Sunburst

by Phyllis Gotlieb

  There was a pair of new white shoelaces on the bed. She smiled at them; she was grateful, but it was a pity Jason couldn’t have managed the shoes to go with them. She threaded in the new laces, pulled the heap of files onto her lap, and immersed herself in less personal problems.

  * * * *

  Q: Do you know what’s happening now?

  A: You got me hyp—hypma—

  Q: I’ve used drugs and hypnosis to inhibit your tp and pk. You may not understand my words, but you can still read my mind and you know I don’t mean you any harm.

  A: Yeah…I guess…

  Q: And it’s no use trying to fight. You’re much too sleepy. You’ve got quite a record with the civvies, haven’t you, John?

  A: Call me Jocko.

  Q: All right, Jocko. I was talking to your mother and father and—

  A: That ain’t my pop. He’s in the bughouse. That’s Moe.

  Q: Moe? Moe who?

  A: I dunno. Moe, shmoe. Who cares?

  * * * *

  A: Stephen Decatur…yeah, my people had me slated for the Navy—but I ended up in the Army instead—sure, they were upset… I’ve always had a funny feeling that I got into all this trouble because I went against them—don’t tell me that’s irrational, I know it already.

  Q: I don’t tell people they’re irrational—I just try to help them figure it out for themselves.

  A: Well, I figured it out for myself, but I’m no further ahead.

  Q: That hasn’t gone far enough as an insight. Maybe you could get some help out of a couple of years of analysis.

  A: Analysis! Lie around on a couch and tell some clot how I wet the bed when I was eight years old!

  Q: Did you? How old were you when you stopped?

  A: None of your goddam business!

  * * * *

  Q: There’s something I can’t figure out here, Jason. Your file says you were pulled into juvenile court when you were nine years old for malicious mischief—you and Charley Longhouse threw some rocks into Koerner-the-Florist’s window.

  A: Yeah, that old bat. The judge gave me probation—my father didn’t, though.

  Q: Then you apparently went straight, did well in school, and kept off the books altogether till the day before yesterday, when you broke into Chremsler’s Market Garden and started teeping cabbages and potatoes down Alicia St., giving Mayor Hough a black eye in the process. If it hadn’t been for that, nobody’d have known you were a psi. How come?

  A: Well, gee, I guess I just kinda went crazy, that’s all.

  Q: That so? Um, tell me, Jason…do you like having psi?

  A: Not much.

  Q: Why not? You can get what you want, read people’s minds—

  A: There’s not much to take around here, and I got my folks here, so I don’t want to leave…the insides of people’s minds isn’t something you want to live with every day, some people, anyway. Things get spoiled: I see a nice-lookin’ doll comin’ down the street all dressed up, and she’s thinkin’, Is the powder covering the pimple on my nose? Oh, you can laugh. I’m only fourteen, I got plenty of time—but I don’t see why I hafta get my ideas all squashed before I’m old enough to really enjoy ’em. It’s no ball having psi.

  Q: Maybe not—but I wouldn’t mind knowing what you’re thinking right now.

  A: Honest, Doc—nothin’ there but the ordinary junk.

  Q: I think I’d like to be able to judge that for myself!

  * * * *

  A: Help!

  Q: I’m trying to help you, son. Please be still. I’m not going to hurt you.

  A: I can’t… I want…let me…let me go!

  Q: Donatus—is that your name?

  A: They—they call—call me—Doydoy.

  Q: I don’t want to call you that. Tell me how this happened to you, Donatus.

  A: I—I d-on’t know! I want-want my mother, fa-father! Mother, help!

  Q: I’m afraid I just can’t do anything more with him, sir.

  * * * *

  Q: I care.

  A: Aah, don’t gimme that malarkey. Remember I know what’s goin’ on in your mind. Just the look of me makes you want to puke.

  Q: I never—

  A: You don’t have to say. You haven’t got it straight yet. Your mind’s a piece of cellophane to me. You don’t have to say. But it’s my body and I’m stuck with it. I can do anything I like but change my body, ’cause I can’t be sure it’d keep workin’ if I did. Roxy Howard tried it an’ killed herself an’ I’m not gonna be that kind of nut. But if you didn’t have me pegged down like this I could do anything I liked with you. I could change those brains you’re so uppity about into cheese or jelly or lead. Then you wouldn’t think I was so ugly because you wouldn’t be thinkin’.

  Q: You don’t have to be ugly inside, LaVonne.

  A: Anybody gonna worry what’s inside me? Twisted guts. Them others, they make me laugh. So their old lady spits on them or their old man kicks them around. I got cheated before I was even born! Queen of Sheba coulda been my mother, wouldna made no difference.

  Ain’t nobody in the world don’t owe me something for letting me be born. An’ I’m gonna collect. Every time, no matter what you think you can do with me. So don’t gimme any bull that you care.

  Q: I guess I’ve gotten all I want from you, LaVonne. But I’ll tell you…you haven’t gone deep enough into those layers of cellophane. I do care…and that’s just the damn fool thing about it.

  * * * *

  Shandy tidied the heap of closed files and closed her eyes against the face of X. It was an ugly face, a lonely face, radiating with the force of the psi to make its mark on Sorrel Park. Including herself, because she was here. She had told Jason she thought she could escape if she wanted to, but that was half-bravado, and even if she were free the problem would never die in her in the same way as she could get rid of Fitch and the bootlegging business. She was committed.

  The ceiling light flickered and she glanced at it. The naked bulb in its mesh housing reminded her of Colin Prothero in his cage, and she shivered, and then yawned. Her time-sense told her it was one-thirty a.m., give or take five minutes; she was going to be terribly cross in the morning. She stretched her arms and yawned again.

  And the light exploded.

  Without thinking, she flicked off the bed like a lizard and rolled under. She waited there motionless for a few seconds, and then became aware of a stinging scratch on one cheekbone. She rubbed at it, and a sliver of glass came away on her finger.

  She thought she heard noises outside, but nothing happened, so she crawled out from under and felt her way over to the window. She slid up the blind: except for a few misty stars there was no light outside.

  A voice said, “It’s okay. Don’t get scared.”

  “Jason! What happened?”

  “The lights went out.”

  “Is that right? I’m glad you told me. What are we going to do now?”

  “Hold hands.”

  “Why Jason, I thought you were going to wait till I grew up.”

  “Come on, take my hand and I’ll get you over to Grace’s room. She’s nervous and I want you to be with her while we scout around and see what’s up.”

  She found his hand. The palm was not only sweated, but vibrating with such rigors it seemed the whole force of his body was behind them. “Jason.”

  “Yeah.” There was a ragged edge to his voice that made her pause, but not for long.

  “I know you wouldn’t be scared…why are you shaking?”

  “I just caught a chill,” said Jason. “Come on—”

  * * * *

  Grace Halsey was huddled in her bed, and Shandy knelt beside her. “There’s plenty men posted here, so don’t get worried,” said Jason, and he was gone.

  “I am, just the same… Grace, do
you think they’ve gotten—” She saw in the dim light that Grace Halsey, too, was trembling. She caught her breath. “They have gotten out!”

  “Please, dear, don’t—”

  “But nothing can stop—why has he left us here?”

  Grace fought for control. “They—you see, they trusted me, they know me, and they hardly realize anything about you; no-one has to worry about us. Really, we’re the two people least likely to be hurt.”

  “Oh—I’m sorry, Grace.” She was ashamed. “I shouldn’t have let go like such a nut.”

  “It’s all right.” But the trembling increased.

  “Grace, you’re crying…” Shandy touched the quivering shoulder, terrified.

  Grace found a handkerchief and managed to control herself. “Shandy, I—I was a neurosurgeon before…the paralysis—and after that I thought I’d never be able…they asked me to come here and take care of those children… I—I trusted them. I hoped—oh,”—she blew her nose—“I’m so silly.” Shandy buttoned her lip. After a moment the voice came out of the dark again.

  “My dear,” Grace said sadly, “there’s only one thing to be said about it. It’s a mug’s game.”

  Sunburst: 7

  Shandy raised her head on an aching neck. She had gone to sleep crouched beside the bed. Her eyes were gritty. Grace was still asleep, fingers twitching, breath rattling in her throat. The light in the room was the amorphous gray ooze of early dawn.

  Shandy pulled herself up by holding on to the bed. Her body felt broken in every bone. She looked up at the window and saw that two panes were shattered. One had burst while she was sitting there with Grace in the dark and the other must have gone while she was asleep.

  When she put her head out through the hole in the window and craned her neck at the risk of slitting her throat she could see that huge doors had opened up in the ground by the walls of Headquarters, and men were driving tractors up ramps leading from underground storage vaults. They were dragging cannons painted in camouflage colors. After she had counted three of these she watched two tanks coming out and shook her head at what seemed to her the futility of the preparations. Then came several wheeled platforms stacked with antennas that looked like additional components for the Marczinek Field. Did Prothero intend to set up a mobile Field like a butterfly net, and shoo the Dumplings into it? She turned her head a little, and saw the mess.

  The Dumplings, who could make nothing with their hands, or out of their angry lives, were prime breakers. They had blasted Marczinek’s flowerbed down to the ground. A few blackened stems lay in writhing shapes, and the earth was littered with cinders and ashes eddying gently in the early winds of morning.

  Something crackled and tinkled above, and she pulled her head in quickly. Another window. The Dumplings knew what was going on, and weren’t afraid to show it.

  She went downstairs and along the hall, gingerly, though she was sure Prothero was very busy elsewhere. In Urquhart’s office she found Jason and Urquhart eating breakfast from a tray on the desk.

  “Have some coffee,” said Jason.

  “I thought the electric went.”

  “Generator’s going.”

  “Jason, Marsh’s flowers—”

  “Yeah. You oughta see what they can do to a human being.”

  “No thanks.” She sipped the coffee. It was vile, but hot, and the heat loosened her joints. “How did they get out?”

  “I dunno. We had a theory how they might get out but I can’t get close enough to them to find out if they did it that way.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Shandy, don’t. Don’t ask me, don’t make me think about it more than I have to.”

  She thought of the Dumplings homing on his mind, on the minds of everyone here, except herself. “Okay.” She turned to Urquhart, who was leaning over the desk and gnawing a thumbnail. “What are they hanging round for? They’ve been out over four hours.”

  “They were in eight years… I think they’re trying to decide what they can do to really impress us. Something bigger than blowing lights and breaking windows…are you afraid?”

  “I know they can’t read my mind, and I don’t think they can do much to me from a distance. If that’s not being scared, I’m not.”

  “I am,” said Urquhart. “It’s strange; I’ve listened to people with the most irrational and fantastically ugly terrors. I couldn’t believe I’d ever have to share in anything like that.”

  “Did you ever expect them to break out?”

  “I’d given up expecting them to be good little kids.”

  “But how much hope was there for them? On those scores you gave them under Kaplanski’s Standard Index—”

  “There was a space to be filled in with a dotted line. I filled it.”

  “But you gave Colin Prothero a sixty-eight point four percent prognosis! That’s just the sort of thing that’s been encouraging Prothero to push for opening up the Sore and tearing down the Dump—and it’s wrong!”

  Urquhart crossed his arms on the desk and looked at her.

  “Shandy—”

  “Don’t, Chris!” Jason said quickly.

  “It’s all right. Shandy, Prothero’s wife killed herself three weeks after the first Dump was set up.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes; that crosses the t on Prothero for you. I knew her only slightly…. She was a gentle person, but not a weak one—and she couldn’t bear it. If that sixty-eight point four percent kept Prothero from going mad, I’m not ashamed of it. It was a genuine test score for a boy of Colin’s age and intelligence. It just didn’t—couldn’t—take into account the fact that at the age of ten he was psychokinetic, telepathic, a teleport, and a pyrophore as well…” His voice lowered to a whisper. “Nobody knew it would last eight years.”

  “They’re supposed to calm down in the mid-thirties—”

  “What a hope!”

  “—and Curtis Quimper. He was a late starter, so his burnout would come even later. He’s twenty-six now, isn’t he?

  “At the rate he’s been burning himself out he ought to be practically ready to retire. But the break’s changed everything. Before, I might have had some hope for him if he’d been man enough to duck the fight with the Kingfish—and managed to stay alive.” He resumed work on the thumbnail.

  “Grace is going to wake up in a minute,” said Jason.

  “Okay, I’ll go back.” He came with her, and she was glad, because the silence and the fear were palpable now in the empty halls. She did not feel panic, but she knew there was nothing for her to do here. Her usefulness was to have ripened slowly, but the time was gone, and the future terrifying. But it was not a thing to talk about to Jason.

  Grace Halsey was not yet stirring, but her breathing had quickened.

  “Is it all right to ask you how they might have gotten away?”

  “Not much secrecy about that any more. As near as I can get it straight, it goes like this: while the radiations are circulating in the barrier, if one of the antennas wavers enough to get out of phase with the next one, even the slightest bit—well, that would leave a weak place in the Field, and they could all push through at once. It shouldn’t happen,” he shrugged, “but the Field’s still working perfectly, so maybe it did. But that bunch of lunks hasn’t got ten years of grade school among ’em, and they’d have to (a) know a lot about electrodynamics to figure it; (b) and be awfully sensitive to fluctuations in the Field; and (c) keep on the alert every minute,”—he rubbed his reddened eyes—“so I can’t see how they coulda done it.”

  “You’ve forgotten Doydoy.”

  “Nah…I wanted to forget him. But what makes you so sure? You didn’t know him at all.”

  “Another lonely kid? I think I know him. He’d have been reading everything he could get his hands on, and he couldn’t get out to play. Besides, he’s more than ju
st bright. I bet every time you went into the Dump he was probing you down to the oceanic sense, blocks or not.” Jason grunted.

  “Unless it was LaVonne. She’s smart enough, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, but she was never much of a reader.”

  “She had access to his mind. When they broke out eight years ago she was the one who shut Fox up. You have to destroy a part of the brain to do that.”

  “Broca’s area…she got that from Doydoy,” he admitted. “And so did I.”

  She bit her lip. “Damn. I guess I should have shut up.”

  “Listen, there’s no getting away from it…but I always liked to think there was some hope for Doydoy.”

  “Oh, Jason! If you’d been in his place—”

  “I admit it. I’ve never felt different. I’d have done the same.”

  “Do you get anything from the Pack at all?”

  “They’re a couple miles away—I don’t know where—and nearly out of range. They can shield for a short time, off and on. Even if they couldn’t, their group mind is kind of a mess, and it’s hard to pick out a decent train of thought. A logical one. They never have any decent ones.”

  “Doydoy?”

  “He can shield two-three hours—and I know what you’re gonna ask: I can do it too, for about five minutes. Ever try concentrating on a pinpoint for an hour straight? That’s what I go through each minute.”

  “Do you ever get any kind of signal at all from me?”

  He sighed. “When I close my eyes you disappear completely. All I need is a pair of earplugs.”

  “Hey—” But her retort was cut off. Grace Halsey began to toss on the bed. “Shandy. Shandy! Are you all right, dear?”