Beyond this Horizon: The Original 1942 Serialized Novel by Robert Heinlein

Author:Robert Heinlein [Heinlein, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-04-24T04:00:00+00:00

SECOND OF TWO PARTS

Second of two parts. Concluding a picture of a world where bejeweled and lace-trimmed men with scented and painted nails were hard, lightning-fast gunmen at the slightest insult—

If the world were perfect, working smoothly, without fuss or strain—why live? What’s the purpose? That was Hamilton Felix’s question. But in essence he found answer enough in two things that were no answer to that—

Synopsis

Part One of Anson MacDonald’s story is, itself, almost a synopsis, covering an outline of three hundred years of history of controlled genetics and the civilization it has brought into being.

The manners of the time, the whole system of thought, out of the system of genetic control that makes it certain that every couple will have, if they want, the best possible child their heredity makes possible—not any haphazard assemblage of good and bad characteristics each parent might contribute. One added factor helps to improve the manners, politeness, and speed of reflexes in the race. Dueling is common, and the weapons used are exceedingly potent, and usually deadly. Bad manners, quarrelsome disposition, thoughtlessness for another’s welfare and slow reflexes are, under those circumstances, practically certain sudden death. Unless, of course, one chooses the refuge of the “brassard of peace”—an armband disclaiming ability to protect oneself.

Hamilton Felix is a professional inventor of superpinball machines, gambling gadgets for amusement places.

He does that because he can do so without effort, and he refuses to make any real effort—for a reason. He’s a second-line genius, an exceedingly brilliant mats—and intelligent enough to know that he is not and can’t be a first-line genius, one of the philosopher-kings of the time,a synthesist who takes as his held of knowledge and effort all human knowledge. He can’t take first prize; he sees no point in trying hard to take second prize.

Mordan Claude is a synthesist, the Genetics Moderator in whose department is the duty of maintaining the operation of the genetic selection service. He has called Hamilton Felix in originally because Felix represents a “star line”—a combination of favorable mutations which the Genetics Department has been following and nurturing for two centuries. Felix is unmarried, and Mordan wants the extremely valuable characteristics of the Hamilton line carried on. Particularly, he’d like to see Felix marry Longcourt Phyllis, a fifth cousin who represents a different but parallel “star line” of heredity. The combination of favorable characteristics possible to their children, Mordan assures him, would unquestionably guarantee that Felix’s son would be a synthesist.

Hamilton Felix—though taken by Longcourt Phyllis, who is naturally (being the high type a star-line heredity necessitates) a thoroughly vital and stimulating sort of person—is not at all taken with the idea. He propounds a problem for Mordan to solve. Why should a human being live? What’s the purpose of it? If Mordan will give him an answer to that, or the beginnings of an answer, he’ll be willing to consider co-operation.

But in the meantime. Hamilton’s gotten another involvement; McFee Norbert and his friends of the “Survivors Club” have approached Felix, and he has joined them for his own reasons.

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