by Gene Wolfe
“I don’t want you to leave,” Little Tib told him.
“It would just take a moment. I fall down a lot, but keys wouldn’t break.”
“No,” Little Tib said. The Clothes Man looked so hurt that he added, “I’m afraid. . . .”
“You can’t be afraid of the dark. Are you afraid of being alone?”
“A little. But I’m afraid you couldn’t really bring them to me. I’m afraid you’re not real, and I want you to be real.”
“I could bring them.” The Clothes Man threw out his chest and struck a heroic pose, but the dry grass that was his stuffing made a small, sad, rustling sound. “I am real. Try me.”
There was another door—Little Tib’s fingers found it. This one was not locked, and when he went out it, the floor changed from sidewalk to smooth stone. “I too am real,” a strange voice said. The Clothes Man was still there when the strange voice spoke, but he seemed dimmer.
“Who are you?” Little Tib asked, and there was a sound like thunder. He had hated the strange voice from the beginning, but until he heard the thunder sound he had not really known how much. It was not really like thunder, he thought. He remembered his dream about the gnomes, though this was much worse. It seemed to him that it was like big stones grinding together at the bottom of the deepest hole in the world. It was worse than that, really.
“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” the Clothes Man said.
“If the keys are in there, I’ll have to go in and get them,” Little Tib replied.
“They’re not in there at all. In fact, they’re not even close to there—they’re several doors down. All you have to do is walk past the door.”
“Who is it?”
“It’s the computer,” the Clothes Man told him.
“I didn’t think they talked like that.”
“Only to you. And not all of them talk at all. Just don’t go in and it will be all right.”
“Suppose it comes out here after me?”
“It won’t do that. It is as frightened of you as you are of it.”
“I won’t go in,” Little Tib promised.
When he was opposite the door where the thing was, he heard it groaning as if it were in torture, and he turned and went in. He was very frightened to find himself there, but he knew he was not in the wrong place—he had done the right thing, and not the wrong thing. Still, he was very frightened. The horrible voice said, “What have we to do with you? Have you come to torment us?”
“What is your name?” Little Tib asked.
The thundering, grinding noise came a second time, and this time Little Tib thought he heard in it the sound of many voices, perhaps hundreds or thousands, all speaking at once.
“Answer me,” Little Tib said. He walked forward until he could put his hands on the cabinet of the machine. He felt frightened, but he knew the Clothes Man had been right—the computer was as frightened of him as he was of it. He knew that the Clothes Man was standing behind him, and he wondered if he would have dared to do this if someone else had not been watching.
“We are legion,” the horrible voice said. “Very many.”
“Get out!” There was a moaning that might have come from deep inside the earth. Something made of glass that had been on furniture fell over and rolled and crashed to the floor.
“They are gone,” the Clothes Man said. He sat on the cabinet of the computer so Little Tib could see it, and he looked brighter than ever.
“Where did they go?” Little Tib asked.
“I don’t know. You will probably meet them again.” As if he had just thought of it, he said, “You were very brave.”
“I was scared. I’m still scared—the worst since I left the new place.”
“I wish I could tell you that you didn’t have to be afraid of them,” the Clothes Man said, “or of anybody. But it wouldn’t be true. Still, I can tell you something that is really better than that—that it will all come out right in the end.” He took off the big, floppy black hat he wore, and Little Tib saw that his bald head was really only a sack. “You wouldn’t let me bring the keys before, but how about now? Or would you be afraid with me away?”
“No,” Little Tib said, “but I’ll get the keys myself.”
At once the Clothes Man was gone. Little Tib felt the smooth, cool metal of the computer under his hands. In the blackness, it was the only reality there was.
He did not bother to find the window again; instead, he unlocked another, and called Nitty and Mr. Parker to it, smelling as he did the cool, damp air of spring. At the opening, he thrust the keys through first, then squeezed himself between the bars. By the time he was outside, he could hear Mr. Parker unlocking the side door.
“You were a long time,” Nitty said. “Was it bad in there by yourself?”
“I wasn’t by myself,” Little Tib said.
“I’m not even goin’ to ask you about that. I used to be a fool, but I know better now. You still want to go to Dr. Prithivi’s meetin’?”
“He wants us to come, doesn’t he?”
“You are the big star, the main event. If you don’t come, it’s going to be like no potato salad at a picnic.”
They walked back to the motel in silence. The flute music they had heard before was louder and faster now, with the clangs of gongs interspersed in its shrill wailings. Little Tib stood on a footstool while Nitty took his clothes away and wrapped a piece of cloth around his waist, and another around his head, and hung his neck with beads, and painted something on his forehead.
“There, you look just ever so fine,” Nitty said.
“I feel silly,” Little Tib told him.
Nitty said that that did not matter, and they left the motel again and walked several blocks. Little Tib heard the crowd, and the loud sounds of the music, and then smelled the familiar dark, sweet smell of Dr. Prithivi’s bus; he asked Nitty if the people had not seen him, and Nitty said that they had not, that they were watching something taking place on a stage outside.
“Ah,” Dr. Prithivi said. “You are here, and you are just in time.”
Nitty asked him if Little Tib looked all right.
“His appearance is very fine indeed, but he must have his instrument.”
He put a long, light stick into Little Tib’s hands. It had a great many little holes in it. Little Tib was happy to have it, knowing that he could use it to feel his way if necessary.
“Now it is time you met your fellow performer,” Dr. Prithivi said. “Boy Krishna, this is the god Indra. Indra, it has given me the greatest pleasure to introduce to you the god Krishna, most charming of the incarnations of Vishnu.”
“Hello,” a strange, deep voice said.
“You are doubtless familiar already with the story, but I will tell it to you again in order to refresh your memories before you must appear on my little stage. Krishna is the son of Queen Devaki, and this lady is the sister of the wicked King Kamsa who kills all her children when they are born. To save Krishna, the good queen places him among villagers. There he offends Indra, who comes to destroy him. . . .”
Little Tib listened with only half his mind, certain that he could never remember the whole story. He had forgotten the queen’s name already. The wood of the flute was smooth and cool under his fingers, the air in the bus hot and heavy, freighted with strange, sleepy odors.
“I am King Kamsa,” Dr. Prithivi was saying, “and when I am through being he, I will be a cowherd, so I can tell you what to do. Remember not to drop the mountain when you lift it.”
“I’ll be careful,” Little Tib said. He had learned to say that in school.
“Now I must go forth and prepare for you. When you hear the great gong struck three times, come out. Your friend will be waiting there to take you to the stage.”
Little Tib heard the door of the bus open and close. “Where’s Nitty?” he asked.
The deep voice of Indra—a hard, dry voice, it seemed to Little Tib—said, “He has gone to help.”
; “I don’t like being alone here.”
“You are not alone,” Indra said. “I’m with you.”
“Yes.”
“Did you like the story of Krishna and Indra? I will tell you another story. Once, in a village not too far away from here—”
“You aren’t from around here, are you?” Little Tib asked. “Because you don’t talk like it. Everybody here talks like Nitty or like Mr. Parker except Dr. Prithivi, and he’s from India. Can I feel your face?”
“No, I’m not from around here,” Indra said. “I am from Niagara, Do you know what that is?”
Little Tib said, “No.”
“It is the capital of this nation—the seat of government. Here, you may feel my face.”
Little Tib reached upward; but Indra’s face was smooth, cool wood, like the flute. “You don’t have a face,” he said.
“That is because I am wearing the mask of Indra. Once, in a village not too far from here, there were a great many women who wanted to do something nice for the whole world. So they offered their bodies for certain experiments. Do you know what an experiment is?”
“No,” said Little Tib.
“Biologists took parts of these women’s bodies—parts that would later become boys and girls. And they reached down inside the tiniest places in those parts and made improvements.”
“What kind of improvements?” Little Tib asked.
“Things that would make the girls and boys smarter and stronger and healthier—that kind of improvement. Now these good women were mostly teachers in a college, and the wives of college teachers.”
“I understand,” Little Tib said. Outside, the people were singing.
“However, when those girls and boys were born, the biologists decided that they needed more children to study—children who had not been improved, so that they could compare them to the ones who had.”
“There must have been a lot of those,” Little Tib ventured.
“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 Little Tib 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 were 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 am 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 who 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.