“No. You mean the rapports. A long time ago I learned to keep part of my mind blanked off under your probing.”
“That’s impossible!” Locke said, startled.
“It is for you. I’m a further step in the mutation. I have a lot of talents you don’t know anything about. And I know this-I’m not far enough advanced for my age. The boys in the crèches are ahead of me. Their parents followed natural laws-it’s the role of any parent to protect its young. Only the immature parents are Out of step-like you.”
Locke was still quite impassive.
“I’m immature? And I hate you? I’m jealous of you? You’ve quite settled on that?”
“Is it true or not?”
Locke didn’t answer. “You’re still inferior to me mentally,” he said, “and you will be for some years to come. Let’s say, if you want it that way, that your superiority lies in your-flexibility-and your homo superior talents. Whatever they are. Against that, balance the fact that I’m a physically mature adult and you weigh less than half of what I do. I’m legally your guardian. And I’m stronger than you are.”
Absalom swallowed again, but said nothing. Locke rose a little higher, looking down at the boy. His hand went to his middle, but found only a lightweight zipper.
He walked to the door. He turned.
“I’m going to prove to you that you’re my inferior,” he said coldly and quietly. “You’re going to admit it to me.”
Absalom said nothing.
Locke went upstairs. He touched the switch on his bureau, reached into the drawer, and withdrew an elastic lucite belt. He drew its cool, smooth length through his fingers once. Then he turned to the dropper again.
His lips were white and bloodless by now.
At the door of the living room he stopped, holding the belt. Absalom had not moved, but Abigail Schuler was standing beside the boy.
“Get out, Sister Schuler,” Locke said.
“You’re not going to whip him,” Abigail said, her head held high, her lips purse-string tight.
“Get out.”
“I won’t. I heard every word. And it’s true, all of it.”
“Get out, I tell you!” Locke screamed.
He ran forward, the belt uncoiled in his hand. Absalom’s nerve broke at last. He gasped with panic and dashed away, blindly seeking escape where there was none.
Locke plunged after him.
Abigail snatched up the little hearth broom and thrust it at Locke’s legs. The man yelled something inarticulate as he lost his balance. He came down heavily, trying to brace himself against the fall with stiff arms.
His head struck the edge of a chair seat. He lay motionless.
Over his still body, Abigail and Absalom looked at each other. Suddenly the woman dropped to her knees and began sobbing.
“I’ve killed him,” she forced out painfully. “I’ve killed him-but I couldn’t let him whip you, Absalom!
I couldn’t!”
The boy caught his lower lip between his teeth. He came forward slowly to examine his father.
“He’s not dead.”
Abigail’s breath came out in a long, shuddering sigh.
“Go on upstairs, Abbie,” Absalom said, frowning a little. “I’ll give him first aid. I know how.”
“I can’t let you—”
“Please, Abbie,” he coaxed. “You’ll faint or something. Lie down for a bit. It’s all right, really.”
At last she took the dropper upstairs. Absalom, with a thoughtful glance at his father, went to the televisor.
He called the Denver Crèche. Briefly he outlined the situation.
“What had I better do, Malcolm?”
“Wait a minute.” There was a pause. Another young face showed on the screen. “Do this,” an assured, high-pitched voice said, and there followed certain intricate instructions. “Got that straight, Absalom?”
“I have it. It won’t hurt him?”
“He’ll live. He’s psychotically warped already. This will just give it a different twist, one that’s safe for you. It’s projection. He’ll externalize all his wishes, feelings, and so forth. On you. He’ll get his pleasure only Out of what you do, but he won’t be able to control you. You know the psychonamic key of his brain. Work with the frontal lobe chiefly. Be careful of Broca’s area. We don’t want aphasia. He must be made
harmless to you, that’s all. Any killing would be awkward to handle. Besides, I suppose you wouldn’t want that.”
“No,” Absalom said. “H-he’s my father.”
“All right,” the young voice said. “Leave the screen on. I’ll watch and help.”
Absalom turned toward the unconscious figure on the floor.
For a long time the world had been shadowy now. Locke was used to it. He could still fulfill his ordinary functions, so he was not insane, in any sense of the word.
Nor could he tell the truth to anyone. They had created a psychic block. Day after day he went to the university and taught psychonamics and came home and ate and waited in hopes that Absalom would call him on the televisor.
And when Absalom called, he might condescend to tell something of what he was doing in Baja California. What he had accomplished. What he had achieved. For those things mattered now. They were the only things that mattered. The projection was complete.
Absalom was seldom forgetful. He was a good son. He called daily, though sometimes, when work was pressing, he had to make the call short. But Joel Locke could always work at his immense scrapbooks, filled with clippings and photographs about Absalom. He was writing Absalom’s biography, too.
He walked otherwise through a shadow world, existing in flesh and blood, in realized happiness, only when Absalom’s face appeared on the televisor screen. But he had not forgotten anything. He hated Absalom, and hated the horrible, unbreakable bond that would forever chain him to his own flesh-the flesh that was not quite his own, but one step further up the ladder of the new mutation.
Sitting there in the twilight of unreality, his scrapbooks spread before him, the televisor set never used except when Absalom called, but standing ready before his chair, Joel Locke nursed his hatred and a quiet, secret satisfaction that had come to him.
Some day Absalom would have a son. Some day. Some day.
Copyright
COPYRIGHT © 1975 BY CATHERINE MOORE KUTTNER, EXECUTRIX FOR THE ESTATE OF HENRY KUTTNER
Introduction: “Henry Kuttner: A Neglected Master,”
COPYRIGHT © 1975 BY RAY BRADBURY
Published by arrangement with Ballantine Books A Division of Random House, Inc.
ISBN: 034524415X
201 East 50 Street New York, New York 10022
Printed in the United States of America