Strange Attractors (1985)

  say exactly so much and shut up. So we sat there, he withdrawn into

  his thoughts but holding my wrist and breathing heavily. You know

  how the surface of your mind continues to work although you are

  scared stiff? I was thinking how clever of me it was to work out why he

  breathed so heavily. Derek had told me that the children could control their autonomic systems to some extent, and so could move with terrific speed and power for a short time; then, of course, they had to

  phase themselves back to normal metabolic rate, and that was what

  Young Feller was doing.

  Then I thought that Derek wore uniform when he left the Project

  site, and a gun was part of it. He would hold the boy up and march

  him back home.

  Young Feller said, ‘Don’t depend on Derek,’ and my face must have

  been a study because his mask cracked like an imitation grin. ‘How

  else would you think? We are both waiting for him.’

  That meant that Derek had talked about us to this monster. Men!

  Then he just ignored me. Nothing Derek had told me had given a

  true idea of the nature of the children; I had thought of them as extensions of my own idea of cleverness, as cunning brats, lightning calculators, quick off the mark with quirky ideas. Now I saw and heard —

  a man? a person? a — what? Someone who wasn’t worth the trouble

  of making explanation to, a thing dealt with and shelved, worse than

  being ignored. Someone ignoring you at least knows that you exist;

  this was like being a piece taken off the board and forgotten.

  In spite of being frightened — or perhaps because of it — I started

  to spit words at him. ‘You can’t hide. You’ll be caught. You burned

  people!’

  He hadn’t forgotten, of course, only withdrawn. With a bit of his

  attention he squeezed my wrist and hurt me and said, ‘Noise! Your

  fault if I kill you!’

  I was too confused with fear and rage to be sensible. I hissed at him,

  ‘I’m a person, not a thing!’

  He smiled, a smile of real amusement at the creature’s antics. ‘Then

  remember that cowardice is a survival trait.’ And he hit me across the

  mouth, hard enough to cut my lip on a tooth, and removed the bit of

  his mind again. God knows what thinking went on in his nice-looking

  teenager head, but it penetrated at last that I could die and that I

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  didn’t want to.

  Soon I heard Derek coming, whistling, feet scuffling on the steep

  little track leading down to the creek. I saw him like a shadow on the

  drapes of the outer trees. Then Young Feller hurt my wrist so badly

  that I screamed and Derek came running. He was a martial arts

  expert and very fast but he didn’t stand a chance against the boy’s

  boosted speed. Young Feller crossed the space like something from a

  catapult, at full speed in the instant of motion. He kicked Derek in the

  knee and struck his neck as he fell forward, and didn’t move.

  I kept on screaming but it no longer mattered; there was no one to

  hear.

  The boy stripped Derek naked and then himself and put on Derek’s

  uniform. He was not quite big enough to fill the uniform and the boots

  were too large but he managed well enough. He weighed Derek’s gun

  in his hand, examined the mechanism, thought for a fraction of a

  second and threw it down. He didn’t need a gun.

  He stood for a moment looking down at my naked lover and then

  did something quite chilling. He bent to ruffle Derek’s hair, and said,

  ‘There, Derry boy; you’ll be all right tomorrow.’

  He looked at me with what I can only call a tolerant expression and

  paid what he thought were compliments. ‘A beautiful specimen, isn’t

  he? A fine strain.’ That was true; Derek, naked, was beautiful. ‘I’d like

  to keep him but it could be difficult.’ He seemed almost regretful.

  ‘There’s comfort of a kind in an unquestioning love that asks no more

  than food and an occasional game.’

  Then he went, and all that remained of him was the pile of clothing

  with the too-obvious Project brand. That same night he robbed three

  men and exchanged the uniform for the clothes of one of them. It was

  on the newscasts. After that he vanished.

  I was left with Derek and the sour taste of dead love. Young Feller

  had filled my head with the picture of my beautiful man licking the

  hand that tossed him bits of food, resting his muzzle on the master’s

  knee, trotting over when called. It wasn’t right, of course, but I knew

  that the vision was with me for ever.

  I waited for him to come round and then I did something unforgivable. I suppose it was unhappiness and the sense of loss, but I told him just what Young Feller had done and said.

  Derek said nothing at all to that. He didn’t seem to mind. How could

  the boy have done it to him? I went on to tell him this was the finish

  between us, that there could be no thought of marriage. He said he

  had never thought of it because he was already married.

  On the nursery floor

  179

  The end of it, in that place and after what had happened there, was

  a screaming quarrel between two people sick of each other.

  Ho hum. But had she heard of changes in the Project operation, how cruelty

  entered into the scheme and the bright kids had for once misjudged the tameness of the animals?

  I wouldn’t know about that; I moved away to the city. But one of the

  psychiatric nurses lives near here and I’m sure —

  Sure he’d talk? Next move offered while ‘they’ watch and consider what I’m

  about.

  5 An old psychiatric nurse

  Can you people leave nothing alone? The story is thirty years over,

  past, finished. W hat’s dead news to you?

  A good question, the one 'they' would like to know the answer to.

  H um an interest? A bucket of slops to tip down your readers’

  throats! Are you really tracking down eye-witnesses of C Group’s

  existence? Two dozen, so far? And all you have that isn’t on public

  record is a shabby tale about a gardener! I remember him. A lump of

  muscle with a roving eye and a sentimental love of animals. Secret

  service or some such stupidity.

  Another long-liver at the taxpayer’s expense. Awarded to keep his mouth

  shut? Wil it open when I quote my tape to him? They were willing enough when

  finally given permission to make an all out assault on the super-human minds.

  They went at them with drugs and sensory probes.'

  He told you that? He could be relegated for less! Official Secrets

  Act. You too, for quoting it. Well, I don’t have to worry; all the Project

  staff were cleared of unreasonable, gross and improper use of investigative tools. Those were the words of the charge. Print anything different and you’ll face official denial, with the transcripts to prove

  you wrong. Contempt of judicial procedure! You’ll lose your credibility, your job and your work permit. Challenge the system and feel it roll over you!

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  George Turner

  The stage has lost a star. Now comes the inside dirt while‘they’ watch to see

  what I do next.

  O f course they did those things; they used everything they knew.

  Hypno
sis was useless on those bastards and truth drugs not much better; too responsive to subconscious pressures from the interrogator.

  Drugs produce altered states, not honest ones. Sensory deprivation

  chambers did better. They produced auto-hypnotic states where

  stimuli evoked free association. Revealing? No; puzzling. They didn’t

  think, in our sense of the word. We guessed that they used the subconscious direcdy, like a map of mental territory, to eliminate useless trails of reasoning at a glance. We guessed that because it made a little

  sense, but we never knew.

  Then there were direct probes, electrodes in the brain, with psychotape recordings of response-type and intensity. The nitwitted public called them mind-reading machines, but they read never a useful

  word from C Group. They taught us about the operation of the brain

  when we used them on ordinary subjects — criminals and such — but

  all they taught about C Group was that their brains worked differently

  from ours.

  The kids resisted. Even when the fools tried physical torture they

  resisted. Not physically but with some form of nervous control, just

  as they controlled their autonomic systems. The results were — were

  horrible.

  Leave me alone, you stupid stuffer of the public mind! You can’t use

  a word of this. Your own editor will kill it stone dead.

  No, no, no! We didn’t kill them. They fought to live. Young Feller

  was their scout into the universe and they needed his report. They

  were isolated in an antiseptic think tank and they needed knowledge.

  They had to live until their scout returned.

  They needed life so badly that they accepted everything done to

  them. They neither hated nor despised us; they assumed that what we

  did was what we were, and accepted it. Imagine yourself yarded by

  howling, biting mongrels that stopped short of killing because their

  purpose required you alive.

  I couldn’t stand it. I resigned. I wasn’t the only one. Go away, you

  louse in the public hair. When I remember the Project I become afraid

  of God.

  Well, this one was at least glad of the opportunity to spill his guts. Catharsis.

  But no clue to the next informant. Perhaps a difficult search coming up and

  ‘they’ want to see how I go about it. At this point I would like to confer with Dad,

  On the nursery floor

  181

  but it wouldn't be safe - for either of us.

  6

  The tutor with an access card

  How on earth did you track me down? Police files? I wasn’t actually

  involved. I mean I didn’t know if he was Young Feller or Conrad or

  whatever. It just seemed peculiar and I reported it; it didn’t even get

  into the papers.

  Here was I, just out of university then — honours, mind you, and

  post-graduate courses but no hope of a job — scraping a crust by

  coaching kids whose purblind parents thought education would help

  them in a world run on opportunism and cunning.

  And this boy came in.

  He seemed about fifteen or sixteen — you know, gangly and not

  quite shaped yet, but pretty big. He had these extraordinary eyes. Not

  hypnotic or nonsense like that, but patient. He was only a kid but I felt

  as though I was the teenager and he was putting up with me because

  he knew I was doing my best. Frankly, I hated him, but if he had

  money, I needed it. To hell with pride.

  Anyway, he loomed up to my desk and said, ‘I want to learn biotopology.’Just like that! As if I could teach it!

  So I asked him how much biology he had done, and he said the

  most curious thing: that there were no biology books in his school --

  And that, if only you knew it, was how I found you. From the start I knew

  about the absence of bio texts; that was one advantage of having a knowing

  Dad. So it was patent that this would be the knowledge sought. The rest was

  legwork - and an old library record of bizarre quantities of bio texts and tapes

  credited to one Access Card in a very short period. QED!

  — and when I asked what sort of school that was, he put on his

  patient look and asked again could I teach him. O f course I couldn’t;

  I didn’t have the laboratory access to teach even simple biology. As for

  Bio-top! I knew it. dealt with inter-gene structuring but it was for

  computer experts, not struggling tutors.

  He heard me out and retired behind his eyes for a bout of thinking,

  as if I wasn’t there. I had to speak, just for the comfort of a familiar

  sound, so I asked him how old he was.

  Without even coming back from wherever, he said, as though a part

  of his mind tossed it off without interfering with other activity, ‘Somewhere between twenty and three hundred.’

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  George Turner

  If you think that didn’t shut me up!

  After a while he said, ‘No laboratory work; diagrams and photographs will do. A syllabus of reading. From elementary to the most advanced theoretical.’

  It was impossible; I mean, nobody could learn an entire discipline

  that way. But I was charging for my time so I explained that he would

  need hours each day of expensive terminal time, hard-copy library

  access, magazine subscriptions and a lot of data-crosslink search programs in the later stages. It would cost a fortune.

  ‘I can get what money is needed. Write it all down.’

  And so help me, I did. ‘B u t’ I told him, ‘you will need a Library

  Access Card.’

  ‘Get me one.’

  ‘It must be recommended by your sponsoring school.’

  He thought for perhaps a second — retired and returned in a blink.

  ‘Have you such a card?’

  ‘O f course.’

  ‘Sell it to me.’

  ‘Oh, no! My living depends on up-to-date access.’

  He counted out a thousand dollars and laid them on my desk.

  ‘Sufficient?’

  ‘No. You can’t buy my means of livelihood.’

  He glanced at the list of requirements, put it in his pocket, stood up,

  said, ‘You may keep the money,’ and left.

  It took me about two flabbergasted hours to connect him with the

  news story about a runaway from Project IQ. Nine day wonder, you

  know; soon forgotten. So I called the police and they came round and

  gave me absolute quiz-show hell for hours. Then they said, ‘Thank you

  so much and keep your bloody mouth shut so he won’t know we’re on

  his track,’ and that was all.

  They never did catch him, but I guess that a real genius wouldn’t

  have much trouble keeping a jum p ahead of them.

  I didn’t mention the thousand dollars. Why should I? But I wonder

  where he got it.

  From the news reports, he got it by being the fastest mugger that ever

  knocked off thirty/forty marks in one night. They never saw him and he never

  hurt them. He was kind to animals that didn’t bite.

  That isn’t all. Two days later I was robbed in the street. Not

  mugged, just touched in passing. All that was taken was my Library

  On the nursery floor

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  Access Card.

  Later that day I found it lying on my desk. It had been copied, I was

  sure. The same night my Credit Survey showed a huge Library Access

  account and I nearly
had a fit at what he was doing to me. In the

  morning, while I was dithering about going to the police again, a

  packet of money was delivered by Courier Service, exactly twice the

  amount of the Access bill. So I forgot the police. Wouldn’t you have?

  This went on for two months — a tremendous account each night

  and double payment in the morning. Then it stopped.

  He must have found the job too big and given it away. I never saw

  him or heard of him again.

  He iearned all that was available, from biology to bio-topology in two

  months. How do you measure an IQ like that?

  Now —

  where did he live while he used another man’s library facilities and

  mugged the local fauna to pay the bills with such curious honesty? Or is

  honesty not 'curious’ to a genuine intelligence? The publicly disseminated picture was of a hunted creature, friendless and alone, cowering in back rooms, furtively haunting the public terminals in the dead hours of night.

  Nonsense. He was not 'friendless and alone’. It has always been obvious to

  me where he went, though Dad said it was out of the question. Young Feller

  had the acquaintances he was born with, whether they could stand each other

  or not.

  7 The genius who harboured a super-genius

  Call me Mayflower; it’s my professional name and everybody uses it.

  Better than Jesus Bloody Christ perhaps. Oh, you poor man, is that

  what they did to you? Pushed you from one to the next, denying all

  knowledge, making silly suggestions. T hat’s us B Group all over, fine

  perceptions and a sophomoric sense of humour. A Group are worse;

  we gave up talking to them when we could no longer understand their

  language. Who wants trial solutions of Fermat’s Last Theorem at

  breakfast? The As think we artists use language to smudge reality and

  our art to subvert it; to them our work is meaningless because we don’t

  know precisely what we are doing. No artist ever did, but how explain

  that to a mathematician?

  Lady, how you gush! If I couldn't see your cool eyes or didn’t know that your

  mind nudges the top levels of measurable IQ, I might accept you at face value.

  Instead, I accept that you are deciding what and how much to say.