Hearken: “None of you may go to this New York. The moment we leave this haven, the moment we are investigated, we are lost. The pack would tear and rend us. Nor could all thy addlepated flights skyward save thee, Lester-dost thou hear?”
“But what are we to do?” Maw said.
“Aw, heck,” Paw said. “I’ll just fix this Perfesser. I’ll drop him down the cistern.”
“An’ spoil the water?” Maw screeched. “You try it!”
“What foul brood is this that has sprung from my seed?” Grandpaw said, real mad. “Have ye not promised the Sheriff that there will be no more killings-for a while, at least? Is the word of a Hogben naught? Two things have we kept sacred through the centuries-our secret from the world, and the Hogben honor! Kill this man Galbraith and ye’ll answer to me for it!”
We all turned white. Little Sam woke up again and started squealing. “But what’ll we do?” Uncle Les said.
“Our secret must be kept,” Grandpaw said. “Do what ye can, but no killing. I’ll consider the problem.”
He seemed to go to sleep then, though it was hard to tell.
The next day I met Galbraith in town, all right, but first I run into Sheriff Abernathy in the street and he gave me a vicious look.
“You stay outa trouble, Saunk,” he said. “Mind what I tell you, now.” It was right embarrassing.
Anyway, I saw Gaibraith and told him Grandpaw wouldn’t let me go to New York. He didn’t look too happy, but he saw there was nothing that could be done about it.
His hotel room was full of scientific apparatus and kinda frightening. He had the shotgun gadget set up, but it didn’t look like he’d changed it any. He started to argue.
“Ain’t no use,” I said. “We ain’t leaving the hills. I spoke outa. turn yesterday, that’s all.”
“Listen, Saunk,” he said. “I’ve been inquiring around town about you Hogbens, but I haven’t been able to find out much. They’re closemouthed around here. Still, such evidence would be only supporting factors. I know our theories are right. You and your family are mutants and you’ve got to be studied!”
“We ain’t mutants,” I said. “Scientists are always calling us outa our names. Roger Bacon called us homunculi, only—”
“What?” Galbraith shouted. “Who did you say?”
“Uh-he’s a share-cropper over in the next county,” I said hasty-like, but I could see the Perfesser didn’t swaller it. He started to walk around the room.
“It’s no use,” he said. “If you won’t come to New York, I’ll have the foundation send a commission here. You’ve got to be studied, for the glory of science and the advancement of mankind.”
“Oh, golly,” I said. “I know what that’d be like. Make a freak show outa us. It’d kill Little Sam. You gotta go away and leave us alone.”
“Leave you alone? When you can create apparatus like this?” He pointed to the shotgun gadget.
“How does that work?” he wanted to know, sudden-like.
“I told you, I dunno. We just rigged it up. Listen, Perfesser. There’d be trouble if people came and looked at us. Big trouble. Grandpaw says so.”
Galbraith pulled at his nose.
“Well, maybe-suppose you answered a few questions for me, Saunk.”
“No commission?”
“We’ll see.”
“No, sir. I won’t—”
Galbraith took a deep breath.
“As long as you tell me what I want to know, I’ll keep your whereabouts a secret.”
“I thought this fundation thing of yours knows where you are.”
“Ah-yes,” Galbraith said. “Naturally they do. But they don’t know about you.”
That gave me an idea. I coulda killed him easy, but if I had, I knew Crandpaw would of ruined me entire and, besides, there was the Sheriff to think of. So I said, “Shucks,” and nodded.
My, the questions that man asked! It left me dizzy. And all the while he kept getting more and more excited.
“How old is your grandfather?”
“Gosh, I dunno.”
“Homunculi-mm-m. You mentioned that he was a miner once?”
“No, that was Grandpaw’s paw,” I said. “Tin mines, they were, in England. Only Grandpaw says it was called Britain then. That was during a sorta magic plague they had then. The people had to get the doctors-droons? Droods?”
“Druids?”
“Uh-huh. The Druids was the doctors then, Grandpaw says. Anyhow, all the miners started dying round Cornwall, so they closed up the mines.”
“What sort of plague was it?”
I told him what I remembered from Grandpaw’s talk, and the Perfesser got very excited and said something about radioactive emanations, as nearly as I could figger out. It made oncommon bad sense.
“Artificial mutations caused by radioactivity!” he said, getting real pink around the jowls. “Your grandfather was born a mutant! The genes and chromosomes were rearranged into a new pattern. Why, you may all be supermen!”
“Nope,” I said. “We’re Hogbens. That’s all.”
“A dominant, obviously a dominant. All your family were-ah- peculiar?”
“Now, look!” I said.
“I mean, they could all fly?”
“I don’t know how yet, myself. I guess we’re kinda freakish. Grandpaw was smart. He allus taught us not to show off.”
“Protective camouflage,” Galbraith said. “Submerged in a rigid social culture, variations from the norm are more easily masked. In a modem, civilized culture, you’d stick out like a sore thumb. But here, in the backwoods, you’re practically invisible.”
“Only Paw,” I said.
“Oh, Lord,” he sighed. “Submerging these incredible natural powers of yours… Do you know the things you might have done?” And then all of a sudden he got even more excited, and I didn’t much like the look in his eyes.
“Wonderful things,” — he repeated. “It’s like stumbling on Aladdin’s lamp.”
“I wish you’d leave us alone,” I said. “You and your commission!”
“Forget about the commission. I’ve decided to handle this privately for a while. Provided you’ll cooperate. Help me, I mean. Will you do that?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Then I’ll bring the commission down from New York,” he said triumphantly.
I thought that over.
“Well,” I said finally, “what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said slowly. “My mind hasn’t fully grasped the possibilities.”
But he was getting ready to grab. I could tell. I know that look.
I was standing by the window looking out, and all of a sudden I got an idea. I figgered it wouldn’t be smart to trust the Perfesser too much, anyhow. So I sort of ambled over to the shotgun gadget and made a few little changes on it.
I knew what I wanted to do, all right, but if Galbraith had asked me why I was twisting a wire here and bending a “Whozis there I couldn’t of told him. I got no eddication. Only now I knew the gadget would do what I wanted it to do.
The Perfesser had been writing in his little notebook. He looked up and saw me.
“What are you doing?” he wanted to know.
“This don’t look right to me,” I said. “I think you monkeyed with them batteries. Try it now.”
“In here?” he said, startled. “I don’t want to pay a bill for damages. It must be tested under safety conditions.”
“See the weathercock out there, on the roof?” I pointed it out to him. “Won’t do no harm to aim at that. You can just stand here by the winder and try it out.”
“It-it isn’t dangerous?” He was aching to try the gadget, I could tell. I said it wouldn’t kill nobody, and he took a long breath and went to the window and cuddled the stock of the gun against his cheek.