The Old Man of the Stars

by John Burke

  An intermittent pulse injected into the brain awoke certain activities in the cortex that had been unknown before. Hitherto unused areas of the brain awoke and set to work—secretly, almost surreptitiously, it seemed to the pioneer research workers. It was only when the first Newmen children were born that the full significance of this mental activity became apparent.

  An old dream of philosophers came true. Language, knowledge, experience...all were transmissible. Even personal memories could be handed on intact, in their full vividness. No longer need every child go through the laborious business of starting its education with the simple banalities, the essential but primitive groundwork—no longer was there the wearisome shaping of disjointed sounds into speech; no longer the groping for comprehension of words, concepts, diagrams, numerals. The child began where its parents left off. The child of a philosopher or scientist took up the threads of the father’s work and went on without flagging.

  Human progress would be incalculably speeded up. The portents were all there. Given a few generations, mankind would increase its stature a hundredfold—a thousandfold.

  The new process was speedily evolved. At other times, in other circumstances, its development might have taken considerably longer. But now there was the advice of the children to be acted on—the shrewd, mature, analytical children in the vanguard of the Newmen. They could tackle a problem of this sort with greater competence than their parents at a similar age could have tackled the building of a column of wooden blocks.

  Blanket radiation was the swiftly-devised solution. A layer of force was generated over every major city and town. Beneath it, basking in it as in the radiance of an invisible sun that gave off no heat, men and women lived their normal lives. They worked, played, married...and brought into the world babies who knew their innermost thoughts and combined their talents.

  The old order changed.

  Physical limitations were all that held these new beings in check. For the formative years—and now ‘formative’ referred only to the development of physique—they had to depend on their parents to carry out their wishes. Adult in mind at birth, and adult in speech within the first twelve months of life, the children gave the orders. The whole balance of society shifted. Parental responsibility, so much talked about at every period of human evolution, changed its character—instead of being the responsibility of grown people towards their immature, defenceless children, it became the responsibility of inferiors towards their betters. Laws were soon put into effect, framed by two-year-olds, whereby property was automatically transferred from parents to their first-born child, with a complicated but efficient scale of adjustments if other children were born later.

  In point of fact, very few parents had more than one child. The decline in the birth rate was even more noticeable in the second and third generations. The first-born child, particularly when this was a son, tended to make such intensive use of its parents and to overawe them so swiftly, that they were unable to contemplate the presence of another child in the household. Then again, the fast-developing minds of the Newmen soon grappled with world problems—with famine, disease, and overcrowding—and saw that the logical step was to reduce the population of Earth as soon as possible. Large families were anti-social. With world peace in sight, the old need for large families as cannon fodder was no longer a valid argument.

  But still the world was not entirely populated with Newmen. There were still others.

  Outside the cities there were still, in places, children who were no more than children. And there were reactionaries who went to join the exiles.

  * * * *

  Myrna said: “That settles it.”

  “I think it does,” agreed Henning.

  They were being carried away from the Marsh home in a helicar, drifting smoothly over the gleaming lights of the widespread city. It was a tranquil night; a radiant, glorious night—for those with eyes to see.

  “I couldn’t face it,” said Myrna. “I couldn’t bear to see contempt in the eyes of any child of mine. I want to be a mother, not a slave.”

  “They’ll say we’re selfish,” said Henning. “That’s what they say about anyone who break away from the pattern. They’ll say we can’t sink our selfish pride and realize that it is all for the good of the race.”

  “Let them say. But they won’t stop us.”

  “There’s no law to prevent our leaving the community. It’s just that we’re...well....”

  “Social outcasts?” she smiled.

  “Sort of.”

  They dipped gently towards their roof. The glowing city rose up about them. A million sparkling eyes swam over and around them.

  Myrna said: “I can’t say I’m very worried.”

  “If you’re sure—”

  “I’m sure. Quite sure. You know we wouldn’t be happy here.”

  They went down to their flat. The door opened before Henning’s fingers, a gentle light came on automatically. He put his hand on Myrna’s arm. They looked towards the nursery door, which she had left open. The bareness of the room seemed to draw them towards it—the suction of a vacuum.

  Myrna stared in once more, and shivered.

  “Not here,” she said. “Oh, not here.”

  “We’ll join one of the rural communities,” said Henning. “We’ll go at once. I’ll hand in my notice, and we’ll square up and go.”

  “And when we’re there, we can start a family.”

  “That’s it. Once we’re out from under this cursed radiation blanket, we can start. We can live on the old pattern. We can live in the older traditions, as men and women were meant to live.”

  They kissed. It was as though they had taken a vow, and felt purified.

  Myrna said: “It’ll be like escaping from a plague spot into clean air.”

  Which showed how little they knew. Henning was a scientist of sorts, but specialisation had numbed some of his faculties. Certain concepts just did not cross his mind. He did not trouble to ask himself certain questions, let alone to seek the answers, which could so readily have been given to him by any competent authority. It did not occur to him, even for a moment, that they might already be too late.

  They escaped. They ducked out from under the radiation blanket and went to live with the Southerden Community.

  And they were happy, and Myrna conceived and produced a son.

  That is how I come to know so much of the workings of their minds. For I am their son, whom they called Peregrine and christened in the old harbour church in the old tradition...and I entered this world with the inheritance of my parents’ knowledge and memories.

  At first they did not realize. Physically, I was helpless, and to them I was merely a baby—tiny, wet, hungry, demanding.

  And adorable.

  Later, perhaps, they would realize the irony of it. But I doubted it. I doubted whether they could ever appreciate my feelings as I lay there. Of course they were both primitive Newmen themselves, but their memories of infancy were oddly blurred. I tried, lying there in my cradle, to sort out the memories of Henning and Myrna on this topic; but I found that there was some psychological block that would not allow them to think back that far. They denied the concept of the Newmen with both consciousness and subconsciousness.

  For a few months, then, I was like any other baby.

  However far I might reach with my thoughts, however impatient I might be to speak and move, I could not control the appropriate mechanisms yet. When I was hungry, I had to cry like any other infant—it was the only way of attracting attention.

  It was humiliating. But I could tell that it would not last for long.

  Yes, I could tell. Lying in my pram outside the cottage, I would quietly practise words. It was only a matter of application. Once I had mastered the movements of mouth and lips, even the inadequacy of the childish voice was no real deterrent.

  There was one man who suspected, right from the start.

  This was old Clayton, the self-appointed senior member of
the Community.

  I remember him leaning over the pram one morning and staring down at me with his disconcerting, pale grey eyes.

  There was something ruthless about him—something crude and domineering. I was frightened. There was nothing I could do to defend myself if....

  Then Myrna was there, saying, “Isn’t he coming on well?”

  Clayton nodded slowly and sceptically.

  “Looks very intelligent,” he said in his rasping, unmodulated voice. “Too intelligent, if you ask me. Too intelligent by half.”

  Myrna laughed. Clayton went on staring at me for a moment, then turned away.

  He came again. He seemed to make a point of coming to peer at me. I was sure he was waiting for me to give myself away. And I was afraid I might do so. It would be so easy; and once done, so irrevocable.

  Myrna said to Henning: “That Clayton man is getting a bit queer in the head. I don’t like the way he leans over Peregrine.”

  “He can’t do any harm.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Myrna.

  Neither was I. Clearly the time was approaching when I would have to declare myself, and Myrna and Henning, at any rate, would have to know what I was. A life of deceit was utterly impossible. To remain pent up in a child’s body without being allowed the full play of the mind would be intolerable. Already I was fretting, wanting to shake off the bonds and put ideas into practice—ideas that would startle my parents and the rest of the Community, but which could not be left lying dormant.

  * * * *

  One sunny afternoon I was put out in the pram as usual. Myrna was uprooting one or two weeds near the gate, and in the distance I could, by twisting my head and thrusting up slightly over the edge of the pram, see old Clayton on the comer of the village street. Beyond him, the masts of two of our fishing boats jutted up from under the harbour wall. He was gossiping as usual. Soon he would turn and come this way, and have a look at me. And this time he might see, and act—crudely and impulsively, as I was sure he would act in all the circumstances.

  I said: “Myrna, don’t go in without me.”

  She straightened up and looked round, startled.

  “Who’s that?”

  I said: “Take me indoors, Myrna.”

  Colour fled from her face. She gave a shaky little laugh and shook her head feebly. “Oh, no,” she said. “No. Oh, please, no.”

  “Quickly,” I said. “Before Clayton comes.”

  She pulled the pram towards the house, and carried me indoors. She was trembling so much that I was afraid she would drop me.

  When we were inside, she put me down on the couch and stared at me as though I were a monster who had crept in from the sea—a hideous changeling.

  She said: “You spoke. Out there. You...you spoke.”

  She wanted me to be silent. I could see that she longed to be reassured, somehow. A moment’s aberration, that must be all it was. It couldn’t really have happened. I had not said a word. She must have imagined it.

  But there was no escape for her.

  “Yes,” I said. “I spoke.”

  Her knees gave way. She slumped into a chair.

  “What shall we do?” she murmured.

  “When Henning comes home,” I said, “we’ll discuss it.”

  It was an absurd relief to her. She was glad to postpone discussion. Knowing her as I did—knowing her through and through, as I knew her husband, my father—in every fibre of my being, I sensed her fatal cowardice. It was odd that she could be so forceful in some ways and so weak in others. Stubbornly, she had hated the world of the Newmen—bravely, she had faced the discomforts of exile in the Southerden Community; and yet now she wanted only to dodge the issue—to shut her ears and refuse to listen.

  Of course, it must have been a shock. To have turned her back on the Newmen, to have hated so violently the idea of a child who would be master of the home, and then to find that the revolt had come too late....

  Yes, I was sorry for her.

  And for Henning.

  * * * *

  His drawn face, wrinkled with salt and the sun, peered down into mine when he got home. He brought the smell of the sea into the room; and he brought the smell of fear.

  I said: “There’s nothing to worry about. I’m not an enemy. You must realize that. I belong here, not with those creatures in the cities.”

  “I don’t understand,” he muttered. “We left before we...before....”

  “The radiations must have done their work on your genes before you left the city,” I patiently explained; as though to a fumbling child. “It was an obvious possibility. It was one which you could have checked if you’d given it a moment’s thought.”

  I tried not to sound too scornful. They ought to have known; but they were obstinate and impetuous, and they had not wanted to face up to any disagreeable possibilities.

  Myrna took Henning by the arm. “We’ve got to keep this quiet.”

  “This is something you’ll never keep quiet,” he said.

  “If anyone else finds out, we’ll be turned away. The Community won’t allow this. We don’t know what they might do.”

  I said: “It can’t be hushed up indefinitely. For one thing, I’m not prepared to lie low and go through a wearisome pretence of being ‘educated’ in the slow way that things are done here.” I had a pretty good mental picture of what the primitive school here must be like. “But we can probably manage to conceal things for a couple of years while I work out my plans.”

  A shadow flitted across Myrna’s face. “Plans?”

  “There are things to be done,” I said.

  They both studied me with an apprehensiveness that would have been comic if it had not been so pitiful. They saw me as one of the threats from which they had fled. Already, it seemed, I was preparing to run their lives for them.

  Henning put it into words. He had difficulty. There had not been time for him to adjust—his rather sentimental affection for me as a baby could not be immediately cancelled out and replaced by this new mistrust. He fumbled, and at last managed to say:

  “You’re...one of the Newmen.”

  “No more than you two are,” I reasonably pointed out. “And I’m on your side.”

  It was a simple statement, but even so, they could not grasp it. It was no use trying to explain there and then. They were in no state to comprehend. I grew tired of them staring at me so blankly and hopelessly, and in a fit of irritation I told them to go away and let me rest.

  They went. Slowly they backed out of the room, still watching me in horrified fascination. They might almost have been expecting me to get up and pursue them.

  I wriggled my still unresponsive body into a more comfortable position, and then practised movements for twenty minutes. By the end of that time I could control my arms and fingers, but I knew that I was not ready for walking or anything too ambitious in the way of physical effort.

  It was time for a sleep. So I slept.

  Henning and Myrna did not return until I called them. The moment they reappeared, I could tell from Henning’s face that they had reached some solemn decision. I could guess what it was.

  Henning said: “We have decided that we must go away. Perhaps in one of the provincial cities we can fit in somewhere. Our duty to you and to the Community—”

  “Please don’t get mixed up in a lot of idealistic imponderables,” I said. “Sit down and listen to me.”

  My voice was stilted and high-pitched. The inadequacy of it annoyed me. But they did not resist its authority. They sat down.

  I went on: “You don’t seem to realize that, although I belong technically to the strain of the Newmen, I have inherited all your dislike of their civilization. In me, your rebelliousness is doubled. In fact, I’m prepared to go a lot farther than you are.”

  “In what way?” demanded Henning.

  “In opposing the child dictators of the city,” I said. “In opposing the whole concept of the Newmen, which is an affront to the dignity
of adult man.”

  “But how can you? It’s...well, it’s unnatural. We can’t expect you not to behave like the rest. The way you talk...the way you are. How can you make out you’re opposed to them?”

  “I’m aware of the apparent contradiction,” I assured him. “But it will all be resolved in good time. Time,” I added, “is what I need. Time for thought, and planning. A year or two—during which we must keep the secret from Clayton and the others.”

  I refused to explain further. There was too much in need of clarification in my own mind before I would confide in others; before I could give my orders.

  The Community would learn in due time. The Community would be grateful to me, eventually.

  * * * *

  For two years I was patient. For two years I went slowly and cautiously. I made a show of learning to walk in the clumsy, old-fashioned way that was common to all the children in Southerden. I evolved a ridiculous baby speech for public use—and rarely used the adult language I knew, even to my parents, for it only upset them, and they could rarely grasp what I was talking about.

  The weeks and months went by while I studied the situation and tried to shape the future to my own satisfaction.

  Through the information and visual images acquired from my mother and father, I knew nearly all there was to know about the Southerden Community. There had been few new developments in the area since I had been born. When I was in any doubt, or wanted to check on a point, I asked Henning briefly for details. Reluctantly, he would answer my questions. He no longer tried to treat me as a baby—his early affection had gone now, and his face was bleak with loss. It was only with the greatest difficulty that he could bring himself to play the game in public of being an adoring father.

  Myrna was better. She sometimes had a yearning expression in her eyes when she looked at me, though, did she hope that somehow it would all turn out all right?