The Perfect Host, page 31
Prodigy
MAYB, CHIEF GUARDIAN for the Third Sector of the Crèche, writhed in her sleep. She pressed her grizzled head into the mattress, and her face twisted. She was deep in slumber, but slumber could not keep out the niggling, soundless, insistent pressure that had slipped into her mind. Sleep was as futile a guard as the sheet which she instinctively pulled up about her ears.
“Mayb!”
She rolled over, facing the wall, her mind refusing to distinguish between the sound of her name in the annunciator and this other, silent, imperative, thing.
“Mayb!”
She opened her eyes, saw on the wall the ruby radiance from the annunciator light, grunted and sat up, wincing as she recognized consciously both summonses. Swinging her legs out of the bed, she leaned forward and threw the toggle on the annunciator. “Yes, Examiner.”
The voice was resonant but plaintive. “Can’t you do something with that little br—with that Andi child? I need my sleep.”
“I’ll see what he wants,” she said resignedly, “although I do think, Examiner, that these midnight attentions are doing him more harm than good. One simply does not cater to children this way.”
“This is not an ordinary child,” said the speaker unnecessarily. “And I still need my sleep. Do what you can, Mayb. And thank you.” The light went out.
There was a time, thought Mayb grumpily, as she pulled on her robe, when I thought I could shield the little demon. I thought I could do something for him. That was before he began to know his own power.
She let herself out into the hall. “Subtle,” she muttered bitterly. Sector One, where children entered the Crèche at the age of nine months, and Sector Two, into which went those who had not fallen by the wayside in eighteen months of examinations—they were simple. The mutants and the aberrants were easy to detect. The subtlety came in Sector Three, where abnormal metabolisms, undeveloped or non-developing limbs or organs, and high-threshold reactive mentalities were weeded out by the time they got there and behavior, almost alone, was the key to normality.
Mayb loved children, all children—which was one of the most important parts of being a Guardian. When it became necessary for her to recommend a child for Disposal, she sometimes stalled a little, sometimes, after it was done, cried a great deal. But she did it when it had to be done, which was the other part of being a good Guardian. She hadn’t been so good with Andi, though. Perhaps the little demon had crawled farther into her affections—at first, anyway—with his unpretty, puckish face and his extraordinary coloring, his toasted-gold hair and the eyes that should have belonged to a true redhead. She remembered—though at present it was difficult to recall a tenderness—how she had put aside the first suspicions that he was an Irregular, how she had tried to imagine signs that his infuriating demands were temporary, that some normal behavior might emerge to replace the wild talent for nuisance that he possessed.
On the other hand, she thought as she shuffled down the hall, it may seem hard-hearted of me, but things like this justify the Code of the Norm. Things like this can be remembered when we have to send some completely endearing little moppet into the Quiet Room, to await the soft hiss of gas and the chute to the incinerator.
Mayb reacted violently to the thought, and wondered, shaking, whether she was getting calloused in her old age, whether she was turning a personal resentment on the child because of this personal inconvenience. She shook off the thought, and for a moment tried not to think at all. Then came the shadow of a wish for the early days of the Normalcy program, two centuries before. That must have been wonderful. Normalcy came first. The children went into the crèches for observation, and were normal or were disposed of. Homo superior could wait. It was humanity’s only choice; restore itself to what it had been before the Fourth War—a mammal which could predictably breed true—or face a future of battles between mutations which, singly and in groups, would fight holy wars on the basis of “What I am is normal.”
And now, though the idea behind the program was still the same, and the organizations of the crèches were still the same, a new idea was gaining weight daily—to examine Irregulars always more meticulously, with a view, perhaps, to letting one live—one which might benefit all of humanity by his very difference; one who might be a genius, a great artist in some field, or who might have a phenomenal talent for organizing or some form of engineering. It was the thin end of the wedge for Homo superior, who would, by definition, be an Irregular. Irregulars, however, were not necessarily Homo superior, and the winnowing process could be most trying. As with Andi, for example.
Holding her breath, she opened the door of his cubicle. As she did so the light came on and the ravening emanation from the child stopped. He rose up from his bed like a little pink seal and knelt, blinking at her, in the middle of the bed.
“Now, what do you want?”
“I want a drink of water and a plastibubble and go swimmin’ ” said the four-year-old.
“Now Andi,” Mayb said, not unkindly, “there’s water right here in your room. The plastibubbles have all been put away and it isn’t time for swimming. Why can’t you be a good boy and sleep like all the other children?”
“I am NOT like the uvver children,” he said emphatically. “I want a plastibubble.”
Mayb sighed and pulled out an old, old psychological trick. “Which would you like—a drink of water or a plastibubble?” As she spoke she slid her foot onto the pedal of the drinking fountain in the corner of the tiny room. The water gurgled enticingly. Before he was well aware of what he was doing. Andi was out of bed and slurping up the water, with the cancellation of his want for the plastibubble taking root in his mind.
“It tas—tuz better when you push the pedal,” he said charmingly.
“Well, that’s sweet of you, Andi. But did you know I was fast asleep and had to get up and come here to do it?”
“Thass all right,” said Andi blandly.
She turned to the door as he climbed back on the bed. “I wanna go swimmin’.”
“No one goes swimming at night!”
“Fishes do.”
“You’re not a fish.”
“Well, ducks, then.”
“You’re not—” No; this could go on all night. “You go to sleep, young fellow.”
“Tell me a story.”
“Now Andi, this isn’t story telling time. I told you a story before bedtime.”
“You tol’ it to everybody. Now tell it to me.”
“I’m sorry, Andi, this isn’t the time,” she said firmly. She touched the stud which would switch the light off when she closed the door. “Shut your eyes, now, and have a nice dream. Good night, Andi.”
She closed the door, shaking her head and yawning. And instantly that soundless, pressurized command began yammering out, unstoppable, unanswerable. Telepathy was not a novelty nowadays, with the welter of mutations which had reared their strange, unviable heads since the Fourth War; but this kind of thing was beyond belief. It was unbearable. Mayb could sense the Examiner rearing up on his bed, clapping his hands uselessly over his ears, and swearing volubly. She opened the door. “Andi!”
“Well, tell me a story.”
“No, Andi!”
He rolled over with his face to the wall. She could see him tensing his body. At the first wave of fury from him she cried out and struck herself on the temples. “All right, all right! What story do you want to hear?”
“Tell me about the bear and the liger.”
She sat down wearily on the bed. He hunkered up with his back to the wall, his strange auburn eyes round and completely, unmercifully, awake.
“Lie down and I’ll tell you.”
“I do-wanna.”
“Andi,” she said sternly. For once it worked. He lay down. She covered up his smooth pink body, tucking the sheet-blanket carefully around him in the way she sometimes did for the others at bedtime. It was a deft operation, soothing, suggesting warmth and quiet and, above all, sleep. It did nothing of the kind for Andi.
“Once upon a time there was a bear who was bare because his mother was radioactive,” she began, “and one day he was walking along beside a neon mine, when a liger jumped out. Now a liger is half lion and half tiger. And he said,
“ ‘Hey, you, bear; you have no hair;
You’re not normal; get away there!’
“And the bear said,
‘You chase me, liger, at your peril
You’re not normal because you’re sterile.’
“So they began to fight. The liger fought the bear because he thought it was right to be natural-born, even if he couldn’t have babies. And the bear fought the liger because he thought it was right to be what he was as long as he could have babies, even if his mother was radioactive. So they fought and they fought until they killed each other dead. And that was because they were both wrong.
“And then from out of the rocks around the neon mine came a whole hundred lemmings. And they frisked and played around the dead bear and the dead liger, and they bred, and pretty soon they had their babies, a thousand of them, and they all lived and grew fat. And do you know why?”
“What was they?”
“Lemmings. Well, they—”
“I want some lemonade,” said Andi.
Mayb threw up her hands in exasperation. You can’t cure an Irregular by indoctrination, she thought. She said, “I haven’t finished. You see, the lemmings lived because their babies were the same as they were. That’s called breeding true. They were Nor—”
“You know what I’d do if I was a bear without any hair?” Andi shouted, popping up from under the covers. “I’d rear back at that old liger and I’d say don’t touch me, you. I hate you and you can’t touch me.” A wave of emotion from the child nearly knocked Mayb off the bed. “If you come near me, I’ll make your brains FRY!” and with the last syllable he loosed a flood of psychic force that made Mayb grunt as if she had walked into the end of an I-beam in the dark.
Andi lay down again and gave her a sweet smile. “Thass what I’d do,” he said gently.
“My!” said Mayb. She rose and backed off from him as if he were loaded with high explosive. The movement was quite involuntary.
“You can go away now,” said Andi.
“All right. Good night, Andi.”
“You better hurry, you ol’ liger you,” he said, raising himself on one elbow.
She hurried. Outside, she leaned against the door jamb, sweating profusely. She waited tensely for some further sign from within the cubicle, and when there was none after minutes, she heaved a vast sigh of relief and started back to her bed. This was the third time this week, and the unscheduled nightwork made her feel every one of her twenty-eight years of service to the Crèche. Fuming and yawning, she composed herself for what was left of her night’s sleep.
“Mayb!”
She twitched in her sleep. Not again, said her subconscious. Oh, not again. Send him to the Quiet Room and have done with it. Again she made the futile, unconscious gesture of pulling the covers over her head.
“Mayb! Mayb!”
The annunciator light seemed fainter now, like the slight blush of a pale person. Mayb lowered the covers from her face and looked at the wall, blinked, and sat upright with a squeal. Her eye fell on the clock; she had to look three times to believe what it told her. “Oh no, oh no,” she said, and threw the toggle. “Yes Examiner. Oh, I’m so sorry! I overslept and it’s three whole hours. Oh, what shall I do?”
“That part’s all right,” said the speaker. “I had your gong disconnected. You needed the sleep. But you’d better come to my office. Andi’s gone.”
“Gone? He can’t be gone. He was just about to go to sl—oh. Oh! The door! I was so distraught when I left him; I must have left the door unl … oh-h, Examiner, how awful!”
“It isn’t good,” said the speaker. “Essie took over for you and she’s new and doesn’t know all the children. So he wasn’t missed until the Free Time when Observation 2 missed him. Well, come on in. We’ll see what we can do.” The light went out, and the toggle clicked back.
Mayb muttered a little while she dressed. Up the corridor she flew, down a resilient ramp and round to the right, where she burst into the door over which the letters EXAMINER drifted in midair. “Oh dear,” she said as she huddled to a stop in the middle of a room which was more lounge than office. “Dear oh, dear—”
“Poor Mayb.” The Examiner was a beaming, tight-skinned pink man with cotton hair. “You’ve had the worst of this case all along. Don’t blame yourself so!”
“What shall we do?”
“Do you know Andi’s mother?”
“Yes. Library-Beth.”
“Oh, yes,” the Examiner nodded. “I was going to look her up and vize her, but I thought perhaps you’d rather.”
“Anything, Examiner, anything I can do. Why, that poor little tyke wandering around loose—”
The Examiner laughed shortly. “Think of the poor little people he wanders against.. Uh—call her home first.”
Mayb went to the corner and wheeled the index to the Library designations, found the number and spoke it into the screen, which lit up. A moment later its blankness dissolved away like windblown fog, to show a young woman’s face. She was the true redhead from whom Andi had his eyes, that was certain.
“You remember me,” said Mayb. “Crèche-Mayb; I’m Andi’s Sector-Guardian.”
“Uh-huh,” said the woman positively.
“Is … is Andi there?”
“Uh-uh,” said the woman negatively.
“Now Beth—are you sure?”
The woman wet her lips. “Sure I’m sure. Isn’t he locked up in your old crèche? What are you trying to do; trick me again into signing that paper to have him put in the Quiet Room?”
“Why, Beth! No one ever tried to trick you! We just sent you a report and our recommendation.”
“I know, I know,” said the woman sullenly. “And if I sign it you’ll put him away, and if I don’t sign it you’ll appeal it and the Examining Board’ll back you up. They always do.”
“That’s because we’re very careful. Guardians—”
“Guardians!” snarled Beth. “What kind of Guardians let a four-year-old child wander out of the Crèche?”
“We are not guardians of the children,” said Mayb with sudden dignity, “we are Guardians of the Norm.”
“Well, you’ll never get him back!” screamed Beth. “Never, you hear?” The screen went black.
“Is Andi there?” The Examiner’s eyes twinkled.
“My goodness,” murmured Mayb. “My, my goodness!”
“I wish the predisposal examinations had never passed the Board. If it weren’t for them, this would never have happened. Why, ten years ago, we’d have quietly put the little fellow out of the way when we found he was an Irregular. Now we have to wait three weeks, and poke and prod and pry to see if the irregularity can possibly turn into a talent. I tell you, it’ll break the crèches. The mother of every last freak on earth is going to cry that her little monster is a genius.”
“Oh, if only I hadn’t been careless with that silly old door!” She wrung her hands.
“Mayb, don’t get worked up. It’ll be all right. I’m sure it will.”
“You’re so nice!” Her voice was shockingly loud in the still room. “Oh dear! Suppose that woman really does hide him? I mean, suppose she takes him away? Do you realize what it will be like if that child is allowed to grow up?”
“Now that is a terrifying thought.”
“Think of it! He already knows what he can do, and he’s only four years old. Think of those radiations of his grown up man-sized! Suppose he suddenly appeared, grown up, in the middle of a city. Why, when he wanted anything, he’d get it. He’d have to get it. And he couldn’t be stopped! He can’t be reached at all when he does that!”
The Examiner took her arms and gently led her to a mirror on the wall. “Look at yourself, Mayb. You know, you don’t look at all like the fine, reliable Guardian you are. Suppose Essie saw you now; you’d never be able to teach her a thing. I’m head of the Crèche. That’s a privilege and there’s a certain amount of worrying I have to do to earn it. So let me do the worrying.”
“You’re so good,” she sobbed. “But—I’m afraid!”
“I’m afraid, too,” he agreed soberly. “It’s a bad business. But—don’t worry. Tell you what. You just go and lie down for a while. Cry yourself out if you want to—it’ll do you good. And then go on with your work.” He patted her on the shoulder. “This isn’t the end of the world.”
“It might be,” she gasped, “with creatures like that loose in it, forcing and pressing and pushing and not to be stopped until they had what they wanted.”
“Go on now.”
She went, wringing her hands.
It was almost exactly the same time the next morning when Mayb was summoned from the Assembly Room where she was teaching her children to sing
“There was a young fellow called Smitti
Who lived in an abnormal city.
His children were bugs
And two-headed slugs,
Oh, dear! What a terrible pity!”
and in the midst of the children’s shrill merriment at Smitti’s comic predicament, she got the Examiner’s call.
The thin veil of laughter fell from her face and she rose. “Free time!” she called. The children took the signal as a permission to play; the hidden watchers behind one-way glass in Observation 1 and 2 bent toward their panes, Normalcy Reaction charts at their elbows.
Mayb hurried to the Examiner’s office. She found him alone rubbing his hands. “Well, Mayb! I knew it would be all right.”
“It’s about Andi? You’ve found him? Did you get the police?”
“She got them.” He laughed. “She got them, herself. She just couldn’t take it—his own mother.”
