ... you understand?" The voice paused, then repeated gently and insistently, "You understand, don't you?"

"Uh ... yes. Homer—"

* * * * *

"He can't last much longer, and so of course I can't. I've landed one kick after another right smack in your emotional solar plexus and you're trying to catch your wind." Tim's hand casually struck a match for the cigarette Phil had put unlit in his mouth and the man leaned forward automatically, puffed, and automatically muttered a word of thanks. The quiet voice went on, taking an even more casual note. "What with trying to examine the implications of everything at once, you've stirred up a fine old Irish stew of fears, resentments and envies, all of them trying to reconcile the certain knowledge that I can be trusted and the essentially neurotic fear that I'm playing you for an almighty sucker.

"Remember, it has been even harder for me to reconcile myself to you human beings than it can possibly be for you to accept the existence of the Challon. The concept of telepathy is not a completely new or alien one to you, but the concept of a nontelepathic civilization was dismissed by the Challon ages ago as a simple contradiction of terms, a self-evident absurdity such as lifting oneself by one's bootstraps.

"It seemed so obvious that a civilized society could not develop without the capacity for intelligent cooeperation, and intelligent cooeperation of any real complexity was impossible without adequate communication. What means of communication could adequately replace the direct linking of mind and mind? Failing any answers short of fantasy, the proposition always remained a sort of classroom joke with us. In fact, several classic satires exist on the subject and one of the least successful—because it seemed too ridiculous—suggested an elaborately coded system of vocalizing. We have a very elementary spoken language and a more complex code of inscriptions for essential records, but neither the written nor the spoken system could possibly be called an adequate means of communication.

"I realize now that one of the satires was not the rather frightening effort that it seemed to be, but a brilliant scientific prediction of the probable development and history of a race of highly intelligent nontelepaths. The composer of the epic pointed out that where the culture and character of the Challon neither permitted nor desired concealment of any sort, a race that lacked adequate communication would have no choice but to live as disharmonious groups of strangers, never truly knowing either their fellows or themselves. He postulated what you now call traumatic experiences which, unrecognized and, therefore, untreated, would fester in secrecy from childhood onward until they manifested as compulsive drives or inhibitive complexes. He invented deranged emotions which you describe as 'guilt' and 'shame' and he showed how they would cause buried memories to erupt in changed form, lead to cankerous misunderstandings, cause unhealthy repressions, and foster frustrations.

* * * * *

"But his master-stroke—and this was pure genius, for it was almost inconceivable—was when he traced the development of his 'nontelepathic civilization' to the point where he predicted criminals, criminal and moral codes of unbelievable complexity, and a great multitude of harmful and illogical taboos, local customs, and regional superstitions. It was a superb achievement of creative imagination and scientific deduction—but not even its creator thought it was more than an exercise in fantasy and perhaps not in the best of taste. The basic assumption was simply too absurd for serious consideration."

"Yeah. I guess we were as indigestible to you as you are to me. Maybe I'm getting over it. Sorry ... uh ... Homer."

"Call me Tim. I don't think of myself as Homer and my Challon identification is a mental-verbal linkage. Even 'Challon' is a compromise simplification."

"I guess it would be. Those cracks I made—"

"Forget them. To what you call the hag-ridden moron jittering out of sight in your mind, so many things equate to a threat to survival. And so many survival reactions outlast their usefulness, becoming essentially antisocial and antisurvival. For a telepathic race there are no false fronts or motives or impulses. In a nontelepathic society, nothing but false faces are ever seen."

"It's beginning to get home to me ... what about that night near the swamp?"

"My poor Challonari. The shockwave of 'my' death left it alert but bewildered. It could not recognize nontelepathic intelligences and tried to turn them aside like the first one. Their deaths are on my head—or on the organic dust that eight years ago was a Challon. The Challonari was confused by the contradictions of my present identity, subtly altered as it has been by Homer's channeling mind, and went insane when faced with a basic conflict of duties. It was like ... losing a simple child."

"So we return to Timmy."

"And to you."

"Me? I'm going downhill fast. Let's have it before I hit rock-bottom and really get around to reacting. And let's have a few straight answers. You could have by-passed the first block that makes Timmy an idiot. O. K., why didn't you?"

"I would have lost control of him at once, of course. For one thing, as an ordinary child his mind would be closed to me just as yours is and I would be a voiceless animal with no protector, my existence likely to end at the bottom of a river in a weighted sack."

"No dice. Remember, I know you too well to believe you'd place your own interests first, much as I hate to admit it."

"As Homer I might, survival being a basic drive. As the Challon-Homer, however, I needed a better reason than simple self-preservation. I have that better reason. It lies in you, in Timmy, and in all your kind. Perhaps you'll see the connection when I tell you that although the Challon are the most intelligent race yet known to exist, Homo sapiens is at present not far behind them. Only more efficient communication and the great strides that it makes possible has advanced the Challon culture and science so disproportionately far beyond your own."

* * * * *

"So the Challon are a bit brighter and a lot more advanced than we are. O. K., they seem like a good bunch ... or are they? Come to think of it, I saw them from your viewpoint which was predisposed to favor them." Another thought struck him and he fell silent for a moment. "You say we are almost their equal at present. What happens—if this inhibited potential you speak of—is released—if Man is made whole?"



The answer came quietly.

"You would have no equal in the known universe."

Phil's face grew thoughtful, sober, while the Challon-Homer watched through Tim's eyes the progress of a calculated gamble.

"Would the Challon—resent—our becoming superior?"

"For the same reason that the present Challon superiority is not resented by races of lower intelligence, they would not themselves resent the appearance of intellects far greater than their own."

"I have a feeling there's a lot more in that answer than meets the eye. Can you estimate to what extent we would surpass the Challon?"

"If my Challon memory serves me, they had no knowledge of any mind-structure of a capacity remotely approaching that of Man. It is a maze, incredibly complex, with far-reaching resources I can only guess at. The Challon part of my mind has the profoundest admiration for a superb mechanism it can only dimly comprehend, but beneath the Challon"—the voice dropped almost to a whisper—"beneath the Challon is the dog, and the dog sees his god." The power of that factor he had not considered.

Phil laughed uneasily, both shocked and repelled.

"I hope you're joking. We sound like the sweet-smelling Flower of Creation! When a dog reaches the level you ... um ... Homer has, it becomes Man's equal, not his pet."

"Until Man's advance thrusts the dog back to an even lower relative position, as it inevitably must when ... if ... Man comes into his own. I told you I dared not leave myself isolated and speechless by clearing the simple short-circuit immobilizing Timmy. Now you see why I dared not go even farther and release—untrained and with no hope of adequate training—the true Homo superior, the transcendent man."

"That's like turning a tiger loose in a kindergarten! Give a man a really high-powered intellect and for all his shortcomings—"

"The intellect is nothing. The data, the circumstances, the influences, the environment that shape the intellect, these are what count. Your theorists say that although Man may some day create wonderful mechanical brains with a creative capacity almost equal to Man's own, you can never create a brain that is your superior. That is true, and the reasoning is obvious. In a more limited sense, your body repairs itself daily but it cannot improve on itself, it cannot spontaneously develop functions it never had—it cannot even repair severe damage without outside help. The same applies to the mind. A sick mind cannot achieve the objectivity needed to repair itself, if the damage is too great. No, the intellect is nothing until it learns. What would Timmy have learned, and from whom? Take a minute to think of all the connotations." Phil thought of some of them, uneasily. "Assume that from the start his status as Homo superior was recognized ... is that a fair assumption?"

"It ... ah ... would sooner or later become apparent."

"After how much damage had been done that could not be undone, since Homo sapiens cannot ever be competent to guide and train Homo superior?"

"Well ... what about what he could learn from your Challon mind?"

* * * * *

"I would have no voice and no assurance that telepathy would be possible. No influence that I could exert on him at any time could hold him, if other factors impelled him to break free. A few months ago I recalled a formula known to the Challon and with nothing more than household chemicals prepared the quick and harmless anaesthetic I used with you. What brought it to mind was a side-reaction reported as a curiosity in one of the scientific journals Jerr ... Dad subscribes to. It had an unexpected side-reaction for me, too, making direct telepathic contact possible with you, but only under difficult and limited conditions."

"There's a fortune in that alone—"

"That was an unworthy thought, Phil, typical of insecurity. I dare not turn loose an immature, untrained, Homo superior, the only one of his kind."

"But why the only one? Why not others as well so that they could work in unison?"

"Don't you understand yet? You are not sane! This planet is a hell-house of disordered personalities, a place of horror, a plague-spot. Suppose I had retained Timmy as my voice and planned on releasing the inhibited potential of many people. I would have to start with one man and that one man would at once become my master! If he wished, he could be the master of all the earth. Could I risk that?"

"We have men of good moral character—"

"By what standards acceptable to all? A good churchman, perhaps, whose first thought would be to bring everyone into the saving grace of his religion? Or an atheist, who would take care that no rascally churchman got the upper hand? Can you think of any man who does not have strong opinions on at least one subject? Who does not have one thing that he is a little bit more afraid of than anything else? One man who could be raised to power first and not insist on at least one positive or negative qualification for all who were permitted to follow? Something they must either be or not be? Yourself, for example.

"Would you suggest that a Russian be chosen first? Or a Frenchman or an Englishman? Or am I wrong in thinking you would 'naturally' want one of your own countrymen to be chosen, purely as a precaution? But which one of your countrymen? Among all your acquaintances, is there even one whom you would trust not to react emotionally on at least one count, thus automatically rendering him unfit to play god? Bearing in mind that the first human being to find his full potential placed at his command will be a titan with the power to prevent any peer being raised to oppose him, would you feel safe with the choice of anyone except—yourself?"

"Are we that bad?"

"At birth, no, but from birth onward you are exposed to infection and you sicken to a greater or lesser degree depending on the concentration of infection around you. Let me answer you this way. Suppose the spaceship were found and examined, what would happen? Among other tools there is a prospecting instrument on board that is a rough approximation of a disintegration beam—it punches neat holes in solid rock by a process that leaves an exceedingly heavy dust behind—for a short while. Then something happens to the molecular bonds of the heavy dust, and the little holes become very big holes. Its principles would take you some years to work out, but its manufacture and operation are fairly obvious. What would be the fate of that very useful tool?"

"I can't deny that its possibilities as a weapon would be seized upon, but with such a weapon—"

"Ah, yes—no one would dare to go to war. At any rate, not with the country possessing the weapon."

"It could stop all war."

"If your part of the world threatened the other part of the world and put a halo around the 'or else'. What would the other part of the world do when the first news of the spaceship leaked out, as it would do immediately?"

"O. K.—I guess you know as well as I do."

* * * * *

"I'm not trying to ride you, Phil, but I want you to see that Fear and a desire for the security you can never know in your present state dominate almost every important act. As a people, a race, a species, you are unsane. What am I to do? To die in peace, leaving you as you are, without hope or help, is against every Challon instinct. To leave unrealized the human potential with its tremendous promise is unthinkable. Your race might destroy itself before your secret is rediscovered millennia from now, and the greatest wonder of creation be lost forever. Even the spaceship which I have failed to destroy with its innocent secrets, could destroy you simply by being found. What am I to do?"

"I ... think you already have an answer."

"Yes, with your consent and only with your consent."

"You have it."

"You don't know—"

"You have it, I said. I trust you."

"Man puts his faith in Dog? Well, it will not be for the first time. Remember us, Man, when you come into your own. Now—I must invade your mind, without reserve. You understand? Nothing known to you will be unknown to me. Are you willing?"

"Another of those Mickey Finns?"

"Yes, it is the only way. I will plant certain inflexible prohibitions which will forever destroy your self-will in regard to certain courses of action—they will be ones which you might at some time feel to be wise, but which I know to be ultimately destructive. In return, I can give you a measure of sanity greater than you have known. You will lose your hags, but you will never be entirely your own master again. You will follow the course I have planned for you for the rest of your life. It is the best I can do with my limited ability, and I cannot guarantee that I am doing what is right."

"And Timmy?"

"I have already seeded in his memory banks—a careful and painstaking job this time!—all the memories and knowledge appropriate to the boy his parents think him to have been, plus other information which will become available to him at the right time. Every day for eight years I gave him the memories for that day, planning for the time when I could pay my debt by releasing him."

"You take eight years that were otherwise useless to him and give him the rest of his life for his own. Fair enough."

"No, his life is not his own. It belongs to his whole race. Your work will be to supervise his training until the time is ripe, and then to awaken the dormant memories that will tell him what has happened between us."

"How do I do that?"

"Think of it as long-term posthypnotic suggestion. It is one of the least complicated matters to arrange. A simple, spoken phrase that you will not remember until the right moment will be sufficient to trigger the memory release. We must hurry now. Homer's breathing—can you hear it? His lungs have almost failed. After I enter your mind, my last act will be to release the simple block that makes Timmy an imbecile ... he will awaken and not know that he has slept all his life until this moment when he becomes in actuality an ordinary, quite intelligent boy. He will not grieve unduly for Homer, and I who have two bodies and am at home in neither of them will be a record that will finally be erased. Are you ready?"

* * * * *

"No—wait. I must know what all this is leading to!"

"We have so little time! Well, then, it is leading to broken hearts, to hatred, and to injustice. Perhaps to martyrdom, perhaps to glory. If my plans fail, your lot will be public anathema as a fool or a murderer, for I will prohibit you from ever clearing yourself by speaking the truth about it."

"Who would believe it!"

"Enough would become curious. A little research along the right lines and you would prematurely learn your own secret. Then a race of mad demigods would be loosed through the void, an all-conquering scourge instead of a blessing. I would sooner have your whole race die with your very existence unsuspected, than have you live in infamy, the unchecked tyrants of the stars. Not even the Challon could stand against you, nor could they coerce a single one of you whose whole potential had been released."

"Then what hope—"

"Timmy's newly-awakened mind will be completely sane. The aids I have given it may keep it sufficiently sane for the next few years, despite infection on all sides. In those years you will watch over him and accumulate the funds that will be needed. That will not be difficult. You must buy the lands surrounding the spaceship and build a laboratory where you will conduct some dangerous experiments, thus explaining the need for an isolated location. The laboratory is only a blind. The ship must be freed from the swamp and repaired in some minor respects, then an 'accidental explosion' one night will destroy the buildings to cover the take-off. Timmy will be presumed killed in the explosion. His parents will grieve, the public may blame you, and you will sink into obscurity. You may live long enough to learn whether Timmy ever succeeded in reaching Challon in a spaceship not designed for his race. My memories and implanted commands will constantly guide and instruct him—"

"How ... how old must he be?"

"As young as possible. As soon as all is ready. Tomorrow, if that were possible."

"A child!"

"For at least a little while he will be more than the equal of a 'good' man. Child, or youth, or man, I will free him from fear and loneliness on the long voyage. If he reaches Challon, they will understand and perhaps not think I have blundered too badly. They will heal him, study him, free him. Then it will be his problem to free his race. If you are very lucky, you may still be alive at that time."

"And if he never reaches—"

"You will never know. Are you ready?"

Phil looked desperately at the setting sun and the long, long shadows, as though he were a doomed man awaiting execution.

"Get on with it," he said huskily.

* * * * *

Very little happened. There was a small lapse of time during which an observer would have seen certain lines of tension vanish almost magically from the man's face—might even have thought that some years seemed to drop from his age. Presently the man roused himself, stretching with the careless vigor of a youth as he experienced a serene peace of mind that he had not known since he was very young indeed. He glanced casually at the boy seated near him—a boy who looked at the world with an air of fleeting puzzlement—then dropped on his knees and cradled an ugly, grizzled head in his arms. A last flicker enlivened the eyes and a dry tongue touched his hand just once.

That was all.

THE END

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction October 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]