People Minus X

by Raymond Z. Gallun

By then they already had two young sons, born of new flesh in an old way.

"Of course—reasonably," she chuckled. "Though I have my moods. Then I don't quite know.... But, Eddie, this is the great, marvelous future, isn't it—the one we looked forward to with longing and wonder? We ought to appreciate it completely."

"It is that future. But now, sweetheart, it's also just the present."

There were incidents to match such restless talk and thinking. There was Mitchell Prell, always groping for new things, shouting down from a cragtop, or from his laboratory, "Hey, Ed! Barbara! Come here!"

Maybe he'd discovered a vein of ore that might be mined, or a strange specimen of hitherto unnoticed local fauna or flora. He remained a scientist, while Ed had become a mere builder of buildings.

More than likely, the woman Prell had married would be with him—she had been Nancy Freeman of a fantastic origin. That he had separated himself enough from his studies to take a wife was a minor miracle. That these so-different two should be together was certainly another. That she had learned to be both tasteful and poised, though no less vigorous than ever, had perhaps been hoped for by the first romancing thought that had given her real being on Earth.

To live in peace, comfort and beauty, Ed now realized, was not a final goal. The wild nomad, like Prell, shouting down from mountaintops, always seeking the unknown and straining to be bigger than his powers—however great they might have become—still had to be served. Otherwise pride was insulted, the urge to learn and progress was defeated; boredom set in, and centuries of life were not worth living.

Besides, belatedly, after years, there were voices, speaking out of wireless equipment in a way that Ed and Barbara Dukas and Mitchell Prell had reason to remember. That this world was now haunted by beings that floated with the dust in the air was a fact which in itself had an eerie, nomadic charm. Three tiny beings. No, now there were four.

"Hello! Did you guess that we came with you on the star ship?... But we stayed on that first planet. Then we visited others. Once we slept under a glacier—we don't know how long. Now we have built another biological workshop. So we will not be lonely. There will be many of us. I see you have done well. What comes next?"

Ed had the odd and startling impression of having been spoken to by himself. But he and a tiny speck of the clay of the half-gods were entirely distinct, even if their names were the same. The vast difference in size, enforcing separate thought patterns to meet the problems of different environment, had widened the gap further.