“I know a little of that already, O omniscient one. What is all this leading up to?”

“Simply that in spite of all which has been accomplished, there’s still a long ways to go… South of us is anarchic barbarism. We have precarious contact with some towns in Latin America, Russia, China, Australia, and South Africa, otherwise we’re an island of, shall I say, civilization in a planetary sea of savagery and desolation. What will come of that? Or still more important—what will come of the mutants?”

Karen’s eyes were haggard as they searched Alaric’s unheeding face. “Perhaps at last—the superman,” she whispered.

“Not at all probable, dear. You read the official book explaining this thing. Since most mutations are recessive, though they do tend to follow certain patterns, there must have been an incredible totality of altered genes for so many to find their mates and show up in the first generation. Even after the radioactivity is gone, there’ll be all those unmatched genes, waiting for a complement to become manifest. For several centuries, there’ll be no way to tell what sort of children any couple will have, unless the geneticists figure out some system we don’t even suspect at present. Even then, the mutated genes would still be there; we couldn’t do anything about that. God only knows what the end result will be—but it won’t be human.”

“There may be other senses of that word.”

“There will be, inevitably. But they won’t be today’s.”

“Still—if all the favorable characteristics showed up in one individual, he’d be a superman.”

“You assume no unfavorable ones, possibly linked, will appear. And the odds against it are unguessable. Anyway, what is a superman? Is he a bulletproof organism of a thousand horsepower? Is he a macrocephalic dwarf talking in calculus? I suppose you mean a godlike being, a greatly refined and improved human. I grant you, a few minor changes in human physique would be desirable though not at all necessary. But any semanticist will tell you Homo sapiens are a million miles from realizing his full mental capacities. He needs training right now, not evolution.

“In any case,” finished Wayne grayly. “we’re arguing a dead issue. Homo sapiens have committed race suicide. The mutants will be man.”

“Yes—I suppose so. What do you think of the steak?”

* * *

Wayne settled down in his easy-chair after supper. Tobacco and newspapers were not being produced, and the government was still taking all the radios made in its new or revived factories. But he had a vast library, his own books and those he had salvaged from the college, and most of them were timeless. He opened a well-thumbed little volume and glanced at lines he knew by heart.

For a’ that an a’ that,
It’s comin’ yet for a’ that.
When men to men, the whole world o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.

I wonder. How often I’ve wondered! And even if Burns was right, will the plowman’s common sense apply to non-humanness? Let’s see what another has to say—