He sat quiet and still, not a muscle moving, wonder gnawing at him. Wonder and a fear, a fear of a dormant alienness that lay within his brain.
He had brought a ship from Cygni, he had returned from death, he had rolled a six.
Now this!
A man is born and he has a body and a mind that have many functions, some of them complex, and it takes him years to learn those functions, more years to master them. Months before one takes a toddling step, months more before one shapes a word, years before thought and logic become polished tools…and sometimes, said Sutton, sometimes they never do.
Even then there is a certain guidance, the guidance of experienced mentors…parents at first and teachers after that and the doctors and the churches and all the men of science and the people that one meets. All the people, all the contacts, all the forces that operate to shape one into a social being capable of using the talents that he holds for the good of himself and the society which guides him and holds him to its path.
Heritage, too, thought Sutton…the inbred knowledge and the will to do and think certain things in a certain way. The tradition of what other men have done and the precepts that have been fashioned from the wisdom of the ages.
The normal human has one body and one mind, and Lord knows, Sutton thought, that is enough for any man to get along with. But I, to all intents, have what amounts to a second body and perhaps even a second mind, but for that second body I have no mentors and I have no heritage. I do not know how to use it yet; I'm just taking my first toddling step, I am finding out, slowly, one by one, the things that I may do. Later on, if I live long enough, I may even learn how to do them well.
But there are mistakes that one will make. A child will stumble when it walks at first, and its words to begin with are only the approximation of words and it does not know enough not to burn its finger with matches it has lighted.
"Johnny," he said. "Johnny, talk to me."
"Yes, Ash?"