Mutant, page 12
“—if you love him,” Alexa said into the mike, “marry him. And if he loves you, he’ll have no objection to running psychrating tests and
Mutant
115
comparing id balance sheets. You’re considering a lifetime partnership, and both of you should read the contracts before signing them.” She managed to look like a cat with cream on its whiskers. “But always remember that love is the most important thing in the world. If you find that, it will always be springtime in your hearts. Good luck, Wondering!”
She pressed a switch. “Thirty, Linc. My job’s done for the day.
That’s one sort of job a Baldy can find—heart problem editor on a telepaper. Think you’d like it?”
“No,” Linc said. “It ain’t . . . it’s not up my alley.”
He was wearing a silken blue shirt and darker blue shorts, and a cropped brown wig covered his skull. He wasn’t used to it yet, and kept touching it uneasily.
“Ain’t as good as isn’t,” Alexa said. “I know what you mean, and that’s more important than grammatical construction. More lessons?”
“Not for a while yet. I get tired easy. Talking’s still more natural, somehow.”
“Eventually you’ll be finding it cumbersome. Personal endings—you speak, he speaks, parlons, parlez, parlent—telepathically you don’t use those vestiges.”
“Vestiges?”
“Sure,” Alexa said. “From the Latin. The Romans didn’t use pronouns. Just amo, amas, amant, ” she clarified mentally, “and the endings gave you the right pronoun. Nous, vous, and ils are used now instead, we, you plural, and they. So the endings are unnecessary. if you’re communicating with a Swiss telepath, though you might find yourself wondering why he kept thinking of a girl as it. But you’d know what it meant to him, and you couldn’t if you were being oral only.”
Mutant
116
“It’s plenty hard,” Linc said. “I’m getting the angles, though. That round-robin business we had last night was—” He groped for a word, but Alexa caught the meaning from his mind.
“I know. There’s an intimacy that’s pretty wonderful. You know, I’ve never felt badly about being adopted. I knew just where I fitted into Marian’s life and Darryl’s, and how they felt about me. I knew I belonged.”
“It must be a nice feeling,” Linc said. “I’m sort of getting it, though.”
“Of course. You’re one of Us. After you’ve mastered the telepathic function, you won’t have any doubts at all.”
Linc watched the play of sunlight on Alexa’s bronze curls.
“I guess I do belong with your kind of folks.”
“Glad you came with Dave?”
He looked at his hands. “I can’t tell you, Alexa. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is. I’d been shut out in the dark all my life, thinking I was a freak, never feeling right sure about myself. Then all this—”
he indicated the televisor. “Magical miracles, that’s what. And all the rest.”
Alexa understood what was in his mind. Through him she felt the heady excitement of an exile returning to his own kind. Even the visor, familiar symbol of her job, assumed a new glamour, though it was the standard double-screen model, the upper for news flashes, the lower for the twenty-four-hour newspaper that was received, recorded on wire-film, and thereafter available for reference. Push-buttons selected the publication, and the dials made it possible to focus down on the pages, on either the action pictures or the printed matter. Format, of course, was quite as important as news value. The big concealed wall-screen at one end of the room was used for plays, concerts, movies, and Disneys. But for the added sensual attractions of smell, taste, and touch, one had to go to the theaters; such special equipment was still too expensive for the average home.
Mutant
117
“Yes.” Alexa said, “you’re one of Us. And you’ve got to remember that the future of the race is important. If you stay, you must never do anything to hurt it.”
“I remember what you’ve been telling me about the p-paranoids,”
Linc nodded. “Guess they’re sort of like the cannibal tribes ’mong the Hedgehounds. They’re fair quarry for any-body.” He felt his wig, stepped to a mirror-unit, and adjusted the headpiece.
Alexa said, “There’s Marian outside. I want to see her. Wait for me, Linc; I’ll be back.”
She went out, Lincoln, awkwardly testing his newly-realized powers, felt her thought fingering subtly toward the plump, pretty woman who was moving among the flowers, armed with gloves and spray.
He wandered to the clavilux, and, one-fingered, picked out a tune.
He hummed:
All in the merry month of May,
When the green buds they were swellin’,
Young Jemmy Grove on his death-bed lay
For love of Barb’ry Allen.
Memories of Cassie rose up. He forced them back into the shadows, along with the Hedgehounds and the nomad life he had known. That wasn’t his life any more. Cassie—she’d get along all right. He’d go after her, one of these days, and bring her to live with him among the Baldies. Only—only she wasn’t a Baldy. She wasn’t like Alexa, for instance. She was quite as pretty, sure; yet there was all this talk about the future of the race. If, now, he married a Baldy and had Baldy sons and daughters—
But, he was already married. What was the good of thinking so? A Hedgehound marriage might not amount to a hill of beans among the townsfolk, of course, and, anyway, all this mental round-robin stuff was sort of polygamy.
Well, he’d climb that hill when he came to it. First he had to get the trick of this telepathy business. It was coming, but slowly, for he’d not been conditioned since infancy, as other Baldies were. The
Mutant
118
latent power had to be wakened and directed—not as a child could be taught, but allowing for Linc’s maturity, and his ability to grasp and understand the goal.
Marian came in with Alexa. The older woman stripped off her cloth gloves and brushed beads of perspiration from her ruddy cheeks. “
’Lo, Linc,” she said. “How’s it going?”
“Fairish, Marian. You should of asked me to help out there.”
“I need the exercise. I gained three pounds this morning arguing with that turnip-bleeder Gatson, down at the store. Know what he wants for fresh breadfruit?”
“What’s that?”
“Catch this.” Marian formed mental concepts involving sight, touch and taste. Alexa chimed in with the smell of breadfruit. Linc had his own arbitrary standards for comparisons, and within a second had assimilated the absolute meaning; he would recognize a breadfruit from now on. Marian threw a quick mental question. Linc answered.
To town (Darryl McNey) by window (ten minutes past)
“A bit confused,” Marian said, “but I get the idea. He ought to be back soon. I’m in the mood for a swim. Suppose I fix some sandwiches?”
“Swell,” Alexa said. “I’ll help. Linc knows more about catching trout than anybody I’ve ever seen, except he doesn’t know what a dry fly is.”
“I just aim to catch fish,” Linc said. “Enough to eat. Many a time I had to fish through holes in the ice to keep from being hungry.”
Later, stretching his brown, hard body on the sandy bank of the pool upstream, he luxuriated in the warm sunlight and watched Alexa. Slim and attractive in white shorts and bathing cap, she inexpertly practiced casting, while McNey, pipe in his mouth, worked a likely-looking spot under an overhang of branches that brushed the water. Marian placidly ate sandwiches and watched
Mutant
119
the activities of a community of ants with considerable interest. The deep, unspoken comradeship of the family and the race was intangibly in the air, a bond that reached out, touched Linc, and drew him into its friendly center. This is it, he thought. I belong here.
And Alexa’s mind answered him with quiet confidence: You are one of Us. The months passed very quickly for Linc, broken by occasional visits from Dave Barton, whose manner grew increasingly more troubled, and by the green that covered tree and brush, ground and vine, as spring gave place to summer, and summer drew toward a not-distant autumn. He seldom thought of the Hedgehounds now. There was a sort of tacit acceptance of the situation among the little group; he felt, without actually bringing the realization consciously to mind, that Alexa knew a great deal about his past, and that she would not bring up the matter of Cassie unless he did. That she was beginning to love him he did not doubt.
Nor did he doubt much that he loved her. After all, Alexa was his kind, as Cassie never had been.
But he dreamed of Cassie, nevertheless. Sometimes he felt loneliness, even among his own people. At such times he was anxious to finish his telepathic training and join Barton’s fight against the paranoids. Barton was eager to enlist Linc, but he warned against the danger of moving too soon. “The paranoids aren’t fools, Linc,” he said. “We mustn’t underestimate them. I’ve lived this long simply because I’m a trained big-game hunter. My reactions are just a bit faster than theirs, and I always try to maneuver them in a position where telepathy can’t help them. If a paranoid’s at the bottom of a well, he may read your intention of dropping a load of bricks on his head—but he can’t do a lot about it.”
“Any news about Callahan?” McNey asked.
“No word for months. There’s some plan—maybe a big push in the propaganda field, maybe assassinations of key technologists. I don’t know what. I’ve read no minds that knew the right answers.
But I think something’s going to break soon; I’ve found out that much. We’ve got to be ready for it. We’ve got to break their code—
or get one of our own. The same tune, Darryl.”
Mutant
120
“I know,” McNey said. He stared out at the empty blue sky. “There isn’t much I can say now, or even think. The same tune, all right.”
“But you haven’t failed? In a few weeks you’re due back at Niagara.”
Linc said, “Look, about this code. I was thinking, the Hedgehounds have got a sort of code. Like this.” He imitated a few bird and animal calls. “We know what they mean but nobody else knows.”
“Hedgehounds aren’t telepaths. If they were, your code wouldn’t stay a secret long.”
“Guess you’re right. I’d like to take a crack at the paranoids, though.”
“You’ll have your chance,” Barton said. “But, meanwhile, it’s Darryl’s job to find us a new weapon.”
McNey said wearily, “I know all about that. No more pep talks, Dave, please.”
Barton stood up, scowling. “I’ve a job to do down south. I’ll see you when I get back, Darryl. Meanwhile, take care of yourself. If this business—whatever it is—should break soon, don’t run any risks.
You’re vital to Us, much more so than I am.”
With a nod to Linc he went out. McNey stared at nothing. Linc hesitated, sent out a querying thought, and met abstracted rebuff.
He went downstairs.
He couldn’t find Alexa. Finally he went out into the gardens, working his way toward the brook. A flash of color caught his eye, and he headed for it.
Alexa was sitting on a rock, her flimsy playsuit unzipped to let the slight breeze cool her. The heat was so intense that she had removed her wig, and her bald head was shiny and incongruous, incompatible with her artificial lashes and eyebrows. It was the first time Linc had ever seen her wigless.
Mutant
121
Instantly, at his thought, she swung about and began to replace the wig. But her arm stopped in arrested motion. She looked at him, half questionably, and then with pain and growing understanding in her eyes.
“Put it on, Alexa,” Linc said.
She watched him steadily. “What for—now?”
“I . . . it doesn’t—”
Alexa shrugged and slipped the headpiece into place. “That was . .
. strange,” she said, deliberately speaking aloud as if she did not want to let her mind slip back into the channels of telepathic intimacy where hurt can strike so unerringly. “I’m so used myself to Baldies being—bald. I never thought before the sight could be—”
She did not finish aloud. After a moment she said, “You must have been very unhappy among the Hedgehounds, Linc. Even more unhappy than you realize. If you’ve been conditioned against the sight of baldness to . . . to that extent—”
“It wasn’t,” Linc denied futilely. “I didn’t . . . you shouldn’t think—”
“It’s all right. You can’t help reactions as deeply rooted as that.
Some day standards of beauty will change. Hairlessness will be lovely. Today it isn’t, certainly not to a man with your psychological background. You must have been made to feel very keenly that you were inferior because of your baldness—”
Line stood there awkwardly, unable to deny the thought that had sprung so vividly into his mind, burning with shame and dismay at the knowledge that she had seen as clearly as himself the ugly picture of her baldness in his thought. As if he had held up a distorting mirror to her face and said aloud, “This is the way you look to me.” As if he had slapped her gratuitously across the cheek with the taunt of her—abnormality.
“Never mind,” Alexa said, a little shakily, smiling. “You can’t help it if baldness disg . . . distresses you. Forget it. It isn’t as if we were m-married or . . . anything.”
Mutant
122
They looked at each other in silence. Their minds touched and sprang apart and then touched again, tentatively, with light thoughts that leaped from point to point as gingerly as if the ideas were ice-floes that might sink beneath the full weight of conscious focus.
I thought I loved you . . . perhaps I did . . . yes, I too . . . but now there can’t be . . . (sudden, rebellious denial) . . . no, it’s true, there can’t ever be rightness between us . . . not as if we were ordinary people . . we’d always remember that picture, how I looked (abrupt sheering off from the memory) . . . (agonized repudiation of it) . .
.no, couldn’t help that . . . always between us . . . rooted too deeply
. . . and anyhow, Cas—(sudden closing off of both minds at once, before even the thought-image had time to form.) Alexa stood up. “I’m going into town,” she said. “Marian’s at the hairdresser’s. I . . . I’ll get a wave or something.”
He looked at her helplessly, half reluctant to let her go, though he knew as well as she how much had been discussed and weighed and discarded in the past moment of voiceless speech.
“Good-by, Alexa,” he said.
“Good-by, Linc.”
Linc stood for a long time watching the path, even after she had gone. He would have to leave. He didn’t belong here. Even if nearness to Alexa were possible after this, he knew he could not stay. They were—abnormal. He would be seeing the baldness, the contemptible, laughable baldness he had hated in himself, more clearly now than the wigs they wore. Somehow until this moment he had never fully realized—
Well, he couldn’t go without telling Darryl. Slowly, dragging his feet a little, he turned back toward the house. When he came to the side lawn he sent out an inexpert, querying thought.
Something answered him from the cellar-laboratory, a queer, strange, disturbing vibration that clung briefly to his mind and then pulled away. It wasn’t McNey. It was—an intruder.
Mutant
123
Linc went down the cellar steps. At the bottom he paused, trying to sort the tangled confusion in his mind as he thrust out exploratory mental fingers. The door was open. McNey was lying on the floor, his mind blanked, blood seeping from a red stain on his side.
The intruder?
Who—
Sergei Callahan.
Where—
Hidden. And armed.
So am I, Linc thought, his dagger springing into his hand.
Telepathically you are untrained. In a fight you can’t win.
That was probably true. Telepathy took the place of prescience with the Baldies. Any Baldy could outguess and conquer a non-Baldy, and Linc was not yet thoroughly trained in the use of the telepathic functtion.
He probed awkwardly. And, suddenly, he knew where Callahan was.
Behind the door. Where he could strike Linc in the back when the boy entered the laboratory. He had not expected the untrained Baldy to discover the ambush until too late, and even as Linc realized the situation, Callahan made a move to spring out.
All Linc’s weight smashed against the panel, slamming the door back against the wall. Callahan was caught. Pressed helplessly between the two metal planes—door and wall—he tried to brace himself, to wriggle free. His hand, gripping a dagger, snaked out.
Linc dropped his own weapon, put his back against the door, and planted his feet more firmly. The door frame gave him good purchase. Veins stood out on his forehead as he ground, crushed, drove the door back with all his strength.
Mutant
124
What had Dave Barton said once? “Kill them with machines—”
This was a machine—one of the oldest. The lever.
Suddenly Callahan began to scream. His agonized thought begged for mercy. In a moment his strength would fail, he pleaded. “Don’t—
don’t crush me!”
His strength failed.
Linc’s heavy shoulders surged. There was one frightful mental scream from Callahan, more agonizing than the audible sound he made, and Linc let the door swing slowly away from the wall. A body collapsed with its movement. Linc picked up his dagger, used it efficiently, and then turned to McNey.
There was a puddle of blood on the floor, but McNey still lived.
Callahan had not had time to finish his task.
Linc became busy administering first aid.
This was it.
It was past midnight. In the cellar laboratory, McNey leaned back in his chair, wincing as he felt the pressure of the bandages about his ribs. He blinked at the fluorescents, sighed, and rubbed his forehead.
His hand hovered over the notepad. An equation was lacking. He wasn’t quite ready to think of it just yet.
