“I overheard some of your conversation, Absalom,” Locke said. “It’s just as well,” Absalom said coolly. “I’d have told you tonight anyway. I’ve got to go on with that entropic course.”
Locke ignored that. “Who were you vising?”
“A boy I know. Malcolm Roberts, in the Denver quizldd Crèche.”
“Discussing entropic logic with him, eh? After what I’d told you?”
“You’ll remember that I didn’t agree.”
Locke put his hands behind him and interlaced his fingers. “Then you’ll also remember that I mentioned I had legal control over you.”
“Legal,” Absalom said, “yes. Moral, no.”
“This has nothing to do with morals.”
“It has, though. And with ethics. Many of the youngsters—younger than I—at the quizkid crèches are studying entropic logic. It hasn’t harmed them. I must go to a crèche, or to Baja California. I must.”
Locke bent his head thoughtfully.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Sorry, son. I got emotionally tangled for a moment. Let’s go back on the plane of pure logic.”
“All right,” Absalom said, with a quiet, imperceptible withdrawal.
“I’m convinced that that particular study might be dangerous for you. I don’t want you to be hurt. I want you to have every possible opportunity, especially the ones I never had.”
“No,” Absalom said, a curious note of maturity in his high voice. “It wasn’t lack of opportunity. It was incapability.”
“What?” Locke said.
“You could never allow yourself to be convinced I could safely study entropic logic. I’ve learned that. I’ve talked to other quizkids.”
“Of private matters?”
“They’re of my race,” Absalom said. “You’re not. And please don’t talk about filial love. You broke that law yourself long ago.”
“Keep talking,” Locke said quietly, his mouth tight. “But make sure it’s logical.”
“It is. I didn’t think I’d ever have to do this for a long time, but I’ve got to now. You’re holding me back from what I’ve got to do.”
“The step mutation. Cumulative. I see.”
The fire was too hot. Locke took a step forward from the hearth. Absalom made a slight movement of withdrawal. Locke looked at him intently.
“It is a mutation,” the boy said. “Not the complete one, but Grandfather was one of the first steps. You, too—further along than he did. And I’m further than you. My children will be closer toward the ultimate mutation. The only psychonamic experts worth anything are the child geniuses of your generation.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re afraid of me,” Absalom said. “You’re afraid of me and jealous of me.”
Locke started to laugh. “What about logic now?”
The boy swallowed. “It is logic. Once you were convinced that the mutation was cumulative, you couldn’t bear to think I’d displace you. It’s a basic psychological warp in you. You had the same thing with Grandfather, in a different way. That’s why you turned to psychonamics, where you were a small god, dragging out the secret minds of your students, molding their brains as Adam was molded. You’re afraid that I’ll outstrip you. And I will.”
“That’s why I let you study anything you wanted, I suppose?” Locke asked. “With this exception?”
“Yes, it is. A lot of child geniuses work so hard they burn themselves out and lose their mental capacities entirely. You wouldn’t have talked so much about the danger if—under these circumstances—it hadn’t been the one thing paramount in your mind. Sure you gave me my head. And, subconsciously, you were hoping I would burn myself out, so I wouldn’t be a possible rival any more.”
“I see.”
“You let me study math, plane geometry, calculus, non-Euclidean, but you kept pace with me. If you didn’t know the subject already, you were careful to bone up on it, to assure yourself that it was something you could grasp. You made sure I couldn’t outstrip you, that I wouldn’t get any knowledge you couldn’t get. And that’s why you wouldn’t let me take entropic logic.”
There was no expression on Locke’s face.
“Why?” he asked coldly.
“You couldn’t understand it yourself,” Absalom said. “You tried it, and it was beyond you. You’re not flexible. Your logic isn’t flexible. It’s founded on the fact that a second-hand registers sixty seconds. You’ve lost the sense of wonder. You’ve translated too much from abstract to concrete. I can understand entropic logic. I can understand it!”
“You’ve picked this up in the last week,” Locke said.
“No. You mean the rapports. A long time ago I learned to keep part of my mind blanked off under your probing.”
“That’s impossible!” Locke said, startled.
“It is for you. I’m a further step in the mutation. I have a lot of talents you don’t know anything about. And I know this—I’m not far enough advanced for my age. The boys in the crèches are ahead of me. Their parents followed natural laws—it’s the role of any parent to protect its young. Only the immature parents are Out of step—like you.”
Locke was still quite impassive.
“I’m immature? And I hate you? I’m jealous of you? You’ve quite settled on that?”
“Is it true or not?”
Locke didn’t answer. “You’re still inferior to me mentally,” he said, “and you will be for some years to come. Let’s say, if you want it that way, that your superiority lies in your—flexibility—and your homo superior talents. Whatever they are. Against that, balance the fact that I’m a physically mature adult and you weigh less than half of what I do. I’m legally your guardian. And I’m stronger than you are.”
Absalom swallowed again, but said nothing. Locke rose a little higher, looking down at the boy. His hand went to his middle, but found only a lightweight zipper.
He walked to the door. He turned.
“I’m going to prove to you that you’re my inferior,” he said coldly and quietly. “You’re going to admit it to me.”
Absalom said nothing.
Locke went upstairs. He touched the switch on his bureau, reached into the drawer, and withdrew an elastic lucite belt. He drew its cool, smooth length through his fingers once. Then he turned to the dropper again.
His lips were white and bloodless by now.
At the door of the living room he stopped, holding the belt. Absalom had not moved, but Abigail Schuler was standing beside the boy.
“Get out, Sister Schuler,” Locke said.
“You’re not going to whip him,” Abigail said, her head held high, her lips purse-string tight.
“Get out.”
“I won’t. I heard every word. And it’s true, all of it.”
“Get out, I tell you!” Locke screamed.
He ran forward, the belt uncoiled in his hand. Absalom’s nerve broke at last. He gasped with panic and dashed away, blindly seeking escape where there was none.
Locke plunged after him.
Abigail snatched up the little hearth broom and thrust it at Locke’s legs. The man yelled something inarticulate as he lost his balance. He came down heavily, trying to brace himself against the fall with stiff arms.
His head struck the edge of a chair seat. He lay motionless.
Over his still body, Abigail and Absalom looked at each other. Suddenly the woman dropped to her knees and began sobbing.
“I’ve killed him,” she forced out painfully. “I’ve killed him—but I couldn’t let him whip you, Absalom! I couldn’t!”
The boy caught his lower lip between his teeth. He came forward slowly to examine his father.
“He’s not dead.”
Abigail’s breath came out in a long, shuddering sigh.
“Go on upstairs, Abbie,” Absalom said, frowning a little. “I’ll give him first aid. I know how.”
“I can’t let you—”
“Please, Abbie,” he coaxed. “You’ll faint or
something. Lie down for a bit. It’s all right, really.”
At last she took the dropper upstairs. Absalom, with a thoughtful glance at his father, went to the televisor.
He called the Denver Crèche. Briefly he outlined the situation.
“What had I better do, Malcolm?”
“Wait a minute.” There was a pause. Another young face showed on the screen. “Do this,” an assured, high-pitched voice said, and there followed certain intricate instructions. “Got that straight, Absalom?”
“I have it. It won’t hurt him?”
“He’ll live. He’s psychotically warped already. This will just give it a different twist, one that’s safe for you. It’s projection. He’ll externalize all his wishes, feelings, and so forth. On you. He’ll get his pleasure only Out of what you do, but he won’t be able to control you. You know the psychonamic key of his brain. Work with the frontal lobe chiefly. Be careful of Broca’s area. We don’t want aphasia. He must be made harmless to you, that’s all. Any killing would be awkward to handle. Besides, I suppose you wouldn’t want that.”
“No,” Absalom said. “H-he’s my father.”
“All right,” the young voice said. “Leave the screen on. I’ll watch and help.”
Absalom turned toward the unconscious figure on the floor.
For a long time the world had been shadowy now. Locke was used to it. He could still fulfill his ordinary functions, so he was not insane, in any sense of the word.
Nor could he tell the truth to anyone. They had created a psychic block. Day after day he went to the university and taught psychonamics and came home and ate and waited in hopes that Absalom would call him on the televisor.
And when Absalom called, he might condescend to tell something of what he was doing in Baja California. What he had accomplished. What he had achieved. For those things mattered now. They were the only things that mattered. The projection was complete.
Absalom was seldom forgetful. He was a good son. He called daily, though sometimes, when work was pressing, he had to make the call short. But Joel Locke could always work at his immense scrapbooks, filled with clippings and photographs about Absalom. He was writing Absalom’s biography, too.
He walked otherwise through a shadow world, existing in flesh and blood, in realized happiness, only when Absalom’s face appeared on the televisor screen. But he had not forgotten anything. He hated Absalom, and hated the horrible, unbreakable bond that would forever chain him to his own flesh—the flesh that was not quite his own, but one step further up the ladder of the new mutation.
Sitting there in the twilight of unreality, his scrapbooks spread before him, the televisor set never used except when Absalom called, but standing ready before his chair, Joel Locke nursed his hatred and a quiet, secret satisfaction that had come to him.
Some day Absalom would have a son. Some day. Some day.
THE MONSTER
by LESTER DEL REY
His feet were moving with an automatic monotony along the sound-deadening material of the flooring. He looked at them, seeing them in motion, and listened for the little taps they made. Then his eyes moved up along the rough tweed of his trousers to the shorter motion of his thighs. There was something good about the movement, almost a purpose.
He tried making his arms move, and found that they accepted the rhythm, the right arm moving forward with the left leg, giving a feeling of balance. It was nice to feel the movement, and nice to know that he could walk so smoothly.
His eyes tired of the motion quickly, however, and he glanced along the hall where he was moving. There were innumerable doors along it; it was a long hall, with a bend at the end. He reached the bend, and began to wonder how he could make the turn. But his feet seemed to know better than he, since one of them shortened its stride automatically, and his body swung right before picking up the smooth motion again.
The new hallway was like the old one, painted white, with the long row of doors. He began to wonder idly what might lie behind all the doors. A universe of hallways and doors that branched off into more hallways?
It seemed purposeless to him. He slowed his steps, just as a series of sounds reached him from one of the doors. It was speech—and that meant there was someone else in this universe in which he had found himself. He stopped outside the door, turning his head to listen. The sounds were muffled, but he could make out most of the words.
Politics, his mind told him. The word had some meaning to him, but not much. Someone inside was talking to someone else about the best way to avoid the battle on the moon, now that both powers had bases there. There was a queer tone of fear to the comments on the new iron-chain reaction bombs and what they could do from the moon.
It meant nothing to him, except that he was not alone, and that it stirred up knowledge in his head of a world like a ball in space with a moon that circled it. He tried to catch more conversation, but it had stopped, and the other doors seemed silent. Then he found a door behind which a speaker was cursing at the idea of introducing robots into a world already a mess, calling another by name.
That hit the listener, sending shocks of awareness through his consciousness. He had no name! Who was he? Where was he? And what had come before he found himself here?
He found no answers, savagely though he groped through his reluctant mind. A single word emerged—amnesia, loss of memory. Did that mean he had once had memories? Then he tried to reason out whether an amnesiac would have a feeling of personality, but could not guess. He could not even be sure he had none.
He stared at the knob of the door, wondering if the men inside would know the answers. His hand moved to the knob slowly. Then, before he could act, there was the sudden, violent sound of running footsteps down the hall.
He swung about to see two men come plunging around the corner toward him. It hadn't occurred to him that legs could move so quickly. One man was thicker than he was, dressed in a dirty smock of some kind, and the other was neat and trim, in figure and dress, in a khaki outfit he wore like a badge. The one in khaki opened his mouth.
"There he is! Stop him! You—Expeto! Halt! George—"
Expeto—George Expeto! So he did have a name—unless the first name belonged to the other man. No matter, it was a name. George accepted it and gratitude ran through him sharply. Then he realized the senselessness of the order. How could he halt when he was already standing still? Besides, there were those rapid motions...
The two men let out a yell as George charged into motion, finding that his legs could easily hold the speed. He stared doubtfully at another corner, but somehow his responses were equal to it. He started to slow to a halt—just as something whined by his head and spattered against a white wall. His mind catalogued it as a bullet from a silent zep gun, and bullets were used in animosity. The two men were his enemies.
He considered it, and found he had no desire to kill them; besides, he had no gun. He doubled his speed, shot down another hall, ran into stairs and took them at a single leap. It was a mistake. They led to a narrower hallway, obviously recently blocked off, with a single door. And the man with the zep gun was charging after him as he hesitated.
He hit the door with his shoulder and was inside, in a strange room of machinery and tables and benches. Most of it was strange to his eyes, though he could recognize a small, portable boron-reactor and generator unit. It was obviously one of the new hundred-kilowatt jobs.
The place was a blind alley! Behind him the man in khaki leaped through the ruined door, his zep gun ready. But the panting, older figure of the man in the smock was behind him, catching his arm.
"No! Man, you'd get a hundred years of Lunar Prison for shooting Expeto. He's worth his weight in general's stars! If he—"
"Yeah, if! George, we can't risk it. Security comes first. And if he isn't, we can't have another paranoiac running around. Remember the other?"
Expeto dropped his shoulders, staring at them and the queer fear that was in them. "I'm not George?"
he asked slowly. "But I've got to be George. I've got to have a name."
The older man nodded. "Sure, George, you're George—George Expeto. Take it easy, Colonel Kallik! Sure you're George. And I'm George—George Enders Obanion. Take it easy, George, and you'll be all right. We're not going to hurt you. We want to help you."
It was a ruse, and Expeto knew it. They didn't want to help—he was somehow important, and they wanted him for something. His name wasn't George—just Expeto. The man was lying. But there was nothing else to do; he had no weapons.
He shrugged. "Then tell me something about myself."
Obanion nodded, catching at the other man's hand. "Sure, George. See that chart on the wall, there behind you—Now!"
Expeto had barely time to turn and notice there was no chart on the wall before he felt a violent motion at his back and a tiny catching reaction as the other's hand hit him. Then he blanked out.
He came back to consciousness abruptly, surprised to find that there was no pain in his head. A blow sufficient to knock him out should have left afterpains. He was alone with his thoughts.
They weren't good thoughts. His mind was seizing on the words the others .had used, and trying to dig sense out of them. Amnesia was a rare thing—too rare. But paranoia was more common. A man might first feel others were persecuting him, then be sure of it, and finally lose all reality in his fantasies of persecution and his own importance. Then he was a paranoiac, making up fantastic lies to himself but cunning enough and seemingly rational at times.
But they had been persecuting him! There'd been the man with the gun—and they'd said he was important! Or had he only imagined it? If someone important had paranoia, would they deliberately induce amnesia as a curative step?
And who was he and where? On the first, he didn't care—George Expeto would do. The second took more thought, but he had begun to decide it was a hospital—or asylum. The room here was whitewashed, and the bed was the only furniture. He stared down at his body. They'd strapped him down, and his arms were encased in thin metal chains!
He tried to recall all he could of hospitals, but nothing came. If he had ever been sick, there was no memory of it. Nor could he remember pain, or what it was like, though he knew the word.