‘I’ll tell you. I’m the central ganglion of a complex organism which is composed of Baby, a computer; Bonnie and Beanie, teleports; Janie, telekineticist; and myself, tele-path and central control. There isn’t a single thing about any of us that hasn’t been documented: the teleportation of the Yogi, the telekinetics of some gamblers, the idiot savant mathematicians, and most of all, the so-called poltergeist, the moving about of household goods through the instrumentation of a young girl. Only in this case every one of my parts delivers at peak performance.
‘Lone organized it, or it formed around him; it doesn’t matter which. I replaced Lone, but I was too underdeveloped when he died, and on top of that I got an occlusion from that blast from Miss Kew. To that extent you were right when you said the blast made me subconsciously afraid to discover what was in it. But there was another good reason for my not being able to get in under that „Baby is three” barrier.
‘We ran into the problem of what it was I valued more than the security Miss Kew gave us. Can’t you see now what it was? My gestalt organism was at the point of death from that security. I figured she had to be killed or it— I —would be. Oh, the parts would live on: two little coloured girls with a speech impediment, one introspective girl with an artistic bent, one mongoloid idiot, and me—ninety per cent short-circuited potentials and ten per cent juvenile delinquent.’ I laughed. ‘Sure,’ she had to be killed. It was self-preservation for the gestalt. ’
Stern bobbled around with his mouth and finally got out: ‘I don’t—’
‘You don’t need to,’ I laughed. ‘This is wonderful. You’re good—real good. Now I want to tell you this, because you can appreciate a fine point in your speciality. You talk about occlusions! I couldn’t get past the „Baby is three” thing because in it lay the clues to what I really am. I couldn’t find that out because I was afraid to remember that I was two things—Miss Kew’s little boy, and something a hell of a lot bigger. I couldn’t be both, and I wouldn’t release either one.’
He said, with his eyes on his pipe, ‘Now you can?’
‘I have.’
‘And what now?’
‘What do you mean?’
Stern leaned back against the corner of his desk. ‘Did it occur to you that maybe this— gestalt organism of yours is already dead?’