CHILDREN OF THE THUNDER

by John Brunner

  It was the first time he had appealed to one of the others for approval. Peter tensed, hoping for a contradiction. On the contrary. Garth gave a sour chuckle.

  “They scared easy. Once I’d killed our bocky neighbors’ prize sheepdog, and particularly after I’d drowned their son in our brook, they were amazingly pliant.”

  A girl spoke up, sitting in the darkest corner where Peter could not see her face. Her voice, though, was so like Ellen’s…! Bar a slightly different accent, it could have been his daughter’s—

  It is my daughter’s.

  Slowly, sickly, awareness of the truth was penetrating his mind.

  What was she saying? He forced himself to recapture her first words, which he had nearly missed.

  “I made my first kill before you did, Garth. I’m Sheila Hubbard, Dad… Dave, I want to speak for myself.”

  “Go ahead,” David invited with an expansive gesture, and added by way of footnote, “Since joining us, Sheila has changed her mind about the way she looks at her plight.”

  “True,” the girl acknowledged, hunching forward with elbows on knees. “I used to think it was my fault that soldier died—”

  “The one who drowned in the river?” Claudia exclaimed.

  “Yes, him.” Sheila’s tone was as dead as the soldier. “But I only killed him. My mother was responsible, because she wanted a child and her first husband didn’t, but she went ahead anyway—”

  “How?” Peter forced out.

  “Let her finish!” David reprimanded sharply. “I told you—the Chinn-Wilkinson wasn’t nearly as ethical as its owners claimed, at least when thousands of pounds were at stake… Go on, Sheila.”

  She shrugged and spread her hands. Still in the same dull tone, she muttered, “Well, she left him and got married again, this time to a rich old growser with a mess of money. But for a long time I didn’t know I wasn’t my official father’s kid. I was lied to. I think it was knowing that my mother had lied to me that drove me to do—well, what I did.”

  “That,” David prompted, “and the discovery of your power?”

  “Shit, we’ve all been that route, haven’t we?” Sheila sighed, and leaned back into darkness.

  “Yes,” David said. “It’s a temptation. Just as well we got together before any of us yielded to it on the grandest scale, hmm?”

  There was a pause, as though some of the children were still not convinced, but eventually there followed a murmur of agreement. Peter’s view of what was going on kept shifting; he was no longer so sure that all the kids were under David’s sway, even though Harry and Alice obviously were. So there might be some hope of escape…

  He hadn’t realized until now that escape would be necessary.

  “Next I got in touch with Terry,” David resumed. “You won’t know his name, any more than you knew the others’, but if I say he was running a neat little protection racket with a handful of older boys…?”

  A suppressed chuckle. The room was growing ever darker, yet Peter’s watch confirmed that only as much time had passed as he had guessed. The rain, then, was due to redouble as the clouds densened—and here came the clatter of waterdrops as fierce as bullets. Raising his voice to compensate, David said, “Well, what else would you expect? A kid raised by a family of loyal government supporters, persuaded that if they didn’t make their pile out of their little local shop they were somehow betraying Britain as the traditional nation of shopkeepers… Small wonder their son—excuse me: their boy—took to what is customarily called a life of crime.”

  Terry stirred. Until now he had been as motionless as he was silent. Now he said, “Some people call it private enterprise, you know.”

  There was a general chuckle. Clutching at straws, Peter thought: Well, at least they have a sense of humor.

  Already his background in medicine, biology and the media was reinforcing his suspicion that these children might regard themselves as superhuman…

  “The next of us that I met was Tracy Coward, who made the silly mistake of trying to take away an engagement ring from one of her former school-fellows, and—”

  “No, it wasn’t!”

  Everyone turned to see who had spoken, in a rough harsh voice. It was Bernie, emboldened by brandy. He was having difficulty hauling himself out of the armchair assigned to him, as though he had put on a vast amount of weight.

  “No, it wasn’t!” he barked again, and tried to set his glass down on a nearby table. A hand snatched it from him seconds before it would have crashed to the floor.

  Steadying himself with an effort, he plunged on.

  “The next was the one in Italy—the one whose mother wanted him because unless she had a kid expresso bongo she and her be-lov-ed brother would have lost her husband’s family estates! The one who turned out better than the lot of you! The one you burnt alive because he would have been your rival!”

  There was a sense of chill in the room, not due to the wintry weather outside.

  Then David rose to his feet. “Bernie,” he said softly, “you’re sailing dangerously close to the wind.”

  There followed a chorus of agreement, while the children shifted menacingly on their chairs and cushions.

  “I was planning to tell the story of GianMarco in due time. You think it should be now. Very well. What do you have to say about him?”

  Defiantly: “That you got rid of him and his family in case he proved to be too much for you to cope with! Peter—Claudia—he arranged for the family’s home to be burnt down!” Bernie rounded on them. “And this was a kid, a teenage kid, and his own half-brother! Not a whenzie cank like Thrower! A kid, the age of my own eldest son!”

  He was shaking with passion, hands curled like claws before his chest.

  “Crystal,” David said softly, but not too softly to be heard, “make a note. Alcohol can minimize the impact.”

  “After continued exposure,” Crystal suggested.

  “Good point. Something to bear in mind. I wonder whether the invention of the still has something to do with the historical pattern. Mark that for further investigation.”

  “Will do.”

  For the first time Peter, still transfixed by the conflict between what he was hearing and how he was feeling, noticed that Crystal was wearing a computer-remote around her left wrist, like a calculator watch. She tapped several keys in rapid sequence, and there was a click from what until this moment had looked like a Louis XVI bureau.

  Illusions, deceptions! Let this whole situation be un-unreal!

  “However, in fact”—David turned commandingly to Bernie—“GianMarco was a failure because he had fallen beyond hope into the trap of the past. A born whenzie, as you might say. He had become convinced that the land his family owned belonged to his family. It does not! We—all of us—belong to the planet, and not the other way around!”

  For the first time Peter felt a glimmering of the—the ideology? Perhaps the faith might be a better term?—that inspired this terrifying boy. If he was concerned to preserve the resources of the Earth, that was at least rational…

  Rational? Or rationalized?

  The question obtruded, because he remembered seeing a TV report: a family trapped in a burning house in Italy, their only son’s name being GianMarco…

  But he must compose himself to listen yet again. Ellen’s caressing hand on his nape conveyed as much.

  “I know Tracy doesn’t want me to talk about her,” David said. His voice had become suddenly light and clear, more like that of an ordinary teenage boy. “But, Trace, we all have to face the consequences of our actions! Sheila’s managing it—”

  For the first time one of the other children dared to interrupt. Again, had he not known that Ellen was perched on the arm of his chair, Peter could have imagined that the words were hers.

  “I’m the only one who was such a bocky fool! And won’t I wear the scars to prove it all my life?”

  “Engagement ring,” Claudia said softly. Unexpectedly, she seemed to have regain
ed more of her self-possession than Peter. But then, she hadn’t been hit with such a load of unwanted responsibility… During the next few seconds Peter hated her.

  The emotion didn’t last. It wasn’t allowed to.

  “I don’t suppose I need to go into detail,” David murmured. “For Tracy’s sake, though, I ought to mention that it was because she was brought up by a couple who cared so much for trivial possessions, who indeed regarded her as a possession—”

  “Dave, you’re making her cry! Stop it!”

  Peter could not tell who uttered the exclamation, but it was a boy, not a girl, who dropped at Tracy’s side on the floor and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. David hesitated.

  Ah! So he doesn’t have total control! There is still hope!

  The hope, though, was faint—and growing fainter…

  David said, “Those responsible will be called to account. That’s a promise, Trace. And there won’t be any more scars.”

  “Except the ones the bocky canks have left where they don’t show!”

  The other children, even David, nodded in total unison. Peter could no longer see their eyes, so dark was the room as the storm beat at the windows, but he knew they were fixed on him—and Claudia—and Harry—and Alice…? No, there was no sign of Alice. She seemed to have left the room, doubtless to prepare the lunch reference to which had so amused Claudia.

  “Nonetheless,” David said gratingly, “they will be called to account. If they are not, we shan’t survive.”

  Before Peter had time to do more than start worrying about that ominous statement, David resumed.

  “Next I tracked down Mary, who is also still in two minds about what she did—she had her father sent to jail. However, she is gradually coming around to the majority view.”

  “Which is—?” Claudia demanded. Peter envied her relative self-control, achieved without the reassuring caresses Ellen was bestowing on his own nape.

  “We cannot afford the luxury known as a conscience. The enemy we are up against certainly doesn’t have one, so we are obliged to be absolutely rational. Cruel, if you like. People of good will, tolerant, liberal, whatever term you care to use, have always labored under a disadvantage. Those in power, those who want to hold on to power whatever the cost, have one ultimate recourse. If all else fails, they are prepared to kill. This is not available to pacifists. Mary, is there anything you want to add?”

  The girl nodded. “Dad brought it on himself. I thought so in the first place; then I stopped being so sure; then I realized I’d been right the first time. Maybe it was rough justice, but it was justice. The bocky hypocrite!”

  “That brings us to Pepita,” David continued. “Our newest recruit. Daughter, as I mentioned, of Cynthia Hallam whom you knew only as Sindy, whose husband realized at once her child could not be his—he was yet another hypocrite—and threw her out. She became an alcoholic. It is a very sick society you brought us into, isn’t it?”

  Peter ignored the gibe. He was foggily trying to solve a mystery that had just occurred to him.

  If Pepita is the latest recruit… I assumed Ellen! She can’t ever have been here before! Does this mean that she isn’t actually one of—of them? If she is, of course, it would explain a million things, up to and including Claudia and me last night…

  “He’s wondering why you haven’t mentioned me yet,” Ellen said.

  Grief! Perhaps she really can read my mind!

  “There’s a reason for that,” David said with a wry smile. “I found all the others. Ellen is the only one who found me. Though we’d never actually met before today. Isn’t email wonderful?”

  Peter, jerking forward on his chair, twisted around to stare accusingly at Ellen.

  “Does this mean you knew these were”—he had to force the words out, had to hear his own voice shaping them—“my children? So what was all that taradiddle about four Louis Parkers? Why didn’t you tell me the truth? If you had—”

  “If I had,” she cut in, “you’d have turned us into a newspaper story and a TV show, wouldn’t you? And maybe a scientific article or two”—with a nod at Claudia. “That had to be prevented. By the way, we’re obliged to you for recalling Louis Parker, even though you misled me and even David for a while. He turned out to be an invaluable red herring.”

  Awareness of the burden he carried in his genes was affecting Peter much as might the news that he had cancer. He wrung his hands.

  “But, Ellen, I thought you—you loved me. You’ve told me you do, often enough.”

  Rising, withdrawing a pace, she gazed down at him. Seeing the iciness of her expression, he felt a pang as though something within his chest had been ripped apart.

  “Love you?” she said. “After the way you treated my mother—after the years when you never bothered to get in touch, never sent me so much as a birthday card? Don’t make me laugh! But what counts is that you love me. I know! You can’t help it.”

  “I…”

  Abruptly Peter was dumbstruck again, overwhelmed by the impact of fresh revelation. Watching keenly, David nodded.

  “I was wondering how long it would take you to work out the nature of our gift. It’s a very old one. It may have been quite widespread at one time—Dr. Morris, you had some thoughts about that, I gather, in connection with the way ancient peoples were drawn to work together on colossal projects like Stonehenge before there were kings and armies and police. It’s an interesting suggestion, worth looking into.

  “But of course it’s always cropped out in certain individuals, and nowadays it’s usually called charisma. The commonest of its manifestations, though, is when one person falls in love with another, and can’t escape the attraction even when he or she is totally mismatched.

  “Putting it bluntly: we have the power to make people love us. They can’t avoid it. It deprives them of reason and judgment, it makes it impossible for them to accept that we are guilty of any kind of crime—at least so long as we are nearby and preferably able to touch them now and then. The pheromone seems to be absorbed quite efficiently through the skin, as well as the nasal passages.

  “And, naturally, possessing such power, we intend to use it. Because we want to live. Do you understand? We don’t want to be burned in a nuclear war—we don’t want to be poisoned by the food we eat and the water we drink and the very air we breathe!”

  His voice rose to a pitch of passionate intensity.

  “We want to survive! And we aren’t going to let anybody stop us!”

  You’re watching TV Plus. Now for Newsframe.

  Dr. Wallace Custer, who claimed to have evidence that the plastic from which most soft-drink bottles are made contains solvents that affect the intelligence and sanity of children, was found shot at his home in Berkshire this morning. Reports that he had committed suicide were discounted by his wife and family. However, the police—

  (All sets tuned to that channel went dead. Later it transpired that the Throwers had made good their threat to close the station down. With a bomb.)

  There followed a pause more dreadful than any that had gone before. Peter’s tongue felt like a blanket in his mouth, but somehow he contrived to speak.

  “Use your power? For things like what you did to General Thrower?”

  David shrugged. “They should not be necessary too often—though it went off very well for a first attempt, hmm?”

  “But—”

  Suddenly the boy was stern. “Don’t tell us we should have been more merciful! He’s been eager to consign people to that sort of hell all his life. He resigned as deputy C-in-C of NATO because he didn’t like his precious nuclear toys being taken away. You know that. If he’d been allowed to carry on, the chances are excellent that he’d have become a dictator, Hitler-style. I’ve modeled it. All it would take is a fifty percent increase in crime, unemployment and bankruptcies. And the trends are there.”

  “But what else are you planning to do?” Peter whimpered. “You said something about salvation—”r />
  “I’m glad you noticed.” Now David’s tone was ironical.

  “I don’t see—”

  Abruptly the boy jumped to his feet and walked across the room to stare out of one of the tall half-curtained windows at the teeming rain.

  He said over his shoulder, “Tell me, Mr. Levin, when did you last open a newspaper or switch on the TV news without being told about a political crisis, or an economic collapse, or an ecological disaster? Or a war, or starvation, or people being driven from their lands and homes?”

  “Well, of course the news—”

  “The news has been too bad for far too long!” David spun on his heel and pounded fist into palm. “We’re going to do something about it! Nobody else can, so it’s up to us. I told you: we have the power and we intend to use it. It’ll take a while to bring it under fully conscious control, but some of us are pretty good at that already, so there’s no doubt it can be done.”

  “Just you kids?” Claudia said incredulously. “Just you dozen kids?”

  “Don’t underestimate us. In a group, we’re irresistible. We’ve proved that. General Thrower took about five minutes to decide that the thing he wanted most, right now, was to dismiss his bodyguards and come with us.”

  He hesitated, then added with a renewal of his wry smile, “Besides, it won’t always be ‘just a dozen.’ Peter made you pregnant last night.”

  “What?” Claudia leapt to her feet. “How in hell’s name can you possibly know that?”

  “I’ve been keeping track of the dates when you visited us during your period,” Ellen said composedly. “The timing is precisely right. And Peter fucked you twice. I was listening.”

  “I’ll get an abortion! Or the ‘morning-after’ pill!”

  “Oh no you won’t,” David said. “You already love your child. As much as you love us. Because it will be one of us.”

  Of a sudden the odor that had mingled with the smell of roasted meat when they first arrived in the house, which they had stopped noticing thanks to olfactory overload, redoubled in intensity. Peter shivered anew, and this time found he could not stop. He went on shaking, shaking.