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driving a earl"
'*Why not? I'm the safest driver you ever saw; I
can see everything that's on the road, even around a
blind curve. If I need to, I read the other drivers'
minds to see what they are going to do next."
"She's right, Phil. The few times I've paid atten-
tion to her driving she's been doing just exactly what
I would have done in the same circumstances. That's
why I haven't been nervous."
"All right. All right," Phil answered, "but would
you two supermen keep in mind that there is a
168 Robert A. Hdnlein
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slightly nervous ordinary mortal in the back seat who
can't see around comers?"
"I'll be good," said Joan soberly. "I didn't mean to
scare you, Phil."
"I'm interested," resumed Ben, "in what you said
about not looking toward anything you wanted to
see. I can't do it too satisfactorily. I remember once
you said it made you dizzy to look away and still use
direct perception."
"It used to, Ben, but I got over it, and so will you.
It's just a matter of breaking old habits. To me, every
direction is in 'front* all around and up and down. I
can focus my attention in any direction, or two or
three directions at once. I can even pick a point of
away from where I am physically, and look at the
other side of things but that is harder."
"You two make me feel like the mother of the
Ugly Duckling," said Phil bitterly. "Will you still
think of me kindly when you have passed beyond
human communication?"
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"Poor Phil!" exclaimed Joan, with sincere sympa-
thy in her voice. "You taught us, but no one has
bothered to teach you. Tell you what, Ben, let's stop
tonight at an auto camp pick a nice quiet one on
the outskirts of Sacramento and spend a couple of
days doing for Phil what he has done for us."
"Okay by me. It's a good idea."
"That's mighty white of you, pardner," Phil con-
ceded, but it was obvious that he was pleased and
mollified. "After you get through with me will I be
able to drive a car on two wheels, too?"
"Why not leam to levitate?" Ben suggested. "It's
simpler less expensive and nothing to get out of
order."
"Maybe we will some day," returned Phil, quite
seriously, "there's no telling where this line of investi-
gation may lead."
"Yeah, you're right," Ben answered him with equal
sobriety. "I'm getting so that I can believe seven
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LOST LEGACY 169
impossible things before breakfast. What were you
saying just before we passed that oil tanker?"
"I was just trying to lay before you an idea I've
been mulling over in my mind the past several weeks.
It's a big idea, so big that I can hardly believe it
myself,"
"Well, spill it."
Phil commenced checking points off on his fingers.
"We've proved, or tended to prove, that the normal
human mind has powers previously unsuspected,
haven't we?"
"Tentatively yes. It looks that way."
"Powers way beyond any that the race as a whole
makes regular use of."
"Yes, surely. Go on."
"And we have reason to believe that these powers
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exist, have their being, by virtue of certain areas of
the brain to which functions were not previously
assigned by physiologists? That is to say, they have
organic basis, just as the eye and the sight centers in
the brain are the organic basis for normal sight?"
"Yes, of course."
"You can trace the evolution of any organ from a
simple beginning to a complex, highly developed
form. The organ develops through use. In an evolu-
tionary sense function begets organ."
"Yes. That's elementary."
"Don't you see what that implies?"
Cobum looked puzzled, then a look of comprehen-
sion spread over his face. Phil continued, with de-
light in his voice, "You see it, too?" The conclusion is
inescapable: there must have been a time when the
entire race used these strange powers as easily as
they heard, or saw, or smelled. And there must have
been a long, long period hundreds of thousands,
probably millions of years during which these pow-
ers were developed as a race. Individuals couldn t do
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it, any more than I could grow wings. It had to be
done racially, over a long period of time. Mutation
170 Robert A. Heinlein
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