Mutants

by Robert Silverberg

  Aunt Amy went out in back, where Anthony’s Mom—Aunt Amy’s sister—sat in the shade of the house, shelling peas. The peas, every time Mom ran a finger along a pod, went lollop-lollop-lollop into the pan on her lap.

  “William brought the groceries,” Aunt Amy said. She sat down wearily in the straightbacked chair beside Mom, and began fanning herself again. She wasn’t really old; but ever since Anthony had snapped at her with his mind, something had seemed to be wrong with her body as well as her mind, and she was tired all the time.

  “Oh, good,” said Mom. Lollop went the fat peas into the pan.

  Everybody in Peaksville always said “Oh, fine,” or “Good,” or “Say, that’s swell!” when almost anything happened or was mentioned—even unhappy things like accidents or even deaths. They’d always say “Good,” because if they didn’t try to cover up how they really felt, Anthony might overhear with his mind, and then nobody knew what might happen. Like the time Mrs. Kent’s husband, Sam, had come walking back from the graveyard, because Anthony liked Mrs. Kent and had heard her mourning.

  Lollop.

  “Tonight’s television night,” said Aunt Amy. “I’m glad. I look forward to it so much every week. I wonder what we’ll see tonight.”

  “Did Bill bring the meat?” asked Mom.

  “Yes.” Aunt Amy fanned herself, looking up at the featureless brassy glare of the sky. “Goodness, it’s so hot! I wish Anthony would make it just a little cooler—”

  “Amy!”

  “Oh!” Mom’s sharp tone had penetrated, where Bill Soames’ agonized expression had failed. Aunt Amy put one thin hand to her mouth in exaggerated alarm. “Oh … I’m sorry, dear.” Her pale blue eyes shuttled around, right and left, to see if Anthony was in sight. Not that it would make any difference if he was or wasn’t—he didn’t have to be near you to know what you were thinking. Usually, though, unless he had his attention on somebody, he would be occupied with thoughts of his own.

  But some things attracted his attention—you could never be sure just what.

  “This weather’s just fine/’ Mom said.

  Lollop.

  “Oh, yes,” Aunt Amy said. “It’s a wonderful day. I wouldn’t want it changed for the world!”

  Lollop.

  Lollop.

  “What time is it?” Mom asked.

  Aunt Amy was sitting where she could see through the kitchen window to the alarm clock on the shelf above the stove. “Four-thirty,” she said.

  Lollop.

  “I want tonight to be something special,” Mom said. “Did Bill bring a good lean roast?”

  “Good and lean, dear. They butchered just today, you know, and sent us over the best piece.”

  “Dan Hollis will be so surprised when he finds out that tonight’s television party is a birthday party for him too!”

  “Oh, I think he will! Are you sure nobody’s told him?”

  “Everybody swore they wouldn’t.”

  “That’ll be real nice.” Aunt Amy nodded, looking off across the cornfield. “A birthday party.”

  “Well—” Mom put the pan of peas down beside her, stood up and brushed her apron. “I’d better get the roast on. Then we can set the table.” She picked up the peas.

  Anthony came around the corner of the house. He didn’t look at them, but continued on down through the carefully kept garden—all the gardens in Peaksville were carefully kept, very carefully kept—and went past the rustling, useless hulk that had been the Fremont family car, and went smoothly over the fence and out into the cornfield, “Isn’t this a lovely day!” said Mom, a little loudly, as they went toward the back door.

  Aunt Amy fanned herself. “A beautiful day, dear. Just fine!”

  Out in the cornfield, Anthony walked between the tall, rustling rows of green stalks. He liked to smell the corn. The alive corn overhead, and the dead corn underfoot. Rich Ohio earth, thick with weeds and brown, dry-rotting ears of corn, pressed between his bare toes with every step—he had made it rain last night so everything would smell and feel nice today.

  He walked clear to the edge of the cornfield, and over to where a grove of shadowy green trees covered cool, moist, dark ground, and lots of leafy undergrowth, and jumbled moss-covered rocks, and a small spring that made a clear, clean pool. Here Anthony liked to rest and watch the birds and insects and small animals that rustled and scampered and chirped about. He liked to lie on the cool ground and look up through the moving greenness overhead, and watch the insects flit in the hazy soft sunbeams that stood like slanting, glowing bars between ground and treetops. Somehow, he liked the thoughts of the little creatures in this place better than the thoughts outside; and while the thoughts he picked up here weren’t very strong or very clear, he could get enough out of them to know what the little creatures liked and wanted, and he spent a lot of time making the grove more like what they wanted it to be. The spring hadn’t always been here; but one time he had found thirst in one small furry mind, and had brought subterranean water to the surface in a clear, cold flow, and had watched blinking as the creature drank, feeling its pleasure. Later he had made the pool, when he found a small urge to swim.

  He had made rocks and trees and bushes and caves, and sunlight here and shadows there, because he had felt in all the tiny minds around him the desire—or the instinctive want—for this kind of resting place, and that kind of mating place, and this kind of place to play, and that kind of home.

  And somehow the creatures from all the fields and pastures around the grove had seemed to know that this was a good place, for there were always more of them coming in—every time Anthony came out here there were more creatures than the last time, and more desires and needs to be tended to. Every time there would be some kind of creature he had never seen before, and he would find its mind, and see what it wanted, and then give it to it. He liked to help them. He liked to feel their simple gratification.

  Today, he rested beneath a thick elm, and lifted his purple gaze to a red and black bird that had just come to the grove. It twittered on a branch over his head, and hopped back and forth, and thought its tiny thoughts, and Anthony made a big, soft nest for it, and pretty soon it hopped in.

  A long, brown, sleek-furred animal was drinking at the pool. Anthony found its mind next. The animal was thinking about a smaller creature that was scurrying along the ground on the other side of the pool, grubbing for insects. The little creature didn’t know that it was in danger. The long, brown animal finished drinking and tensed its legs to leap, and Anthony thought it into a grave in the cornfield.

  He didn’t like those kinds of thoughts. They reminded him of the thoughts outside the grove. A long time ago some of the people outside had thought that way about him, and one night they’d hidden and waited for him to come back from the grove—and he’d just thought them all into the cornfield. Since then, the rest of the people hadn’t thought that way—at least, very clearly. Now their thoughts were all mixed up and confusing whenever they thought about him or near him. So he didn’t pay much attention.

  He liked to help them too, sometimes—but it wasn’t simple, or very gratifying either. They never thought happy thoughts when he did—just the jumble. So he spent more time out here.

  He watched all the birds and insects and furry creatures for a while, and played with a bird, making it soar and dip and streak madly around tree trunks until, accidentally, when another bird caught his attention for a moment, he ran it into a rock. Petulantly, he thought the rock into a grave in the cornfield; but he couldn’t do anything more with the bird. Not because it was dead, though it was; but because it had a broken wing. So he went back to the house. He didn’t feel like walking back through the cornfield, so he just went to the house, right down into the basement.

  It was nice down here. Nice and dark and damp and sort of fragrant, because once Mom had been making preserves in a rack along the far wall, and then she’d stopped coming down ever since Anthony had started spending time here, and the pr
eserves had spoiled and leaked down and spread over the dirt floor, and Anthony liked the smell.

  He caught another rat, making it smell cheese, and after he played with it, he thought it into a grave right beside the long animal he’d killed in the grove. Aunt Amy hated rats, and so he killed a lot of them, because he liked Aunt Amy most of all and sometimes did things that Aunt Amy wanted. Her mind was more like the little furry minds out in the grove. She hadn’t thought anything bad at all about him for a long time.

  After the rat, he played with a big black spider in the corner under the stairs, making it run back and forth until its web shook and shimmered in the light from the cellar window like a reflection in silvery water. Then he drove fruit flies into the web until the spider was frantic trying to wind them all up. The spider liked flies, and its thoughts were stronger than theirs, so he did it. There was something bad in the way it liked flies, but it wasn’t clear—and besides, Aunt Amy hated flies too.

  He heard footsteps overhead—Mom moving around in the kitchen. He blinked his purple gaze, and almost decided to make her hold still—but instead he went up to the attic, and, after looking out the circular window at the front end of the long V-roofed room for a while at the front lawn and the dusty road and Henderson’s tip-waving wheat field beyond, he curled into an unlikely shape and went partly to sleep.

  Soon people would be coming for television, he heard Mom think.

  He went more to sleep. He liked television night. Aunt Amy had always liked television a lot, so one time he had thought some for her, and a few other people had been there at the time, and Aunt Amy had felt disappointed when they wanted to leave. He’d done something to them for that—and now everybody came to television.

  He liked all the attention he got when they did.

  Anthony’s father came home around six thirty, looking tired and dirty and bloody. He’d been over in Dunn’s pasture with the other men, helping pick out the cow to be slaughtered this month and doing the job, and then butchering the meat and salting it away in Soames’ icehouse. Not a job he cared for, but every man had his turn. Yesterday, he had helped scythe down old Mclntyre’s wheat. Tomorrow, they would start threshing. By hand. Everything in Peaksville had to be done by hand.

  He kissed his wife on the cheek and sat down at the kitchen table. He smiled and said, “Where’s Anthony?”

  “Around someplace,” Mom said.

  Aunt Amy was over at the wood-burning stove, stirring the big pot of peas. Mom went back to the oven and opened it and basted the roast.

  “Well, it’s been a good day,” Dad said. By rote. Then he looked at the mixing bowl and breadboard on the table. He sniffed at the dough. “M’m,” he said. “I could eat a loaf all by myself, I’m so hungry.”

  “No one told Dan Hollis about its being a birthday party, did they?” his wife asked.

  “Nope. We kept as quiet as mummies.”

  “We’ve fixed up such a lovely surprise!”

  “Urn? What?”

  “Well … you know how much Dan likes music. Well, last week Thelma Dunn found a record in her attic!”

  “No!”

  “Yes! And we had Ethel sort of ask—you know, without really asking—£ he had that one. And he said no. Isn’t that a wonderful surprise?”

  “Well, now, it sure is. A record, imagine! That’s a real nice thing to find! What record is it?”

  “Perry Como, singing ‘You Are My Sunshine.’”

  “Well, I’ll be darned. I always liked that tune.” Some raw carrots were lying on the table. Dad picked up a small one, scrubbed it on his chest, and took a bite. “How did Thelma happen to find it?”

  “Oh, you know—just looking around for new things.”

  “M’m.” Dad chewed the carrot. “Say, who has that picture we found a while back? I kind of liked it—that old clipper sailing along—”

  “The Smiths. Next week the Sipichs get it, and they give the Smiths old Mclntyre’s music-box, and we give the Sipichs—” And she went down the tentative order of things that would exchange hands among the women at church this Sunday.

  He nodded. “Looks like we can’t have the picture for a while, I guess. Look, honey, you might try to get that detective book back from the Reillys. I was so busy the week we had it, I never got to finish all the stories—”

  “I’ll try,” his wife said doubtfully. “But I hear the van Husens have a stereoscope they found in the cellar.” Her voice was just a little accusing. “They had it two whole months before they told anybody about it—”

  “Say,” Dad said, looking interested. “That’d be nice, too. Lots of pictures?”

  *T suppose so. I’ll see on Sunday. I’d like to have it—but we still owe the van Husens for their canary. I don’t know why that bird had to pick our house to die … it must have been sick when we got it. Now there’s just no satisfying Betty van Husen—she even hinted she’d like our piano for a while!”

  “Well, honey, you try for the stereoscope—or just anything you think we’ll like.” At last he swallowed the carrot. It had been a little young and tough. Anthony’s whims about the weather made it so that people never knew what crops would come up, or what shape they’d be in if they did. All they could do was plant a lot; and always enough of something came up any one season to live on. Just once there had been a grain surplus; tons of it had been hauled to the edge of Peaksville and dumped off into the nothingness. Otherwise, nobody could have breathed, when it started to spoil.

  “You know,” Dad went on. “It’s nice to have the new things around. It’s nice to think that there’s probably still a lot of stuff nobody’s found yet, in cellars and attics and barns and down behind things. They help, somehow. As much as anything can help—”

  “Sh-h!” Mom glanced nervously around.

  “Oh,” Dad said, smiling hastily. “It’s all right! The new things are good! It’s nice to be able to have something around you’ve never seen before, and know that something you’ve given somebody else is making them happy… that’s a real good thing.”

  “A good thing,” his wife echoed.

  “Pretty soon,” Aunt Amy said, from the stove, “there won’t be any more new things. Well have found everything there is to find. Goodness, that’ll be too bad—”

  “Amy!”

  “Well—” Her pale eyes were shallow and fixed, a sign of her recurrent vagueness. “It will be kind of a shame—no new things—”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Mom said, trembling. “Amy, be quiet!”

  “It’s good” said Dad, in the loud, familiar, wanting-to-be-overheard tone of voice. “Such talk is good. It’s okay, honey—don’t you see? It’s good for Amy to talk any way she wants. It’s good for her to feel bad. Everything’s good. Everything has to be good…”

  Anthony’s mother was pale. And so was Aunt Amy—the peril of the moment had suddenly penetrated the clouds surrounding her mind. Sometimes it was difficult to handle words so that they might not prove disastrous. You just never knew. There were so many things it was wise not to say, or even think-but remonstration for saying or thinking them might be just as bad, if Anthony heard and decided to do anything about it. You could just never tell what Anthony was liable to do.

  Everything had to be good. Had to be fine just as it was, even if it wasn’t. Always. Because any change might be worse. So terribly much worse.

  “Oh, my goodness, yes, of course it’s good,” Mom said. “You talk any way you want to, Amy, and it’s just fine. Of course, you want to remember that some ways are better than others …”

  Aunt Amy stirred the peas, fright in her pale eyes.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “But I don’t feel like talking right now. It… it’s good that I don’t feel like talking.”

  Dad said tiredly, smiling, “I’m going out and wash up.”

  They started arriving around eight o’clock. By that time, Mom and Aunt Amy had the big table in the dining room set, and two more tables off to the side. The c
andles were burning, and the chairs situated, and Dad had a big fire going in the fireplace.

  The first to arrive were the Sipichs, John and Mary. John wore his best suit, and was well scrubbed and pinkfaced after his day in Mclntyre’s pasture. The suit was neatly pressed, but getting threadbare at elbow and cuffs. Old Mclntyre was working on a loom, designing it out of schoolbooks, but so far it was slow going. Mclntyre was a capable man with wood and tools, but a loom was a big order when you couldn’t get metal parts. Mclntyre had been one of the ones who, at first, had wanted to try to get Anthony to make things the villagers needed, like clothes and canned goods and medical supplies and gasoline. Since then, he felt that what had happened to the whole Terrance family and Joe Kinney was his fault, and he worked hard trying to make it up to the rest of them. And since then, no one had tried to get Anthony to do anything.

  Mary Sipich was a small, cheerful woman in a simple dress. She immediately set about helping Mom and Aunt Amy put the finishing touches on the dinner.

  The next arrivals were the Smiths and the Dunns, who lived right next to each other down the road, only a few yards from the nothingness. They drove up in the Smiths’ wagon, drawn by their old horse.

  Then the Reillys showed up, from across the darkened wheat field, and the evening really began. Pat Reilly sat down at the big upright in the front room, and began to play from the popular sheet music on the rack. He played softly, as expressively as he could—and nobody sang. Anthony liked piano playing a whole lot, but not singing; often he would come up from the basement, or down from the attic, or just come, and sit on top of the piano, nodding his head as Pat played “Lover” or “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” or “Night and Day.” He seemed to prefer ballads, sweet-sounding songs—but the one time somebody had started to sing, Anthony had looked over from the top of the piano and done something that made everybody afraid of singing from then on. Later, they’d decided that the piano was what Anthony had heard first, before anybody had ever tried to sing, and now anything else added to it didn’t sound right and distracted him from his pleasure.