He made a mental note to discuss this with his own analyst.
Dr. Sloane had to feel his way. The boy wasn't a patient who had come to him, more or less anxious to talk, more or less anxious to be helped.
Under the circumstances it would have been best to keep his first meeting with Richard short and noncommittal. It would have been sufficient merely to establish himself as something less than a total stranger. The next time he would be someone Richard had seen before. The time after he would be an acquaintance, and after that a friend of the family.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Hanshaw was not likely to accept a long-drawn-out process. She would go searching for a probe and, of course, she would find it.
And harm the boy. He was certain of that.
It was for that reason he felt he must sacrifice a little of the proper caution and risk a small crisis.
An uncomfortable ten minutes had passed when he decided he must try. Mrs. Hanshaw was smiling in a rather rigid way, eyeing him narrowly, as though she expected verbal magic from him. Richard wriggled in his seat, unresponsive to Dr. Sloane's tentative comments, overcome with boredom and unable not to show it.
Dr. Sloane said, with casual suddenness, "Would you like to take a walk with me, Richard?"
The boy's eyes widened and he stopped wriggling. He looked directly at Dr. Sloane. "A walk, sir?"
"I mean, outside."
"Do you go-outside?"
"Sometimes. When I feel like it."
Richard was on his feet, holding down a squirming eagerness. "I didn't think anyone did."
"I do. And I like company."
The boy sat down, uncertainly. "Mom?-"
Mrs. Hanshaw had stiffened in her seat, her compressed lips radiating horror, but she managed to say, "Why certainly, Dickie. But watch yourself."
And she managed a quick and baleful glare at Dr. Sloane.
In one respect, Dr. Sloane had lied. He did not go outside "sometimes." He hadn't been in the open since early college days. True, he had been athletically inclined (still was to some extent) but in his time the indoor ultra-violet chambers, swimming pools and tennis courts had flourished. For those with the price, they were much more satisfactory than the outdoor equivalents, open to the elements as they were, could possibly be. There was no occasion to go outside.
So there was a crawling sensation about his skin when he felt wind touch it, and he put down his flexied shoes on bare grass with a gingerly movement.
"Hey, look at that." Richard was quite different now, laughing, his reserve broken down.
Dr. Sloane had time only to catch a flash of blue that ended in a tree. Leaves rustled and he lost it.
"What was it?"
"A bird," said Richard. "A blue kind of bird."
Dr. Sloane looked about him in amazement. The Hanshaw residence was on a rise of ground, and he could see for miles. The area was only lightly wooded and between clumps of trees, grass gleamed brightly in the sunlight.
Colors set in deeper green made red and yellow patterns. They were flowers. From the books he had viewed in the course of his lifetime and from the old video shows, he had learned enough so that all this had an eerie sort of familiarity.
And yet the grass was so trim, the flowers so patterned. Dimly, he realized he had been expecting something wilder. He said, "Who takes care of all this?"
Richard shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe the mekkanos do it."
"Mekkanos?"
"There's loads of them around. Sometimes they got a sort of atomic knife they hold near the ground. It cuts the grass. And they're always fooling around with the flowers and things. There's one of them over there."
It was a small object, half a mile away. Its metal skin cast back highlights as it moved slowly over the gleaming meadow, engaged in some sort of activity that Dr. Sloane could not identify.
Dr. Sloane was astonished. Here it was a perverse sort of estheticism, a kind of conspicuous consumption- "What's that?" he asked suddenly.
Richard looked. He said, "That's a house. Belongs to the Froehlichs. Coordinates, A-3, 23, 461. That little pointy building over there is the public Door."
Dr. Sloane was staring at the house. Was that what it looked like from the outside? Somehow he had imagined something much more cubic, and taller.
"Come along," shouted Richard, running ahead.
Dr. Sloane followed more sedately. "Do you know all the houses about here?"
"Just about."
"Where is A-23, 26, 475?" It was his own house, of course.
Richard looked about. "Let's see. Oh, sure, I know where it is-you see that water there?"
"Water?" Dr. Sloane made out a line of silver curving across the green.
"Sure. Real water. Just sort of running over rocks and things. It keeps running all the time. You can get across it if you step on the rocks. It's called a river."
More like a creek, thought Dr. Sloane. He had studied geography, of course, but what passed for the subject these days was really economic and cultural geography. Physical geography was almost an extinct science except among specialists. Still, he knew what rivers and creeks were, in a theoretical sort of way.
Richard was still talking. "Well, just past the river, over that hill with the big clump of trees and down the other side a way is A-23, 26, 475. It's a light green house with a white roof."
"It is?" Dr. Sloane was genuinely astonished. He hadn't known it was green.
Some small animal disturbed the grass in its anxiety to avoid the oncoming feet. Richard looked after it and shrugged. "You can't catch them. I tried."
A butterfly flitted past, a wavering bit of yellow. Dr. Sloane's eyes followed it.
There was a low hum that lay over the fields, interspersed with an occasional harsh, calling sound, a rattle, a twittering, a chatter that rose, then fell. As his ear accustomed itself to listening, Dr. Sloane heard a thousand sounds, and none were man-made.
A shadow fell upon the scene, advancing toward him, covering him. It was suddenly cooler and he looked upward, startled.
Richard said, "It's just a cloud. It'll go away in a minute-looka these flowers. They're the kind that smell."
They were several hundred yards from the Hanshaw residence. The cloud passed and the sun shone once more. Dr. Sloane looked back and was appalled at the distance they had covered. If they moved out of sight of the house and if Richard ran off, would he be able to find his way back?
He pushed the thought away impatiently and looked out toward the line of water (nearer now) and past it to where his own house must be. He thought wonderingly: Light green?
He said, "You must be quite an explorer."
Richard said, with a shy pride, "When I go to school and come back, I always try to use a different route and see new things."
"But you don't go outside every morning, do you? Sometimes you use the Doors, I imagine."
"Oh, sure."
"Why is that, Richard?" Somehow, Dr. Sloane felt there might be significance in that point.
But Richard quashed him. With his eyebrows up and a look of astonishment on his face, he said, "Well, gosh, some mornings it rains and I have to use the Door. I hate that, but what can you do? About two-weeks ago, I got caught in the rain and I-" he looked about him automatically, and his voice sank to a whisper "-caught a cold, and wasn't Mom upset, though."
Dr. Sloane sighed. "Shall we go back now?"
There was a quick disappointment on Richard's face. "Aw, what for?"
"You remind me that your mother must be waiting for us."
"I guess so." The boy turned reluctantly.
They walked slowly back. Richard was saying, chattily, "I wrote a composition at school once about how if I could go on some ancient vehicle" (he pronounced it with exaggerated care) "I'd go in a stratoliner and look at stars and clouds and things. Oh, boy, I was sure nuts."