Birthright

aren't mutations—or at least, not in the sense that you've been working on mutations. I'll make it simple

for you. Possibly a million human mutations are conceived every day. Probably half of them are reabsorbed within hours. Of the others, most are such minor mutations as to go virtually unnoticed: a child born with a yellow spot in a head of otherwise red hair, or maybe with a weird-looking birthmark. Some get minor attention, like a baby with six fingers, or with a thin layer of flesh over its anal outlet, or with the potential for only twenty-six teeth at adulthood. Usually they're so minor we don't even notice them. And, to be sure, very few mutations breed on. We still have the appendix, we still have tonsils, we still have hair on our bodies. Despite the fact that there have been some families where no mother has nursed her baby in eighty or ninety generations the female children still develop breasts, sometimes rather large and lovely ones. No, as I said, mutations rarely breed on, and no mutation has yet produced a superman with any more mental capacity than you or I possess. “However,” he said, stabbing the air with his cigar, “no mutation isneeded to produce a mental superman. As I mentioned upstairs, all that's required is for a man or a woman to use one hundred percent—or even fifty percent—of the potential he or she is born with.” “And you've found such people and test them down here?” asked Rojers. “We've been finding such people for four millennia or more,” said Herban. “And yes, we test them here.”

“And what talents have you found?”

“Oh, a little bit of everything. Except for prescience. Usually the hunchers, as we call them, can sense impending events, but never the details. Most often it's simply a feeling of almost unbearable expectation, and rarely does it apply or relate to anyone but themselves. But we've gotten telepaths who can send, receive, or both. We've gotten levitators. We've found teleporters, though there have been only three of them, and two of the three had to be threatened irreversibly with death before they could find the wherewithal to teleport themselves. We've found far more people who are adepts at telekinesis. And, of course, we've gotten some intelligences that have gone right off the scale, brainpower so high that we've still no real way of measuring it.”

“Fantastic!” said Rojers. “And wonderful!” “Fantastic, at any rate,” said Herban dryly. “Still, most of them go home intact.” “What do you mean, go home intact?” demanded Rojers. “Just what I said. Why do you think we're doing all this testing?” “I assume for the same reasons we've been trying to force evolution in the incubator rooms: to create a superman.”

“Butthese supermen have already been created,” pointed out Herban. “Then I would imagine you'd want to train them to use their talents to the best of their abilities, for the good of the Oligarchy.”

“What an absolutely childish answer!” Herban laughed. “If enough of them used their abilities to their maximum potential, the Oligarchy—and Man—would be finished within fifty years or so. No, my idealistic boy, we definitely donot help them become supermen and then turn them loose on society.”