by Gene Wolfe
“The biologists offered money to people who would bring their children in to be studied, and a great many people did—farm and ranch and factory people, some of them from neighboring towns.” Indra paused. Little Tib thought he smelled like cologne; but like oil and iron too. Just when he thought the story was finished, Indra began to speak again.
“Everything went smoothly until the boys and girls were six years old. Then at the center—the experiments were made at the medical center, in Houston—strange things started to happen. Dangerous things. Things that no one could explain.” As though he expected Little Tib to ask what these inexplicable things were, Indra waited; but Little Tib said nothing.
At last Indra continued. “People and animals—sometimes even monsters—were seen in the corridors and therapy rooms who had never entered the complex and were never observed to leave it. Experimental animals were freed—apparently without their cages having been opened. Furniture was rearranged, and on several different occasions large quantities of food that could not be accounted for was found in the common rooms.
“When it became apparent that these events were not isolated occurrences, but part of a recurring pattern, they were coded and fed to a computer—together with all the other events of the medical center schedule. It was immediately apparent that they coincided with the periodic examinations given the genetically improved children.”
“I’m not one of those,” Little Tib said.
“The children were examined carefully. Thousands of man-hours were spent in checking them for paranormal abilities; none were uncovered. It was decided that only half the group should be brought in each time. I’m sure you understand the principle behind that—if paranormal activity had occurred when one half was present, but not when the other half was, we would have isolated the disturbing individual to some extent. It didn’t work. The phenomena occurred when each half-group was present.”
“I understand.”
The door of the bus opened, letting in fresh night air. Nitty’s voice said, “You two ready? Going to have to come on pretty soon now.”
“We’re ready,” Indra told him. The door closed again, and Indra said: “Our agency felt certain that the fact that the phenomena took place whenever either half of the group was present indicated that several individuals were involved. Which meant the problem was more critical than we supposed. Then one of the biologists who had been involved originally—by that time we had taken charge of the project, you understand—pointed out in the course of a casual conversation with one of our people that the genetic improvements they had made could occur spontaneously. I want you to listen carefully now. This is important.”
“I’m listening,” Little Tib told him dutifully.
“A certain group of us were very concerned about this. We—are you familiar with the central data processing unit that provides identification and administers social benefits to the unemployed?”
“You look in it, and it’s supposed to tell who you are,” Little Tib said.
“Yes. It already included a system for the detection of fugitives. We added a new routine that we hoped would be sensitive to potential paranormalities. The biologists indicated that a paranormal individual might possess certain retinal peculiarities, since such people notoriously see phenomena, like Kirlian auras, that are invisible to normal sight. The central data bank was given the capability of detecting such abnormalities through its remote terminals.”
“It would look into his eyes and know what he was,” Little Tib said. And after a moment, “You should have done that with the boys and girls.”
“We did,” Indra told him. “No abnormalities were detected, and the phenomena persisted.” His voice grew deeper and more solemn than ever. “We reported this to the President. He was extremely concerned, feeling that under the present unsettled economic conditions, the appearance of such an individual might trigger domestic disorder. It was decided to terminate the experiment.”
“Just forget about it?” Little Tib asked.
“The experimental material would be sacrificed to prevent the continuance and possible further development of the phenomena.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The brains and spinal cords of the boys and girls involved would be turned over to the biologists for examination.”
“Oh, I know this story,” Little Tib said. “The three Wise Men come and warn Joseph and Mary, and they take baby Jesus to the Land of Egypt on a donkey.”
“No,” Indra told him, “that isn’t this story at all. The experiment was ended, and the phenomena ceased. But a few weeks later the alert built into the central data system triggered. A paranormal individual had been identified, almost five hundred kilometers from the scene of the experiment. Several agents were dispatched to detain him; but he could not be found. It was at this point that we realized we had made a serious mistake. We had utilized the method of detention and identification already used in criminal cases—destruction of the retina. That meant the subject could not be so identified again.”
“I see,” Little Tib said.
“This method had proved to be quite practical with felons—the subject could be identified by other means, and the resulting blindness prevented escape and effective resistance. Of course, the real reason for adopting it was that it could be employed without any substantial increase in the mechanical capabilities of the remote terminals—a brief overvoltage to the sodium vapor light normally used for retinal photography was all that was required.
“This time, however, the system seemed to have worked against us. By the time the agents arrived, the subject was gone. There had been no complaints, no shouting and stumbling. The people in charge of the terminal facility didn’t even know what had occurred. It was possible, however, to examine the records of those who had preceded and followed the person was wanted, however. Do you know what we found?”
Little Tib, who knew that they had found that it was he, said, “No.”
“We found that it was one of the children who had been part of the experiment.” Indra smiled. Little Tib could not see his smile, but he could feel it. “Isn’t that odd? One of the boys who had been part of the experiment.”
“I thought they were all dead.”
“So did we, until we understood what had happened. But you see, the ones who were sacrificed were those who had undergone genetic improvement before birth. The controls were not dead, and this was one of them.”
“The other children,” Little Tib said.
“Yes. The poor children, whose mothers had brought them in for the money. That was why dividing the group had not worked—the controls were brought in with both halves. It could not be true, of course.”
Little Tib said, “What?”
“It could not be true—we all agreed on that. It could not be one of the controls. It was too much of a coincidence. It had to be that one of the mothers—possibly one of the fathers, but more likely one of the mothers—saw it coming a long way off and exchanged infants to save her own. It must have happened years before.”
“Like Krishna’s mother,” Little Tib said, remembering Dr. Prithivi’s story.
“Yes. Gods aren’t born in cowsheds.”
“Are you going to kill this last boy too—when you find him?”
“I know that you are the last of the children.”
There was no hope of escaping a seeing person in the enclosed interior of the bus, but Little Tib bolted anyway. He had not taken three steps before Indra had him by the shoulders and forced him back into his seat.
“Are you going to kill me now?”
“No.”
Thunder banged outside. Little Tib jumped, thinking for an instant that Indra had fired a gun. “Not now,” Indra told him, “but soon.”
The door opened again, and Nitty said: “Come on out. It’s goin’ to rain, and Dr. Prithivi wants to get the big show on before it does.” With Indra close behind him, Little Tib let Nitty help him down the steps and out
the door of the bus. There were hundreds of people outside—he could hear the shuffling of their feet, and the sound of their voices. Some were talking to each other and some were singing; but they became quiet as he, with Nitty and Indra, passed through them. The air was heavy with the coming storm, and there were gusts of wind.
“Here,” Nitty said, “high step up. Watch out.”
They were rough wooden stairs, seven steps. He climbed the last one, and …
He could see.
For a moment (though it was only a moment) he thought that he was no longer blind. He was in a village of mud houses, and there were people all around him, brown-skinned people with large, soft, brown eyes—men with red and yellow and blue cloths wrapped about their heads, women with beautiful black hair and colored dresses. There was a cow-smell and a dust-smell and a cooking-smell all at once; and just beyond the village a single mountain perfect and pure as an ice cream cone; and beyond the mountain a marvelous sky full of palaces and chariots and painted elephants; and beyond the sky, more faces than he could count.
Then he knew that it was only imagination, only a dream; not his dream this time, but Dr. Prithivi’s dream. Perhaps Dr. Prithivi could dream the way he did, so strongly that the angels came to make the dreams true; perhaps it was only Dr. Prithivi’s dream working through him. He thought of what Indra had said—that his mother was not his real mother, and knew that that could not be so.
A brown-skinned, brown-eyed woman with a pretty, heart-shaped face said, “Pipe for us,” and he remembered that he still had the wooden flute. He raised it to his lips, not certain that he could play it, and wonderful music began. It was not his, but he fingered the flute pretending that it was his, and danced. The women danced with him, sometimes joining hands, sometimes ringing little bells.
It seemed to him that they had been dancing for only a moment when Indra came. He was bigger than Little Tib’s father, and his face was a carved, hook-nosed mask. In his right hand he had a cruel sword that curved and recurved like a snake, and in his left a glittering eye. When Little Tib saw the eye, he knew why it was that Indra had not killed him while they were alone in the bus. Someone far away was watching through that eye, and until he had seen him do the things he was able, sometimes, to do, make things appear and disappear, bring the angels, Indra could not use his sword. I just won’t do it, he thought; but he knew he could not always stop what happened—that the happenings sometimes carried him with them.
The thunder boomed then, and Dr. Prithivi’s voice said: “Play up to it! Up to the storm. That is ideal for what we are trying to do!”
Indra stood in front of Little Tib and said something about bringing so much rain that it would drown the village; and Dr. Prithivi’s voice told Little Tib to lift the mountain.
Little Tib looked and saw a real mountain, far off and perfect; he knew he could not lift it.
Then the rain came, and the lights went out, and they were standing on the stage in the dark, with icy water beating against their faces. The lightning flashed and Little Tib saw hundreds of people running for their cars; among them were a man with a monkey’s head, and another with an elephant’s, and a man with nine faces.
And then he was blind again, and there was nothing left but the rough feel of wood underfoot, and the beating of the rain, and the knowledge that Indra was still before him, holding his sword and the eye.
And then a man made all of metal (so that the rain drummed on him) stood there too. He held an ax, and wore a pointed hat; and by the light that shown from his polished surface, Little Tib could see Indra too, and the eye.
“Who are you?” Indra said. He was talking to the Metal Man.
“Who are you?” the Metal Man answered. “I can’t see your face behind that wooden mask—but wood has never stood for long against me.” He struck Indra’s mask with his ax; a big chip flew from it, and the string that held it in place broke, and it went clattering down.
Little Tib saw his father’s face, with the rain running from it. “Who are you?” his father said to the Metal Man again.
“Don’t you know me, Georgie?” the Metal Man said. “Why we used to be old friends, once. I have—if I may say so—a very sympathetic heart. and when—”
“Daddy!” Little Tib yelled.
His father looked at him and said, “Hello, Little Tib.”
“Daddy, if I had known you were Indra I wouldn’t have been scared at all. That mask made your voice sound different.”
“You don’t have to be afraid any longer, son,” his father said. He took two steps toward Little Tib, and then, almost too quickly to see, his sword blade came up and flashed down.
The Metal Man’s ax was even quicker. It came up and stayed up; Indra’s sword struck it with a crash.
“That won’t help him,” Little Tib’s father said. “They’ve seen him, and they’ve seen you. I wanted to get it over with.”
“They haven’t seen me,” the Metal Man said. “It’s darker here than you think.”
At once it was dark. The rain stopped—or if it continued, Little Tib was not conscious of it. He did not know why he knew, but he knew where he was: he was standing, still standing, in front of the computer, with the devils not yet driven out.
Then the rain was back and his father was there again, but the Metal Man was gone, and the dark came back with a rush until he was blind again. “Are you still going to kill me. Father?” he asked.
There was no reply, and he repeated his question.
“Not now,” his father said.
“Later?”
“Come here.” He felt his father’s hand on his arm, the way it used to be. “Let’s sit down.” It drew him to the edge of the platform and helped him to seat himself with his legs dangling over.
“Are you all right?” Little Tib asked.
“Yes,” his father told him.
“Then why do you want to kill me?”
“I don’t want to.” Suddenly his father sounded angry. “I never said I wanted to. I have to do it, that’s all. Look at us, look at what we been. Moving from place to place, working construction, working the land, worshiping the Lord like it was a hundred years ago. You know what we are? We’re jackrabbits. You recall jackrabbits, Little Tib?”
“No.”
“That was before your day. Big old long-legg’d rabbits with long ears like a jackass’s. Back before you were born they decided they weren’t any good, and they all died. For about a year I’d find them on the place, dead, and then there wasn’t any more. They waited to join until it was too late, you see. Or maybe they couldn’t. That’s what’s going to happen to people like us. I mean our family. What do you suppose we’ve been?”
Little Tib, who did not understand the question, said nothing.
“When I was a boy and used to go to school I would hear about all these great men and kings and queens and Presidents, and I liked to think that maybe some were family. That isn’t so, and I know it now. If you could go back to Bible times, you’d find our people living in the woods like Indians.”
“I’d like that,” Little Tib said.
“Well, they cut down those woods so we couldn’t do that any more; and we began scratching a living out of the ground. We’ve been doing that ever since and paying taxes, do you understand me? That’s all we’ve ever done. And pretty soon now there won’t be any call at all for people to do that. We’ve got to join them before it’s too late—do you see?”
“No,” Little Tib said.
“You’re the one. You’re a prodigy and a healer, and so they want you dead. You’re our ticket. Everybody was born for something, and that was what you were born for, son. Just because of you, the family is going to get in before it’s too late.”
“But if I’m dead …” Little Tib tried to get his thoughts in order. “You and Mama don’t have any other children.”
“You don’t understand, do you?”
Little Tib’s father had put his arm around Little Tib, and now he
leaned down until their faces touched. But when they did, it seemed to Little Tib that his father’s face did not feel as it should. He reached up and felt it with both hands, and it came off in his hands, feeling like the plastic vegetables came in at the new place; perhaps this was Big Tib’s dream.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” his father said.
Little Tib reached up to find out who had been pretending to be his father. The new face was metal, hard and cold.
“I am the President’s man now. I didn’t want you to know that, because I thought that it might upset you. The President is handling the situation personally.”
“Is Mama still at home?” Little Tib asked. He meant the new place.
“No. She’s in a different division—gee-seven. But I still see her sometimes. I think she’s in Atlanta now.”
“Looking for me?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
Something inside Little Tib, just under the hard place in the middle of his chest where all the ribs came together, began to get tighter and tighter, like a balloon being blown up too far. He felt that when it burst, he would burst too. It made it impossible to take more than tiny breaths, and it pressed against the voice-thing in his neck so he could not speak. Inside himself he said forever that that was not his real mother, and this was not his real father; that his real mother and father were the mother and father he had had at the old place; he would keep them inside for always, his real mother and father. The rain beat against his face; his nose was full of mucus; he had to breathe through his mouth, but his mouth was filling with saliva, which ran down his chin and made him ashamed.
Then the tears came in a hot flood on his cold cheeks, and the metal face fell off Indra like an old pie pan from a shelf, and went rattling and clanging across the blacktop under the stage.
He reached up to his father’s face again, and it was his father’s face, but his father said: “Little Tib, can’t you understand? It’s the Federal Reserve Card. It’s the goddamned card. It’s having no money, and nothing to do, and spending your whole life like a goddamn whipped dog. I only got in because of you—saying I’d hunt for you. We had training and all that, Skinnerian conditioning and deep hypnosis, they saw to that—but in the end it’s the damn card.” And while he said that, Little Tib could hear Indra’s sword, scraping and scraping, ever so slowly, across the boards of the stage. He jumped down and ran, not knowing or caring whether he was going to run into something.