by Gordon Eklund
In the three or four years since Gordon Eklund began writing science fiction he’s published an impressive number of excellent stories, ranging from his very first, the well-remembered novelette “Dear Aunt Annie” through novels like Beyond the Resurrection. The reasons go beyond mere style or craft: Eklund’s stories are enlivened by the talents of a real storyteller who likes the people he writes about. See, for instance, this not entirely picaresque novelette about a girl with psi powers in the San Francisco dome-city of tomorrow (a story which incidentally comes complete with an auctorial bow in the direction of Charles Dickens).
* * * *
WHEN THE dome clock struck twelve noon, sending shivers of sound reverberating brightly through the green square of the park below, the two ladies—equally middle-aged and first-degree—turned to each other, smiling benignly, and bowed from the waist. One of the two was rather tall, though not quite seven feet, and exceedingly thin, while the second was nearly as round as the other was long. Together, they stood poised upon the top step of the concrete stairs that led from the green park below to the flat gray deck of the observation platform above. The platform itself was already fulsomely occupied by a massive moving statue of a forty-niner miner, who panned for mineral wealth in the narrow blue river which swept majestically across the platform, disappearing inside the concrete at both ends.
After the ringing of the clock, the ladies turned back, gazing once more at the milling crowd which filled the park below. The thin lady moved her eyes carefully, shifting her gaze quickly, like the motions of a hawk circling an unsuspecting chicken flock. The fat lady did not seem to be able to make herself stand still. She kept moving from flat bare foot to flat bare foot in a rhythmic graceless shuffle step.
Then the thin one saw something. Her arm jerked like an arrow shot from a crossbow and she cried, “Oh my Lord! Look! Don’t miss this! Have you ever seen such a sight?” Her finger pointed at a solitary figure amid the crowd below.
“Oh my,” the round lady said, frowning. “No—no. I swear that’s a real sack she’s wearing.”
“It is.” The thin lady waved her pointing finger furiously. “And her hair. My God, I have to swear. I say you could raise chickens in that. . . that thatch.”
“No,” said the other, with a heavy, limping smile. “You’re wrong. Not chickens—no—but eagles. You could raise eagles in there.”
Hearing this, the thin lady became serious. “I imagine it won’t be long until the lesser elements find her. I frankly think it is a real pity. The poor girl. Can you imagine . . . ? Well, I do wish . . . They prey on her sort.”
“They have no real choice in the matter,” the round lady answered crisply. (And frankly.) “These girls come here looking for it. They seek humiliation. Openly. I’ve seen it often enough. Working down there among them. Trying to help. I ought to know.”
“They are a stupid lot,” the thin lady admitted.
“But—of course!”
“And also—oh my God! Look! I swear she’s coming this way. Do you think she could have heard?”
“No. Hush. Yes. Don’t pay her the slightest attention.” Whisperings : “She ought to know better.”
Silence ensued as a lone figure emerged from the milling crowd and ascended the stairs. The girl paused on the step just below the two ladies. Her dress was a loose floppy sack, her feet were bare and black, and her hair would have made a fine nesting place for hens. The girl surveyed the two ladies with contempt.
Then, as quickly as she had come, she faded back into the crowd.
“Well!” said the round lady. “Have you—?” Then she laughed shrilly. “My God, the nerve of that. . . that. . .”
“The police will hear of this. I can assure you I will go—” And then this lady—it was the thin lady—stopped talking. Instead, she began to squawk and cackle. Her hands slid neatly into her armpits, as though accustomed to residing there, and her elbows began to flutter. On dainty tiptoes, she pranced down the steps, leaping from one to another, squawking all the while, cackling passionately, arms fluttering like the wings of a landlocked bird. With a graceful swoop, her nose glided down to the concrete and her tongue flicked out, gathering in bits of refuse and spilled food. She pecked furiously at the steps, cackling as she savored each delicious morsel of garbage, the volume of her cries rising as she proceeded inexorably toward the grass below.
Meanwhile, the round lady, who had at first watched her companion silently, now began to moo. She drew one breast—a hefty elongated structure closely resembling a flattened cannonball— from within her bodice and waved it mournfully at the crowd, as if pleading. “Moo,” she cried painfully. “Oh, moo.”
Moo?
Squawk?
Cackle?
Two such fine ladies as these—so carefully certain and pure in their first-degree?
So it was.
Some ten yards from the platform, arms and legs firmly latched around the width of a lamppost, the girl in the sack, her hair flaring as a wind emerged, watched the scene, laughing with unrestrained glee. Her teeth glistened fiercely white as she laughed, and so genuine, so wonderful was her joy that Andrew could not help approaching.
He removed her gently from around the post, then held her warmly in his arms, stroking her sack as though it were bare flesh. “Please tell me your name,” he begged, whispering.
“Duck,” she said.
“Uh. What?” Andrew was a nephew of the round lady. He had accompanied her here today. But it was this sack girl—the one who said her name was Duck—whom he presently loved without end.
“I said it was Duck,” said Duck.
“What?” said Andrew.
“Oh, Rodelphia,” she said, her patience at an end. Then hastily, before he could once more say “what?” she added, “And you’re the duck.”
“What?” said the duck.
Rodelphia left him quacking madly in the soft fluttering eternally springtime grass of the park. When she was sufficiently far away, her conscience began to ache, so, taking pity upon him, she sent him forward and allowed him to join his aunt and her friend upon the steps. That way all three of them were together, and this was enough to satisfy Rodelphia’s sense of rightness.
That day, upon the steps leading to the observation platform, for a full quarter of an hour before the arrival of the police, Union Square Park was graced by the following: (1) a mooing, pleading cow with an exposed udder; (2) a squawking, cackling chicken who ate garbage; and (3) a madly quacking young duck. It was the duck who caused the greatest difficulty when he insisted upon trying to float in the artificial river that flowed past the statue of the forty-niner. Unfortunately, when the duck tried this, he sank with the dull suddenness of a two-hundred-pound man, a creature he happened to closely resemble.
What the whole thing was—it was decided—was a scandal.
When the Free City Chief of Police, Kendrick Drake, was at last allowed to interrogate the trio of surrogate animals, their squawking and quacking and mooing having for the moment ceased, he could not discover a single really solid fact. “I remember nothing—and if I could, I certainly would not choose to discuss it.” “My mind is a total blank except—no, I simply cannot remember.” When informed that the chief’s name was Drake, the man named Andrew immediately became hostile and had to be restrained physically. The two ladies were eventually allowed to return to their oceanfront homes while the young man was held for the night in the county jail. An intoxicant test was administered, but the results proved negative.
Rodelphia, who was blocks away from the park before the police arrived, was shocked by the contrasting conditions prevalent here in the Free City. The tall, stately towers near the floater terminal quickly gave way to smaller two- and three-story houses, the rotting wood and flaking plaster of which seemed to exude the powerfully musty odor of decay. Then she realized there was human excrement here and there in the gutters. She paused to examine this phenomenon but could make nothing of it. Children flocked everywhere, flowing past her in small, strutting, prancing groups. Her mind was jambled with untranslatable phrases: Gotegetadaw and Sumdayagunbebigga and Whazamatwitya-aenwa, the thoughts of these passing children; and Rodelphia soon had to admit that she would have to close down her mind entirely before they succeeded in driving her screwy. She did so, remembering how Grandfather had warned her, mincing not a word, “In the Free City there’s just three kinds of people, all different. One is the first-degree kind, who is both rich and smart. The second-degree kind is nothing. They do all the work and are famous for being bland, like that meat I got two weeks ago which wasn’t real. Remember that? And the third-degree: well, they talk a whole different language. They ain’t hardly people.”
Nor were they.
Rodelphia’s grandfather had resided here in the Free City at one time, back before he had come and stolen her away from the Home, but he would never say what degree he had been, if any. “Couldn’t stand the constant noise,” he explained, though for her the noise itself was grand—she only regretted she could not comprehend its meaning. The eyes of these children appeared dead, their mouths hung flaccid with decay, and their skin was either incredibly pale or else black as a starless night. Without the noise that came from their minds, she might easily have mistaken them for a lot of marvelously animated walking corpses. Opening her mind once more briefly, she caught a passing thought, Girlwudya? and shut things off again, pleased by this comforting reminder of the continuing jamble of daily life about her. God, she was falling in love with this city. Its immemorial jambling and hooting. Above, in bright sparkling scarlet letters as tall as the tallest downtown buildings, the dome cried out: two oclock exactly fct while disturbance today union sq when 3 1-d citizens performed bizarre acts while mixed crowd watched under full police investigation present moment of possible exterior subversive influences complete report to follow k drake ch of police. Rodelphia stopped cold, her head tilting, eyes pointed at the artificially painted sky. Reading, she laughed. Grandfather had also warned her never to reveal her powers openly. “It’s the true reason why I had to flee the home of my fathers and the Free City in turn. They came yipping at my heels and my best frock coat got caught in the Golden Gate as I slipped toward the redwoods that night. Had they caught me, they darn well would have burned me, and I don’t mean my frail old body, I mean my mind, which is still as keen and sharp as a slickman’s polished blade.” She knew he was right, admitted the fact openly to herself, always had, but those two old ladies with their cackling—they had both been so brazen and vulnerable, an irresistible combination. The young man too.
Even as a child, Rodelphia had been unable to withstand open temptation. In the third grade, there was a time when she had made the teacher—an apprentice spinster in her late twenties-expose her naked underbriefs before the gathered class, front and back, then remove them in a brisk singular motion—with pink roses imprinted upon the azure silk—holding them high like a fluttering dove and then proceeding to lecture the class upon the divine nature of such objects, meanwhile rubbing the garment passionately up against her own bare pink cheeks.
Rodelphia had been an incredible sophisticate for that place and time, with any man’s mind wide open for her to see, and she had rocked with laughter, watching the humbling of her enemy, but that same night she and Grandfather had moved again, crawling higher up the white slopes of the cold Sierras, plunging ever deeper into the lonely mysteries of the deep backwoods. After turning twelve, she had never seen another human being in the flesh except for Grandfather until yesterday when she caught the floater. When she was fourteen, seeing the turn of the old man’s thoughts, she had allowed him to seduce her one warm red night when the whole of the sky was ablaze with a thundering fire. Afterward, bawling painfully upon her bared chest, he pleaded to be forgiven, admitting that he wasn’t really her grandfather and couldn’t very well be expected to help himself.
“Go ahead and tell me,” she said, knowing it had to come.
His tale poured out of him: “Hell, I was only thirty-three when I got away and couldn’t have been your grandfather even if I’d’ve wanted to. I’m not a bit of your blood, my darling. I wish I was closer to you, but when I left the Free City with them yipping ‘Mutie, mutie, mutie!’ at my heels and came sneaking along various cold back roads, I passed this huge white house with gables and turrets and a million lights, green willowy grass out front and trees in the yard like a miniature forest. I thought it could have been a real country mansion and I stopped, almost thinking I saw a cow grazing in the yard, freezing through and through, hungry enough to gnaw at my own hand, and I started listening to see if I might find a receptive welcome. Instead, near knocked this old head off of its supporting shoulders, on account of what I got was kids—these thousands of kids—all blaring back at me in a horrible cacophony and I started to shut off in a dreadful fright when suddenly I realized there was something more to this than simple noise alone. I listened again, as keenly as I knew how; near panicked realizing that it wasn’t only me listening, but there was another in that house who was listening right back at me. I tell you, I shivered, and it wasn’t only for the cold night. And it was you, my dumpling granddaughter. You, who was then eight years old and pretty as a roving butterfly, locked up in that awful home of a prison, declaimed as an orphan of the state. You had the power, and it was so darn strong I couldn’t believe it, stealing around the house that night, moving on the tips of my toes as I watched out for them phony watchdogs, not seeing a one, grabbing you out of that bed, and running with you, just running. I think we were lucky to get away. And I decided, sleeping that night in a ditch, with you laying on top of me so as not to get damp, that I’d tell you how I was your grandfather and we both had the power on account of our blood. But it was never so, my darling. I don’t know why you’ve got it or even why I’ve got it. But we do.”
And he continued sobbing, and she held him warmly, their relationship at last upon an equal and mature footing, and she stifled a laugh. Not because she was cruel: the laugh was because everything he had just told her, the words pouring out of him like fire from a dragon’s mouth, she had plucked piecemeal from his mind years before, knowing the whole story long before she turned ten. Grandfather’s powers had always been minimal compared to hers, and he never heard a thought of hers she did not intend for him to hear. But she loved him. Later that night he admitted he had only come to the Free City as a refugee and had lived there less than four years before his exposure. He had, in fact, been born someplace called Nebraska. But she knew this, too, and could never understand why it shamed him so.
After that one occasion, he never touched her body again, but when the old man died, Rodelphia gently tore his body apart molecule by molecule and took the component parts lovingly in the grasp of her mind and then heaved them spinning, high, high, tossing them straight toward the blazing disk of the noontime sun. It was a grand funeral. She loved him that much. After spending one more night inside the cabin, she blew it down the following morning and then hopped down the mountain to the nearest floater station. From there, the Free City was less than two hours away.
Now her tail end was getting sore from sitting. She began to thirst for action. She was tired of walking and also hungry. This place drove her screwy, the way they kept switching the weather every five minutes. Right now a brisk wind was madly blowing. The children, gathered around her in a loose circle, shouted what she guessed were obscenities, but not a word made any real sense to her.
But then, abruptly, a hand snaked around her mouth and another enclosed her jaw. She was lifted right off the curb and dragged, the heels of her feet scratching the concrete, across the sidewalk. The mind behind was thinking, Hold her, hold her, so she let him hold her. The children stared after her and one small cute boy laughed aloud, but the girl beside him turned and slapped his face so fiercely that his lower lip split, exposing blood. A dark doorway opened behind her and she was drawn through it, swallowed by a dimness that was not quite blackness.
The boy set her down in the dust, then scurried around with a finger upon his slender lips. “I won’t hurt you,” he whispered.
“I know,” she said.
She was crouched inside the basement of one of the ramshackle houses. A rat came scurrying up—a ghostly gray specter—and sniffed at her feet, then bounded hastily back as she gave its brain a tickle. The boy sauntered back, returning from having shut the door. The dimness was now much nearer to real darkness, but behind, deep in the bowels of the basement, she could hear the sound of other voices.
The boy said, “He told me to bring you. That was the only way I know how. I’m sorry, but if I’d missed, if you’d got away . . .” He drew his forefinger swiftly across his throat and then gurgled passionately on his own imagined blood.
“Who’s he?” asked Rodelphia.
“Why, Abraham.”
“Oh, sure,” she said. “Him.”
“You’ve never heard of Abraham?”
“In the Bible.” She pretended to ponder. “And Lincoln.” The subject bored her. “Tell me your name”—though she knew.
“I’m Hungry,” he said.
“Oh, really?” she said. “So am I,” laughing.
But he had plainly heard this one before. “I can’t imagine your never having heard of Abraham. Are you sure you’re not lying? If you don’t know him, how come you’re down here? You’re not a third, and you’re nothing else, so you’ve got to be a derelict.”
“I hopped off the floater three hours ago.”
“From where?”
She waved toward the east. Where she thought the east must lie.
“And they let you in?” He pointed at her sack dress while his eyes made puzzled circles in her hair. “You?”
“I snuck in,” she confessed.
“I thought so but—” A fierce bellow cut him short. The sound came rumbling like thunder through the hollow twisting corridors of the basement, dashing like the heaving waters of a flash flood streaming down a dry Western riverbed. “Where are you, Hungry?” came the bellow.
The boy leaped to his feet and shouted back in a shrill, piping voice, “Right here, Abraham!”
“You got that girl?” came the rumble.
“Yes sir!”
“Then bring her here! Goddamn the Lord! Quit fooling around!”
“Quick,” said Hungry, pulling her upright.
Rodelphia shook him away. “Hands off me!” she cried extra loud.
Hungry paled at the sound of her voice, backing away, cowering, hands shielding his face.
“Oh, come on. I’m not going to hit you,” Rodelphia said, leading him away through the twisting mazelike passages of the basement. As they rounded each new corner, a tiny electric light glowed at their appearance. The room they sought was the center room—the prize at the middle of the maze—a tiny, cluttered, cloistered place filled with the stored junk and refuse of the hundred lives that were lived above. A child sat here upon the broken remnants of a couch, another on the floor scrawled her name carelessly in the dust, while a third child—a golden-haired boy— dangled like a cobweb from the rafters above. Maybe two dozen children in all—sliced neatly down the middle according to sex. An average age was probably sixteen. The girls seemed older than the boys.
“Hungry!” bellowed Abraham, seeing them coming. He sat sprawled in the very midst of his children, a giant wobble of a man, big and powerful as a whale, with a fierce jagged black beard dangling clear to his chest and red-painted lips that curled deliberately downward at their ends and blue eyes that managed to twinkle and glower simultaneously. He was dressed wholly in black rags, tattered torn fragments of cloth, a brazen combination of the styles and fashions of a generation. A stovepipe hat tottered precariously upon his head like a crown upon the head of a medieval prince.
He did not move, saying, “I am Abraham,” mocking politeness as Rodelphia strolled fearlessly forward. Then he stretched his hand toward hers. “Aha,” and he kissed her palm delicately.
“You’re lovely,” he murmured. Then: “Kids out!” evoking a rustling and bustling so tinged with undue haste that Rodelphia felt it necessary to close down her mind once more.
Then she and Abraham were alone except for Hungry, who lurked inconspicuously beside the doorway. Perhaps he was acting as a guard. But for whom? she wondered, finding his thoughts unclear on this point. Suddenly he tilted forward, so as not to miss a single word.
“Do you know us?” Abraham said. “We are thieves.”
She confessed her ignorance, sitting beside him. A recent arrival in the Free City. She explained everything. A displaced citizen from the near east. Innocent, she was. And lonely.
“Poor child. But I could have told you that,” Abraham said. “We are simple people, mere thieves only. I hope you do not misunderstand me as—” He licked his lips in obvious preparation for an extended dissertation. His tongue flamed red as the lipstick smeared. “We have a point.” Slamming his fist into the ground, raising an emphasizing puff of dust. “More than that. We have a purpose. We steal, yes, but that is hardly all. Now you tell me— believing it as you speak—you say, ‘Abraham, stealing is wrong.’
You say, ‘Stealing is a sin and you are a most evil man.’ And what do you expect from me in reply? A spasm of guilt? Anguish? Should I say, ‘My child, why yes, you are absolutely correct?’ And kiss you boldly upon the lips, repenting, and thus surrendering my profession, my livelihood. My life, in fact. Ho-ha! Stealing is not wrong! I’m telling you that it carries both point and purpose. In this society we have three worlds. The first which is idle and rich, the second which works to feed the others, and the third which is nothing. All right—but what of the others? The humble few? I mean us.” Thumping his chest. “Or just me, my love. We who are called derelicts, rejected by all, rejecting in turn. My story? I was born a first as most of my children were born seconds. I lived a most contented life. My mother was a lovely wisp of a woman, rumored to be close to a hundred in years, an original survivor of the first moon colony, and a lady never known to speak in a voice harsher than a whisper. My father was a lisping pervert, a lover of boys—a walking archetype of that form, or perhaps merely a cliche, a stereotype—with a wrist bent a full ninety degrees, creating me purely by mistake, wandering into the wrong bed one deluded night, mistaking my mother’s graceful rump for that of some boy, implanting the seed which grew to be me by slip alone. That is my family story, as told by servants, aunts, uncles—it’s something I heard my whole life. My father had gone to America in shame—New York, I think—and my mother died of cancer. At the side of her warm grave, these eyes” —pointing at the simultaneously twinkling/glowering orbs, already close to overflowing with moistness—”shed bitter tears, true tears of anguish and despair, wet and filled with the angry cruel salt of honest grief, and never since—not for one second—have I cried. I came here, living first in the sewers below, devoted to pits of the purest foul hell, then crawling on my belly this high to a damp, cold basement. True, we steal—myself and my children. We take from those who have it to spare and bestow these blessings upon those less fortunate—namely, ourselves. Or me.” He wept openly now, shedding unashamed rivers of tears. “We have no intention, however, of harming the fabric of this society. We. care not to bring it down upon our own ears. Anarchism is a monstrous aberration. We spit upon those who profess it.” He spat in the dust. “We love and adore this free city. And we do our part; yes, we steal.
“So will you join us?” And he began to cough, the noise rising so high it clouded his mind and prevented Rodelphia from peering within. She waited until he was through.
“Cancer of the lungs,” he explained. “As my poor mother died.”
“Isn’t there something you can do about it?” she asked, genuinely concerned.
“I could swallow pills.” He popped a pill into his mouth. “But I refuse.”
“You do?”
“I prefer a natural death to an unnatural life.” A gentle cough —a prompt answering pill. “But will you not join us?”
She said, “All right.”
“And you will steal?”
“I will.”
“Then remove your clothes. That foul sack. Ugh.”
“My clothes?”
“Yes. Ugh. I’m afraid that it’s necessary. Absolutely. Please don’t mind me. I see that your upbringing has emphasized the proper virtues. As did mine. Because of my mother, I have remained a virgin to this day. Tell her, Hungry.”
“Abraham is a virgin,” said Hungry, from the doorway.
“So tell her why.”
“Abraham is waiting for a woman he can love.”
“And he has not yet found her,” Abraham said, sniffling. “See? I prefer unnatural abstinence to natural lust.”
“And you don’t take pills either?” she asked.
“Either strip or die,” he said coldly.
She guessed he meant it. His mind was a horrible mess. Working the dress over her head was the work of a moment. Beneath, she was naked. Hungry disappeared during the act of undressing, but promptly returned carting a full-length mirror, cracked in a dozen places, lines radiating from the various epicenters of destruction like the slender strands of a spider’s web. Hungry held the mirror so that Abraham could see the girl in its reflection. Abraham, staring at the glass, muttered. Rodelphia, glancing down, saw nothing exceptional. She did regret not having washed more recently.
Spinning on her tiptoes, flapping her arms, she gave her hips an abruptly furious rattle. She felt silly doing this, but it was what he wanted.
“Splendid,” said Abraham, finally. Looking away, he drew his beard over his lips, rubbed, then let it flop back to his chest. He wasn’t looking at Rodelphia any more.
She got dressed.
“Retain the sack,” he said. “It hides your charms and will force them to wonder.”
“Who will wonder?”
He explained her work: she was to be a prostitute, performing the proper functions for a proper fee. “But make certain you capture their money banks before letting them get away, I mean, don’t let them keep a penny. If they have nothing, call Hungry, who will administer a beating. This rarely happens. Hungry will provide further information. I believe you’re worth it—whether you know it or not.”
A cry erupted from the outer corridor, and then the door crashed open and a small slender girl came bounding inside, her white hair flying behind. “Father—I cut myself,” she cried, rushing to plop herself in Abraham’s wide lap.
“Poor girl,” he said, looking down, parting the trickle of blood upon the child’s knee, exposing a small jagged gash.
“On a nail,” she said.
He stroked her hair, drawing the girl lovingly close to his chest. He rocked back and forth, shifting on his hips. “Won’t you be all right?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said, smiling now.
“I will care for you. I will.”
“I know,” she said.
Rodelphia turned and tiptoed from the room. Hungry followed her. He shut the door. Through the wood, they heard the child give an awful shriek.
“I think he hit her,” Rodelphia said.
Hungry, looking embarrassed, shrugged. He led her away.
“That’s his daughter?” she asked.
He said, “Sure.”
“And the mother?”
He shrugged again.
Later, as they stood on the street, he explained. “Abraham loves us, all of us, and that means you. But don’t cross him. He’ll kill you if you try. What he wants from us is money, not love. He gives all the love that’s needed around here.”
Then he left her standing in the middle of the gutter. She was careful to avoid the pockets of excrement but followed the rest of his instructions explicitly. She held her hands clasped in front of her waist, let her shoulders slump like those of a hunchback and allowed her tongue to dangle freely from the left corner of her mouth. Past this obstruction, she murmured ambiguous noises in a light, lilting voice. She guessed he knew what he was up to.
Then it got dark all of a sudden. The sun fell straight down out of the sky and was replaced a moment later by a full yellow moon and a blanket of brilliant stars. Around her, street lamps blossomed into full illumination and puzzling sounds began to echo along the block—she could have sworn she heard crickets. Then a man approached from the shadows across the way. He came stomping straight toward her, wearing a pair of thigh-length leather boots and a green suede belt wrapped so tightly around his waist that his belly flopped above and over it, though the man was hardly fat,
“I...er...you know,” he said, removing his money bank from under his arm. Unzipping the purse, he jiggled the coins. He said, “You poor thing,” and took her hand in his.
She continued to sing, but he appeared ready to go. She gave him a brief wave, then turned and twitched herself as if stung by a hornet and skipped off into the basement behind. She heard him following.
In the first room, a light had been fired for her benefit. It clearly showed the rumpled legless bed in the farthest corner. “We won’t need that,” said the man. Purely for fun, Rodelphia said, “Imwannapleememan,” which was third-degree talk. She had been warned not to try it. “Nobody can talk the way they can. They’ve been bred for it since two hundred years ago. Don’t try.” But she had never been one for following instructions.
The man did not object. In fact, the sound of her voice, grunting through the thicket of the words, had clearly thrilled him. Now he sat on the bed and begged her to sit beside him. Before doing so, she crept gently into his mind and saw what he wanted her to do. It almost made her laugh. She sat beside him while he flounced her hair and tickled her leg.
“Some are born more fortunate than others,” the man said. “That is the way of the world. But don’t you agree with me that it is the duty of the fortunate to aid those less fortunate?”
She nodded, wide-eyed.
“See?” He clapped his hands. “That is very good.” He was pleased at her quickness. “And that is why I have come here tonight. At home, I possess a full complement of children. The boy is so painfully bright that I weep when I hear him. I am convinced he will amount to something royal. My daughter is too young for brains yet, though I have detected a creative bent in the manner of her walk. My wife does social work. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had met her. Myself, you ask: my position is an essential one. You have been to Broadway? No, of course you haven’t. Poor child, you cannot. But I am the one who composes the jokes, the riddles and witty sayings, that are inscribed each night upon the dome out there for the benefit of the celebrants. Every evening, I prowl Broadway and listen to the eruptions of spontaneous laughter that greet my work. For instance, How is an android like an American? I did that. My work. And others. I’m very good at it. Shall we get ready?”
Standing, Rodelphia removed her dress. The man looked her up and down, smiled, and then darted a glance toward the corner where the mud buckets waited. He then removed his boots and belt. Rodelphia gave a sigh. Enough was quite enough. She started the pictures going for him, then hopped away. She would do almost anything for the experience, but she wasn’t going to roll around in mud. Besides, she was starved, sapped of all energy. Why didn’t they feed her around here? On the bed, the man groaned and panted, his breath coming like the wind off the sea.
Before he finished, she stepped forward and lifted his money bank. She set the coins in the corner beside the mud buckets. Then she let her conjured image merge with her physical presence.
The man was frowning at her, puzzled by his cleanliness and hers. She gave a shrug, letting him wonder, and began to dress. In a quick voice, he told her, “It’s only fair this way. I know you can’t understand why. You probably don’t care. But we’ve rubbed mud over you people for two hundred years. We’ve kept you the way you are, never given you a chance. But I’m not guilty. How can I be? I know what has to be done to keep society on an even footing. I’m no anarchist. I believe in rule and reason.” He checked his money bank, but finding it empty, merely shrugged. “All fine,” he muttered. She followed him to the door. Without looking, he patted her back. “I do hope I’ll see you again. I’ll try to have a few of my jokes translated. Then we can laugh together. More fun that way. I suppose the riddles would prove too esoteric for you. A pity. My best work is my riddles. I’ve got a fine one tonight: What did the deer say when the archer’s arrow missed him by a fraction of an inch? But you wouldn’t know. Be seeing you.” The night swallowed him.
Rodelphia dressed, then returned to the gutter. Hungry, who had been hiding across the street, raced over. “How did it go?” Before answering, she demanded food. He said no, that was impossible. “Think of someone else for a change. Abraham would kill me if I let you go now.”
He wanted to know how it had gone.
“Just great,” she said.
“He was first-degree. Was it the mud?”
“Yes.”
“That’s best. Sometimes we get a second-degree. The firsts feel sorry for the thirds, but the seconds just hate them. It can get nasty.”
“How?” she asked.
She found out several moments later, when a band of second-degree toughs dashed from a dark doorway, shoved Hungry flat on his face, and carried her away into the basement. She was in there with them for more than an hour.
When the boys came out, emerging one by one, the last wiping his slickman’s knife upon his shirttail, Hungry raced across to see if she was still alive.
She was. At her side sat a huge stack of glinting coins.
“Now can I eat?” she asked.
He had to tell her no.
Back to the gutter again. From there to the basement. As the early evening wandered into middle night, Rodelphia served an additional six clients. By the time the last departed, her patience had reached its end. She streaked across the street with the rapidity of a greyhound racer and pulled Hungry loose from the shadows.
“I quit,” she said.
“How much money have you made?”
She told him plenty and took him in and made him look at the neatly stacked coins. He gave a whistle. “Come on—let’s tell Abraham.”
Abraham was alone in the center room. He was fast asleep. His snores ripped through the still air like the growling of a great angry beast. From the doorway Hungry pelted his boss with small flat stones. He had picked them up on the street.
When Abraham awoke, Hungry and Rodelphia entered the room.
Rubbing his eyes, Abraham said, “How goes it?”
Rodelphia deposited the coins in front of him. They fell to the floor in a clattering mess.
Abraham uttered a gleeful cry. “This is wonderful. Darling, I said you could do it. Now I know that I love you.”
“But she didn’t do it,” Hungry said.
Rodelphia groaned. She looked into his mind and saw what his game was. But it was too late to try to stop him.
“How about something to eat?” she said, hoping to forestall the coming crisis.
But it didn’t work. Abraham sprang to his feet and raced across the room. Catching Hungry by the collar, he said, “What do you mean by that?”
“She’s a mutie,” said Hungry.
“So what?” He let Hungry go. “Do I care?”
She might not have been there for all the attention they were paying her. She prowled the room in search of food, finding a stale prune on the floor near the back wall. But it left a mean nasty lump in her stomach.
“She must have been playing pictures for them,” Hungry said. “I watched the way you told me, and she had seven or eight first-degree customers and there wasn’t a drop of mud used out of the buckets. Explain that. And a gang of seconds jumped her. Must have been twelve in the pack. They had her for an hour. And she’s still alive. Have her strip. I bet you won’t find even a bruise.”
Abraham turned upon her, clearly considering Hungry’s suggestion. “I have nothing against muties,” he said.
“Good,” said Rodelphia. “But I’m not taking off my clothes again no way.”
A knife appeared in Abraham’s huge hand. She could have sworn he’d got it from his beard. He dashed at her, swinging the knife. She made her molecules jump and landed on the opposite side of the room.
“Careful doing that,” Hungry said. He edged toward the door. “I don’t want you landing on me.” Then he ran.
Abraham came at her again. She took another jump. Grandfather had warned her never to try this trick in public. It was probably just as well that he was dead now and couldn’t see her.
When she was whole again, she asked Abraham to stop. “You’ll never catch me,” she said.
He didn’t need to be told. Already he was panting furiously from exertion. He sat down on the floor and began to weep. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t allow my customers to be cheated. I have a reputation to maintain. And self-pride. As a matter of fact, I happen to love and admire muties. Like myself, they are rebels. But I’m afraid you’ll just have to go, my little darling.” He threw his knife suddenly but his aim was poor and his thrust was weak and the blade caught in the hem of her dress. By the time she managed to extract the knife, he was coming at her again.
This time, closing her eyes, she pictured a brilliant image of the outside gutter. She jumped.
And landed whole.
But Hungry stood at her side only inches away.
“That was close,” he said.
“Why did you tell him?” She sat on the curb. “You know, you don’t make much sense.”
He admitted as much, sitting up close to her. “I love you,” he said.
“I know. That’s what puzzles me. You’re not supposed to act that way when you love somebody.”
“Why not? I knew he’d never hurt you. I just couldn’t see you wasting your life working for him. At least not tonight. I wanted to take you sightseeing with me. I couldn’t think of any other way of getting you away from him. And he hates muties. I like them myself. At least”—he laid his hand lovingly upon hers—”I don’t have anything against you.”
“Can we eat now?” she asked.
He opened his fist proudly, displaying a glittering roll of gleaming coins. “We eat like a Mayor Dempsey.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “Is that good?”
“The best. But first you’ve got to come with me.”
“Where?” she asked, standing.
“This way.” He led her down the avenue to the corner, where a narrow steel-and-glass rectangular booth sat bathing in its own brilliant light. Above the booth a neon sign flickered, proclaiming: transport station—public.
‘To Broadway,” Hungry said. “North Beach. It’s the best place in the Free City for both eating and seeing. Tomorrow morning I guess we’ll come back here. I won’t tell on you tomorrow, if we get everything done tonight, so you can go ahead and work for him if you still want.”
“I don’t think he’ll want me. You took care of that.”
“Oh, no.” He fell into a secretive whispering tone that tickled her ear. “You don’t have to worry about that. Abraham uses drugs. He swallows them like a big fish after minnows. His favorite is Blank—that’s a drug where you take it and it erases your memory like a big brush. Among other things. Every night Abraham takes a huge dose of Blank. In the morning he wakes up and the only thing he knows is his own name. He’s got that tattooed on his wrist. Everything else, I have to come in and tell him. What he is and why he is and what all he’s up to.”
“But that can’t be true,” she said. Hungry opened the glass door of the booth and went inside. She waited, watching him play with various dials and buttons upon the farthest wall. She saw a street map of the Free City and a beeping red dot that roamed through the streets as Hungry manipulated the dials. “He told me so much about his life,” Rodelphia said. “Even his childhood. And I could tell it was true.”
“Sure,” said Hungry. “He thinks it’s true. Why not? But I’m the one who makes it all up. That story he told you—about his mother—that’s my basic story. But I’ve got plenty more. I used to really let my imagination run wild but I’ve had to curb that tendency lately. A couple of weeks ago, I told Abraham he was the legitimate eldest son of the old Chief of Police. You should have seen him. He stalked straight down to City Hall and demanded his job and uniform. It got embarrassing. They locked him up as screwy, and it took days to get him set free.”
“But isn’t he? Screwy, I mean?”
Hungry came out to explain to her about the booth. It was a public device to be used for getting from one place to another. No fee. Within the limits of the city and county, meaning the dome. He had already set the coordinates for where they wanted to go, so when he was gone, she was to open the door, then close it tightly behind. “And make sure it’s closed or it won’t work. Then hit the big red button and you’ll come right after me.”
She said, “Sure.”
Jumping through the transport booth was no different from jumping through her own powers except that she didn’t know where she was going. But she got there in any event. At the end of the line was another booth identical to the one from which she had jumped. Stepping out, she wasn’t even positive she had gone anywhere. Looking around, she was instantly assaulted by the most gorgeous colors. It took a moment for her to realize she was seeing the sky. It had to be the dome, she knew, painted in bursts of swirling red and orange and violet and green and every imaginable shade in between—all constantly shifting, weaving into one another, flowing like water, mingling fantastically, then bursting apart, shattering. Then she noticed there were pictures up there too—faces—for here an eye blinked between clouds of blue and gold, and here in another place was a big round red nose, and then suddenly an Indian chief came riding across a blank portion of the sky mounted upon the back of a huge palomino stallion. The chief threw back his arm and cocked his elbow and then heaved a brilliantly feathered lance straight across the middle of the sky. For a moment the lance burned savagely, and then it plunged into the middle of a churning mass of color and was gone. When Rodelphia looked back, the chief too had disappeared.
‘That’s not so much,” said Hungry, taking her arm.
“Now look at that,” he told her.
The dome had gone mysteriously dark. Rodelphia held her breath, anticipating. Then a series of block letters, bright yellow in color, began to appear, one blinking into existence, then another. Softly to herself, she read:
what did the deer say when
the archer’s arrow
missed him by half an inch?
Not amused, Hungry said, “That was an arrow escape. You know,” he said, “I wish the guy that writes that stuff would think up something new for a change.”
For the first time—so totally involved had she been with the formations on the dome—Rodelphia took a look at the street. It was literally jammed with people. It was impossible to tell where the street ended and the sidewalk began. Grabbing Hungry’s hand tightly, she allowed him to draw her deeply into the middle of the mob. So many separate bristling thoughts hammered at her mind that she had to close it down entirely. Walking within the mob, she saw that the whole was actually only the sum of many component parts. A dozen men and women streamed past, holding hands, whipping in a snakelike dance. Moments later, the snake himself appeared: a huge fat python ridden by a naked yellow-haired girl who was only slightly longer than the snake was wide. Some people simply stood aside and watched the various processions. Among the performers was a bald-headed juggler who, while balancing a stick on the tip of his nose, tossed and caught six bottles, a tin cup, and one live puppy. A toothless, shriveled man crawled up to Rodelphia and asked if she might want to purchase the services of a mutie.
“He’s a good one. Four legs on him. Various other deviations from the norm. And he can read your mind like a book.”
Hungry gave her a warning look and she politely refused the offer.
Continuing on, they seemed to be moving against the general flow of traffic. Not once did they see the same person twice. Above, the colors had returned to the dome, and tilting back her head Rodelphia watched transfixed while Hungry gave her a rundown on the street. He first warned her to be especially careful, apparently referring back to the toothless man, because these people here were first and they hated muties. “I saw one burned to death—he was hardly a baby—a month ago. And that was nothing. There’s been much worse. I can tell you.” She promised to be good. The rest of what he said she hardly heard; the colors were so gorgeous. He said, “This street is the true heart of the Free City. Nobody actually lives here, but every night when the sun is closed down this whole street comes alive. I really don’t know where some of them come from, but I’ve heard that many sleep down in the sewers and come up only at night. That way they never have to see the sun, which they hate. I guess you could call it a big party, with the Free City itself serving as host. The party runs nightly from sunset to sunup, and anything can happen and usually does. Come dawn, everybody runs home or down to the sewers or wherever. I thought you’d like it.”
She did like it well enough. The whole thing—especially with her mind closed down so that she couldn’t really see—was something absolutely beyond her powers to comprehend. It was those things she could not understand that she always liked the best. There really weren’t that many.
“In here,” said Hungry.
He jumped through a doorway and she went right after him. After the noise of the street, the silence here was dreadful. Rodelphia opened her mind tentatively and catching a thought from Hungry felt much better. A whiff of cooking food caught her nose and she laughed gleefully. At last they would eat. Turning to Hungry, she allowed him to glimpse a smile of complete gratitude.
Then someone caught her hand and gave it a tug. Turning, she saw a happy, smiling man of about thirty-five. With a start she realized he was amazingly handsome: hard as she looked, she couldn’t find a flaw; his features were as perfect as chiseled marble. Except for a narrow band around his waist and a leather pouch attached there, he was quite naked.
“My name is Epson,” he said. “I wanted to ask if you’d care to accompany me home.”
Hungry tried to pull her away, but she stood her ground firmly. Taking a peep into Epson’s mind, she discovered that he was someone rich and famous and powerful. This made her pause. Grandfather had suggested she seek out the rich and famous and powerful, for only they could protect her. She had violated so many of his dictums today; wasn’t it about time she said yes for a change?
But there was something she had to find out first. “Do you have food at your home?” she asked. “I’m really starved.”
“At my home,” said Epson, “the food is natural and constantly in readiness.”
‘Then let’s go,” she said, taking his hand. Hungry, who was weeping openly now and protesting his love, tried to stop her. She got past him, but then he fell to his knees and clawed at her dress. Another man, going for food, stopped long enough to boot Hungry in the rear. He fell over, hitting his face. When he got himself up again, Rodelphia saw that his nose had turned red and shiny as a beet. She was glad he wasn’t badly hurt.
Epson took her back to the street, then darted around an abrupt corner. As if by magic, they were alone; the mob had gone. Epson asked her to stop, then put both arms around her waist. He said, “It is my duty to inform you that you are under arrest.”
Rodelphia was a quick thinker. Picturing an image of the street in front of Abraham’s basement, she prepared to jump.
Only she didn’t jump. Nothing happened. Opening her eyes, there was Epson.
Still thinking quickly, she turned to run.
Only he held her firmly and her feet never moved an inch.
Then something hard and cold snapped around her wrist.
Peering into his mind, she ran smack into an impenetrable stone wall.
Epson said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to come along with me, Rodelphia.”
* * * *
The interview took place in Epson’s office. The room seemed big since the only furniture was a small wooden desk and a tiny chair. Epson sat on the edge of the desk while Rodelphia took possession of the chair. The ceiling and walls were painted a dingy, ugly shade of gray; the carpet was torn and frayed.
The office was located on the first floor of the Free City Police Headquarters. Rodelphia asked Epson if he was a policeman.
“No, not exactly,” he said. “We have only two policemen in this entire city. And I’m not one of them.”
“Then who are you?”
He favored her with a bright smile which dripped with kindness. “I’m the same as you,” he said. “A mutation. A telepath. I read minds, leap through space in violation of ancient rigid laws of physics. We—you and I—brother and sister.” He crossed his first two fingers to illustrate the closeness of their relationship.
“Then why did you go and arrest me?”
“If I were given to dramatics—and I’m not—I would say: Rodelphia, I did it to save your life. It happens to be true.”
“Nobody can kill me,” she said, with deliberate smugness.
“I can. Now I want you to listen to what I say. Will you?”
“Sure.” Later she prided herself upon the fact that she had listened to every word he said.
He started out by telling her that she had been in the Free City long enough to know that the social stability of the city was based upon a strict system dividing the entire population into three caste groups. “However,” he said, “nature has a way of playing havoc with the best-laid plans. Thus—presto—you and I. Little jokes from Mother Nature. We are not, I can assure you, at all unique. Estimates”—he dug some papers out of his desk drawer and sprinkled them randomly across the floor—”show that one of every fifty births in this city is a mutation of some kind. Most— those with the eight heads and fourteen arms—die at once, though a few survive and then are killed.” He drew a sharp forefinger across his Adam’s apple. “An even smaller number—maybe one in a hundred—escape detection entirely. These are almost always mental mutations such as you and I. Three hundred or so years ago, a massive nuclear bomb exploded near here, spraying radiation upon the city like a rainstorm. The city itself survived, but the people haven’t been the same since. It’s even worse in America, but that doesn’t concern us. Thus the mutations, physical and mental, the most highly developed of which are the telepaths.”
She started to ask him about her grandfather, but then noticed that his tongue—purple as a grape—was dangling from one corner of his mouth. The gesture startled her and she forgot what she wanted to say. Then the tongue withdrew and he continued.
“As for you, I’m afraid dear nature has granted you a power. An ability. But—and this is the question—what are you supposed to do with it? Bet you don’t know. So far today, I have to tell you, you have used your abilities most unwisely. You have, in fact, revealed yourself in a dangerous fashion. You have been frivolous— the most ugly of sins. Mutations are disliked within the general population of the city. It’s the old story of fear becoming hatred. Those that are discovered are invariably murdered. They are by definition unhuman, and to kill one is not a crime. A few derelicts, such as those you chanced to meet today, are tolerated. We pity them deeply. But not mutants. A mutant is both a deviation and a danger. So—” He drew his finger across his throat again, but this time the long nail caught in the puckered flesh, making a tiny cut. Rodelphia watched the gentle trickling of blood.
“Let me tell you a story,” Epson said. “I promise you a moral. I guarantee it.” He smiled. “Once there was a man—shall we call him Edgar Tuttle?—who was born a mutant. We’ll say that this birth occurred shortly after the bomb, when the Free City was still in the process of finding its feet once more. Tuttle was an intelligent man but not, alas, a wise one. He used his powers frivolously. He inserted thoughts into the minds of others. Beautiful women—often the wives of the rich or powerful—fell constantly in love with him. Handed an insult, Tuttle returned it in kind. His favored enemies paraded the streets of the city, quacking like ducks or mooing like cows. He enjoyed telling people their innermost thoughts and desires when these things happened to be personally embarrassing to them. At the first sign of potential danger, Tuttle leaped through time and space. Does this sound familiar?”
“It does,” Rodelphia admitted.
“It should. Well, Tuttle died. He was murdered as he slept. The people of the city caught him and nailed him to a tree or shot him full of holes or cut off his head. Not a pleasant story, no.” A tear caught in his eye; he coughed daintily to clear his throat of grief. “But I promised you a moral, and here it is: No matter how strong a man may be, he will never be stronger than all other men put together.
“Now for a second story, a thematic sequel to the first. Our protagonist this time carries the name of Norman Daniels. As a matter of form, let’s make him a maternal grandfather of mine, several generations removed. Born shortly after the death of Tuttle, but not realizing the scope of his powers till relatively late in life. When he does, fear grips his heart like an iron vest. He races to city hall and there falls on his knees. He begs the authorities for permission for an immediate operation. He wants the offending portion of his brain excised. Above all, Norman Daniels wishes to be normal again. Wisely, his request is refused. Instead, he is offered an opportunity of putting his talents to good use. He is authorized to visit and inspect all the city’s hospitals, specifically the maternity wards. Nothing like setting a mutant to catch a mutant. On his first day, Norman detects ten previously undiscovered mutants. A medal is awarded to him. Mayor Dempsey kisses his cheek. The job becomes his work for life. He performs his assigned tasks with pride and pleasure and dignity. The worse conceivable deviant from the social order, Norman Daniels ensures the continued survival of this same order. And he is successful. When he dies—a satisfied and richly honored man—his replacement is one of the children he himself has discovered. A full circle.
“So you see my point, Rodelphia? This city is an island, surrounded on all sides by hostile, turbulent forces. Our survival is based upon order, decency, regularity, and sanity. We mutants must surrender the capricious possibilities of our powers to the greater good of everyone. If this city falls, civilization falls as well. Kerplop. Not a pleasant sound, no. But it happens to include us, Rodelphia dear. You and I.”
Suddenly he stopped talking and started laughing hysterically. Falling off the edge of the desk, he hit the floor with a kerplop. Down there, he continued to giggle, holding his stomach. Then he stopped, jumped to his feet, and dived for her. She darted away, taking refuge in a corner. “So what do you expect me to do? You don’t expect me to start going around to hospitals, do you?”
He shook his head, bringing a lace handkerchief from somewhere and making it flutter beneath his nose. “No, no, of course not. As a matter of fact, there are innumerable tasks you may perform. My personal duties consist primarily of crime detection and prevention. I roam the city night and day like a wandering dog, detecting the presence of criminal thoughts in criminal minds before they can be transformed into criminal deeds. Others operate the dome—the artistically inclined among us. You witnessed the North Beach demonstration tonight. I tell you no two people saw exactly the same thing. Wouldn’t you like to have a hand—or is it a mind?—in that? Or you may, if you wish, work among the wayward. Do social work in the third-degree wards. Implanting proper attitudes into youthful half-formed minds. The choice,” he said, waving his arms expansively, tottering on his feet, “is yours.”
“I’ll give it a thought,” she pledged.
“Divine!” He clapped his hands fiercely. “Now I want you to come home with me.” A nasty smile creased his face, and he came toward her on soundless feet. “Come,” he said.
“Will you feed me?” she asked, slipping past his initial assault.
“You bet I will,” he said, catching her arms. He held tight.
“Then let’s go,” she said. “And you let me go.”
He released her, following cautiously as they left his office. Outside, it was snowing. Rodelphia stopped on the uppermost step of the concrete porch and gazed upward at the graceful spinning flakes that came cascading gently down from the dome above. Already, a full inch of snow blanketed the ground around the station.
In a hurry, Epson started to rush past her. Then suddenly she saw into his mind. A teeming jungle of jangled thoughts rocked her back on her heels, but she had sufficient presence of mind to insert a tentative hook before she was driven out.
She gave the hook a tug. It held. She had him now.
Stopping cold in his tracks, Daniels turned and looked at her. Then his front teeth thrust past his lower lip, and he turned back. Bending his knees, he jumped, clearing the porch in a single expert bound. A second leap carried him deeply into the blanket of snow. He hopped again. Hop, hop, hop. Hands on her hips, Rodelphia watched poor Epson hopping away, a quaint, curious rabbit disappearing into the night, leaving behind a tiny whispering pattern of prints in the soft gentle bright flatness of the fallen snow.
“Serves you right,” she said aloud, though she wasn’t positive that was exactly true. She had a distinct feeling Epson could no more help being screwy than anyone else in this city.
Suddenly overcome by hunger, she clutched her stomach. Thinking about hunger made her remember poor old Hungry, whom she had deserted. Now there was the one person she had met in this city who didn’t seem to be totally screwy. She tried to remember the side street where Epson had captured her, hoping she could go there and look for Hungry on Broadway. She made herself a promise that if she found him again, she would wipe away the thoughts of love she had implanted in his mind. She was curious to know how he would feel about her if left to himself. One way or another, she was going to get something to eat. She hadn’t forgotten that either.
As she stood on top of the porch, getting her thoughts in order, a man came hurrying past her. As he went by, she caught a sneering thought directed at her sack dress.
She’d had enough of that for one day.
Here we go again, she thought, and before she could think anything else, the man had flopped to his belly and began to crawl down the steps, slithering gracefully on his stomach. Passing her, he stuck out his tongue and rattled his rump, but she stood stock-still, and he did not strike.
With a shrug, then a laugh, Rodelphia jumped. Someday she was just going to have to learn how to control herself.
But not now.