‘None I ever heard of.’
‘I got to know about that,’ he said heavily.’ There is such a thing. I want to know if it ever happened before.’
‘I can’t see how anything of the sort could exist.’
‘It does. A part that fetches, a part that figures, a part that finds out, and a part that talks.’
‘Talks? Only humans talk.’
‘I know,’ he said, and got up and went away.
I looked and looked for such a book but found nothing remotely like it. I came back and told him so. He was still a very long time, looking off to the blue-on-blue line of the hilly horizon. Then he drove those about-to-spin irises at me and searched.
‘You learn, but you don’t think,’ he said, and looked again at the hills.
‘This all happens with humans,’ he said eventually. ‘It happens piece by piece right under folks’ noses, and they don’t see it. You got mind-readers. You got people can move things with their mind. You got people can move themselves with their mind. You got people can figure anything out if you just think to ask them. What you ain’t got is the one kind of person who can pull ‘em all together, like a brain pulls together the parts that press and pull and feel heat and walk and think and all the other things.
‘I’m one,’ he finished suddenly. Then he sat still for so long I thought he had forgotten me.