CHILDREN OF THE THUNDER

by John Brunner

  “Ellen?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? No, I don’t suppose I did. We haven’t talked much recently… Well, she’s turning into an absolute whiz. Got herself email friends all over the place! I had to put my foot down, of course, when I found out she was interrogating boards as far away as Australia. Even though—would you believe?—instead of going to the minder her school recommended after classes, she’s found herself a part-time job cleaning house for an old lady! This, in order to be able to pay her own way on my rig!”

  “I told you she was a bright one, didn’t I?” Claudia muttered.

  “Oh, sure! No doubt of it! So I’ve told her: provided she confines herself to Europe and doesn’t mind moving over when I have work to do, she can play around as much as she likes.”

  “You’re not letting her become—well, agoraphobic?”

  “On the contrary.” Peter shook his head vigorously. “Her teachers say that because she’s learning so much so quickly it’s doing wonders for her confidence. Being at a new school where there are relatively few kids of—ah—mixed extraction, she was having trouble for a week or two. In fact, that’s what turned her off going to the minder. Now, it seems, the other kids are appealing to her for help and information. You’re right: she is bright.”

  “And nice with it,” Claudia confirmed. “Give her my regards.”

  The lift arrived. Neither of them spoke again until they reached the foyer. Then Claudia said musingly, “I never expected to turn into an investigative journalist. I don’t expect I’ll be much good at it… May I call you up for advice?”

  “Any time, lady. Any time. But it may be Ellen who answers.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be polite…” They reached the entrance; the pavement outside was littered with hysterical anti-pet leaflets, bearing photographs of rabies victims. At hazard she said, “Aren’t you glad you don’t own a dog?”

  “As a matter of fact I’ve been thinking about getting one. It’d be company for Ellen when I’m out. But given what’s going on…”

  “It’ll blow over. We have rabies in the States. We live with it.”

  “I know, I know. Given the frenzy we’re working ourselves into, though, I could imagine the poor kid finding it crucified on the front door when she got home from school. She’s had enough to put up with. I don’t want to add that as well.”

  “What do you predict concerning pigs?” she countered with Jewish causticity, and without waiting for an answer swung on her heel and headed for the nearest bus stop.

  Good question. The Animal Liberation Front…

  Peter snapped his fingers. That was the fresh angle he needed to follow up the pigs-with-AIDS story. During the next two days he didn’t spare a thought to Claudia’s.

  Unfortunately, though, the second pig item didn’t sell.

  Nor did the others he had had high hopes for.

  Growing more and more depressed, he began to wonder about being blacklisted. Of course there was no proof, but when so many hot leads died…

  Perhaps it was as well he couldn’t afford hard liquor any more.

  Reaching for an admission form, not looking up, the hospital’s night receptionist said in a weary tone, “Cash or charity?”

  So low had been reduced the once-noble concept of Britain’s National Health Service.

  From this lobby three passageways extended like the branches of a T. The one on the right was noticeably cleaner than that on the left, and far less shabby, with carpet on the floor instead of vinyl tarnished by the passage of uncountable feet. The one between was scarcely even lighted; there were fluorescent tubes, but half were dark.

  Then, roused by the sound of sobbing, the receptionist lifted her head and realized that Crystal stood between two women constables, hands cuffed behind her back.

  “Oh,” she said, and jerked a thumb to indicate: behind me. “Criminal. That way.”

  Twilit, the third corridor was full of screams and moans.

  When she wasn’t overcome by tears, Crystal was purely and simply furious with herself: I should have had more sense, I should have had more sense…!

  Yet how could she have foreseen that a punter would accuse her of infecting him with not AIDS but syphilis? And, although neither had learned the other’s name (she used invented names with her clients and changed them from day to day) would enable the police to trace her because he was a computer-graphics artist and arrived at the station equipped with a near-flawless likeness of her.

  And—this was where sobs racked her anew—that the Bill would come searching for her while she was briefly deprived of the Shadow’s “power to cloud men’s minds”.

  She’d been amused by that term; she owed it to a client who had sought her out six or eight times, wanting as much to talk about the fads and fancies of his teenage years as to get it on with her. He’d shown her prizes from his valuable collection of old comics, and in one…

  But that was then and she was here and now, sullenly ignoring questions, hearing them answered for her by the butch policewomen, gazing with hate-filled eyes at her surroundings: cracked tiles on floor and walls, a row of dirty chairs, a wired-glass door whose pane was held together with crossed strips of tape… As well as screams, this area was full of stinks.

  “… and he’s prepared to swear she was his only contact in over three months, so it must have been her who infected him.”

  “Right”—in a bored tone. “I’ll take a blood sample straight away. Our automatic Wassermann machine is working for once. You’ll have the evidence before she goes before the magistrate.”

  “Not magistrate. Juvenile.”

  “Christ. Isn’t it hard to tell these days? When I was young, kids looked like kids… Does she have a smart lawyer on tap to turn her loose?”

  The policewomen exchanged first glances, then grins. The older of them said, “We won’t go into that—hmm?”

  “Suits me. What time is she due in court, anyway?”

  One of the policewomen punched keys on a belt-slung computer and fed the result to her radio. After scant seconds the reply came back in an unconvincing synthetic voice. A slot had been assigned her on the juvenile court schedule at about ten next morning.

  “Pick her up around nine, then.” Crystal hadn’t even looked at who was speaking; she only knew the tone was harsh and male, a jailer’s. “We’ll have the proof for you.”

  Making up your mind a little prematurely, aren’t you?

  But she had more sense than to speak aloud. She had been beaten up on the way here, and she ached already; she had no wish to make herself feel worse.

  And after that there was a cell. Blank walls. No food or drink, nor even anything to lie down on or wrap around herself: just a china toilet in the corner, with no seat. It was against AIDS regulations—but since when did this puky government obey the laws it passed? And they were riddled with holes, anyhow. Under age, she should have had a responsible adult with her throughout this agony, but when she tried to insist…

  She managed sleep, somehow; drank a mug of sour tea by way of breakfast; appeared in court an hour and a half later than predicted by the wonderful computers at New Scotland Yard; was fined ten thousand pounds which she couldn’t pay, with the alternative of jail, for “biological assault” upon the punter (that was a relic of the panicky days when AIDS victims sometimes deliberately passed it on and left lipstick messages to say so on the bathroom mirror); and by three P.M. was in the infirmary of a young offenders’ prison for compulsory treatment of a notifiable disease.

  Detachedly she began to wonder what weapons she could lay her hands on—broken glass, for instance, or discarded hypodermics. Then she calmed, remembering that within a few more days she would be able to talk her way out of here without violence.

  The waiting wasn’t going to be easy. But she could stand it. Meantime: low profile.

  Low.

  Even when a bocky chaplain with a high whinnying voice came round to declare that she was an instrument of S
atan and deserved her punishment.

  “Knight!”

  She started and swung round.

  “Go to the chaplain’s office! You’ve got visitors!”

  Her heart sank. Oh, no! Just as I’m feeling the power again! Tomorrow I’ll be able to use it properly! I’ll bet he’s mustered missionaries to save my soul!

  But she complied meekly enough. Even during her period she seemed to retain enough of her talent to elude the worst that others had in view for her, though she could not impose direct commands.

  What she encountered, however, was nothing like what she’d expected. The chaplain, certainly, was in the room, thin and bent-shouldered at his desk. But Crystal spared him scarcely a glance. Also present were two adult strangers… and a boy about her age.

  He had the Power.

  She had never imagined it could be so strong.

  Nor, indeed, that anybody else possessed it.

  For the space of five accelerated heartbeats she was both terrified and disappointed: the former, because she felt as though something private to herself had been put on public sale like auction goods, to be pried at by greedy questing hands; the latter, because if this meeting had to happen she would have wished it to occur when she was at her peak, so there might be a just and equal contest.

  And then she realized it had always been impossible.

  No, more than impossible. Unnecessary.

  For he was on her side…

  She gasped and tilted forward, fainting.

  Though they revived her swiftly, only fragments of what transpired thereafter endured in memory. She recalled words in the chaplain’s horrible voice, and would rather not have thought about the Houyhnhnms… yet, there having been so many Yahoos in her life, she couldn’t help it. Consequently: fragments.

  “—seems that Mr. Shay has set up a refuge for you pitiable creatures—sad that it’s not a religious foundation—nonetheless in present circumstances what with overcrowding in all jails—paid the fine and sworn to have you treated—sign this and we can go before the governor…”

  (Later she found herself unable to distinguish between what the chaplain had said, what David Shay had said, what if anything the governor had said, and what her own drug-distorted mind had supplied to fill the gaps. To cure her syphilis, which was resistant, strangers had stabbed her over and over, some relishing the pain they were inflicting with the needles. And she had only been here two days. So how—? So why—?)

  She was still babbling those questions when she found herself in the back seat of a Rolls Royce, a bag containing her meager possessions on her lap. David, beside her, told his parents in the front to open the windows, which they did although it was cool and rain was threatening. He said it was to ensure that Crystal didn’t pass out again. His tone sounded sympathetic, and she felt reassured.

  But when she tried to hug him out of gratitude he thrust her away with a scowl.

  “You,” he stated crudely, “are a twat.”

  And with fastidious grip he lifted clear her clutching hands.

  “What…? What?” Crystal was on the verge of tears again.

  “A twat! A damnfool version of a female person! I hoped for better when I started hunting—Never mind! But given the talent that I know you share with me, should you have wasted it on prostitution?”

  It was as though all air was emptied from her lungs—as though she were aboard a spaceship punctured by a meteor. She tried to fall, moaning, across David’s lap; he shoved her roughly aside.

  “Don’t touch me!” he ordered. “Or any of us! Not until you’re cured of all your STDs!”

  And withdrew to his corner of the seat to attend to other and more urgent business. Cowering, Crystal tried to make sense of what he was doing. The Rolls was fitted with not just a phone, but also the facility to access remote computers, which was what David was exploiting at the moment. She blinked away tears and suffered the return of memory. The last car she had seen so lavishly equipped had been Winston Farmer’s Jaguar—and even in that case she hadn’t known how rich he was until he came to court.

  When, luckily, she had not had to testify. The fact that he’d been caught in possession of two k’s of crack had been enough—

  For a moment she was frantic, reflex superseding rationality. Could these weird people be ex-customers, their sights set on taking over his business?

  As though he had sensed her reaction, David snapped, “Shut up!”

  But she hadn’t said anything… Maybe she ought to listen for a change. She did her best to concentrate, and heard:

  “What name?… Yes, I got the surname. But the first one?… Ah, I got you! Garth!”

  Whereupon he produced a pocket organizer and entered a memo to self, then posted it to a remote computer.

  Passive, Crystal leaned back against the soft, absorbing cushions of the car, not noticing the route that it was following but savoring the contrast between this setting and the chill harsh building she had left. She waited until David had finished, then ventured timidly, “How did you track me down?”

  “Through PNC, of course,” he sighed. And added cruelly, “Given that you were jailed for spreading syph I’m not so sure it was a good idea!”

  She was instantly in tears. No one had spoken to her with such authority since her parents died. Her aunt and uncle had been brusquer, but earned none of her respect. This boy, however, from the very start…

  She forced out, “It was my only hope!”

  “Of wiping out the whenzies?”—cynically.

  “No! To survive!”

  There was a pause.

  During it, up front, Mr. Shay kept on driving and Mrs. Shay kept on pretending that she didn’t give a damn about whatever happened. That was a fact. Crystal knew it, didn’t have to guess. Her period having drawn to its close, her talent—her power—was being bit by bit restored.

  Though she never expected to match David’s.

  At last David, uttering a sigh, reached out to pat her hand, if only for a moment.

  “Welcome, sister,” he said half-inaudibly.

  “What do you mean?” She jolted upright.

  “You must have believed you were the only one.”

  “I don’t understand!”

  Seeming to ignore her words, he carried on. “I did for a long while, and so did… Never mind. You’ll meet them in a little while. I only wish you hadn’t declared biological warfare on the whenzies, given the risk to yourself—”

  “I didn’t!” Crystal’s voice was half a scream.

  He searched her face with dark intense eyes while she fought to make him believe what she had said.

  And won. Perhaps her magic was returning. For he let his face relax toward a smile.

  However, what he said was not what she’d expected…

  “Ah, what the hell? We couldn’t all be lucky, I suppose. Statistically there was apt to be at least one who went on the streets and didn’t care about disease—”

  “I did so!”—erupting. “Got my AIDS certificate! And I paid a mint for the inoculation!”

  He fixed her with his stern dark gaze.

  “And had room for only one disease in your mind? Forgot about syphilis and gonorrhea and soft chancre and NSU and the fungal conditions that you could have been transmitting and quite likely were?”

  Crystal was crying; she didn’t quite know why, but it might have been because this strange boy sounded so much more like her father than her unwillingly adoptive uncle. She forced out, “What the hell else was I supposed to do to stay alive?”

  “For the first time,” said David Shay, and sounded strangely old—one could have invoked the term patriarchal—as he spoke the words, “you have the chance to be alive. And so do… No, that has to wait. You’ll find out in a little while.”

  The car was whirring along a motorway, dispersing lesser vehicles like a fast launch dismissing rowboats.

  “We’ll get properly acquainted when you’re cured,” David went on eventually. �
�Meantime, my search program appears to have turned up another of our siblings.”

  What?

  But she didn’t dare ask for a more detailed explanation. His power… Oh, Lord! She’d never guessed the magic could be strong! Convincing, yes—persuasive, yes! But never strong!

  And yet…

  For the first time in months she confronted the fact, so long and so often pushed to the back of her mind, of the difference between herself and other people. Sometimes she had been frightened by her talent, even when she was using it to maximum advantage. But at bottom what she really feared was being unique—an exception, a mutant, a monster.

  At least she wasn’t that. Here was David for proof. And he’d mentioned the possibility of yet another…

  Little by little, as the car hummed onward, she started to relax, and when they reached their destination she was able to laugh and clap her hands with unalloyed delight.

  You’re watching TV Plus. It’s time for Newsframe.

  Thousands of acres of crops in the basin of America’s Colorado River are under threat following an irruption of salt water from a natural underground reservoir. Water-engineers believed the reservoir to contain fresh water. This may have been true ten years ago when test-wells were last sunk to it, but subsequently salt water appears to have leaked in through a rock-fault. More details later.

  Speaking in West Germany at a rally organized by descendants of servicemen who died in World War II, General Sir Hampton Thrower praised the valiant spirit of the fallen…

  “Miss Morris? From the Comet? Do come in, do sit down.”

  Got it!

  In memory Claudia could still hear Peter’s excited voice on the phone when his vague recollection ceased to be vague after two days of striving. And here was the person it had led her to: Dr. Ada Grant, who had been on the staff of the Chinn-Wilkinson, though not a partner, at the time Peter was donating semen, and who was now director of possibly the best-known fertility clinic in London. Long-faced, long-boned, with short dark hair, she wore a severe white coat and narrow black skirt. A red-white-and-blue ribbon was pinned to the breast of the coat—but one saw the emblem everywhere nowadays. (Even Peter…)