Arnold felt an emptiness opening in front of him. “If you must, you must. How about Sally?”
“I shall take her with me.”
“Where will you go? Back to Entchley?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. It wouldn’t be advisable to take Sally back there. Not yet. But, I’m sorry—yours is the more urgent problem. I only mentioned it now so that you would know that my presence wouldn’t be a factor to take into account.”
“Your absence will be.”
“Thank you.” She smiled gently, sadly. “Arnold?”
“Yes?”
“Open your mind to me.”
He did so, gladly.
Moments passed. Then she looked up at him, smiled and unexpectedly kissed him.
“Go and tell Professor Green that you’ll carry on. And, Arnold, don’t feel too guilty. Whatever pain the power has caused can only be remedied by the power.”
He went back to Professor Green.
“I’ll carry on. I’ve made up my mind—with help. And I’m glad. So far I seem to have been working in holes and corners with this, but with your imprimatur I can—”
“Imprimatur?”
“If you believe in me and the power, you’ll sponsor me, won’t you?”
Green looked away.
“But with your name and prestige, surely—”
Green brought his gaze back to Arnold and it was troubled. “I’m sorry, but I can’t lend my name publicly to this.”
“I see,” Arnold said bitterly. “You ask me to carry on with something which so far has only brought me pain, not to mention that it’s dislocated my whole life in a few months, you tell me that it’s important that I go through with it, and you haven’t got the basic faith to speak out on my behalf.”
“Mr. Ash… Arnold… I do have faith. But I’ve suffered once. Not just myself, I brought suffering upon my family. Did you ever hear of the McCarthy trouble in America way back in the late forties and early fifties? I was in America then, an alien from Germany, not long naturalized. I was just beginning to make my way, to provide properly for my wife and children and, what was most important of all, to get support and funds for my work. But a few years before, in a paper, I had stated that it was no use bringing so-called cured mental patients back to a competitive society, that it was no use trying to adjust them to a society that was itself sick. I suggested that the cure lay in reorganizing society. All right, I don’t believe that now; it was too black-and-white a statement. And I certainly didn’t mean anything revolutionary by it.
“But I was hauled before a congressional sub-committee. Now, I had only said this in the journal of a learned society, but such forces have their eyes and ears everywhere. Besides, it seemed that I had been consorting with people whose views were already suspect. I was asked to reveal my political affiliations. I didn’t have any to speak of, but I refused to answer, just the same, on principle.
“It took me over ten years to recover from that. I’m not sure that I’ve recovered even now. A setback like that early in a man’s career can never be properly made good. No, I’m not martyring myself again. As I see it, I don’t have to.”
“But—”
“I am supposed, as a scholar, to be neutral. I can investigate phenomena, not sponsor people. My name might be valuable to you, but only because of my reputation as a scholar. The moment I came out on your side I would invalidate the very support you are asking of me.”
Arnold had, grudgingly, to see the sense of that.
“But I’ll send my postgraduate students to see you.” Green smiled. “I won’t even do that. I shall drop the seed. But they’ll come, you see. Meanwhile, go on trying to spread it as you see fit. Even if it is in holes and corners. After all, your religion started that way.” He smiled again, and his smile was like a shrug. “I was born, not Michael Green, but Moisha Grunberg. If you thought I was trying too hard to back out, remember that my people have a long history of persecution, and I’ve had my share. You are beginning to know what it’s like yourself.”
He rose and clapped Arnold on the shoulder. “Now, if I may have my coat?”
He turned by the door as he was about to leave.
“My people also have a strong messianic streak. Perhaps I’m only conforming to pattern. But, please—don’t let them say we were always wrong.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Professor Green was true to his word. So was Claire to hers; she left, taking Sally with her. She did not say where she was going, and he did not ask, but ten days later a card arrived from Ireland, from a place he had never heard of. He looked it up in a gazetteer and found that it was on the west coast. The card showed high hills breaking abruptly down to a shore littered with what looked like the building blocks of a giant’s child. It was just such a postcard as people on vacation sent to friends, with a message to the effect that they had arrived safely, that they had taken a cottage, that the weather was fine. It only lacked one thing—the “wish you were here” bit.
The ordinariness of the card somehow intensified the dull pain of their parting. For three months they had lived together in a strange relationship—not lovers in the ordinary sense, but joined as lovers never had been. And now she was gone, and he did not know when, or even if, she would return. But the card was at least one small token of something gained. This was the third time that she had fled from him—and the first time she had sent him an address.
Arnold saw nothing more of Green. But through the bright dead days of August and into September, the students arrived. He thought they would have been on vacation, but these were obviously dedicated men and women. They were cool, calm, unhurried—and coolly, calmly, unhurriedly, they took him to pieces.
And he was grateful.
It reminded him of himself when he had been a boy at school. How in those crises which, looking back at them, seemed laughable but which, at the time, seemed so final and terrible—things like not having done the lines he had been given, or being ostracized for having let the school team down—he had found a way of making them endurable. He would tell himself that it was happening, not to him, but to a statistic on a chart. One boy in three hundred and twenty-five did something stupid on the football field or skipped his lines. Punishment endured for sixty-six seconds of caning, by national statistics, or for three days, four hours of being ignored. It put a perimeter around pain.
So that now he welcomed being reduced from a man with a heavy load of problems and pain to a set of figures, a series of graphs. He realized that he had been too concerned about his possession of the power—arrogant, almost—and it was that which debased it. At least, that was how the activities of the researchers made him feel. Now it was being subjected to assay and the proof was out of his hands. And the responsibility could wait.
They measured him, weighed him, took parings of his nails and drops of his blood. They examined his personal history minutely, put him under narcosis, gave him association tests. They even dragged an electroencephalograph up the twisting stairs and hooked him to it. Most important of all, they started contact sessions.
One would seat himself facing Arnold, while the rest squatted on chairs or on the floor, making notes. Six tried, and five succeeded, in reaching first stage. The sixth drew an utter blank. Another was unable to reach second stage. Then the four tried communicating among themselves and, not to Arnold’s surprise, but to their own almost comically restrained excitement, succeeded. What was more, between them they managed to waken second-stage powers in the one with whom Arnold had failed.
The one who couldn’t get started at all accepted the situation with a grim good humour. What must have made it worse for him was the fact that he had the reputation of having the best mind of all of them. He had to take a lot of ribbing from his colleagues. But it confirmed Arnold’s belief that attainment of the power did not depend on intelligence. It might mean that an intellect of a really high order made too many barriers around itself. More likely it simply meant that
, irrespective of intelligence, some just didn’t have the aptitude. But the score was high enough to indicate that Claire’s fear of an arrogant elite—or its obverse, a persecuted minority—was unlikely.
Arnold appreciated the way the researchers acted, which was three parts serious and one part light-hearted. Or three parts objective, treating him for what he was—a special kind of guinea pig—and one part subjective, in that they identified themselves with his unique position and respected it. They were polite invaders, on first name terms immediately. They brought provisions and took turns cooking meals and making coffee. They also brought a wholesome sanity into his world.
Some of the tests they gave him he understood or could suspect the motivation of; many he couldn’t. If he asked them they told him readily enough, but he soon stopped asking. He did not want to hold up the good work. And he was content to let them reach their own findings.
But they talked in front of him quite freely. Their talk to him was almost entirely non-shop. That, he realized, was part of their tact; it was something they had probably picked up from their mentor, Professor Green, whom they obviously held in something akin to reverence.
It was the non-starter—his name was Jeff Kane—who talked to him most. That might have been simple compensation, for want of something to do while his colleagues were testing the power among themselves, but the conversations gave Arnold a glimpse into some of the dimensions which the power opened up. One, which Jeff was obviously enthusiastic about, was its bearing on evolution theory.
“You see, Arnold, you’re something unique. That’s the understatement of the year! But I mean, in a particular way. You’re the first possessor of a mutation which is infectious—or contagious, shall we say.” He shrugged. “All right,.so I’m immune. But don’t think I’ve given up hope of getting in on it. Because this has made me think. On a point that first bothered me years ago. It’s really outside my specialized field; it belongs in biology. Or it did. If what I’m guessing now is right It will become a field of study on its own—one of those disputed borderlands which come into being all the time these days.
“Yomikoto, in sixty-eight, had doubts, too. The doubt centres in the shaky—but still not supplanted by anything better—Darwinian hypothesis of evolution. It seemed to him, as it seemed to me, too long a process, even in the eons available. The process was seen as a succession of slight changes in individual members of a species, adding up finally to a markedly modified species or an entirely new one. These changes in individual creatures are survival factors—that is, if they’re positive changes which are dominant genetically. But, even so, a survival factor does not automatically guarantee survival in fiercely competitive arenas.
“Anyway, Yomikoto isolated a species and fed the whole problem to a computer. It’s too big a problem to do that to, really. For all the data we’ve got, it’s far too scanty. But the figures he got were several times too big to fit the theory of natural selection as it’s more or less accepted. It would have taken far too long. Not conclusive, but a pointer.
“And the pointer is to a factor, or factors, that we hadn’t known. Now I think I know what that factor is—an emulation factor. Tenuous, maybe, but no more tenuous than a survival factor. The first man who ran a four-minute mile wasn’t a mutation, though he was a perfect specimen physically for the job. Lung size, leg length, musculature, pulse, were ideal. Now, for thirty years men had been dreaming of breaking the barrier. As soon as he did it—within months—several other men did it, men who had found it physically impossible before, who were nowhere near the theoretical perfection of Bannister. I did it myself, come to that, a few years ago in the Inter-University sports—and came in second. The world record stands at three forty-nine point five at the moment.
“Now, your ability is communicable directly, which prompts my line of reasoning. But a confirmation will be given by the first person who fails at first, then succeeds by sheer social pressure—a matter of keeping up with the Joneses. The day that I break through is going to start me in enough research to last me the rest of my life.”
The researchers left as suddenly as they had arrived. There was a shaking of hands all round, an assurance that they’d be in touch, and they departed with their tackle and trunkloads of notes, leaving Arnold in a vacuum. Green had advised him to go on in his own way, independently of his students. But, now that they had left, he felt even less inclined to seek personal contacts to take this power down from the rarefied plane of research and back to the market place.
So he caught up with arrears of advertising work, feeling little taste for it, but recognizing that he had to. His reserves of money were getting low. He wrote a long letter to Claire, telling her about recent events—and tore it up.
One day, a week after the researchers had left, he had some copy to deliver to a small agency in Knightsbridge. He looked in at the South Kensington museums on the way back, and was strolling towards the Tube station when he was suddenly brought to a halt. He turned—and a girl who must have just passed him in the crowd turned back, too.
She looked puzzled, then she smiled and they moved towards each other instinctively. It had started to spread—from a centre not his. This girl had the power.
But from where? She hardly looked as if she might be a friend of one of the researchers. Her hair, of an unreal redness, was carefully untidy. She wore green tights and a low-necked yellow linen tunic. Then it dawned on him at the moment that the confirming image came into the girl’s mind—she was a friend of Vic.
They stood there on the pavement, jostled by the passing crowds, exchanging silent greeting. Arnold suddenly felt conspicuous, the two of them standing there without a word passing between them. He would have felt conspicuous anyway with this girl, even if they had been talking normally. He took her into a nearby bar.
To his surprise, she asked for a lemonade. He thought a large gin or vodka would have suited her raffish appearance better. But she lit a cigarette of peculiar aroma.
She saw Arnold’s nostrils wrinkle. “Sorry. Charge?”
“No thanks. One drug at a time’s enough for me,” he said aloud, gesturing to his whisky.
“Me too,” she said, inhaling deeply.
Which wasn’t exactly true, Arnold thought. The power too, that was a drug to her. Vic was using it for kicks, obviously, in the subterranean circles of Chelsea that he moved in. He knew himself the compulsion of it—his relationship with Claire might not look entirely guiltless to a third party. But the thought of using it deliberately for that one end aroused disgust in him and wakened all his old fears.
His feelings must have seeped through, for the girl said “But I thought Vic was a friend of yours.”
“Did he tell you that? Did he mention me, Arnold Ash?”
“No, but I got the impression when we bumped into each other.” Her voice was a husky drawl. “And then just now I wasn’t sure. But you must be or you wouldn’t have this. Cute isn’t it?”
Trust Vic, Arnold thought bitterly, but he was careful not to reveal it. After all, he had no proprietorial rights in the power. As he covered up he realized that the girl was puzzled by somebody who, having the power, should close his mind against another who had it. She was only too eager to open hers.
He let down his guard for a moment and felt her eagerness. And her mind was not all that she was offering. Looking at her, lolling amply in her chair, Arnold had to admit that the body was a better bargain than the mind, what he had seen of it. He was momentarily tempted, then recognized that a strong ingredient in that feeling was one of revenge against Vic. The impulse was doubly shoddy. He ducked out on a mumbled pretext and slid out of the far door. Vic was the one he had to get at—but directly.
He caught up with him that evening at a pub in Chelsea. It wasn’t difficult; Vic was well known in the area.
Arnold went straight to where he was sitting.
“Hi, lad,” Vic greeted him. “Have a drink.”
“No thanks. I found out
something today. I wondered why I hadn’t heard from you since that TV programme. I might have known.”
Vic could see Arnold’s anger; it was impossible for him not to. But he was plainly baffled by it.
“But I’ve been busy myself.”
“I know. And I know what with. I met one of your guinea pigs. And I don’t like the way you’re using it.”
“Steady, fella. I’m grateful for what you passed on to me, but I don’t see why I should have to account to you for the way I use it.”
“You don’t have to account to me—only to yourself. But you might have let me know when you found out you could pass on the power as well as use it.”
“I meant to. I’m sorry, but you know how it is. Anyway, I was pretty sure you’d find that out yourself soon enough. Haven’t you?”
“That’s not the point. Don’t you realize the responsibility of it?”
“Responsibility? I might realize better if I knew who you’d met.”
“I didn’t ask her name. She goes around in transparent green tights and a smock that starts low and finishes high.”
Vic grinned. “That’s not much identification. That’s the latest Ess Double-U garb.”
“She also has hair several shades too red.”
“Well, that narrows the field slightly. That makes it either… let me see… Jean or Drusie.”
“Drusie? I got an impression of that, but that’s a name?”
“Short for Drusilla, old man. It’s the Honourable Drusilla really. She’s a member of an old titled family.”
“I’m not interested in her family tree,” Arnold said tersely, “only in the particular branch that you’ve been swinging on.” He felt annoyed at himself for having been deflected from his main object by Vic’s airy attempt at identification.
Vic seemed to struggle between resentment and a genuine regret that he had offended Arnold. In the end the latter feeling won.
“Look, Arnold, let me give you a potted history of Drusie. She was thrown out of an exclusive girls’ school at the age of sixteen for having an affair with one of the groundsmen. She had two abortions before she was eighteen and spent ten months in a home for moral degeneracy before she was twenty. She’s also been inside for shorter periods for alcoholism, drugs and petty larceny. She was on the run from a Maltese pimp when she barged into our circles down here.”
The Silent Speakers Page 11