More Than Human Part 3, Section 7 Summary

  • They enjoy themselves at an amusement park. He thinks about how their time together is special, how they're enjoying each other's company.
  • He wonders why Janie rescued him and vows to give her any assistance she needs.
  • Hip, gazing at lovers on a beach, abruptly remembers his need to hunt someone down. The need was more important to him than anything, even love or becoming a colonel.
  • He ponders if Janie wants him as a romantic conquest. Ooh-la-la! Hip considers it appealing and pictures how attractive she is, but decides she doesn't seem to be seducing him. It's a different sort of intimacy.
  • She is passively, patiently waiting for him to unearth his memories. He contrasts this with the way Thompson and Bromfield goaded, probed, and pried at him. He wonders who Bromfield is.
  • Standing by the beach, they turn to each other. Their emotions merge. They seem on the brink of kissing, but Janie pulls back. Hip feels pained but manages to let the unborn kiss die away. Regretfully, the two continue walking.
  • They pass attractions at the amusement park. Hip and Janie stop at a game with toy guns that shoot at aircraft silhouettes. Hip does well shooting them and mumbles military jargon. He wins a statuette of a police dog. Janie does better than he did, and once Hip notices, he pretends to be bad at the game.
  • Corncob time! They walk on and encounter a boy of about seven who's sucking on a corncob. They try to offer him the statuette, but he keeps refusing. Janie suddenly says to leave him alone. Hip keeps trying to convince the boy to take the dog as she walks away. Hip sets the statuette down and catches up with her. She calls the boy a devil. Hip turns, sees the corncob float up and hit the boy in the head. He decides he must be seeing things. The boy curses them and flees. The two, happy again, eat pizza (more food!) and walk to a taxi.
  • Hip feels as if his whole world is expanding. He asks Janie how much it can grow. She says his world can get much bigger. He tells her he feels sick. She tells him he knows what that feeling is (Thompson's command).
  • Hip insists Thompson is wrong and that he, Hip, won't get sick again. He tells the driver to go to what is obviously Miss Kew's house.
  • Hip stares dumbly at Miss Kew's house for a while, then tells the driver to take them home. No TV in his taxi either, this being written in 1953.
  • Back home, Hip protests that the cash in his possession doesn't belong to him. She says it does. He says it doesn't and asks about the rent. Janie remains quiet. Hip starts musing about how he went to that house once holding the aluminum tube.
  • Hip gets angrier about the money not really being his. He tries to remember what happened to him. He tells her how he remembers going to the Kew house, looking for children. The children weren't there, so he asked to talk with Alicia Kew. The people at the house said she was dead but told him where to find the children.
  • Hip looks for a piece of paper with the children's new address and decides Janie has taken it from his old clothes. She says nothing, and he insists he can remember anything on his own.
  • Janie finally speaks, telling Hip she's merely assisting him in doing the memory work. Hip says there can't be too much more to remember. She disagrees.
  • He says remembering the Kew house was enough. Hip says the address will lead to "him," but Hip can't remember who he is. Poor guy.
  • Janie tells Hip he can go to the house tomorrow, but he'll be unable to make sense out of it. He shouts that she must know the answers and shakes her. She begs him to stop; he flings her onto the bed. Uh-oh. He apologizes as she cries. He says he just wants the answers.
  • She admits knowing the answers, but mentions the aluminum tube. He picks it up. She asks him what he remembers about it. He barely remembers anything.
  • Janie reveals she's been putting the tube in his hands and shoes and everywhere else, but he keeps ignoring it because he's currently unable to remember its significance.
  • Hip tells her he remembers Bromfield saying he had a mental block, but can't remember who Bromfield is. Janie explains she's helping him get past the block by prompting his memories, and that it is a very slow process. If she just spoon-feeds him the answers, he won't be able to hear them.
  • He gets super insistent and says if he can just get to the house, he can get the new address of the kids again and be on his way.
  • She reveals that if he succeeds in that without being prepared enough, he will be killed. He gets angry and asks her to leave. She does, in despair.