‘God!’
She made a short and painful laugh. ‘Yes, Hip. I did it to you. I didn’t know then of course. I just wanted to interest Gerry in something.
‘He was interested all right. He asked Baby about it and got the answer pronto. You see, Lone built that thing before Gerry came to live with us. We’d forgotten about it pretty much.’
‘Forgotten! A thing like that? ’
‘Look, we don’t think like other people.’
‘You don’t,’ he said thoughtfully and, ’Why should you?’
‘Lone built it for the old farmer, Prodd. That was just like Lone. A gravity generator, to increase and decrease the weight of Prodd’s old truck so he could use it as a tractor. All because Prodd’s horse died and he couldn’t afford another.’
‘No!’
‘Yes. He was an idiot all right. Well, he asked Baby what effect it would have if this invention got out and Baby said plenty. He said it would turn the whole world upside down, worse than the industrial revolution. Worse than anything that ever happened. He said if things went one way we’d have such a war, you wouldn’t believe it. If they went the other way, science would go too far, too fast. Seems that gravities is the key to everything. It would lead to the addition of one more item to the Unified Field—what we now call psychic energy, or „psionics”.’
‘Matter, energy, space, time, and psyche,’ he breathed, awed.