Robert Heinlein - Beyond This Horizon

"Have you?" she asked him, and turned back to Theobald.

"There was lots more, Mama. Want to hear it?"

"Not just now. Let's answer your two questions first."

"But Phyllis," Felix interrupted.

"Wait, Felix. I've got to answer his questions."

"Suppose you and I step out into the garden for a smoke," Mordan suggested. "Phyllis is going to be fairly busy for a while."

Quite busy. "Infatuated" was, in itself, quite a hurdle, but how to explain to a child in his forty-second month the allegorical use of symbols? She was not entirely successful; Theobald referred to Mordan indiscriminately thereafter as "Uncle Claude" or "Old Goat."

Eidetic memory is a Mendelian recessive. Both Phyllis and Felix had the gene group for it from one ancestor; Theobald had it from both his parents, by selection. The potentiality, masked as recessive in each of his parents, was therefore effective in him. Both "recessive" and "dominant" are relative terms; dominants do not cancel recessives like symbols in an equation. Both Phyllis and Felix had excellent, unusual memories. Theobald's memory was well-nigh perfect.

Recessive Mendelian characteristics are usually undesirable ones. The reason is simple-dominant characteristics get picked over by natural selection every generation. Natural selection-the dying out of the poorly equipped-goes on day in and day out, inexorable and automatic. It is as tireless, as inescapable, as entropy. A really bad dominant will weed itself out of the race in a few generations. The worst dominants appear only as original mutations, since they either kill their bearers, or preclude reproduction. Embryo cancer is such a one-complete sterility is another. But a recessive may be passed on from generation to generation, masked and not subjected to natural selection. In time a generation may arrive in which a child receives the recessive from both parents-up it pops, strong as ever. That is why the earlier geneticists found it so hard to eliminate such recessives as hemophilia and deaf-mutism; it was impossible, until the genes in question were charted by extremely difficult indirect and inferential means, to tell whether or not an adult, himself in perfect health, was actually "clean." He might pass on something grisly to his children. Nobody knew.

Felix demanded of Mordan why, in view of the bad reputation of recessives, eidetic memory should happen to be recessive rather than dominant.

"I'll answer that twice," said Mordan. "In the first place the specialists still arguing as to why some things are recessives, and others dominants. In the second place, why call eidetic, memory a desirable trait?"

"But-for Egg's sake! You selected for it for Baldy!"

"To be sure we did-for Theobald. 'Desirable' is a relative term. Desirable for whom? Complete memory is an asset only if you have the mind to handle it; otherwise it's a curse. One used to find such cases occasionally, before your time and mine-poor simple souls who were bogged down in the complexities of their own experience; they knew every tree but could not find the forest. Besides that, forgetting is an anodyne and a blessing to most people. They don't need to remember much and they don't. It's different with Theobald."

They had been talking in Mordan's office. He took from his desk a file of memoranda, arranged systematically on perhaps a thousand small punched cards. "See this? I haven't looked it over yet-it's data the technicians supply me with. Its arrangement is quite as significant as its content-more so, perhaps." He took the file and dumped the cards out onto the floor. "The data are still all there, but what use is it now?" He pressed a stud on his desk; his new file secretary entered. "Albert, will you please have these fed into the sorter again? I'm afraid I've randomed them."

Albert looked surprised, but said, "Sure, chief," and took the pied cards away.

"Theobald has the brain power, to speak loosely, to arrange his data, to be able to find it when he wants it, and to use it. He will be able to see how what he knows is related to its various parts, and to abstract from the mass significantly related details. Eidetic memory is a desirable trait in him."

No doubt-but sometimes it did not seem so to Hamilton. As the child grew older he developed an annoying habit of correcting his elders about minutiae, in which he was always maddeningly accurate. "No, Mother, it was not last Wednesday; it was last Thursday. I remember because that was the day that Daddy took me walking up past the reservoir and we saw a pretty lady dressed in a green jumpsuit and Daddy smiled at her and she stopped and asked me what my name was and I told her my name was Theobald and that Daddy's name was Felix and that I was four years and one month old. And Daddy laughed and she laughed and then Daddy said-"

"That will do," said Felix. "You've made your point. It was Thursday. But it is not necessary to correct people on little things like that."

"But when they're wrong I have to tell them!"

Felix let it ride, but he reflected that Theobald might need to be inordinately fast with a gun when he was older.

Felix had developed a fondness for country life, little as he had wanted to undertake it. Had it not been for his continuous work on the Great Research he might have taken up horticulture seriously. There was something deeply satisfying, he found, in making a garden do what he wanted it to do.

He would have spent all his holidays fussing with his plants, if Phyllis had concurred. But her holidays were less frequent than his, since she had resumed putting in one shift a day at the nearest primary development center as soon as Theobald was old enough to need the knocking around he would get from other children. When she did have a holiday she liked to go somewhere-a flying picnic, usually.

They had to live near the Capital, because of Felix's work, but the Pacific was only a little over five hundred kilometres west of them. It was convenient to pack a lunch, get to the beach in time for a swim and a nice, long, lazy bake, then eat.

Felix wanted to see the boy's reaction the first time he saw the ocean. "Well, son, this is it. What do you think of it?"

Theobald scowled out at the breakers. "It's all right," he grudged.

"What's the matter?"

"The water looks sick. And the sun ought to be off that way, not there. And where's the big trees?"

"What big trees?"

"The high slim ones, with big bushes at the top."

"Hmmm ... what's wrong with the water?"

"It ain't blue."

Hamilton walked back to where Phyllis lay on the sand. "Can you tell me," he said slowly, "whether or not Baldy has ever seen stereos of royal palms-on a beach, a tropical beach?"

"Not that I know of. Why?"

"Think back. Did you use such a picture to extensionalize for him?"

"No, I'm sure of that."

"You know what he's read-has he seen any flat-picture like that."

She checked back through her excellent and well-arranged memory. "No, I would have remembered it. I would never have put such a picture in his way without explaining it to him."

The incident occurred before Theobald had been entered at the development center; what he had seen, he had seen at home. Of course it was possible that he had seen it in a news or story cast in the receiver at home, but he could not start the machine himself and neither of them recalled such a scene. Nevertheless, it was damned funny.

"What did you start to say, dear?"

Hamilton gave a slight start. "Nothing, nothing at all."

"What kind of 'nothing'?"

He shook his head. "Too fantastic. My mind was wandering."

He went back to the boy and attempted to pump him for details in an effort to ferret out the mystery. But Theobald was not talking. In fact, he was not even listening. He said so.

On a similar occasion but much later an event occurred which was quite as disturbing, but a little more productive. Felix and the boy had been splashing in the surf, until they were quite tired. At least Felix was, which made a majority with only one dissent. They lay down on the sand and let the sun dry them. Presently the salt drying on the skin made them itch, as it has a habit of doing.