Patiently Traven waited for them to speak to him, thinking of the great blocks whose entrance was guarded by the seated figure of the dead archangel, as the waves broke on the distant shore and the burning bombers fell through his dreams.
<<CONTENTS>>
* * * *
“Eliot stayed contritely sober for two days after that, then disappeared for a week. Among other things, he crashed a convention of science-fiction writers in a motel in Milford, Pennsylvania. . . .
“‘I love you sons of bitches,’ Eliot said in Milford. ‘You’re all I read any more. You’re the only ones who’ll talk all about the really terrific changes going on, the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space voyage, and not a short one, either, but one that’ll last for billions of years. You’re the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us, what cities do to us, what big, simple ideas do to us, what tremendous misunderstandings, mistakes, accidents and catastrophes do to us. You’re the only ones zany enough to agonize over time and distances without limit, over mysteries that will never die, over the fact that we are right now determining whether the space voyage for the next billion years or so is going to be Heaven or Hell.’
“Eliot admitted later on that science-fiction writers couldn’t write for sour apples, but he declared that it didn’t matter. He said they were poets just the same, since they were more sensitive to important changes than anybody who was writing well. “The hell with the talented sparrowfarts who write delicately of one small piece of one small lifetime, when the issues are galaxies, eons, and trillions of souls yet to be born.’”
from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
(Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965)
PROBLEM CHILD
Arthur Porges
If relief from pain can be found in absorbing mental work, then the mathematician is among the most fortunate of men. In every direction, beyond the well-cultivated plains of basic analysis, lie the unsealed peaks of the great problems, attacked, some of them for generations, and always without success. And surrounding them, or lying over the horizon, out of sight, whole new empires awaiting their inevitable conquerors.
Professor Kadar was like a man within sight of Paradise, but unable to find a path through the impassable terrain that blocked his way. He had patiently tried hundreds, all promising, only to be confronted, at the last moment, by the same yawning chasm that indicated No Highway.
Now it had checked him again. He dropped the pen, sighed, and put his head in his hands. There was a small, sucking sound, and the professor looked up. Briefly, he had forgot; that was one virtue of the thorny analysis that sprawled over a ream of yellow second sheets.
How long had the child been there? He came and went so silently these days. Perched on the tall chrome bar stool, so incongruous a seat for a three-year-old, he slumped like a Buddha across from his father. And always with that same inward look. The wizened face, still wearing that aged-in-the-womb expression of the newborn infant, seemed vaguely Oriental to Kadar today. Not a Mongolian idiot, definitely, the clinical psychologist had assured him. Just retarded.
The professor’s eyes, deep-socketed and melancholy, met Paul’s, which had, he felt, an unmistakable slant. He was conscious, more strongly than ever, of his son’s sweetness and placidity. Odd that they should be so characteristic of the mentally retarded child. As if nature desired to compensate the cheated parents. Not that it was ever compensation enough. And in this case, when he remembered—could he really forget, even for a moment, even when that path to Paradise seemed open?—that Eleanor had died to birth this little vegetable, it was no comfort at all.
The slanting eyes, small and dark, turned inward again. Oriental or gypsy? Many Hungarians had Romany blood. Or was the doctor—all those experts he had consulted—wrong, and Paul Mongoloid?
Names, Kadar reflected bitterly. What did they mean? In mathematics, you called something a ring, a cycle, an ideal. What you named it was unimportant; all that mattered was its place in the structure—never things, but the relations among them; those were what counted. What was Paul’s relation to the world, now and in the future?
For the present, he was only a baby; in many ways, less than a baby. Mrs. Merrit was a kind, motherly woman; not intelligent; not educated; but warm. Paul obviously liked her, if he responded to anybody, which was doubtful. His normal expression, in an adult, often suggested profound boredom.
The professor thought about the tests—the endless, expensive tests. Colored doodads, blocks, strings, geometric forms to be matched—and the brisk, young men and women who presided over the rituals. Paul had confounded all of them; Kadar felt a perverse glow of satisfaction at the thought. The boy didn’t make mistakes; instead, he simply refused to cooperate. Of course, it was nothing to rejoice over. Apathy meant even more severe brain damage, the doctors seemed to think. And Paul’s electroencephalographs certainly were abnormal, suggesting those of an advanced epileptic.
The child nibbled at his lips again, making that tiny murmur in his throat. The eyes turned outward briefly, met Kadar’s somber gaze, then Paul slipped clumsily from the high stool and padded from the room, moving with the rather unbalanced gait of a sedentary elder.
Off for some lunch, Kadar thought. Why didn’t Mrs. Merrit call the boy, instead of letting him set his own schedule? My fault, he told himself immediately. I’m letting her raise him, while I try to forget Eleanor—yes, and him, too—in my work. On the other hand, why impose disciplines on a child who never rebels? The sweet placidity of Paul was reflected in his childish routines. He ate whatever was given him—but only if hungry. He never cried; always lay quietly in bed when put there; and seldom got out until Mrs. Merrit came for him in the morning, although she mentioned occasionally, with some wonder, that he often was awake, stretched out under smooth bedclothes, with his eyes wide open.
Aside from that, his only quirk was the tall stool. At the age of two, he had already shown his preference for the flashy thing, climbing it to overlook Mrs. Merrit at her chores in kitchen and dining room.
Then, after the professor, acting on impulse, put the stool in his study, across from the big desk where he worked, Paul had come to prefer that location. Every day, for at least three hours, while Kadar scribbled away, the child sat there, sometimes apparently fascinated by the motion and hiss of the pen on paper, but more commonly with his eyes blank and unfocused.
Mrs. Merrit, naturally, thought this scandalous and unhealthy. For many weeks she tried to interest the child in a variety of toys, but without success. What the trained psychologists had been unable to accomplish, Kadar thought wryly, was not for a woman like his housekeeper to bring about between cooking and floor-mopping.
Even retarded children may be good artists. But when given crayons and big sheets of paper, Paul had made a few tentative dabs, very awkwardly, and lost interest.
The boy must at least get some exercise, Mrs. Merrit insisted, so the professor bought a jungle gym, and, to his surprise, Paul condescended to scramble about in the thing for half an hour now and then. But Kadar suspected it was that same urge to attain purely physical elevation—did the child seek a height equivalent to that of the adults around him? Was that the only break in his apathy?