by Jerry
Al gulped and beat a hasty retreat. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“And keep your hair on, too. Don’t take your wig off in class. Use the stickum stuff in the bathroom closet.”
“Yes, but . . . Mr. Venner doesn’t wear a wig.”
“Remind me to do some historical research with you on zoot-suiters,” Burkhalter said. “Mr. Venner’s wiglessness is probably his only virtue, if you consider it one.”
“He makes money.”
“Anybody would, in that general store of his. But people don’t buy from him if they can help it, you’ll notice. That’s what I mean by a chip on your shoulder. He’s got one. There are Baldies like Venner, Al, but you might, sometime, ask the guy if he’s happy. For your information, I am. More than Venner, anyway. Catch?”
“Yes, Dad.” Al seemed submissive, but it was merely that. Burkhalter, still troubled, nodded and walked away. As he passed near the Shane girl’s boulder he caught a scrap:—at the summit of the Glass Mountains, rolling rocks back at the gnomes until—
He withdrew; it was an unconscious habit, touching minds that were sensitive, but with children it was definitely unfair. With adult Baldies it was simply the instinctive gesture of tipping your hat; one answered or one didn’t. The barrier could be erected; there could be a blank-out; or there could be the direct snub of concentration on a single thought, private and not to be intruded on.
A copter with a string of gliders was coming in from the south: a freighter laden with frozen foods from South America, to judge by the markings. Burkhalter made a note to pick up an Argentine steak. He’d got a new recipe he wanted to try out, a charcoal broil with barbecue sauce, a welcome change from the short-wave cooked meats they’d been having for a week. Tomatoes, chile, mm-m—what else? Oh, yes. The duel with Reilly. Burkhalter absently touched his dagger’s hilt and made a small, mocking sound in his throat. Perhaps he was innately a pacifist. It was rather difficult to think of a duel seriously, even though everyone else did, when the details of a barbecue dinner were prosaic in his mind.
So it went. The tides of civilization rolled in century-long waves across the continents, and each particular wave, though conscious of its participation in the tide, nevertheless was more preoccupied with dinner. And, unless you happened to be a thousand feet tall, had the brain of a god and a god’s life-span, what was the difference? People missed a lot—people like Venner, who was certainly a crank, not batty enough to qualify for the asylum, but certainly a potential paranoid type. The man’s refusal to wear a wig labeled him as an individualist, but as an exhibitionist, too. If he didn’t feel ashamed of his hairlessness, why should he bother to flaunt it? Besides, the man had a bad temper, and if people kicked him around, he asked for it by starting the kicking himself.
But as for Al, the kid was heading for something approaching delinquency. It couldn’t be the normal development of childhood, Burkhalter thought. He didn’t pretend to be an expert, but he was still young enough to remember his own formative years, and he had had more handicaps than Al had now in those days, Baldies had been very new and very freakish. There’d been more than one movement to isolate, sterilize, or even exterminate the mutations.
Burkhalter sighed. If he had been born before the Blowup, it might have been different. Impossible to say. One could read history, but one couldn’t live it. In the future, perhaps, there might be telepathic libraries in which that would be possible. So many opportunities, in fact—and so few that the world was ready to accept as yet. Eventually Baldies would not be regarded as freaks, and by that time real progress would be possible.
But people don’t make history—Burkhalter thought. Peoples do that. Not the individual.
He stopped by Reilly’s house again, and this time the man answered, a burly, freckled, squint-eyed fellow with immense hands and, Burkhalter noted, fine muscular co-ordination. He rested those hands on the Dutch door and nodded.
“Who’re you, mister?”
“My name’s Burkhalter.” Comprehension and wariness leaped into Reilly’s eyes. “Oh. I see. You got my call?”
“I did,” Burkhalter said. “I want to talk to you about it. May I come in?”
“O.K.” He stepped back, opening the way through a hall and into a spacious living room, where diffused light filtered through glassy mosaic walls. “Want to set the time?”
“I want to tell you you’re wrong.”
“Now wait a minute,” Reilly said, patting the air. “My wife’s out now, but she gave me the straight of it. I don’t like this business of sneaking into a man’s mind; it’s crooked. You should have told your wife to mind her business—or keep her tongue quiet.”
Burkhalter said patiently, “I give you my word. Reilly, that Ethel didn’t read your wife’s mind.”
“Does she say so?”
“I . . . well, I haven’t asked her.”
“Yeah,” Reilly said with an air of triumph.
“I don’t need to. I know her well enough. And . . . well, I’m a Baldy myself.”
“I know you are,” Reilly said. “For all I know, you may be reading my mind now.” He hesitated. “Get out of my house. I like my privacy. We’ll meet at dawn tomorrow, if that’s satisfactory with you. Now get out.” He seemed to have something on his mind, some ancient memory, perhaps, that he didn’t wish exposed.
Burkhalter nobly resisted the temptation. “No Baldy would read.
“Go on, get out!”
“Listen! You wouldn’t have a chance in a duel with me!”
“Do you know how many notches I’ve got?” Reilly asked.
“Ever dueled a Baldy?”
“I’ll cut the notch deeper tomorrow. Get out, d’you hear?”
Burkhalter, biting his lips, said, “Man, don’t you realize that in a duel I could read your mind?”
“I don’t care . . . what?”
“I’d be half a jump ahead of you. No matter how instinctive your actions would be, you’d know them a split second ahead of time in your mind. And I’d know all your tricks and weaknesses, too. Your technique would be an open book to me.
Whatever you thought of—”
“No.” Reilly shook his head. “Oh, no. You’re smart, but it’s a phony set-up.”
Burkhalter hesitated, decided, and swung about, pushing a chair out of the way. “Take out your dagger,” he said. “Leave the sheath snapped on: I’ll show you what I mean.”
Reilly’s eyes widened. “If you want it now—”
“I don’t.” Burkhalter shoved another chair away. He undipped his dagger, sheath and all, from his belt, and made sure the little safety clip was in place. “We’ve room enough here. Come on.”
Scowling, Reilly took out his own dagger, held it awkwardly, baffled by the sheath, and then suddenly feinted forward. But Burkhalter wasn’t there: he had anticipated, and his own leather sheath slid up Reilly’s belly.
“That,” Burkhalter said, “would have ended the fight.”
For answer Reilly smashed a hard dagger-blow down, curving at the last moment into a throat-cutting slash. Burkhalter’s free hand was already at his throat; his other hand, with the sheathed dagger, tapped Reilly twice over the heart. The freckles stood out boldly against the pallor of the larger man’s face. But he was not yet ready to concede. He tried a few more passes, clever, well-trained cuts, and they failed, because Burkhalter had anticipated them. His left hand invariably covered the spot where Reilly had aimed, and which he never struck.
Slowly Reilly let his arm fall. He moistened his lips and swallowed. Burkhalter busied himself reclipping his dagger in place.
“Burk-halter,” Reilly said, “you’re a devil.”
“Far from it. I’m just afraid to take a chance. Do you really think being a Baldy is a snap?”
“But, if you can read minds—”
“How long do you think I’d last if I did any dueling? It would be too much of a set-up. Nobody would stand for it, and I’d end up dead. I can’t duel, b
ecause it’d be murder, and people would know it was murder. I’ve taken a lot of cracks, swallowed a lot of insults, for just that reason. Now, if you like, I’ll swallow another and apologize. I’ll admit anything you say. But I can’t duel with you, Reilly.”
“No, I can see that. And—I’m glad you came over.” Reilly was still white. “I’d have walked right into a set-up.”
“Not my set-up,” Burkhalter said. “I wouldn’t have dueled. Baldies aren’t so lucky, you know. They’ve got handicaps—like this. That’s why they can’t afford to take chances and antagonize people, and why we never read minds, unless we’re asked to do so.”
“It makes sense. More or less.” Reilly hesitated. “Look, I withdraw that challenge. O.K.?”
“Thanks,” Burkhalter said, putting out his hand. It was taken rather reluctantly. We’ll leave it at that, eh?”
“Right.” But Reilly was still anxious to get his guest out of the house.
Burkhalter walked back to the Publishing Center and whistled tunelessly. He could tell Ethel now; in fact, he had to, for secrets between them would have broken up the completeness of their telepathic intimacy. It was not that their minds lay bare to each other, it was, rather, that any barrier could be sensed by the other, and the perfect rapport wouldn’t have been so perfect. Curiously, despite this utter intimacy, husband and wife managed to respect one another’s privacy.
Ethel might be somewhat distressed, but the trouble had blown over, and, besides, she was a Baldy too. Not that she looked it, with her wig of fluffy chestnut hair and those long, curving lashes. But her parents had lived east of Seattle during the Blowup, and afterward, too, before the hard radiation’s effects had been thoroughly studied.
The snow-wind blew down over Modoc and fled southward along the Utah Valley. Burkhalter wished he was in his copter, alone in the blue emptiness of the sky. There was a quiet, strange peace up there that no Baldy ever quite achieved on the earth’s surface, except in the depths of a wilderness. Stray fragments of thoughts were always flying about, subsensory, but like the almost-unheard whisper of a needle on a phonograph record, never ceasing. That, certainly, was why almost all Baldies loved to fly and were expert pilots. The high waste deserts of the air were their blue hermitages.
Still, he was in Modoc now, and overdue for his interview with Quayle. Burkhalter hastened his steps. In the main hall he met Moon, said briefly and cryptically that he’d taken care of the duel, and passed on, leaving the fat man to stare a question after him. The only visor call was from Ethel; the playback said she was worried about Al, and would Burkhalter check with the school. Well, he had already done so—unless the boy had managed to get into more trouble since then. Burkhalter put in a call and reassured himself. Al was as yet unhanged.
He found Quayle in the same private solarium, and thirsty. Burkhalter ordered a couple of dramzowies sent up, since he had no objection to loosening Quayle’s inhibitions. The gray-haired author was immersed in a sectional historical globe-map, illuminating each epochal layer in turn as he searched back through time.
“Watch this,” he said, running his hand along the row of buttons. “See how the German border fluctuates?” it fluctuated, finally vanishing entirely as semimodern times were reached. “And Portugal. Notice, its zone of influence? Now—” The zone shrank steadily from 1600 on while other countries shot out radiating lines and assumed sea power.
Burkhalter sipped his dramzowie. “Not much of that now.”
“No, since . . . what’s the matter?”
“I low do you mean?”
“You look shot.”
“I didn’t know I showed it,” Burkhalter said wryly. “I just finagled my way out of a duel.”
“That’s one custom I never saw much sense to,” Quayle said. “What happened? Since when can you finagle out?”
Burkhalter explained, and the writer took a drink and snorted. “What a spot for you. Being a Baldy isn’t such an advantage after all, I guess.”
“It has distinct disadvantages at times.” On impulse Burkhalter mentioned his son. “You see my point, eh? I don’t know, really, what standards to apply to a young Baldy. He is a mutation, after all. And the telepathic mutation hasn’t had time to work out yet. We can’t rig up controls, because guinea pigs and rabbits won’t breed telepaths. That’s been tried, you know. And—well, the child of a Baldy needs very special training so he can cope with his ultimate maturity.”
“You seem to have adjusted well enough.”
“I’ve—learned. As most sensible Baldies have. That’s why I’m not a wealthy man, or in politics. We’re really buying safety for our species by foregoing certain individual advantages. Hostages to destiny—and destiny spares us. But we get paid too, in a way. In the coinage of future benefits—negative benefits, really, for we ask only to: be spared and accepted—and so we have to deny ourselves a lot of present, positive benefits. An appeasement to fate.”
“Paying the piper,” Quayle nodded.
“We are the pipers. The Baldies as a group, I mean. And our children. So it balances; we’re really paying ourselves. If I wanted to take unfair advantage of my telepathic power—my son wouldn’t live very long. The Baldies would be wiped out. Al’s got to learn that, and he’s getting pretty antisocial.”
“All children are antisocial,” Quayle pointed out. “They’re utter individualists. I should think the only reason for worrying would be if the boy’s deviation from the norm were connected with his telepathic sense.”
“There’s something in that.” Burkhalter reached out left-handedly and probed delicately at Quayle’s mind, noting that the antagonism was considerably lessened. He grinned to himself and went on talking about his own troubles. “Just the same, the boy’s father to the man. And an adult Baldy has got to be pretty well adjusted, or he’s sunk.”
“Environment is as important as heredity. One complements the other. If a child’s reared correctly, he won’t have much trouble—unless heredity is involved.”
“As it may be. There’s so little known about the telepathic mutation. If baldness is one secondary characteristic, maybe—something else—emerges in the third or fourth generations. I’m wondering if telepathy is really good for the mind.”
Quayle said, “Humph. Speaking personally, it makes me nervous—”
“Like Reilly.”
“Yes,” Quayle said, but he didn’t care much for the comparison.
“Well—anyhow, if a mutation’s a failure, it’ll die out. It won’t breed true.”
“What about hemophilia?”
“How many people have hemophilia?” Quayle asked. “I’m trying to look at it from the angle of psychohistorian. If there’d been telepaths in the past, things might have been different.”
“How do you know there weren’t?” Burkhalter asked.
Quayle blinked. “Oh. Well. That’s true, too. In medieval times they’d have been called wizards—or saints. The Duke-Rhine experiments—but such accidents would have been abortive. Nature fools around trying to hit the . . . ah . . . the jackpot, and she doesn’t always do it on the first try.”
“She may not have done it now.” That was habit speaking, the ingrained caution of modesty. “Telepathy may be merely a semisuccessful try at something pretty unimaginable. A sort of four-dimensional sensory concept, maybe.”
“That’s too abstract for me.” Quayle was interested, and his own hesitancies had almost vanished; by accepting Burkhalter as a telepath, he had tacitly wiped away his objections to telepathy per se. “The old-time Germans always had an idea they were different; so did the . . . ah . . . what was that Oriental race? They had the islands off the China coast.”
“The Japanese,” said Burkhalter, who had a good memory for trifles.
“Yes. They knew, very definitely, that they were a superior race because they were directly descended from gods. They were short in stature; heredity made them self-conscious when dealing with larger races. But the Chinese aren’t tall, th
e Southern Chinese, and they weren’t handicapped in that way.”
“Environment, then?”
“Environment, which caused propaganda. The . . . ah . . . the Japanese took Buddhism, and altered it completely into Shinto, to suit their own needs. The samurai, warrior-knights, were the ideals, the code of honor was fascinatingly cockeyed. The principle of Shinto was to worship your superiors and subjugate your inferiors. Ever seen the Japanese jewel-trees?”
“I don’t remember them. What are they?”
“Miniature replicas of espaliered trees, made of jewels, with trinkets hanging on the branches. Including a mirror—always. The first jewel-tree was made to lure the Moon-goddess out of a cave where she was sulking. It seems the lady was so intrigued by the trinkets and by her face reflected in the mirror that she came out of her hideout. All the Japanese morals were dressed up in pretty clothes; that was the bait. The old-time Germans did much the same thing. The last German dictator, Poor Hitler they called him—I forget why, but there was some reason—he revived the old Siegfried legend. It was racial paranoia. The Germans worshiped the house-tyrant, not the mother, and they had extremely strong family ties. That extended to the state. They symbolized Poor Hitler as their All-Father, and so eventually we got the Blowup. And, finally, mutations.”
“After the deluge, me,” Burkhalter murmured, finishing his dramzowie. Quayle was staring at nothing.
“Funny,” he said after a while. “This All-Father business—”
“Yes?”
“I wonder if you know how powerfully it can affect a man?”
Burkhalter didn’t say anything. Quayle gave him a sharp glance.
“Yes,” the writer said quietly. “You’re a man, after all. I owe you an apology, you know.”
Burkhalter smiled. “You can forget that.”
“I’d rather not,” Quayle said. “I’ve just realized, pretty suddenly, that the telepathic sense isn’t so important. I mean—it doesn’t make you different. I’ve been talking to you—”