Jimmy straightened up and looked at her. She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. «It wasn’t your fault,» she repeated.
«Yes, it was,» Jimmy knew. «I was goofing off. Just like I always do. If I hadn’t been such a jerk …»
A doctor pushed through the double doors. He looked very serious, almost angry. Mr. Martinez went over from the receptionist’s desk to the white-jacketed intern.
«You brought in the boy with the laceration under his arm?» the doctor asked.
«Yes,» Mr. Martinez said. «His lung …»
The doctor shook his head. «He tasted blood in his mouth?»
«Yes.»
«That’s because he bit his tongue. There’s nothing wrong with his lung.»
Mr. Martinez’ jaw dropped open. Then he smiled. Jimmy felt himself take a deep, relieved breath.
«He’s just got a scratch,» the doctor said. «He’ll be out in a minute.»
Jimmy wanted to laugh, to jump to his feet and shout. But he felt too weak to move.
In a few minutes Paul came back out into the waiting room, grinning sheepishly. There was a bandage under his right arm. They all clustered around him.
«Where’s my jacket?» he asked.
Jimmy started to make a teasing answer, then realized that this was no time for being funny. «We must’ve left it back in the gym.»
«We’ll have to walk back to the Y dressed like this?» Donna looked aghast.
Jimmy realized that they were an odd-looking crew: wearing knee-length fencing pants, or shorts, or sweatshirts, or chest protectors.
Mr. Martinez grinned. «I guess we’ll have to walk the two blocks dressed this way, all right. We’d better stick close together.»
«Maybe we should’ve brought our foils,» one of the kids said. They all laughed and started for the door of the waiting room.
«All for one, and one for all,» somebody shouted.
Mr. Martinez pulled up beside Jimmy. «Do you still think fencing is for sissies?»
Jimmy could feel his face go red. «Naw, I guess not. It’s a tough game. I’ll have to work real hard at it.»
«You’re coming back next week?» Paul asked.
Jimmy nodded, and inside his head he realized that something good had come out of all this. «Yep. I’ll be back. And no more goofing off. I want to see if I can really become a good fencer.»
«Good!» said Mr. Martinez. «We have our first competition against another team at the end of the month. I want to be able to depend on both you boys for our team.»
«You can,» they said together, then laughed at how much alike they sounded.
THE SHINING ONES
If you have read my book of advice to writers, Notes To a Science Fiction Writer, then you have seen a structural analysis of this story, The Shining Ones. Rather than repeat that analysis here, let me tell you how censorship affects the publishing business.
The Shining Ones was originally written at the request of a publishing house which wanted to start a series of short novels for «reluctant readers»: that is, people of young adult age who had not learned to read much beyond the grammar-school level. The basic ideas in the plot, and the characterizations of the main personages in the story, were carefully reviewed and approved by the book company’s editor. When I delivered the manuscript the editor reported, at first, that she liked it very much. But she had to get approval from a board of «experts» that the publisher had hired: a group of teachers and psychologists whose main function, as I understood it, was to decide if the story would be readable by its intended audience.
The «experts» approved the story, but with a catch. They felt that the hero’s fatal disease was too depressing; that part of the story should be dropped. When I was informed of this by the editor, I pointed out that Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol would hardly be the memorable story it is if Tiny Tim had suffered merely from acne, instead of a crippling, life-threatening disease. No use. The «experts» were adamant. Although I was not allowed to meet them or argue my case with them, their decision was finaclass="underline" Change the story or have it rejected.
I withdrew the story and published it elsewhere. As far as I know, no one has ever suffered mental or emotional disability because of this story. Particularly if they read to the end of it!
Johnny Donato lay flat on his belly in the scraggly grass and watched the strangers’ ship carefully.
It was resting on the floor of the desert, shining and shimmering in the bright New Mexico sunlight. The ship was huge and round like a golden ball, like the sun itself. It touched the ground as lightly as a helium-filled balloon. In fact, Johnny wasn’t sure that it really did touch the ground at all.
He squinted his eyes, but he still couldn’t tell if the ship was really in contact with the sandy desert flatland. It cast no shadow, and it seemed to glow from some energies hidden inside itself. Again, it reminded Johnny of the sun.
But these people didn’t come from anywhere near our sun, Johnny knew. They come from a world of a different star.
He pictured in his mind how small and dim the stars look at night. Then he glanced at the powerful glare of the sun. How far away the stars must be! And these strangers have travelled all that distance to come here. To Earth. To New Mexico. To this spot in the desert.
Johnny knew he should feel excited. Or maybe scared. But all he felt right now was curious. And hot. The sun was beating down on the rocky ledge where he lay watching, baking his bare arms and legs. He was used to the desert sun. It never bothered him.
But today something was burning inside Johnny. At first he thought it might be the sickness. Sometimes it made him feel hot and weak. But no, that wasn’t it. He had the sickness, there was nothing anyone could do about that. But it didn’t make him feel this way.
This thing inside him was something he had never felt before. Maybe it was the same kind of thing that made his father yell in fury, ever since he had been laid off from his job. Anger was part of it, and maybe shame, too. But there was something else, something Johnny couldn’t put a name to.
So he lay there flat on his belly, wondering about himself and the strange ship from the stars. He waited patiently, like his Apache friends would, while the sun climbed higher in the bright blue sky and the day grew hotter and hotter.
The ship had landed three days earlier. Landed was really the wrong word. It had touched down as gently as a cloud drifts against the tops of the mountains. Sergeant Warner had seen it. He just happened to be driving down the main highway in his State Police cruiser when the ship appeared. He nearly drove into the roadside culvert, staring at the ship instead of watching his driving.
Before the sun went down that day, hundreds of Army trucks and tanks had poured down the highway, swirling up clouds of dust that could be seen even from Johnny’s house in Albuquerque, miles away. They surrounded the strange ship and let no one come near it.
Johnny could see them now, a ring of steel and guns. Soldiers paced slowly between the tanks, with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. Pretending that he was an Apache warrior, Johnny thought about how foolish the Army was to make the young soldiers walk around in the heat instead of allowing them to sit in the shade. He knew that the soldiers were sweating and grumbling and cursing the heat. As if that would make it cooler. They even wore their steel helmets; a good way to fry their brains.
Each day since the ship had landed, exactly when the sun was highest in the sky, three strangers would step out of the ship. At least, that’s what the people were saying back in town. The newspapers carried no word of the strangers, except front-page complaints that the Army wouldn’t let news reporters or television camera crews anywhere near the star ship.