More Than Human, un roman écrit par Theodore Sturgeon en 1953 et gagnant du International Fantasy Award, aborde un sujet qui deviendra, au cours des décennies suivantes, une véritable obsession du genre science-fictionnel, la post-humanité, sans pour autant utiliser les tropes classiques du genre (structures narratives, personnages, lieux). Nul anticipation, dystopie, et encore moins space opera. Ne reste que la naissance du premier Homo gestalt, prochaine étape dans l'évolution d’Homo sapiens, sous la forme d’un être pluriel, symbiotique. Le roman, qui semble se dérouler au moment de sa publication, soit au début des années cinquante (la seule référence historique étant une mention, à la fin, de la bombe nucléaire), se présente en trois parties très distinctes, chacune focalisée sur un personnage différent: un idiot, un adolescent criminel et un amnésique. Trois étapes pour cette naissance d'un être nouveau et pluriel, trois fois le même processus : la découverte par le personnage de sa propre identité et des raisons qui ont motivé un acte incompréhensible.
Résumé détaillé
Dans la première
partie, « The Fabulous Idiot », deux jeunes filles, Alicia et Evelyn
Kew, sont enfermées dans une maison-forteresse, hors du monde, par un père
violent et misogyne à l'excès, dans le dégoût de leur propre corps et dans la
négation totale de leurs pulsions. Alors que la plus jeune se balade dans les
jardins de leur prison, elle se met, instinctivement, à chanter ses sensations,
son goût pour la nature. Son chant est entendu par un idiot, incapable de
parole et de la moindre pensée minimalement construite, qui pénètre la
forteresse et embrasse la jeune fille. Le père tue son enfant et se suicide,
laissant derrière lui, une jeune femme qui doit apprendre à vivre dans le monde
et à s’accepter comme femme et un idiot blessé. Recueilli par des fermiers, les
Prodd, ce dernier apprendra progressivement à parler, à interagir minimalement
avec les autres, à utiliser des outils. Il se nommera lui-même Lone, premier
mot qu’il prononce pour marquer sa solitude (alone), et découvrira qu’il possède le talent inattendu de la
télépathie. S'il a survécu jusque-là, si les passants se sont sentis forcés de
le nourrir à l’occasion, c’est que son esprit projetait instinctivement ses
besoins vitaux dans celui des autres. Après quelques années, lorsqu’il est
rejeté par le couple de fermiers qui attend finalement son premier enfant, Lone
s’installe dans la forêt et se construit une maison-caverne bien à lui. En
parallèle, une petite fille de cinq ans, Janie, qui possède un talent de
télékinésie, est maltraitée par une mère qui multiplie les amants en attendant
un père en service militaire. Toujours
enfermée dans sa chambre, elle observe le monde de sa fenêtre et s’amuse à
martyriser deux jumelles âgées d’à peine deux ans et de race noire, Bonnie et
Beanie. Lorsque celles-ci se vengent en utilisant leur pouvoir de se
télétransporter, elle décide de fuguer et de les amener avec elle. À force de
pérégrinations, les trois enfants se retrouvent dans la maison abandonnée des
Kew, puis sont recueillis par Lone, dans sa cabane située à proximité. Lone
retournant régulièrement voir comment se porte les Prodd, trouve la famille
dévastée, le père devenu fou et incapable de travaillé, la mère disparue et le
bébé, mongoloïde, abandonné dans son berceau. Lone remet alors le fermier sur
pied et repart avec le bébé, qui devient le cerveau de cette famille
improbable. Le bébé (nommé simplement Baby)
qui ne grandira jamais est un idiot-savant pour qui peut le comprendre. Il
suffit de lui fournir les données d'un problème pour qu’il le résolve. Or, seules
les jumelles peuvent le comprendre et seule Janie peut comprendre les jumelles.
Le groupe forme alors un tout bien supérieur à ses parties, un véritable Homo gestalt. Ainsi, lorsque Lone soumet
le problème du fermier dont le camion s’embourbe constamment dans son champ,
Bébé invente pour lui un appareil technologique qui se révèle être une machine antigravitation.
Mais lorsque Lone l’installe finalement sur le camion, le fermier Prodd est
définitivement parti, laissant au milieu du champ, une invention pour le moins
prometteuse, mais dont seul un idiot connaît l’existence.
La deuxième
partie, « Baby is Three », est complètement focalisée sur un nouveau
personnage, Gerard/Gerry, un adolescent de quinze ans qui entre chez un
psychothérapeute, Stern. Il dépose un billet de mille dollars sur le bureau et
lui demande de le traiter. Intrigué, Stern accepte et Gerard commence à
raconter la raison de sa visite : il a tué quelqu’un, mais il ne comprend
pas pourquoi. Progressivement, Stern permet à Gerard, grâce à une forme d’autohypnose,
de retourner dans son passé et d’y trouver les raisons de son crime. Gerard
était un orphelin en fuite de huit ans, mourant sur le bord d’une voie ferrée,
lorsque Lone le découvrit et le transporta dans sa maison-caverne. Le petit
groupe s’occupa alors de lui et l’intégra progressivement à la famille. Apparemment
sans talent particulier, il se révélera plus tard que Gerard a le même don que
Lone. Ainsi, lorsque celui-ci meurt par accident, Gerard prend sa place et
devient la tête de l’Homo gestalt (Bébé
est le cerveau, les jumelles sont les bras et Janie la voix). Conscient que le
groupe d’enfants ne peut survivre par lui-même, il les entraîne, suivant ce que
Lone avait souhaité, chez une femme bourgeoise et surannée, Mme Kew (la plus
vieille des deux jeunes femmes du début, qui a maintenant 33 ans), qui accepte
de s’occuper d’eux après que Lone lui ait rendu un grand service. Mais Mme Kew ignore les talents particuliers de
ces enfants et refuse de les admettre. Elle entreprend donc de les élever
correctement, mais deux incidents brisent l’harmonie de cette nouvelle
vie : Mme Kew sépare les jumelles noires des autres enfants, suivant la
ségrégation raciale de l’époque, mais ceux-ci parviennent à obtenir un compromis,
puis elle tente de se débarrasser de Bébé, qui n’a toujours pas grandi malgré
ses trois ans et dont le développement est stoppé par sa trisomie (dans le
roman, il est dit mongoloïde). Le groupe d’enfants fait une crise et parvient à
faire revenir Bébé parmi eux. Un jour où tous les enfants semblaient heureux,
Gerard assassine donc Mme Kew, qui était pourtant pour eux source de protection
et de bonheur. Avec l’aide du psychothérapeute, Gerard se remémore finalement
le moment où il a décrit à Mme Kew les enfants de Lone, moment précis où son
don de télépathie s’est activé et qu’il a absorbé instantanément toute la vie
de son interlocutrice, chaque épisode, chaque détail de son existence.
Désormais, conscient d’être la tête de ce qu’il comprend finalement être un Homo gestalt, il comprend que cette nouvelle vie, si elle est bénéfique aux
individus, est en train de tuer l’organisme nouveau qu’ils forment, et que c’est donc par esprit de
conservation qu’il a éliminé la source de cette nouvelle vie. À la fin de la
thérapie, qui compose tout le chapitre, le thérapeute explique à Gerard que la
prochaine étape est de fournir à l’Homo
gestalt une moralité. Puis, Gérard efface sa mémoire et repart satisfait,
incapable de comprendre ce concept de moralité.
La
troisième partie, « Morality », est entièrement focalisée sur un
nouveau personnage, Hip Barrows, un homme amnésique et apathique enfermé en
prison pour un délit mineur. Une jeune femme survient, Mme Gerard, prétend être
une cousine et le libère. Elle l’installe dans une chambre, lui fournit
vêtement et nourriture, et s’occupe de lui, le laissant retrouver la santé,
puis, très progressivement, des fragments mémoriels. Hip ne comprend pas
pourquoi cette femme lui vient en aide, mais il l’accepte, du moins au début.
Durant des semaines, elle laisse sa mémoire se reconstruire d’elle-même. Mme
Gerard est en fait Janie et Hip est un ancien ingénieur de l’armée devenu
soudainement fou et mystérieusement obsédé par un certain Thompson. Un jour,
alors que Hip se souvient finalement qu’il était en train de chercher quelqu’un, un half-wit, et qu’il découvre une adresse
qui pourrait l’aider, Janie lui explique qu’il ne peut pas reprendre sa quête
avant d’avoir complètement retrouvé la mémoire. Il s’entête, puis visite Janie
dans sa chambre, où il ne découvre qu’une femme noire nue. Troublé, il retrouve
finalement Janie, qui panique, et qui l’entraîne dans sa fuite. Il se rappelle
finalement qui il est et Janie comble les trous : Hip était donc un
ingénieur qui découvrit dans un champ une mystérieuse source de magnétisme,
l’invention de Bébé laissée jadis là par Lone pour le fermier. Gerard, pour
protéger le secret de cette machine antigravitationnelle, entra dans son esprit
et manipula Hip pour le rendre fou. Janie, trouvant que les agissements de
Gerard étaient de plus en plus discutables et troublants, entreprit de ramener
Hip à la raison afin de le confronter à Gerard, pour que celui-ci ressente pour
la première fois de la honte vis-à-vis de ses agissements, croyant que ce
sentiment pourrait bien être l’amorce d’une moralité. Hip et Janie se rendent
donc à la maison et confrontent Gerard, mais Hip a réfléchi à la question et il
en est venu à la conclusion que l’Homo
gestalt, étant une nouvelle espèce, ne peut être soumise à la morale (qu’il
définit comme un ensemble de règles sociales pour permettre la survie des
individus) humaine (ce qui n’aurait pas plus de sens que de soumettre
l’humanité à une morale fourmis), et qu’il faut plutôt que l’être gestalt développe une éthique (qu’il
définit comme un ensemble de règles individuelles pour la survie de la société)
nouvelle, qui deviendra peut-être la morale de l’espèce naissante. Après une
confrontation difficile, Hip est finalement intégré à l’Homo gestalt. Il devient l’éthos, l’esprit moral de cet être
immortel, multiple et unifié, pleinement intégré à un tout encore plus grand,
l’humanité.
Extraits
« Gestalt.
[…]
Group. Like a cure for a lot of diseases with one kind of
treatment. Like a lot of thoughts expressed in one phrase. The whole is greater
than the sum of the parts. » (104)
« "The way a termite can’t digest wood, you know,
and microbes in the termite’s belly can, and what the termite eats is what the
microbe leaves behind. What’s that?" "Symbiosis. […] Two kinds of
life depending upon one another for existence. » (105)
« Where each organism is a part of the whole, but
separated? […] You mean a gestalt
life-form? It’s fantastic. » (105)
« This all happens with humans […]. It happens piece by
piece right under folks’ noses, and they don’t see it. You got mind-readers.
You got people can move things with their mind. You got people can move
themselves with their mind. You got people can figure anything out if you just
think to ask them. What you ain’t got is the one kind of person who can pull
’em all together, like a brain pulls together the parts that press and pull and
feel heat and walk and think and all the other things. » (105-106)
« I ain’t finished yet. […] I don’t mean
"finished" like you’re thinking. I mean I ain’t – completed yet. You
know about a worm when it’s cut, growin’ whole again? Well, forget about the
cut. Suppose it just grew that way, for the first time, see? I’m getting parts.
I ain’t finished. […]
All I know is I got to do what I’m doing like a bird’s got
to nest when it’s time. And I know that when I’m done I won’t be anything to
brag about. I’ll be like a body stronger and faster than anything there ever
was, without the right kind of head on it. But maybe that’s because I’m one of
the first. That picture you had, the caveman…
"Neanderthal."
Yeah. Come to think of it, he was no great shakes. An early
try at something new. That’s what I’m going to be. But maybe the right kind of
head’ll come along after I’m all organized. Then it’ll be something. »
(106)
« "What are you?"
"I’ll tell you. I’m the central ganglion of a complex
organism which is composed of Baby, a computer; Bonnie and Beanie, teleports;
Janie, telekineticist; and myself, telepath and central control. There isn’t a
single thing about any of us that hasn’t been documented: the teleportation of
the Yogi, the telekinetics of some gamblers, the idiosavant mathematicians, and
most of all, the so-called poltergeist, the moving about of household goods through
the instrumentation of a young girl. Only in this case every one of my parts delivers
at peak performance.
Lone organized it, or it formed around him; it doesn’t
matter which. I replaced Lone, but I was too underdeveloped when he died […]. »
(112-113)
« "So… now what?"
I shrugged. "Did the Pekin man look at Homo Sap walking
erect and say, "Now what? We’ll live, that’s all, like a man, like a tree,
like anything else that lives. We’ll feed and grow and experiment and breed.
We’ll defend ourselves. […] We’ll just do what comes naturally."
"But what can you do?"
"What can an electric motor do? It depends on where we
apply ourselves." » (114)
« You and the
kids are a single creature. Unique. Unprecedented. […]
Alone.
[…]
"Just think about it, […]. You can do practically
anything. You can have practically everything. And none of it will keep you
from being alone."
"Shut up, shut up… Everybody’s alone."
He nodded. "But some people learn how to live with
it."
"How?"
He said, after a time, "Because of something you don’t
know anything about. It wouldn’t mean anything to you if I told you."
"Tell me and see."
He gave me the strangest look. "It’s sometimes called
morality."
"I guess you’re right. I don’t know what you’re talking
about." I pulled myself together. I didn’t have to listen to this.
"You’re afraid," I said. "You’re afraid of Homo Gestalt."
He made a wonderful effort and smiled. "That’s bastard
terminology."
"We’re a bastard breed," I said. » (115)
« "I think he was genuinely interested in some
things for a little while: music and biology and one or two other things.
But he soon came to realize that he didn’t need to prove
anything to anyone. He was smarter and stronger and more powerful than anybody.
Proving it was just dull. He could have anything he wanted.
He quit studying. He quit playing the oboe. He gradually
quit everything. Finally he slowed down and practically stopped for a year. Who
knows what went on in his head? He’d spend weeks lying around, not talking.
Our gestalt, as we
call it, was once an idiot, Hip, when it had Lone for a "head." Well,
when Gerry took over it was a new, strong, growing thing. But when this
happened to him, it was in retreat like what used to be called a manic-depressive."
"Uh!" Hip grunted. "A manic-depressive with
enough power to run the world."
"He didn’t want to run the world. He knew he could if
he wanted to. He didn’t see any reason why he should.
Well, just like in his psych texts he retreated and soon he
regressed. He got childish. And his kind of childishness was pretty
vivious. » (163)
« "Listen," she said passionately,
"we’re not a group of freaks. We’re Homo
Gestalt, you understand? We’re a single entity, a new kind of human being.
We weren’t invented. We evolved. We’re the next step up. We’re alone; there are
no more like us. We don’t live in the kind of world you do, with systems of
morals and codes of ethics to guide us. We’re living on a desert island with a
herd of goats!"
"I’m the goat."
"Yes, yes, you are,
can’t you see? But we were born on this island with no one like us to teach
us, tell us how to behave. We can learn from the goats all the things that make
a goat a good goat, but what will never change the fact that we’re not a goat! You can’t apply the same set
of rules to us as you do to ordinary humans; we’re just not the same
thing!"
She waved him down as he was about to speak. "But
listen, did you ever see one of those museum exhibits of skeletons of, say
horses, starting with the little Eohippus and coming right up the line,
nineteen or twenty of them, to the skeleton of a Percheron? There’s an awful
lot of difference between number one and number fifteen and number sixteen? Damn little!" She stopped and
panted.
"I hear you. But what’s that to do with–"
"With you? Can’t you see? Homom Gestalt is something new, something different, something
superior. But the parts – the arms, the guts of it, the memory banks, just like
the bones in those skeletons – they’re the same as the step lower, or very
little different. I’m me, I’m Janie. » (168)
« Janie. By herself, facing the pointed face with the–
Homo Gestalt, a
girl, two tongue-tied Negroes, a mongoloid idiot and a man with a pointed face
and–
Try that one again. Homo
Gestalt, the next step upward. Well, sure, why not a psychic evolution
instead of the physical?
Homo sapiens stood
suddenly naked and unarmed but for the wrinkled jelly in his king-sized skull;
he was as different as he could be from the beasts which bore him.
Yet he was the same, the same; to this day he was hungry to
breed, hungry to own; he killed without compunction; if he was strong he took,
if he was weak he ran; if he was weak and could not run, he died.
Homo sapiens was
going to die.
The fear in him was a good fear. Fear is a survival
instinct; fear in its way is a comfort for it means that somewhere hope is
alive.
He began to think about survival.
Janie wanted Homo
Gestalt to acquire a moral system so that such as Hip Barrows would not get
crushed. But she wanted her Gestalt
to thrive as well; she was a part of it. My hand wants me to survive, my
tongue, my belly wants me to survive.
Morals: they’re nothing but a coded survival instinct!
Aren’t they? What about societies in which it is immoral not
to eat human flesh? What kind of survival is that?
Well, but those who adhere to morality survive within the
group. If the group eats human flesh, you do too.
There must be a name for the code, the set of rules, by
which an individual lives in such a way as to help his species – something over
and above morals.
Let’s define that as the ethos.
That’s what Homo
Gestalt needs: not morality, but an ethos. And shall I sit here, with my
brains bubbling with fear, and devise a set of ethics for a superman?
I’ll try. It’s all I can do.
Define:
Morals: Society’s code for individual survival. (That takes
care of our righteous cannibal and the correctness of a naked man in a nudist
group.)
Ethics: An individual’s code for society’s survival. (And
that’s your ethical reformer: he frees his slaves, he won’t eat humans, he
"turns the rascals out.")
Too pat, too slick; but let’s work with ’em.
As a group, Homo
Gestalt can solve his own problems. But as an entity:
He can’t have a
mortality, because he is alone.
An ethic then. "An individual’s code for society’s
survival." He has no society; yet he has. He has no species; he is his own
species.
Could he – should he choose a code which would serve all of
humanity? » (175-176)
« Listen to me, Gestalt
boy. You found power within you beyond your wildest dreams and you used it
and loved it. So did I.
Listen to me, Gerry. You discovered that no matter how great
your power, nobody wanted it. So did I.
You want to be wanted. You want to be needed. So do I.
Janie says you need morals. Do you know what morals are?
Morals are an obedience to rules that people laid down to help you live among
them.
You don’t need morals. No set of morals can apply to you.
You can obey no rules set down by your kind because there are no more of your
kind. And you are not an ordinary man, so the morals of ordinary men would do
you no better than the morals of an anthill would do me.
So nobody wants you and you are a monster.
Nobody wanted me when I was a monster.
But Gerry, there is another kind of code for you. It is a
code which requires belief rather than obedience. It is called ethos.
The ethos will give you a code for survival too. But it is a
greater survival than your own, or my species, or yours. What is is really is a
reverence for your sources and your posterity. It is a study of the main
current which created you, and in which you will create still a greater thing
the time comes.
Help humanity, Gerry, for it is your mother and your father
now; you never had them before. And humanity will help you for it will produce
more like you and then you will no longer be alone. Help them as they grow;
help them to help humanity and gain still more of your own kind. For you are
immortal, Gerry. You are immortal now.
And when there are enough of your kind, your ethics will be
their morals. And when their morals no longer suit their species, you or
another ethical being will create new ones that vault still farther up the main
stream, reverencing you, reverencing those who bore you and the ones who bore
them, back and back to the first wild creature who was different because his
heart leapt when he saw a star.
I was a monster and I found this ethos. You are a monster.
It’s up to you. » (181)
« "The Gestalt
has a head and hands, organs and a mind. But the most human thing about anyone is a thing he learns and… and earns. It’s
a thing he can’t have when he’s very young; if he gets it at all, he gets it
after a long search and a deep conviction. After that it’s truly part of him as
long as he lives."
"I don’t know what you mean. I – you mean I’m… I could
be part of the… No, Janie, no." He could not escape from that sure smile.
"What part?" he demanded.
"The prissy one who can’t forget the rules. The one with
the insight called ethics who can change it to the habit called
morals." » (184)
« Welcome.
The Voice was a silent one. And here, another, silent too,
but another for all that. It’s the new one.
Welcome, child!
Still another: Well,
well, well! We thought you’d never make it.
He had to. There
hasn’t been a new one for so long…
Gerry clapped his hands to his mouth. His eyes bulged.
Through his mind came a hush of welcoming music. There was warmth and laughter and
wisdom. There were introductions; for each voice there was a discrete
personnality, a comprehensible sense of something like stature or rank, and an
accurate locus, a sense of physical position. Yet, in terms of amplitude, there
was no difference in the voices. They were all here, or, at least, all equally
near.
[…]
They were young, they were new, all of them, though not as
new and as young as Gerry. Their youth was in the drive and resilience of their
thinking. Although some gave memories old in human terms, each entity had lived
briefly in terms of immortality and they were all immortal.
[…]
To form a question was to have an answer.
Who are you?
Homo Gestalt.
I’m one; part of; belonging…
Welcome.
Why didn’t you tell me?
You weren’t ready. You
weren’t finished. What was Gerry before he met Lone?
And now… is it the ethic? Is that what completed me?
Ethic is too simple a
term. But yes, yes… multiplicity is our first characteristic; unity our second.
As your parts know they are parts of you, so must you know that we are parts of
humanity.
[…]
And – are you… we… responsible for all humanity’s
accomplishments?
No! We share. We are
humanity!
Humanity’s trying to kill itself.
(A wave of amusement, and a superb confidence, like joy.)
Today, this week, it
might seem so. But in terms of the history of a race… O new one, atomic war is
a ripple on the broad face of the Amazon!
Their memories, their projections and computations flooded
in to Gerry, until at last he knew their nature and their function; and he knew
why the ethos he had learned was too small a concept. For here at last was
power which could not corrupt; for such an insight could not be used for its
own sake, or against itself. Here was why and how humanity existed, troubled
and dynamic, sainted by the touch of its own great destiny. Here was the
withheld hand here, too, was the guide, the beacon, for such times as humanity
might be in danger; here was the Guardian of Whom all humans knew – not an
exterior force, nor an awesome Watcher in the sky, but a laughing thing with a
human heart and a reverence for its human origins, smelling of sweat and
new-turned earth rather than suffused with the pale odor of sanctity.
He saw himself as an atom and his gestalt as a molecule. He saw these others as a cell among cells,
and he saw in the whole the design of what, with hoy, humanity would become.
He felt a rising, choking sense of worship, and recognized
it for what it has always been for mankind – self-respect.
He stretched out his arms, and the tears streamed from his
strange eyes. Thank you, he answered
them. Thank you, thank you…
And humbly, he joined their company. » (185-186)
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