The Sopaths

by Piers Anthony

  “I won’t let you!” he exclaimed, appalled once more. Was the power he held over females extending even to a seven-year-old? Who had perhaps sought him out for that reason?

  She smiled. “Not tonight. But maybe sometime.”

  “Never! Now go away.”

  “One more thing. I said I could escape. You thought I was bluffing.”

  “I did.”

  “Watch. Say that bunk is you behind the bars, when we were talking.”

  “I don’t see what—”

  She drew her knife and hurled it. It sailed neatly through the bars and wedged into the mattress.

  Abner was amazed. She could indeed have struck him with her thrown knife, possibly killing him. She truly had held off because she wanted to talk with him. She was the most dangerous kind of sopath: one with self-control.

  She recovered her knife. “But I wanted to make you release me, so we could have a relationship. Don’t forget to get rid of the body.” Then she was off into the night.

  Abner was disturbed anew by her boldness. But he had to admit to himself that one reason he had let her go was that their dialogue had caused her to become a person to him, and he couldn’t cold-bloodedly kill a person. Not even, as it turned out, a sopath.

  This time he chose a different method of disposal. He dragged the boy’s body to his car, wrapped it in a tarpaulin, and drove to the city dump, which was closed for the night. He heaved it onto a pile of garbage, where it would get buried by the next load. If the garbage workers saw it, they would keep quiet, knowing it was a sopath.

  Witnessing a killing, and disposing of the corpse, were awful things. But his dialogue with Nefer was worse.

  Back home, he talked with Bunty, who brought in the children and made it a family discussion. The idea of shielding children from the realities of life and death was foolish under the circumstances. “Maybe it’s right, daddy,” Dreda said. “The sopaths are getting harder to spy, and some may pass as soulers. I can only be really sure if I touch one, which I hate to do. We need to know more about them.”

  “But she—she tried to seduce me,” Abner said. “Her vocabulary, her actions were gross.”

  “They do use sex,” Dreda reminded him. “It’s just a tool to them, and some of them like it.” As of course she knew from her own experience.

  “But this business about the police,” Bunty said. “That’s alarming. I fear they do have dossiers on us. We should have thought of that before.”

  “So the sopath maybe saved us from some real trouble,” Clark said.

  “It was right to let her go,” Dreda concluded.

  “Maybe,” Abner agreed reluctantly.

  They shared the warning with Pariah, who concluded that they would have to stop letting the police pick up the bodies. The option Abner had chosen might also be suspect. The sewer disposal option became the first choice. They would feed future bodies into the pipe.

  The nocturnal sopath killings continued. The children slaughtered each other, but Abner didn’t deceive himself: he was setting it up, and was responsible for their deaths. He was getting used to it, but it still appalled him.

  “One thing bothers me especially,” Maxine said one evening as they loaded the bodies for disposal. “Children are young, and it takes them time to develop consciences. Suppose we are killing some who do have souls, but haven’t grown into them yet, as it were?”

  Abner suffered a horrendous revelation. “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. If we kill a sopath, he’s gone. If we kill a souler, his soul is returned to the bank, as it were, and is available for the next birth, which would otherwise have been a sopath.”

  “That’s sickening!”

  “But true.”

  “But true,” she agreed. “It doesn’t make me feel better about it.”

  “I don’t feel better either,” he agreed. “I hate every aspect of this business. But what else can we do? Any sopath we don’t kill is bound to kill someone else before long.”

  “That’s the cold equation,” she agreed morosely. “Some of the sopaths are actually returning souls to the pool, that way, ironically.”

  Another day, Saturday, Abner and the family were at the grocery store. Bunty normally shopped alone, but on the weekend the others liked to express their preferences. They were still getting comfortable as a family, rounding off edges.

  Abner froze. There ahead of them were a woman and a girl. He knew the child. Nefer! With her mother.

  They turned to go down the next aisle. Nefer glanced his way and smiled, exactly like a nice normal girl. She recognized him! But she gave no other sign.

  Then they were gone, and Abner’s party was in another aisle. He remained bemused.

  Dreda took his hand. “You saw something, daddy.”

  He had to tell the truth. “The sopath,” he murmured.

  She pursed her lips, imitating one of Bunty’s expressions. “I didn’t know. She’s good.” She meant good at masking her nature.

  Back in the car he had to tell the others. “I saw Nefer, the sopath I freed.”

  “Her mother doesn’t know,” Bunty said.

  “She doesn’t. The child’s an actress.”

  “So they are learning to emulate normals,” Bunty said. “That’s dangerous.”

  “Yes. I shouldn’t have released her.”

  “You made a deal, dad,” Clark said. “Soulers honor their deals.”

  “I hope we don’t all come to regret it.”

  A few days later, as Abner went out in the morning for his drive to work, a voice spoke from the back seat. “Abner.”

  He recognized it. “Nefer! What are you doing in my car?”

  “You left it unlocked. Don’t do that again. If I’d been a hostile sopath, you’d be dead.”

  She was right. He would be scrupulous in that regard hereafter. “What do you want?”

  Nefer scrambled over the seat to join him in front, in the process managing to give him a glimpse of her pantyless crotch. He knew it was deliberate, because she was holding her panties in her hand. “Tomorrow you’re taking your family to the fair.”

  That was true. The traveling fair was in town, and promised to be fun for the children. She could readily have guessed. “So?”

  “I want to go with you. My folks aren’t going. I want to see the sights, eat cotton candy, ride the rides, play the rigged games. The whole thing.”

  “You’re a sopath!”

  “So they won’t let me in, if they know. They won’t know if I’m with you. No one else will know.”

  “My family will know!”

  “Tell them it’s okay. I want to have fun. Just because I’m a sopath doesn’t mean I don’t like kid fun. I’ll trade for it.”

  It revolted him, but it was feasible. “What do you offer?”

  “Tonight a boy sopath is going to ambush you. Between your car and your house. With a gun. As one did before, with the school kids, only this one’s after you. To get your wallet, with money. So he can go to the fair. He figures he can pass, if he tries hard.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “He told me. I traded him for half.”

  “Traded?”

  “I gave him a really good fuck. Some boys like that, even if they can’t spout. Mostly they’re just curious about what’s there with a girl, seeing her cunt, poking a finger in, getting a feel of her ass. Juvenile stuff. I’ve done it for petty cash. But some really do want to do it all the way if they can just figure out how. I knew how to get him hard, and how to get it in. It’s easier with a boy my size, and he doesn’t spout, so it’s fairly clean. He’d never have made it with a souler girl, and another sopath girl would have killed him if he tried. But I made a deal, and delivered. Just as I will with you, when you’re willing.”

  “So why are you telling me?”

  “You’re a contact. You can be useful. More useful than half your money would be. Anyway, I like you. More than I ever liked a man before.”

  “Sopaths don
’t like anybody.”

  “We’re incapable of real friendship, but I like your look, as I said, and there’s something about your soul. Maybe it’s a passing fancy. I still figure some day you’ll fuck me.”

  “I will not!” Yet now he understood why she thought so. She had seduced grown men before, her way.

  “As long as we associate, there’s a chance. It could be fun trying, with your big cock, easing it in. I might even get an orgasm with you.”

  That much he could correct. “A child can’t get an orgasm.”

  “Sure they can. They can’t spout, but they can get the feeling. I do it when I stroke my clit long enough and use a vibrator in my cunt. But not with a man. I have to pay too much attention to making his big cock fit in my little hole, and then there’s the mess when it spouts, so I don’t get the feeling. It’s purely business. But you’re nice, and I really go for you, and maybe I could get there with you, if you fucked me slowly. If you kissed me and told me how you liked me. My slit gets wet just thinking about it.”

  He had thought he was beyond shock, but he wasn’t. She had set him straight with a vengeance. “No.”

  “I wish you’d let me try,” she said wistfully. “You’re the only man I ever wanted it with. You wouldn’t even have to make a deal. I’d let you just do it. I’d even like it if you spurted into me, because that would mean it was real. I’d save the gism.”

  It was past time to change the subject. “So you may have saved my life with your warning about the ambush, and I will have to take you to the fair tomorrow.”

  “That’s it.”

  What could he do? She had delivered, as before. “Okay. Just don’t expect my family to welcome you.”

  “I don’t care about them. I just want the fair.”

  “But there will have to be some rules for the occasion. Leave the vocabulary behind. In fact, don’t mention sex at all.”

  “I’m a sopath, not a moron, Abner. I’ll be a proper innocent girl.”

  He had to smile, reluctantly. Innocent sopath was an oxymoron, especially in her case. “And if you get mad about something, don’t draw your knife or throw a fit. Tell me quietly what’s bothering you and I’ll try to fix it. That’s the civilized way. I don’t want a scene.”

  “You and me both, Abner.”

  “And don’t call be Abner.”

  She looked sidelong at him. “You’d rather I called you daddy?”

  “No!”

  “Or lover?”

  “No!” he repeated, horrified. But she had a point. “Call me Mr. Slate, just as if you respect me.”

  “I do respect you, Mr. Slate. That’s why I want to be near you.”

  Was it sarcasm? He wasn’t sure. “The way a normal girl would respect the father of one of her friends.”

  “I know the act. I’ll even keep my panties on.” She put them back on at this point. “You know why I respect you? I can trust you. Because you do what you think is right, even when tempted. Not all souled folk do that, and none of the sopaths.”

  “I’m not tempted!”

  “You’re a man, right? When you see into a girl’s split, you want it. All men do.”

  “I don’t!”

  She merely smiled. “Let me off at the next stop sign.”

  He did, and she left the car. She looked exactly like a typical schoolgirl as she walked away. But not only was she a sopath, she had compromised him.

  He called Bunty from work to advise her of the deal. “We have to do something about that ambush,” he said.

  “We’ll set up a counter ambush,” she said. “You be completely normal.”

  “That’s nervous business.”

  “Dealing with sopaths is. I don’t look forward to tomorrow.”

  Neither did Abner.

  He drove home exactly on schedule. He parked the car and got out.

  There was a shot from the bush. He ducked.

  “It’s okay, dad,” Clark called. “I got him.”

  So he had. There was a dead boy in the bush, shot through the head. Clark had taken out the sopath as he got ready to shoot at Abner.

  Then Abner was holding Clark while he cried. He didn’t like killing any better than Abner did, though he had killed before.

  But the fact remained: Nefer might have saved his life. The sopath might have missed, or Abner might have heard him and dived clear, or Bunty might have seen the boy setting up. But most of the risk had been eliminated by Nefer’s warning. She had earned her day with them.

  Bunty had gone over it with the children, so they were prepared. They didn’t like it any better than Abner or Bunty did, but they were necessary realists. “Just ignore her,” Bunty advised.

  “We’ll pretend she’s real,” Dreda said bravely.

  Next morning Nefer was there by the car, modestly garbed. She took her place in silence.

  Abner paid for the five and they entered the fair. He bought cotton candy for all, and paid for the rides and games. Nefer behaved perfectly, which meant acting just like an innocent excited child. She was able to follow rules when she had reason, exactly as she had told him.

  When it came to the horror house Clark and Dreda hung back. But Nefer wanted to go. He knew that was why the other two did not want to: they would be jammed in close with the sopath.

  Abner hesitated. Bunty would stay with theirs, but that meant he would have to go with Nefer, because children were required to be accompanied by adults. “I don’t want to be alone with her,” he whispered to Bunty. “You know why.”

  She did. There was no telling what the sopath would do in the noisy darkness. She might try to kiss him, or get her hand into his fly. She might try for more. She had a vagina she wanted to get into play one way or another, and in the privacy of the horror house the limits might be off. “We’ll all go,” Bunty decreed.

  They all went, carefully seated. Clark and Dreda sat beside Abner, while Nefer sat beside Bunty. That eliminated any chance for any funny business. The sopath did not protest; in fact she almost seemed relieved. Perhaps because she didn’t trust herself not to mess up their deal, if tempted.

  And the ride was fun. They all enjoyed it. The pretend horror was laughable compared to what they had experienced with sopaths.

  Thereafter Clark and Dreda associated more closely with Nefer, so that they seemed almost like three siblings. They were getting used to each other despite their formidable difference. The rest of the fair went well.

  “Thank you,” Nefer said politely as they went home. “That was fun.”

  “We can drop you off at your house,” Bunty said.

  “No thank you, Mister Slate. My folks think I spent the day at the children’s library.” They had to laugh.

  They got out at home, and Nefer promptly disappeared.

  “She’s sweet on daddy, all right,” Dreda said without jealously.

  “She’s a sopath!” Clark protested. “I touched her and felt that emptiness.”

  “So did I. They get crushes too.”

  “That could explain why she was so well behaved,” Bunty said. “She wants you to like her, Abner.”

  “She wants me to have sex with her!”

  “That, too,” Bunty agreed. “Be careful of her, Abner. Don’t rebuff her in such a way as to make her feel like a woman scorned.”

  Because any sopath was dangerous, and this one doubly so. “She is quite explicit about what she wants of me. There’s no way I can oblige it. You know that.”

  “Keep telling her no,” Dreda said. “But leave a little bit of doubt in your voice, so she thinks maybe you don’t really mean it. Like mommy when she says she’ll spank us if we don’t behave.”

  “I never spanked you!” Bunty protested indignantly.

  “But you threatened to. That’s what I mean.”

  “Even when we did misbehave,” Clark said.

  Bunty lifted her hands in surrender. “Point made.”

  “But that’s tacitly encouraging her!” Abner said.


  “It’s the safest course, dear. Her interest in you is a lever that can make her emulate a conscience. Nothing else will.”

  And that was excellent advice. “But with luck I’ll never see her again.”

  “She’ll be back,” Dreda said. “She wants to get close to you.”

  She was surely correct, again.

  CHAPTER 5

  For a while things were relatively calm. The traps continued to get sopaths, and the detention cellar continued to take them out. Most were young, three or four years old, and inexperienced, easy prey. It was the older ones, like Nefer, that were dangerous, because they were learning to emulate normals, and some were quite good at it.

  “We’re losing ground,” Sylvia said. “We’re taking out the less dangerous ones and missing the smart ones. We need a better way.” All of them had become hardened to the necessity of killing children, or arranging for them to kill each other. It was an ugly business, but the alternative was uglier.

  “We need to bring down the population so that sopaths aren’t born anymore,” Abner said.

  She grimaced. “Lots of luck with that.”

  “There’s the problem,” he agreed. “Despite the increasing evidence, powerful political and religious groups still oppose any birth control, which is the only painless and effective way to do it. Families insist on their right to reproduce in any quantity they choose, and the least responsible ones increase their numbers disproportionately. So the global population continues to increase, and the ratio of sopaths increases.” It was foolhardy but seemed to be an insoluble problem.

  “We’re limited to what we can do locally,” Sylvia said. “Speaking of which, we have reports that a criminal has moved into the neighborhood, giving out guns and drugs to sopaths, making them twice as dangerous. We have to stop that.”

  “We do,” he agreed. “Most sopaths have been armed only with knives. If they all get guns, we’ll be in trouble.”

  “Serious trouble,” she agreed. “That’s why I’m going to make a formal complaint to the police.”

  “I’m not sure that’s wise. Scuttlebutt is that some of them have connections with sopath girls.”

  “I’ve heard. Six-year-old prostitutes. In fact the criminal is a pedophile, trading his wares for sex. All the more reason to take him out.”