The Distant Home

by Morphett, Tony

  ‘That’s when I read them.’

  ‘I see.’

  Sally had a familiar sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. It was not fair. Dr Allport had asked her to answer the questions correctly. And it was kind of fun, seeing how fast she could do it. Now Dr Allport was turning on her like all the others at school did.

  It was not easy pretending you were dumber than you actually were, pretending that you did not understand things, pretending you did not know the answer when the teacher asked you, but if you did not pretend you got into trouble with your friends, and earned suspicious looks from the teachers.

  ‘So you didn’t just answer at random?’ Dr Allport was saying.

  ‘No!’ said Sally. ‘Of course not. That’d be no fun.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Dr Allport, collecting her papers and putting them away in her briefcase.

  ‘Do I get the results?’ said Sally.

  ‘I don’t think that’d be for your benefit, Sally,’ said Allport, snapping her briefcase shut. ‘You already know how bright you are, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ said Sally. And then, to Allport’s questioning look, she added, ‘I’ve never really been pushed to my limits.’

  Allport hesitated. Sally was obviously telling the truth. Allport had already done what Dr Chambers had asked in giving Sally a test appropriate for her biological age. But in the briefcase were other tests, tests that would give Allport herself trouble, and Allport was a very intelligent woman indeed.

  After a moment’s pause, Allport unlocked her briefcase again. ‘Then let’s do that,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if we can push you to your limits. Whatever they may be.’

  Sally was happy to oblige. The more she could distract Allport the better chance she had of palming the pen she had been given to use on the tests. Sally was already thinking of several uses for that pen.

  chapter nineteen

  Meanwhile, Dr Chambers was leading Bobby, Maria and Jim into a waiting room very like the one in which Jim had sweated out the hours before the twins’ birth twelve years before. Following them in was the large orderly who had foiled Bobby’s attempt to get Sally out of the hospital.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting here,’ Dr Chambers said, showing his teeth in what he obviously thought was a reassuring smile, ‘we’ll get right back to you.’

  ‘I want to see Sally,’ said Maria abruptly. Bobby could have told Chambers it was no use trying to distract Maria’s attention when she wanted something.

  ‘When can we see our daughter?’ Jim said, sounding angrier by the minute.

  ‘We’re just running some psychological tests on her at the moment,’ Dr Chambers said in a soothing voice as if he were trying to sell Jim something.

  ‘Psychological tests?’ Jim did not like the sound of that.

  ‘In case of head injury,’ Chambers said.

  ‘Head injury?’ Maria’s words came out as a stifled yell.

  ‘Routine!’ said Chambers. ‘Just routine. She doesn’t have a head injury, you can take my word for that, but hospital regulations say we have to do tests, so we’re doing them.’ He moved to the door and then turned, and asked, very casually, ‘How does she do at school by the way?’

  ‘She’s a dead-set Spock,’ said Bobby.

  ‘Bobby means she’s very bright,’ Jim said. ‘Tops her classes, always has.’

  Chambers got even more casual. ‘In everything?’

  ‘The teachers say she has the reading age of an adult.’ Jim was very proud of this.

  ‘And you never wondered about that?’ Chambers was genuinely puzzled. If his kid had showed an abnormality like that he would have had her investigated. You couldn’t be too careful these days.

  ‘We were just very proud,’ Maria said.

  Chambers understood. The parents were so stupid that they had not regarded an adult reading age in a twelve year old as in any way suspicious. Unless they were in league with the kid. They would certainly bear investigation. ‘Of course,’ he said. He beckoned the gigantic orderly and murmured, ‘I want that boy to stay in this room.’ And then he forced a smile at Jim and Maria, and went out.

  The orderly picked up a chair in one huge hand, spun it, put it down and sat on it, keeping his eyes on Bobby the whole time. Bobby did not like the way the orderly looked at him. There was a big kid at school who looked at him like that. The big kid’s nickname was ‘Predator’.

  In the pathology laboratory, the pathologist was checking blood samples. One tube was labelled ‘Maria Harrison’, one ‘Jim Harrison’, one ‘Bobby Harrison’.

  Now Dr Chambers handed the pathologist another tube. This one was labelled ‘Sally Harrison’ and contained a blue-green fluid.

  The pathologist looked at the liquid in the tube and then at Dr Chambers. ‘Is this a joke?’ she asked.

  ‘Have you ever heard me make a joke?’ said Chambers.

  ‘No I haven’t.’

  ‘Have you ever heard me laugh at a joke?’ said Chambers.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Behind my back, people say I have no sense of humour,’ said Dr Chambers. ‘Correct?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir,’ said the pathologist.

  ‘If you knew they said that and then denied knowing it, that would mean that you were in on it with them,’ said Dr Chambers.

  ‘I now remember hearing people say it, Dr Chambers,’ said the pathologist.

  ‘And knowing I have no sense of humour you ask me if I’m making a joke?’ yelled Dr Chambers.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘Test the blue-green fluid,’ he said.

  ‘What sort of test, sir?’ said the pathologist.

  ‘A blood test,’ said Chambers. When the pathologist hesitated, he screamed, ‘Do it!’

  Back in the waiting room, Bobby was crossing his legs. The blank eyes of the gigantic orderly took that in. Now Bobby crossed his legs the other way. Now he stood up and jiggled on his feet.

  ‘I think I’ll just go to the lavatory,’ he said.

  ‘Dr Chambers wants you to stay here,’ the orderly said, speaking each word in exactly the same way, like a robot.

  Bobby sat down. Then he crossed his legs. Then he recrossed them, and then he uncrossed them. He wrinkled his forehead, he pursed his lips, his face took on a look of desperate agony. Then he shot out of his chair as if rocket-assisted. ‘I’ve really got to go!’ he shouted.

  ‘Sit!’ said the orderly, rising, and pulling the chair out from under himself.

  ‘Sorry,’ yelled Bobby. ‘I’m busting!’

  And he was out of there like a sprinter. The orderly lunged after him like a big football forward trying to catch a speedy back, and missed him by a centimetre.

  The orderly thundered into the corridor after Bobby, looked both ways, and saw nothing! Bobby had already disappeared.

  The orderly suddenly had a very sick feeling. Dr Chambers would skin him for this. He ran off along the corridor searching for Bobby, looking in each door, asking questions of passing patients and staff. No one had seen a runaway boy.

  All the while the orderly searched, a linen trolley moved along the hospital corridor in the opposite direction. There was an odd thing about this linen trolley. It was moving, but no one seemed to be pushing it. Looking closer, an observer might have seen a boy-sized foot wearing a jogger, protruding through a slit in the linen bag, and pushing the trolley along.

  Before the orderly turned and came back to search in the opposite direction, the linen trolley had turned a corner and disappeared.

  chapter twenty

  Locked in her private room, Sally was exploring the uses to which she could put Dr Allport’s pen. She had already checked the barred window, but the pen was no use in trying to unscrew the fastenings on the bars. Besides, even if she removed the bars, the room was on the third level, and no one short of a mountain climber could have reached the ground safely.

  No, she thought, it had to be the door. Or had it? Again, she
found herself looking at the air-conditioning ducting, big square pipes that took filtered air around the hospital. She stood on her bed and examined the grille through which conditioned air came into her room. The grille was made to be removed. Maybe, she thought, if she used the pen as a lever. Very carefully, she pushed the end of the pen under the grille and began to work it backwards and forwards.

  If Sally had known what was going on in the X-ray department, she might have worked much faster. Because, as she worked, a conference was being held that would decide her entire future.

  Dr Chambers had the X-rays of all the Harrison family up on the viewing screens. There on one side were the X-rays of Bobby, Maria and Jim, and on the other, Sally’s showing her two hearts, four lungs, four kidneys and so on. On the bench below the viewing screens stood a rack of sealed test tubes, three with normal coloured blood, one with blue-green.

  Chambers turned to Dr Rosen, Dr Allport, the pathologist, and the senior nursing sister. ‘I’m swearing you all to secrecy. Understand?’

  They nodded. They were all a little nervous. For one thing, they had all lived their entire lives seeking rational explanations for things, and here they were facing evidence which defied rational explanation. And for another thing, they knew if they fouled up on this one, Chambers would have their scalps.

  Chambers looked at Dr Allport, the psychologist. ‘Doctor?’ he said. ‘Your report please.’

  Allport hugged her clipboard. If she had seen anyone else doing it, she would have said that their clipboard represented a security blanket. Naturally things like that did not apply to her, but she hugged it tight, and looked at it, even though she knew what she was going to see.

  ‘Patient Sally Harrison,’ she began, ‘personality is almost suspiciously stable.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Chambers interrupted.

  ‘Twelve years old, has an accident, is brought into hospital, there should be signs of normal disorientation. The subject was unnaturally self-controlled. It was almost as if she were in charge of the interview.’

  ‘You let her take control?’ yelped Chambers.

  ‘Certainly not! But she wasn’t as vulnerable as I would have liked.’ Allport paused. ‘It was like dealing with a very old, very wise adult. I had a professor like that at university—Professor O’Connor. It was as if she was … humouring me.’

  ‘Did she explain things to you?’ Chambers was still feeling bitter about Sally telling him about astigmatism and twins.

  ‘When we got down to personality tests, she wanted to know if we’d be doing Rorshach inkblots or thematic apperception tests. I can tell you it wasn’t like dealing with a twelve year old at all.’ Allport paused. ‘It was spooky.’ A sudden thought hit her. ‘She’s not an adult is she? A physically very immature adult?’

  ‘As far as we know she’s twelve years old,’ said Chambers. ‘What’s the intelligence read-out?’

  Allport shrugged. ‘Hard to say.’ She saw Chambers face go red and forestalled his angry outburst, ‘Dr Chambers, she’s off the chart. The intelligence is scarcely measurable.’

  ‘Very bright,’ he said. ‘Her parents say she tops her class at school.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m talking about,’ Allport said carefully. ‘Very bright is not the term. With further testing I could talk figures like an IQ in the mid two hundreds, but it could be higher than that.’

  ‘We can’t measure that high!’ Chambers was outraged.

  ‘Exactly what I’m saying,’ said Allport.

  ‘But you’re saying she’s more intelligent than I am!’ shouted Chambers. He felt sick with anger. How could a little kid be more intelligent than he was? It was against the laws of nature!

  ‘She’s probably more intelligent than both of us put together,’ Allport said.

  Chambers eyes went to the X-ray, and then to the blue-green fluid he had seen extracted from Sally’s vein. ‘We’ve delayed long enough,’ he said. ‘We have to tell the authorities.’ He turned and looked at the others. They were staring at him. The idiots, he thought, had not worked it out yet. ‘Well she doesn’t come from this planet, does she?’ he said. There. It was out in the open. He had thought the unthinkable, said the unsayable. ‘She comes from … somewhere else.’

  Allport turned from Chambers and looked at the blue-green blood. ‘You means she’s … it, daughter of them?’

  ‘I can’t see any other explanation,’ said Chambers. ‘The internal organs, the blood, the impossibly quick healing, the intelligence level higher than that of even the most brilliant human such as myself, it can add up to only one thing. She’s from somewhere else.’

  ‘But the parents and the brother—’ the nursing sister began.

  ‘Are human. Just.’ Chambers’s mouth twisted into an imitation of a smile. ‘They claim never to have noticed anything odd about the creature called “Sally”. Now if that’s true, their combined intelligence must equal that of an indoor plant. A rather dumb indoor plant. On the other hand,’ and here he paused, ‘they may be in on it.’

  ‘In on what?’ said the radiologist.

  ‘In on the plot, you imbecile!’ Chambers grated. ‘Think about it. The Harrison family either know what it is that they’ve been bringing up, or she was planted on them at some time in the past.’

  ‘Like a cuckoo’s egg,’ Allport said. ‘Cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests and let those birds bring them up.’

  ‘I know what cuckoos do!’ Chambers yelled. It was bad enough having the girl creature explain things to him without Dr Allport starting. Then he realized the implications of what she had said. Lots of cuckoos did it. Maybe lots of aliens did it. ‘Ask yourself,’ he moaned. ‘How many more of them are there out there?’

  The others stared at him, not wanting to believe him. But there were the X-rays. There was the blood sample.

  Chambers got himself under control. This might be a crisis in human history, a threat to the survival of the entire human race but, looking on the bright side, what a career opportunity it represented! He went on more calmly. ‘The more we know about them the better. The so-called parents aren’t going to give permission to dissect, but I think once the authorities know, we’ll get the old green light on that little matter!’

  At that moment there was a knock on the door and the giant orderly entered, looking scared. ‘I’m sorry, Dr Chambers, sir,’ he said, ‘but I’ve lost the boy.’

  Chambers’s pink face went an ashen colour. He knew that if that irritating boy was loose, then there was bound to be trouble. He headed for the door and the others followed.

  chapter twenty-one

  Bobby climbed out of his laundry trolley outside the door with the number 312 above it. This was it, the room Sally had told him she was locked in. He tried the door handle, found the door was locked, took a deep breath and then knocked. ‘Sally?’ he whispered. ‘It’s me. Bobby.’

  ‘What kept you?’ Her voice was muffled by the door but it was Sally all right.

  ‘Had to do tests and things. Then they had a guy the size of a gorilla guarding me. Now, how do I get in?’

  ‘You can’t get through the door,’ Sally’s muffled voice said. ‘And you should get out of the corridor in case they’re looking for you. So phone me.’

  ‘What?’ Bobby shook his head. Sally sometimes came up with the weirdest ideas.

  When Sally answered, her voice had a very patient tone that he recognized. ‘Find a phone, dial three one two.’

  Bobby looked both ways, then moved along to the next door, pushing the laundry trolley in front of him. He tried the door, it opened, and he slipped inside.

  He found he was in a room with a single hospital bed in it. The bed was made up but the room was clearly unoccupied. Swiftly he locked the door behind him and moved to the phone on the bedside table.

  ‘Three one two,’ he murmured to himself as he pressed the buttons.

  There was a brief ringing sound from the room next door, and then Sally’s voice. �
��Hi. That you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bobby, ‘I’m in the room next door.’

  ‘Ace!’ said Sally. ‘In your room is there an air-conditioning duct with an access cover on it?’

  Bobby looked around. He could see a big pipe with a wire grille on it. ‘Yeah. Big pipe thing. There’s a hole in it covered with wire mesh.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Sally’s voice said. ‘Do you have your Swiss Army knife?’

  ‘I always have my Swiss Army knife,’ said Bobby, shocked at the idea that he would ever leave home without it.

  ‘Try and lever the wire mesh off. I think it’s my only way of getting out of this room,’ said Sally. Then, hearing the rattle of a key in the lock, she said, ‘Got to hang up, someone’s coming!’

  She put down the receiver and turned toward the door as it opened. Dr Chambers and the nursing sister entered. ‘Can I help you?’ Sally said, but they ignored her, and began to search the room, looking under the bed and in the wardrobe.

  Satisfied that Bobby was not in the room, Chambers looked at Sally, keeping his distance from her as if she was dangerous. ‘Have you seen Bobby Harrison?’ he said.

  ‘My twin brother?’ Sally asked, surprised at the way Chambers had put the question.

  ‘Bobby Harrison,’ Chambers repeated.

  ‘Logically, since I’m locked in here, no, I haven’t seen him,’ Sally replied.

  In the next room, Bobby was using his Swiss Army knife to lever the cover off the air-conditioning duct.

  ‘He’s running around causing trouble,’ Chambers said, ‘disrupting hospital routine. If he turns up, tell him to report to the front desk.’

  Bobby was disappearing into the air-conditioning duct. He knew it was very dangerous and in normal circumstances even he would not have dreamed of doing it, but this was an emergency. He had to get Sally out of there.

  ‘I’m not likely to see him,’ Sally was saying, ‘unless you leave the door unlocked.’

  ‘You can’t fool me that way,’ Chambers said, and to Sally’s ears, this grown-up doctor was sounding more and more like one of the younger kids at school. ‘If he talks to you through the door, tell him to report downstairs at the main desk.’